Now there is a good reason not to buy an electric bike: the Copenhagen Wheel from the Senseable City Lab can make you go hybrid with the switch of a tire. In a sense, it turns an ordinary hilly city such as Jerusalem and Amman into flat cities like Copenhagen and Amsterdam.
It gets hot in Israel, so two local entrepreneurs have invented a water-saving device called the Q-Fog to keeps cyclists cool. Pump a lever on the handlebars and presto – instant air con!
Cartoonist Charles Schulz wrote, “Life is like a ten speed bicycle. Most of us have gears we never use.” A group of women in the mountains of Afghanistan, who likely never read his strip, don’t agree.
For the two years I lived in Jerusalem, I tried to bike with my crappy communist throwback – a mini gearless green metallic wonder that I bought for the flat streets of Tel Aviv. The bike looked too pitiful to steal and that’s why it suited my tastes. Transplanted to Jerusalem, the labyrinth of hilly neighborhoods, […]
There’s been a huge jump in Tel Avivians riding on two wheels in the last decade. When I first visited Tel Aviv about 12 or 13 years ago I was one of the only cyclists on the road, along with a few other nuts, and the African immigrant workers hauling around skeins of fabric in […]
Even though Qatar is the world’s second fattest nation, it will host four international sporting events in the next decade, including the 2016 World Road Cycling Championship and the 2022 World Cup. With Sheikh Saoud bin Abdulrahman Al Thani at the helm, Qatar’s bid committee spent years fighting to host this prestigious cycling event for two […]
Seven months ago, a Tunisian university teacher decided to travel from Tunisia to China on his bike to help raise awareness of the human and environmental value of wetlands. Here is his journey. I am a sucker for any cycling journey – although it doesn’t quite have the nostalgia of travelling by train, it certainly […]
Bikes blocking traffic or crosswalks are being impounded in Tel Aviv. From the first time I visited Tel Aviv more than a decade ago, up until today so much has changed in the way the city’s residents accept cycling. Back then if you rode a bike you were either a migrant worker pushing fabric rolls […]
We interview Izhar Gafni, the inventor of the cardboard bike.
It only costs Izhar Gafni 9-12 USD to produce this sleek, waterproof and roadworthy cardboard bike. At the behest of his wife (who was tired of Gafni’s talk without action), the Israeli Kibbutznik developed an earth-friendly alternative for urban cyclists that is “so cheap it’s not worth stealing.” Like most innovators, Gafni defied the naysayers […]
Izhar Gafni makes a bike from cardboard for $9. Engineers told Izhar Gafni that a cardboard bike was impossible. But he went ahead and made one anyway. An ardent cyclist and skilled mechanic, Gafni found a cardboard bicycle taking shape in his mind. American engineers he consulted solemnly nay-sayed, but he couldn’t let go of […]
It’s hard to ignore the lack of infrastructure and safety for cyclists in the Middle East. In Egypt you might get sexually harassed if you are a woman riding a bike in Cairo. With the raised sidewalks, when they exist in Amman, Jordan; and the deathly traffic and smog, riding in Amman isn’t such a […]
The bad news is that Jordan’s Bus Rapid Transit system (BRT) was suspended last year amid concerns about the associated cost and feasibility. Although the multimillion dollar project would have considerably reduced traffic and smog in capital Amman, details of the system conceived by the Greater Amman Municipality in 2009 are still being ironed out. […]
Math helps us understand how people flow, and just maybe it could help Hajj pilgrims stay safe. A Californian jogs to the beach. Coming towards him on the sidewalk is a Texan. Unless one steps aside they’ll collide. Quick: which way does the jogger move? If this is in Europe or the USA, heavy odds he […]
Jerusalem’s light rail may have been up and running for months already, but some residents believe that cycling is still the best way to get around. In the fall of 2011, Jerusalem finally got its much anticipated light rail (after years of construction). The light rail was intended to offer a comfortable and eco-friendly means […]