Cyclists once crowded the streets of Douala. As Cameroon won independence, Douala was the country’s “leading port for bicycle exports,” and “hosted the country’s first bicycle assembly plants.” ...

These are the criminal words of a gangster regime: “It’s an honor to serve you in this volunteer position to make Greenland a part of the U.S.” – Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana, Dec. 21, 2025, accepting his appointment as DJT’s “special envoy” to Greenland. ...

Historical portrait photography tells us something about the place of the bicycle in twentieth-century Bamako. As Issa Fofana and Issa Togola report in “The Resourceful Few,” Bamakois bicycle owners sometimes included their mount in the photo. ...

Cyclists “were the logistical backbone of Aba’s palm oil economy,” Uche Uwaezuoke Okonkwo reports. In “Bicycles, Brotherhood, and Oil in the Delta,” Okonkwo explains that in southeast Nigeria, export-oriented roads and railways neglected local transport needs, leaving bicycles to fill the gap. ...

Continuing through the archives of Talking Headways by @theoverheadwire.com, I absolutely loved this episode interviewing @norton.bsky.social about the role of transport in society through the years. Are cars a tool or a solution? Incredible idea, worth a listen!

In “Raleigh Riches, Achaba Hustle,” Yusuf Umar Madugu reveals the cycling experience of Kano. This ancient city, Madugu notes, is “now Nigeria’s second-largest metropolis and the commercial heart of the north.” ...

That this has happened is shocking. That this is even possible, however, is alarming. No cult of personality can be reconciled with representative government. Idolatry is betrayal. Acquiescence is cowardice. Neroism is despicable.

Arthur C. Clarke (1968): “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” This is not just an observation. It’s a warning.

Today is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Carter G. Woodson. Woodson was born December 19, 1875, in New Canton, Virginia, 35 miles south of my home. In my work as a historian, no historian’s example has served me better than Woodson’s. ...

“Kisumu is Kenya’s cycling city,” writes Jethron Ayumbah. Bicycles are far more common here than in Nairobi. In “The Lakeside City of Cycling Persistence,” Ayumbah guides us through Kisumu’s cycling experience. ...

In “A Return to Bicycles?” Dorcas Nthoki Nyamai epitomizes Nairobi’s cycling experience through the photograph accompanying her title page. ...

In Tanzania the bicycle was both a declaration and an instrument of independence. In “Nyerere’s Bicycle of Self-Reliance,” Frank Edward reveals a familiar pattern by which cycling began in Dar es Salaam as a ruling-class import and developed into a practical local tool. ...

In Cairo cycling began as an imported recreation for the ruling class, but it soon proliferated, serving the workaday needs of everyday people. In “Nationalist Autonomy to Capitalist Modernity,” Nourhan Sherif, Ranya Ayman and Carine Khalil trace Cairo’s cycling experience. ...

In “Cycling Across Divides,” Siddique Motala, Phano Liphoto, Marianne Vanderschuren, and Therona Moodley show how cycling in Cape Town evolved within a tension between resourceful Capetonians needing practical mobility and intimidating authorities intent on enforcing state control. ...

In 1900, Johannesburg may have been “the most prominent cycling city in South Africa – if not the continent.” As Njogu Morgan reveals in “Between Segregation and Freedom,” many Johannesburgers favored cycling for its independent personal mobility – and as bike prices fell, the practice spread. ...

In Ghana, cycling rates are highest in the north – and Tamale is northern Ghana’s cycling city. In “Bicycles Forever,” Sabine Luning, Samuel Ntewusu, and Gideon Asmah reveal how bike riders have made their own bicycle paths, paving them not with asphalt but with constant use. ...

The bicycle has never been just a vehicle. In Africa it was both an instrument of colonial control and a tool of anticolonial resistance. ...

Affordable public transportation is not a new issue. After Mayor Tom Johnson’s success in getting a 3-cent-fare street railway in Cleveland (see yesterday’s post), the established Cleveland Electric Railway fought back, citing injunctions to bar the new Low Fare Railway from using its tracks. ...

Thanks to the current White House and its sycophants, the preeminent “shared interest” among Caribbean states, Canada and Greenland is the shared interest in stopping this criminal administration and its offensive threats to their sovereignty, to international justice and to hemispheric peace.

Hey all, my new book, Adam Lemp and the Western Book, is out today in bookstores everywhere and on-line. Check it out!

Like Zohran Mamdani, Cleveland’s popular Tom Johnson ran on an affordable public transit platform. In 1901 he promised three-cent streetcar fares. In 1906 Mayor Johnson finally delivered, piloting the first “threefer” (as Clevelanders called it) himself.

What did the Business Men’s League of New York have in common with New York’s communists? Both defended the city’s five-cent fare. Preston P. Lynn, general manager of John Wanamaker’s department store, and Ben Davis, New York’s communist city councilman, stood together for the nickel fare. ...

The Rev Martin Luther King, Jr, has just been cancelled. No Nobel Peace Prize winners anymore. Just FIFA “peace prize” whiners. ...

