Popular Science magazine recently put all of their archived issues on-line. A quick search for bicycles brought up this interesting article from July 1936.

The bicycle is back. Four millions Americans now pedal along streets and highways. And, last year factories in the United States turned out 750,000 machines, nearly equaling the peak production of the gay nineties. News items from all part of the country tell the story of this dramatic boom in popularity.

Bike polo. Bike rental stations. Trains on bikes. The bicycle news of 1936 wasn’t all that different than today.

And, they note that Detroit has created “handlebar paths” for bicyclists in several city parks. We’re guessing that included Belle Isle and Rouge Park.

The article also documents the rise of bicycles starting in 1885 and their subsequent fall by 1904. The depression spurred Americans to rediscover this “forgotten vehicle.”

That sounds similar to what has happened during our gas price spikes and tough economy.

The Ann Arbor Chronicle recently published this interesting article on local bicycling history, but especially on bike law and bloomers.

The 1876 Ann Arbor city charter contains no mention of bicycles — it wouldn’t be until two years later that A. A. Pope manufactured the first bicycles in the U.S. The invention spread across the nation, threw city fathers into consternation as they scrambled for their city charters, and incited Ann Arbor’s “Bloomer War.”

The Chronicle also notes that Ann Arbor’s recent debate on banning sidewalk bicycling is not new.

In Michigan, state law does not prohibit bicycling on sidewalks though it does allow cities to prohibit it. Some have prohibited sidewalk riding citywide (e.g. Royal Oak) while others have limited the ban to their business district (e.g. Ferndale.) Often such bans provide exceptions for children.

State law also requires these city specific regulations to be adequately signed, otherwise they’re not enforceable.

The intention of these laws is not always clear, though it seems reducing pedestrian-bicyclist conflict is often cited. Are they also intended to promote safer cycling by reducing vehicle-bicycle collisions? Studies have shown that riding on sidewalks is significantly more dangerous than roads.

A recent review of police crash reports in Royal Oak and Troy found that nearly all crashes occurred on sidewalks or in crosswalks.

It should be noted that many Metro Detroit outer-ring suburbs ignore national AASHTO guidelines and best practices by designating sidewalks and sidepaths (locally known as “safety paths”) as bicycle routes. In these cases it could be argued that vehicle mobility — getting bicyclists off the road — is the fundamental justification, not safety.

Photo: Detroit News

The North American International Auto Show is in Detroit right now.

And just as many things in Detroit’s transportation history have an early connection to bicycling, so too does the auto show.

According to the Detroit News, the “credit for the beginning of the Detroit auto shows belongs to the energy and enthusiasm of one man — William E. Metzger, who dealt in bicycles before becoming an important figure in the development of the auto industry.”

Metzger had been interested in cycling since the late 1880s. He raced and completed a number of centuries, which was quite challenging given that era’s roads and equipment.

His favorite bike was a star highwheeler. He was the first president of the Detroit Wheelmen cycling club.

After a stint working at Hudson’s, he opened the Huber & Metzger bike shop in 1891. It was located at 13 Grand River between Woodward and Griswold. It eventually became one of the largest bike shops in the U.S..

That bike shop is now on display on the lower level of the Detroit Historical Museum.

He sold his share of this bike shop in 1895 and opened America’s first automobile retail showroom a couple years later. This former bike shop owner (CORRECTED 12/11/2010) He became Detroit’s first auto dealer, and perhaps the first independent auto dealer in the U.S.. He sold electric cars and as well as the first Oldsmobile. He still sold bicycles as late as the 1920s.

But it was in 1899 when he started the first auto show in Detroit (only the second of its kind.) The next year he helped stage the first New York Auto Show.

Metzger was also very active in the Good Roads Movement. And when Horatio “Good Roads” Earle called the first International Good Roads Congress in 1900, he asked his friend William Metzger if he could get a car there for a demo. (The car died halfway around the race track.)

In 1901 he renewed his membership in the League of American Wheelmen and became a lifetime member. Apparently he didn’t completely trade his bicycles for cars.

He went on to greater success helping found the Cadillac Motor Car Company, the Everitt-Metzger-Flanders (E-M-F) Company (which produced 26,000 cars in 1911 — second only to Ford), and the Metzger Motor Company.

