Feedly OPML export broken?

I haven’t done a bicycle blog & news roundup in some time, but before I get into that: Has anybody successfully used an OPML file exported from Feedly? Specifically, I’d like to go back to Old Reader. I thought Old Reader had my subscriptions, but nope, not there. So I looked at my Google Takeout downloads, where I saved my Google Reader subscriptions, but it turns out Google deletes those downloads after only a week. So then I exported my RSS feed subscription from Feedly, but Old Reader barfs on that OPML file, and looking at it manually the XML seems like it might be broken.

Any suggestions?


Bicycle news below


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First the sad news:

  • Women on a bike killed in apparent right hook on Folsom Street south of Market in San Francisco. I don’t know if the truck passed the cyclist before turning or if the cyclist passed to the inside of the truck, but if the latter: Please never ever pass to the inside of a truck, especially as you approach an intersection.
  • A cyclist struck a pedestrian on JFK Drive in Golden Gate Park, sending both to the hospital.
  • Chicago cyclist Kevin Flynn killed in “accident”; he was hit from behind during a sudden rain storm.

Budapest Mountain Bikers race through old limestone mines. Via Mackenbach.

Adventure In Real Life: How four cyclists made it through the North Cascades mudslide.

Job opening: Bicycle program coordinator position at Virginia Tech.

Here are some rough back-of-the-envelope guesses on the profitability (or not) of Citibike in New York City from Cap’n Transit:

It turns out that we can actually estimate quite a bit. We know, from the Citibike website, that as of Sunday there were 69,830 annual memberships. The rate at which new people are joining is constantly dropping, as is standard, but the system may get up to a hundred thousand members a year, bringing in $9.5 million. There are about 1500 24-hour passes and 150 seven-day passes sold per day on average, earning $18,750 per day, which will come out to about another six million dollars a year, allowing for weather conditions. So the total membership income for the year will probably be around $15 million, which dwarfs the $10 million per year that the city gets from its sponsors.

So what are the expenses? According to this article, Bixi costs $400,000 Canadian a year to run 1800 bikes in Toronto, for an average of $222 per bike. Everything’s more expensive here, so let’s say $1.5 million a year for our 6,000 bikes. That means that we could pay for the the system out of 24-hour passes, or that it broke even with annual memberships before it even launched. Or about $23 million in profit, which is split between the city and Alta, leaving $11.5 million a year for expansion.

Reader comments after the post discusses refinements to the original guesses.

Road diets don’t hurt business.

Tiny pedal powered libraries.

NYPD crackdown on scofflaw cyclists makes at least one resident think twice about using CitiBike.

Jamis forms a new cyclocross team.

On Taylor Swift’s wishlist: “a mint green bike.”

Bicycle baskets for men.

California Bike Summit 2013 takes place November 7-10 in Oakland.

Transit, too

This is the main reason I don’t usually use panniers with my bike.

Jarrett Walker on empty buses. I’d like to shoot photos of our busy San Francisco Bay Area freeways, city parking garages, and international airports a off-peak times and say “Look at this COMPLETELY EMPTY $280 million interchange! Government waste!”

SOme discussion on why Elon Musk’s cost guesstimate has no bearing on reality.

3 Comments

  1. I don’t understand your comment about needing to pay bus fares promptly being a reason not to use panniers. Taking Ortlieb panniers off a bike before putting it on a bus bike rack shouldn’t add any time to loading the bike—they come off in about 2 seconds. Or are you saying that you would carry your wallet in your panniers? I agree that would be a bad idea, but it has nothing to do with using panniers.

  2. I’ll use panniers and I’ve carried all kinds of stuff on the bus with me from the bike, and I don’t begrudge anybody who does so on a regular basis. For my regular commute, though, lugging panniers around by the handle does add to boarding and … debark? alight? (whatever you call getting off of the bus) time. My small shoulder bag is plenty to carry my lunch and a light jacket.

    The other thing I notice when using panniers is the content inflation. I carry more stuff because I can!

  3. I have a long-wheelbase recumbent, so I can’t mix bike and bus on a trip (the bike is too long to fit in the racks). Luckily in Santa Cruz County it is almost always faster to bike than to take the bus (Hiway 17 Express and Watsonville Express excepted), so I’m rarely tempted to mix modes.

    My right pannier does get heavy with the lock, tools, spare inner tubes, patch kit, and accumulated junk.

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