The five-cent fare was Mayor John F. Hylan’s ticket to electoral success. Though often framed as a class issue, the nickel fare united New York’s straphangers with the city’s Business Men’s League. ...

We were warned. In Federalist 76 (1788), Hamilton said the Senate must hold presidential appointees to a high standard, lest cabinet secretaries serve with “no other merit than that … of possessing the necessary insignificance and pliancy to render them the obsequious instruments of his pleasure.”

Streetcar riders organized to thwart fare increases. In 1919, the Northern Ohio Transit and Light Company said it needed a six-cent fare. One week after the Car Riders’ League ran this ad, voters rejected the fare increase by a five-to-one margin.

“You can only [competently] imagine the future when you understand the past.” — Ruth Oldenziel seeingthewoods.org/2016/09/06/c...

Even a rumor of a fare increase was political dynamite. In 1917, streetcar fare in Pittsburgh was five cents. That November, Pittsburghers had to choose a successor to the outgoing mayor, Joseph Armstrong. ...

First (Sep 5) the US Secretary of Defense agreed his job is really not defense. It’s war. Then (Sep 30) he told the entire US military: No more “stupid rules of engagement.” Just “maximum lethality.” ...

In 1919, Toledo streetcar riders rioted to defend the five-cent fare, demonstrating an extreme kind of inelasticity of demand. ...

Some campaigns for the five-cent fare were efforts by private bus companies to compete with street railways. Striving to make its campaign look like a popular movement, the Metropolitan Motor Coach Company worked through the “Greater Cleveland Five Cent Fare Club.” ...

On June 21, 1970, a seven-man court-martial in Da Nang sentenced Michael Schwartz to imprisonment for life. Private Schwartz, from Weirton, West Virginia, was 21 and married, with a three-year-old son. Schwartz was convicted of killing 12 civilians. He was acting under orders. ...

The street railway as bully. When the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company charged passengers a second nickel to get to Coney Island, the New York Evening World attacked it, championing the 5-cent fare. ...

“We also don’t fight with stupid rules of engagement. We untie the hands of our warfighters to intimidate, demoralize, hunt and kill the enemies of our country. No more politically correct and overbearing rules of engagement – just common sense, maximum lethality and authority for warfighters.” ...

United States v. Keenan (1969) is standing law. Judge Robert E. Quinn ruled for the unanimous US Court of Military Appeals, together with judges Homer Ferguson and William Darden. Here the judges quote the appealed ruling of a board of review to concur with its assessment.

Rising costs inundate fixed fares. In a P.R. sheet for passengers, Twin City Lines makes a plea.

Walkability is leverage. A member of Buffalo’s Nickel or Walk Club weighs in. In 1920 the International Railway Company, which operated Buffalo’s street railways, raised its fare from 5 cents to 7.

The shrinking nickel.

To walk or not to walk?

In 1920 Buffalo’s International Railway Company, then managed by the Mitten Management Company of Philadelphia, raised streetcar fare from five cents to seven cents. Many Buffalonians resented the increase and blamed the management company. ...

As costs rose, the nickel fare faced an ever-steeper slope.

Affordable public transportation is not a new issue in New York City. Meet John F. Hylan, champion of the five-cent fare and New York’s mayor from 1918 to 1925. His opponents called him “Red Mike.”

The forgotten sit-in of 1906: Citing a judge’s opinion, a carload of Brooklynites questioned the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company’s right to charge a second 5-cent fare. When the conductor insisted, they refused to pay. ...

Affordable public transportation is not a new issue in New York. Brooklyn, 1906: A judge said the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company could not charge riders a second 5-cent fare for passage to Coney Island. The BRT disagreed. ...

“Given the contradictory statements, someone is obviously not telling the truth.” Since his forced resignation of June 27, James E. Ryan, president of the University of Virginia from 2018 to 2025, has observed a diplomatic silence. ...

Affordable public transportation is not a new issue in New York. In 1906, when a judge said the Brooklyn Rapid Transit Company could not charge passengers a second 5-cent fare to reach Coney Island, passengers refused to pay it. ...

“Rosie Zeits, five years old, who was riding to Coney Island to join her mother and sisters, and had only five cents to pay her fare, was asked for the extra nickel by the conductor of the car. She began to cry and said she had no more money. ... ”

Lillian Wald on the right to (get out of) the city: “Ten cents for a ride to Coney Island practically closes that resort to the families I have in mind.” Wald founded the Henry Street Settlement and was a founding member of the NAACP. She was a suffragist and a pioneer of public health nursing.

𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗭𝗮𝗴 𝗟𝗶𝘀𝘁: 𝟭𝟬𝟬 𝗠𝗼𝗯𝗶𝗹𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲𝗿𝘀 🚀 Today, we’re excited to reveal the 2nd annual edition of The Zag List, doubling our spotlight to 100 trailblazers driving the global shift toward cleaner, safer and more connected mobility worldwide. See the Zag100 here: zagdaily.com/featured/the...