Easy rider: reinventing the bicycle

However ‘normal’ bikes far surpass their recumbent cousins in popularity. For one, they had a head start back in the 1930s. It was a time when bicycles were viewed as a prospect alternative to expensive automobiles and public attention to cycling events was at a high. A recumbent bicycle beat several cycling records, including the 20-year-old hour record by Oscar Egg.

Cycling officials felt Francis Faure had an unfair advantage using a recumbent Velocar.

However, the Union Cycliste Internationale (UCI) felt it was unfair, since they saw the races as competitions between riders and not constructors. Their ruling effectively banned recumbent bikes from competing (and is still in force to date), pulling the rug from underneath emerging designers.

Cycling in general and recumbent bikes in particular saw a revival in the late 1970s and 1980s after the 1973 oil crisis and fuel price hike. It was also the golden age for enthusiastic designers in Russia, as told RT veteran designer with over 30 years of experience Veniamin Ulyanovsky.

It does take a rocket scientist…

Ulyanovsky, who will celebrate his 60th birthday this year, became ‘addicted’ to inventing human-powered vehicles (HPV) when he worked at a space firm in the late 1970s.

Vladimir Kremlev for RT. Click to enlarge.

“We had an argument, opinions split, and someone said he won’t believe it until he sees a working machine. So I decided to build one. I though it would take a week or two of my time, and ended up as a lifetime hobby,” he recalls.

A velomobile (a four-wheeled HPV) based on Bundschuh’s design and built by Ulyanovsky was one of the first machines of its kind in the country.

“Avatar 2000” marked the resurgence of recumbents in the 1980s. Russians call the under-seat steerer in this model’s honour. Photo from http://ryanownersclub.com/

The story is far from being original. In the US, the resurgence of recumbent bikes in 1970s was heralded by David Gordon Wilson, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and his “Avatar 2000”. In Russia, most pioneers of the HPV movement had degrees in engineering and many worked in top secret workshops or research institutes.

One model in Ulyanovsky’s personal collection of home-made bikes, tricycles and velomobiles of that time was built by an engineer at an air base, where he used to ride along the runways, servicing aircraft with his toolkit safely tucked under the seat.

The only soviet recumbent to go into series “Riga-1” was an experimental product of a civil aviation factory in the Latvian capital.

Rise and fall of the pedaled dream

The popularity of human-powered transport was somewhat utilitarian, similar to how Velocar velomobiles became a hit in the 1930s in France.

“The dream of ordinary people was a car of their own to use in everyday life. That’s why many of the enthusiastic designers built their models with a utilitarian purpose it mind. They wanted to take their families for a ride or transport things from place to place,” says the designer.

Not even winter can stop a cycling fan with an inventive mind. Click to watch video.

Other groups interested were touring aficionados who liked the exotic looks and comfort, which home-built recumbents gave them. Every autumn they gathered for a so-called “Golden Ring race”, a tour over a dozen ancient Russian cities and towns famous for being tourist attractions. It was a chance for designers to test their creations in the field and to see for themselves how good a job they did.

There were also a few people seeking speed records, like famous racer and engineer Sergey Dashevsky from Krasnoday, a five-time world champion in recumbent racing, or the designer duo from St. Petersburg Aleksandr Galkin and Andrey Kudryavtsev with their Dolphin models.

Some of the HPVs built in Russia were unconventional and weird in their design. For instance, one bike has both its wheels steered independently. Its inventor said it was easier to park it this way near cars. There are original mini-bicycles and tricycles with gear tailored to high speed rides, a solution praised by some as an ideal for a crowded urban environment.

Thanks to the large chain-ring a mini-bicycle like this one can ride on par with its bigger counterparts.

At the peak of its popularity, the Moscow-based “Club of Eco-friendly Bio-transport” (the awkward name is meant to give the nicer-sounding abbreviation “cab” in Russian) had almost 300 members from all corners of the country, who have built over a thousand individual HPVs. In some campuses and ‘academician towns’ a home-made bicycle became as common a sight as an automobile.

Enthusiasts were sure that it was only a matter of years before vehicles powered by muscle alone will turn from an extravagant hobby into a nationwide fad. This didn’t happen, in large part due to economic crises of the early 1990s. It took a full fifteen years for the hobby to recover and show the first signs of revival.

Is this the future?

Even in countries with stronger cycling traditions than in Russia, recumbents and other non-traditional vehicles are not common. The firms producing them are few, and some details are custom made, resulting in them being 15-20% more expensive than ordinary bikes of the same class. They are often bulkier, especially in the case of trikes and quadracycles. There is a safety issue too: car drivers are not accustomed to low-riders in the street, so it’s advised to have a warning flag to draw attention if you ride one.

Russian enthusiasts have their own specific problems. There are few dedicated cycling tracks and lines in Russian cities – a problem common for cyclists, roller skaters and skateboarders.

Veniamin Ulyanovsky showcases the “Zolga”, a pedal-driven wheelchair for people with impaired movement coordination.

New designers will have to show a higher class than their counterparts from the 1980s. There have been so many inventions and improvements over the last decade that learning them from scratch is a challenge in itself.

There are new people coming into the movement, some are sons and daughters of the first generation, others are cycling fans who discovered a different approach to their hobby. A recent example of the inflow of fresh ideas from an unexpected source is the workshop’s latest model “Zolga”.

It was developed for Olga Zotova, a girl suffering from cerebral palsy. Her legs are strong enough to turn the pedals, but won’t keep her upright, and she has good enough control over just one arm, which made most wheelchairs unsuitable for her.

On her request, Ulyanovsky developed a delta tricycle with forward drive wheel steered by a lever on the side. The model, which was named after Olga, was an instant hit, and not only among people with disabilities. He says serious officials and businessmen who tried it at exhibitions were charmed by its maneuverability and envisioned using it as Segway-style riding along corridors and elevators.

Ulyanovsky believes there are good prospects for HPVs and different models of recumbents and velomobiles, particularly in Russia, as the market is more mature and the environment is friendlier to the designs. He says he’ll be the first one to use a model instead of his car for short trips up to a dozen kilometres long.

Whether his dream comes true is up to those who don’t share his passion for engineering, but may value the comfort and health benefits the exotic vehicles can give them.

Alexandre Antonov, RT

RT thanks Sergey Ponomarev, a fellow journalist and HPV enthusiast, for his contribution to writing this story.