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    Free Bike Rides For Some

    Bike sharing comes to downtown Dallas, but it's a bit of a tease

    Alex Bentley
    Nov 6, 2014 | 12:02 pm

    Public bike sharing is currently a reality in Fort Worth and is on the verge of happening at Fair Park, but right now it's a pie-in-the-sky idea for Dallas at large. That's why it was a surprise to see a bike sharing stand pop up outside of the 2100 Ross building in downtown Dallas recently.

    However, even though the sign next to the bikes entices with the line, "Need a bike? Borrow ours!," the bikes are only available to the employees of Lockton Companies, a global insurance brokerage firm that prides itself on having happy employees. In fact, Lockton made the Dallas Business Journal's list of Best Places to Work in North Texas in 2012 and 2013.

    The bikes come courtesy of Zagster, a private bike sharing company making its first foray in Dallas with Lockton Companies.

    The bikes come courtesy of Zagster, a private bike sharing company making its first foray in Dallas with Lockton. The company has hundreds of bikes deployed in more than 20 states and works with colleges, corporate campuses, hotels and other businesses. In addition to the bikes, the model includes professional maintenance, insurance and a proprietary website that tracks bike availability.

    For now, the shiny Lockton bikes are just a big tease for the Dallas Arts District. But according to Zagster's Bradley Ericson, private bike sharing could soon be spreading in Dallas.

    "We are talking to some other interested tenants in the building where Lockton is at about a possible multi-employer bike sharing program," says Ericson. "We’re exploring to see how the Lockton program can grow, but also benefit some other partners and companies in the area."

    If Lockton's program, which is initially set for two years, proves popular, Ericson anticipates the idea will spread like wildfire.

    "Ever since we launched the program with Quicken Loans in Detroit, we began working with a bunch of different partners in downtown Detroit — other employers, other property owners and other sponsors," Ericson says. "I’d envision a pretty similar growth in Dallas. I think Dallas and Detroit are similar in that both cities don't have plans to bring in a public bike sharing program, and they both also have a lot of quality large companies that have headquarters and large offices in the city."

    According to Ericson, Lockton started the program not only to give employees a free and easy way to get around downtown, but also to complement pre-existing company initiatives that incentivize healthy activities.

    If seeing the Zagster bikes zipping around downtown is too much for some bike lovers to take, there's always the possibility that Lockton or other future Dallas clients might open up their bikes to non-employees on a fee basis. A small percentage of Zagster clients in other cities are doing just that, and the company has noticed that the practice is starting to increase significantly.

    Until that trend trickles down to Dallas, employees of Lockton can lord their bike sharing privileges over downtown while the rest of us watch on with barely concealed envy.

    For now, the Zagster bikes are only available to employees of Lockton Companies, which has offices in downtown Dallas.

    Zagster bike sharing for Lockton Companies
      
    Photo courtesy of Zagster
    For now, the Zagster bikes are only available to employees of Lockton Companies, which has offices in downtown Dallas.
    unspecified
    news/city-life

    Weather News

    Researchers collect fresh Texas hail to unlock their hidden secrets

    Associated Press
    Jun 27, 2025 | 4:30 pm
    Ice nugget between your fingers, at home
    Getty Images
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    Dozens of researchers are chasing, driving, and running into storms to collect fresh hail, getting their car bodies and their own bodies dented in the name of science. They hope these hailstones will reveal secrets about storms, damage, and maybe the air itself.

    But what do you do with nearly 4,000 melting iceballs? A lot.

    Researchers in the first-of-its-kind Project ICECHIP to study hail are measuring the hailstones, weighing them, slicing them, crushing them, chilling them, driving them across several states, seeing what's inside of them and in some cases — which frankly is more about fun and curiosity — eating them.

    The whole idea is to be "learning information about what the hailstone was doing when it was in the storm,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini, one of the team’s lead scientists.

    Calipers and crushers
    It’s pushing midnight on a Friday in a Texas Walmart parking lot, and at least 10 vans full of students and full-time scientists are gathering after several hours of rigorous storm chasing. Hailstones are in coolers in most of these vehicles, and now it’s time to put them to the test.

    Researchers use calipers to measure the width, in millimeters, of the hailstones, which are then weighed. So far after more than 13 storms, the biggest they found is 139 millimeters (5.5 inches), the size of a DVD. But on this night they are smaller than golf balls.
    Once the measurements are recorded in a laptop, the fun starts in the back of a van with a shark-festooned beach blanket protecting the floor.

    The hail is put on a vertical device’s white holder. Jake Sorber, a meteorologist at the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety, squeezes a hand grip about a foot above it and another white block comes crashing down, crushing the ice to smithereens. In the front of the van, Ian Giammanco, another IBHS meteorologist, records how much force it took to cause the destruction.
    “That tells us about its strength,” Giammanco said.

    Different teams do this over and over, with the debris littering vans. It’s all about trying to get good statistics on how strong the typical hailstone is. On this night, Gaimmanco and colleagues are finding the day’s hail is unusually soft. It’s surprising, but there’s a good theory on what’s happening.

    “In hailstones we have layers. So we start off with an embryo, and then you’ve got different growth layers,” said Central Michigan University scientist John Allen. “That white growth is what’s called dry growth. So basically it’s so cold that it’s like super cold liquid water freezing on surface. ... All the gas gets trapped inside. So there’s lots of air bubbles. They tend to make a weak stone.”

    But don’t get used to it. Less cold air from climate change could conceivably mean harder hail in the future, but more research is needed to see if that’s the case, Giammanco said.

    “Damage from a hailstone is not just dependent on how fast and the exact amount of energy it has. It’s how strong are these hailstones,″ Giammanco said. ”So a really soft one is not actually going to damage your roof very much, especially an asphalt shingle roof. But a really strong one may crack and tear that asphalt shingle pretty easily.”

    How to collect a pristine hailstone
    Mostly researchers grab hail to test after it falls, wearing gloves so as not to warm or taint the ice balls too much.

    But to collect pristine hail and get it cold as soon as possible, there's SUMHO, a Super Mobile Hail Observatory. It's a chest-high metal funnel that catches hail and slides it directly down into a cooler. No contamination, no warming.

    Most of these pristine hailstones go directly to a cold lab in Colorado, where they are sliced with a hot wire band saw. The different layers — like a tree's rings — will help scientists learn about the short but rapid growth of the ice in the storm, Gensini said.

    Scientists will also figure out what's in the hail besides water. Past research has found fungi, bacteria, peat moss and microplastics, all of which helps researchers know a bit more about what's in the air that we don't see.

    After weeks of collecting these ice balls, Central Michigan student Sam Baron sampled the fruit of his labors.

    “It tastes like an ice cube,” Baron said. “It’s like the good ice that they serve at restaurants.”

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