Much later his interest switched to airplanes and he started the first airplane show in Detroit. He was friends with some other former bike shops owners: the Wright Brothers.

The Wright Brothers bike shop was preserved by Henry Ford and can be viewed at Greenfield Village.

We recently purchased a Detroit Police Department booklet on traffic regulations from 1929.

What’s interesting is that we have many of the same regulations today. However, there are some differences.

• Under these city ordinances, bicycles were considered vehicles. Under current state law, bicycles are devices.
• The vehicle speeds are lower: 20 MPH in the neighborhoods and 15 MPH in the business districts — rates that are much safer for pedestrians and bicyclists. Those today have been raised to a minimum of 25 MPH.
• Reckless driving appears to be a lower standard, perhaps because it includes today’s careless driving standard. Back then, if you were “to endanger or likely to endanger,” you could be found reckless and possibly lose your license.

It was illegal to drive drunk in 1929, which is interesting since America still had Prohibition. Perhaps that’s not surprising with 75% of America’s booze being smuggled through Metro Detroit at the time — the city’s second largest business after automobiles.

The booklet does include a map. While much of the street grid remains intact, we have lost some roads to superblocks, including the Renaissance Center, Cobo Hall, Comerica Park, and Ford Field.

The Lodge expressway has also done serious damage to the business district street grid. It was named after Mayor John C. Lodge who was in office at the time this booklet was printed.

Link: Detroit Police 1929 Traffic Regulations booklet (9.6 megabytes)

One of the last major missing pieces of the Detroit RiverWalk along the East Riverfront is the Uniroyal site.

While Senator Carl Levin has secured funding for building this RiverWalk section and MDOT has agreed to manage the project, the site contamination remains a hindrance.

It’s called the Uniroyal site because it was home to tire manufacturing from as early as 1906 through 1980 — hence some of the contamination.

The tire history began when Morgan and Wright, the world’s largest bicycle tire manufacturer relocated from Chicago to Detroit.

According to this Detroit News history article:

Construction on the first buildings in the riverfront complex began in August 1905. Completed in October 1906, the plant housed the Morgan & Wright Bicycle Tire Co., once the world’s largest maker of bicycle tires. Morgan & Wright had migrated from Chicago to link up with Detroit’s developing auto industry. In its early years, the tire plant housed several of the annual Detroit Auto Shows. Initially the 750 people who worked there produced 350 tires daily. In 1906, company President Samuel P. Colt commented on the auto-rubber connection: “Judging from the past, the growth of the automobile tire business will be of momentous importance in the future. Ten years ago, rubber tires were not important. Now they consume one-half of the raw unprocessed rubber product.”

It’s apparent in the 1911 Morgan and Wright advertisement that early car tires owed much of their design to bicycle tires. Detroiter Horatio “Good Roads” Earle asked in this autobiography, “Whoever heard of ball bearings and pneumatic tires until they were used in bicycles?”

In addition, this web site has an interesting collection of Morgan and Wright history and photos.

Morgan & Wright was founded in 1891 by Fred Morgan and Rufus Wright, while the pneumatic safety bicycle was still fairly young, and the bicycle boom was just coming into flower. besides tires, they also produced other tire-related items (pumps, patch kits, tire repair accessories…) and other bicycle products (pedal rubbers, rubber toe clips, chain lubricant), and distributed a variety of other bicycle-related sundries through their catalogue. With the advent of the 20th century, the company gradually turned to the early automobile rubber market, moved to Detroit around 1906, and was bought by the U.S. Rubber Company around 1911 (a 1912 supply catalog I have refers to M & W tires now being marked as U.S. tire), and later became Uniroyal.

The Uniroyal site was also the site for stove and auto manufacturers. This industry was served by the Michigan Terminal, a now abandoned rail line that roughly parallels Beaufait. It’s the reason for the slight hump in Jefferson just west of the Lofts at Rivertown.

The Gleaners Food Bank is also located along this abandoned rail line. There is very preliminary talk of developing a rail-to-trail greenway from the food bank to the RiverWalk.

It’s interesting that after more than 100 years, this area will once again be a benefit to bicyclists.