This video from the Detroit Je t’aime shows many of the city’s bike clubs riding together as Angels’ Night volunteers.
It’s interesting to hear Mike Neeley of the Eastside Riders talk about how biking uniquely brings together riders from all parts of the city.
This Saturday, November 12th is the first Detroit Custom Bike Fall Show at the Magic Stick. The event begins at 7pm and there’s a $3 cover. RSVP on Facebook.
Bikes & Murder Presents the 2011 Fall Bicycle Show
The Magic Stick is thrilled to present the 1st annual showcase of Detroit custom bike builders, featuring some of Detroit’s best wrenchers:
Come get your geek on while you ooh and aah over some sweet custom creations!
With special guest DJ’s Jeff Risk, Dante Tucker, and Erno the Inferno
One of Detroit’s most famous cycling and Good Roads advocate received a posthumous award from Amsterdam: The Paul Mijksenaar Design for Function Award 2011.
White lines down the middle of the road: What could be more obvious? And yet they were once – in 1911, to be exact – a brilliant new idea. In Michigan, Edward N. Hines, a member of the Wayne County Road Commission, saw a leaky milk wagon leaving a liquid trail on a dusty roadway. It made him think of painting white lines down the centre of the road to create lanes that would clearly separate traffic moving in opposite directions.
UPDATE 11/23/2021: Is the milk story true? We doubt it. It’s more likely that story came from the safety-line strip-marker device. We will continue to track this down.
The Detroit News and Free Press also acknowledged his award, but left out many of his other accomplishments which this 1914 article in Motor Age magazine sums up well.
Like scores of other notables whose names you will find in the “Who’s Who” of motordom, Edward Hines unknowingly rode out on a bicycle to meet Fame. This was two score and 4 years ago when he was an enthusiastic cyclist and a three-ply executive, serving simultaneously as vice-president of the League of American Wheelmen, chief consul of the Michigan division of the L. A. W. and president of the Detroit Wheelmen. He pedaled through the mud and mire and hurdled the bumps of the Wayne county highways until his leg muscles went on a strike and his vertebrae demanded shock absorbers. Sore and exhausted, he decided to turn reformer and take the initiative in an attempt to improve the highways radiating from Detroit.
In 1890 he formed a good roads organization which petitioned the state legislature to amend the constitution, make the counties instead of the townships the units for the building and maintenance of the highways and give the counties the privilege of adopting the county system. Three years of missionary work and lobbying elapsed before such a measure was passed. In the meantime, Hines superintended the construction of 3-foot wide bicycle cinder paths built with money raised through popular subscription by the Detroit Journal. He also coaxed through the legislature a bill protecting these paths from the roving kine and devastating wagons of the Michigan farmers.
The county road law was passed in 1893. Its adoption by the various counties was certain and gradual. At the present time fifty-eight of the eighty-three counties of Michigan have seen the benefits to be derived from building their roads under skilled and intelligent supervision and have condemned former township road supervisors to the oubliette.
When Wayne county adopted the county system of road supervision 8 years ago, Hines was made chairman of the highway commission. Henry Ford, whom Hines knew as an ambitious young man and whose famous 999 he had timed in its first trial on the ice of Lake St. Clair, was a member of the county board and an ally of the road doctor of Detroit in his fight for the use of concrete in highway construction.
When first organized, the commission followed the accepted practices and started in to build bituminous macadam roads, but after a year’s experience in noting the wear upon them, foreseeing a constantly increasing maintenance charge and weeping as flotillas of motor cars scattered the so-called good roads into particles, it decided that a change was not only desirable, but imperative, and set out to find a material that was more permanent and durable and no more costly than macadam.
Edward Hines found such a material. It was concrete.
Hines thought roads were more than just concrete. He was an adamant supporter of road beautification efforts, which is why Hines Drive in Wayne County is named after him.
“I may want too much, I may be too visionary,” he said, “but I am going to have a road beautiful even if I have to spend my own money to satisfy such a desire.”
So don’t be surprised if in the future while touring in the vicinity of Detroit you suddenly run head-on into a mass of trailing arbutus, daffodils, chrysanthemums, lilies of the valley, orchids and forget-me-nots.
When Edward Hines wants something, he gets it.
If Hines were around today, he would probably “get” Complete Streets and Transportation Enhancements as well.
Congratulations on your award, Mr. Hines.
This is a really interesting article from Wayne State University’s The South End.
While the article is primarily about the haunted bike tours offered through Wheelhouse Detroit, there is also a commentary on how bike tours can dispel Detroit stereotypes.
Scott Galbraith and Cathy Kester, who participated in the Haunted Detroit tour, come from the Lansing area to visit Detroit about once a week.
“We had been to a number of those places (on the tour) or driven by them and just seeing them at a different perspective outside on your bike and what not — they were all fun,” Kester said. “I think it’s good for the city, absolutely. It gives something else for people to do besides the sporting events and bars and restaurants, or casinos.”
Biking through the city on a tour also helps to defeat Detroit’s stereotype as being unsafe or completely rundown, Galbraith said.
“Detroit has a reputation,” he said. “The Cass Corridor is not the safest area, but to go through and feel safe and feel at ease and go through the park there, things like that, I guess it just gives you a new perspective that not everything you hear is always true and give it a chance.”
This Friday, October 28th is the next Detroit Critical Mass ride at 6:30pm from the corner Trumbull and Warren. Costumes are recommended.
Get your wheels and wool ready. This Sunday is the next Detroit Tweed Ride.
You can RSVP on Facebook.