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Portal:Transport

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The Transport Portal

Bicycle wheel
Transport. According to the Appropriate transport manual, sustainable transportation is a strategy for the flow of people and goods across the Earth that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. Transportation accounted for 32.6% of US green house gas emissions in 2005. In addition to the widely publicized environmental consequences of driving automobiles, it is also socially and economically costly:
  • Land use: Parking and roads use valuable land resources.
  • Transportation equity: Driving, with all of its expenses, costs the average U.S. household $7,000 per year per vehicle.
  • Economics: Most of the money spent on driving leaves a local economy, weakening it.
  • Community: Travelers outside of their cars interact more with their physical environment and each other.
  • Safety: The presence of pedestrians and cyclists make our neighborhoods safer from crime. Conversely, 42,000 Americans are killed in car accidents every year.
  • Health: Increasingly, Americans are suffering from weight-related illnesses. This is partly attributable to the decline in active transportation use and availability.

Building and encouraging alternatives to the single-occupant vehicle, or, for short "alternative transportation," is imperative. Some alternative transportation advocates have taken to using the term, sustainable transportation, instead of the previous, widely-used "alternative transportation" term to avoid sidelining their interest from the mainstream.

Many efficient, practical, and inexpensive sustainable transportation technologies already exist, meaning activism, policy work, and planning research is most often more crucial to developing sustainable transportation than technology development.

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Luggage carrier for transport bicycle
Luggage carrier for transport bicycle. Bicycles are used for transporting bulky and heavy loads. It is trickey to do this in a way that it is still possibe to pedal the bicycle. In practice sometimes special racks are permanently attached to the bicycle. Such racks may hinder the more normal use of this bicycle. Moreover normal bicycles are not build to take heavy loads over rough roads. Special bicycles for heavy loads are not generally available. An alternative could be a load carrier characterized with the following: the load does not rest on the frame of the bicycle, but is transferred directly to the wheelaxles; it is easy to mount and remove the load rack; such a load rack can be made by the user and adapted to the load to be transported. The load rack should not be in the way to push the loaded bicycle or to ride it.

To make sure that the load put on the bicycle is mainly transferred to the wheel axle, straps are attached where the wheel axles are bolted to the bicycle frame. These straps are made by winding some thin wire around frame and axle and twisting it into a loop.In each strap fits the tapered end of a straight stick roughly one and half a meter long. For the load rack over the front wheel, these sticks are tied with a strip of rubber to the steering handle. For the load rack over the rear wheel, the two sticks are also mounted in the loops attached to the rear wheel axle, then higher up with rubberstrips to a T-shaped wooden extension strapped to the frame under the saddle. Any basket, bag, netting or platform can be attached to the sticks, that support the load in the most practical way. This choice is left to the user. After use only the wire loops remain attached to the bicycle frame for future use. The sticks and the T-frame are removed. On the way back from the market, these parts can be tied in a bundle to the side of the bicycle.

Bike snow plow

A test scraper attachment is stowed on the top of the bike snow plow. It attaches behind the plow and is designed to skim down the hard packed crust that the main plow can't get.

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