Knee replacement at two years...

[Sylvia]

Wow, thank you so much!! I asked at my lbs about shorter cranks and got a "well, I don't think that will help". Sure wish shops would consider hiring an older person who has experienced difficulties with mobility, there's a HUGE market of us out there. I'm going to take your links in with me and show the guy, see if they can be fitted to my bike. Thank you!!

Yeah, I don't think bike shops will typically know much about this , I spent a lot of time researching this just to get this dialed in for myself. So I'm glad if I can help someone else as well.

In your signature, it says you ride an Electra Townie 7D, so I googled it but couldn't tell what type of cranks it used, although it appeared to be a single chain ring.
Typically cranks come in a 130 BCD(road) or 110 BCD(mountain bike or BMX). The shortest road cranks, that I know of come in 145mm length (which is the size I ride). These are the Origin8 145mm that I have on one of my bikes. Cobb cycling also sells a 145mm crankset. In addition there are a number of BMX cranks that come in sizes all the way down to 90mm. They typically take a single chainring, but some can be modified to take a double.

Another possibility would be crankshorteners, you could try those out to perhaps get a feel for what size cranks you might need. Scroll down 2/3rds of the way down on this page and you can see the Tandem East shorteners. Another type of crankshortener would be these Ride2 shorteners. If you go with crank shorteners, be sure to get ones that will fit the width of your cranks.

It would definitely be worth talking with Mark Stonich at BikeSmith design. Many of the smaller cranks and shorteners are designed for kids, so they will probably be designed with their weight and strength levels in mind. He would better be able tell you if these would be appropriate for your application. I wouldn't want to steer you towards a solution that might be a safety issue.