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This is another one of my "URL is the message" campaigns to promote the numerous benefits of bike commuting. I maintained the sign and current price of oil on my bike continuously from April through August of 2008, when the price of oil was going bananas. I got a few thumbs ups and horn honks from commuters, but I never saw anyone adopt my signage on their bikes, though I posted instructions on my set up at http://bikeandsave.org/oil.html
It was an interesting experiment in a number of ways. First, I found that having the sign on my bike had an unusual effect on my attitude towards traffic and bike commuting routes: Instead of my typical behavior of trying to find the most car-free streets at off-peak times of day, I was often tempted to bike on streets with major levels of traffic at peak commute times, in order to better spread the message. If you know Berkeley, once or twice I did a loop at mid-day or ~6pm covering San Pablo, University, MLK Way, and Ashby, braving vehicles and some pretty nasty potholes. Eventually, I stopped engaging is such risky behavior, but I continued to choose highly visible public places in which to park and lock my bike, making sure the sign was easily visible from the street.
Another interesting aspect of this was the task of trying to devise ways of posting current commodity data on my bike, and dealing with the onslaught of the elements (mainly, wind). My solutions were always quite low-tech, eventually doing something similar to how gas stations update their prices of gasoline (swapping individual digits on paper with double-sticky tape) . But I always thought about fancier schemes involving streaming real-time data via an internet-enabled cell phone to an LED display. Any takers?
After the price of oil settled down in the Fall of 2008, I kept just the "Bike And Save.org" part of the sign without the oil price. When the weather started getting rough and the sign was getting worse-for-wear, I took it down. This project has been on hold since late 2008, since I got involved in other things, but I think it has some interesting potential.
