PEDAL: Pedal Energy Development Alternatives

PEDAL: Pedal Energy Development Alternatives

october 2003, Vancouver BC
by Johanne Pelletier and Francis Murchison
click here to see all the pictures

PEDAL is one part responsible for the movement of a mechanism that has multiple parts. It is a mother organization that rides hard for the development and promotion of pedal powered technology use and the ride is just getting started. Other parts that go around with every stroke of PEDAL are Our Community Bikes, Pedal Works, and Maya Pedal

johanne pelletier

The Frame

The frame of PEDAL’s activities is a local Vancouver area bike shop called Our Community Bikes. The first push of the pedal was ten years ago on a local economic development loan. In this colorful and lively bike shop, mechanics help cyclists empower themselves by sharing their experience and knowledge about bike repairs. Their mission is to offer people opportunities to learn what they thought they could never know, to do what they thought was beyond their abilities, and to take control over aspects of their lives they thought they could not control. PEDAL hopes that as a result of what they do more bikes will ride the road. At the bike shop, anyone can have access to bicycle tools for a fee of $5/hr. Help is also available to those who need repair instructions or hands- on help. For those still on training wheels, Our Community Bikes holds a bicycle repair course for people seeking more organized instruction. Full repair service is also available for those who have the money and not the time. Old cruisers, mountain bikes, low-riders, and road bikes are all recycled here and find new life, as their parts are made available for repairs.

The space is made available for occupational therapy workshops. A few individuals with special needs come in for workshops, where they receive the opportunity to learn concrete skills and be part of something meaningful.

This organization makes sure everything is well-oiled when it comes to the well-being and rights of its workers. The shop usually makes a small profit, which is divided among the workers at the end of each year. Just like a craftsman’s guild in the Middle Ages, Our Community Bikes structures its hierarchy based on the skill and experience of its workers. As each spoke helps keep the wheel straight, all the workers participate in the consensus based decision-making process.

the community bikes

The mechanics from Our Community Bikes recently helped set up a bike shop at the University of British Columbia. They worked there until enough students had been trained to take over. The new shop is called The Bike Kitchen and is modeled on Our Community Bikes. Among other things, The Bike Kitchen has started a free bike program on campus. By becoming members, students are given a key that allows them the right to use free bikes located all over the campus.

The Chain

PEDAL also has a workshop called Pedal Works. Here prototype pedal driven devices are developed and built to promote the use of pedal power as an alternative energy. Pedal Works publicizes pedal power as ecological, energy efficient, technologically accessible, and healthy to use. Among the machines that Pedal Works has developed are grain mills, water pumps, coffee de-pulpers, roof tile makers, generators, blenders, load tricycles, and custom prototypes. As a result of their work, an organic vineyard, under the umbrella of an organization called FarmFolk/CityFolk has adopted a bicycle powered water pump. This technology still has an uncertain future in Canada as few individuals have expressed their willingness to use it. Pedal Works also restores and builds custom bikes such as tall bikes, low-riders, and choppers.

interior view of the shop

The Wheel

Yes, the pedal, the frame and the chain all contribute to the wheel being in motion. The wheel is called Maya Pedal, it is an initiative based in highland Guatemala. Here PEDAL works in cooperation with Maya Pedal to promote and make available the use of alternative energy to indigenous communities. Maya Pedal builds pedal powered devices that are distributed to community groups comprised mostly of indigenous women, who integrate the devices into micro-agricultural operations that provide the women with more food for their families or money from selling their goods on local markets. These machines have been modified to adapt to Mayan cultural traits. Because pedal powered machines mostly affect women’s tasks, the machines were modified so that a woman could keep a modestly low hemline while pedaling. Pedal powered technologies are intended to allow rural Guatemalans to break the cycle of dependency on fossil fuels, expensive agricultural technologies, and international genetically modified grain producers. This whole project is permeated with a conviction of the underlying interconnectedness of North and South Americans and the importance of mutual support.