Annals of Cycling – 11
An occasional update on items from the Velo-city.
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NYC BIKELASH – 4
More from Next American City on “the bicycle lane controversy now tearing apart the New York intelligentsia.”
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AIRBIKE
Airbike is “grown” from nylon power. EADS, the European aerospace and defense group, has unveiled the world’s first bike “grown” from powder, allowing complete sections to be built as one piece. Known as the “Airbike,” it is made of nylon but strong enough to replace steel and 
requires no conventional maintenance or assembly. It can be built to rider specification and requires no adjustment.
Similar in concept to 3D printing, the bike design is perfected using computer-aided design and then constructed by using a powerful laser-sintering process that adds successive, thin layers of the chosen structural material until a solid, fully-formed bike emerges.
The company claims the process itself uses about one-tenth of the material required in traditional manufacturing and reduces waste, and allows products to be produced quickly and cheaply on “printers” located in offices, shops and houses.
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An official at Toyota Motor Corp. has presented proposals to the central and local governments to install 250,000 kilometers of cycling lanes across Japan over the next five years in a bid to reduce accidents involving cyclists. …Watari concluded that cycling lanes separated from traffic by fences or curbstones were needed to ensure safety on some 6,900 kilometers of city roads where speed limits of 50km/h or 60 km/h and above were implemented. On the remaining urban roads and roads in non-urban areas — a distance of about 730,000 kilometers– Watari proposed cycling lanes separated with white lines. He also suggested making cycling lanes in urban areas stand out with colored paving.
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THE SORCERER’S BICYCLES
But where was Mickey Pier?
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The music, of course, is not The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by Dukas but Grieg – Hall of the Mountain King from the Peer Gynt suite. So that is probably why Mickey does not appear
Concert properties’ next tower is called Salt and its site is located at Drake and Hornby. The project’s advertising is prominently featuring the separated cycling lanes as an amenity that sets the project apart from similiar offerings downtown. It will be interesting to see whether the large proposed multi-tower development on the Jim Pattison Toyota site at Drake and Hornby will also feature the protected cycling lanes as an amenity that is attractive to prospective buyers.