The following are my comments on a post on P. M. Summer’s CycleDallas blog [http://cycledallas.blogspot.com/2010/10/texbike-tbc-is-ok-with-texas-mandatory.html], no longer available and not archived. I’d have liked to post my comments there, but they were longer than allowed by the software on Summer’s site.
Quoting Robin Stallings, Executive Director of the Texas Bicycle Coalition:
We have tried to answer your inquiry from a ‘legal’ point of view below.
Leslie Puckett, our legal fellow, prepared the answer with some input from Mark Stine and I. This should not be construed as legal advice. Consult an attorney for that.
The word “legal” in quotes — the nominative “I” as the object of a preposition — trivialities? Maybe, but on the other hand, grammatical errors can drastically alter the meaning of laws. Indeed, consult an attorney, but Stallings and his advisors didn’t!
The short answer of BikeTexas’ interpretation of the current law is that:
“If the bicycle lane is considered part of the roadway, then, TTC 551.103, which requires a cyclist to ride as far to the right on the roadway as possible, would seem to require a cyclist to ride in the bike lane (or paved shoulder) except when it is obstructed or when turning left, since the bike lane is usually on the right side of the roadway. The law is appropriately ambiguous and leaves discretion to individual cyclists to determine for themselves if the bike lane is obstructed and is usable.”
Stallings appears to be unaware that the bike lane, but not the shoulder, is part of the roadway. Also, Texas law requires a cyclist to ride as far right as practicable, not “possible”, and with additional exceptions he doesn’t mention. These are important distinctions in the light of the Reed Bates arrests in Texas. Stallings knows of these arrests.
I leave out the list of studies that Stallings cites — Summer has addressed that.
There are no examples of cities that we are aware of, in Texas or the nation, where the mainstream bicycle advocates regret the installation of, or are calling for removal of bike lane networks.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, to give an example…Stallings also changes the subject, “where is it legal to ride?” to “mainstream, knowledgeable (!) people like us support bike lanes everywhere and if you don’t, you’re a weirdo.”
However, protected bike lanes, also known as “cycle tracks”, are replacing bike lanes in many cities.
Stallings floats a topic that has nothing to with the original question — he gets to sound more authoritative to an uninformed audience, and to use the word “protected”. This originally applied in traffic engineering to, for example, a left-turn signal phase where the opposite-direction traffic has a red light, but now, instead, it is applied to a bikeway behind parked cars, with the attendant poor safety record due to crossing and turning conflicts and sight-line obstructions. It is a path — but calling it a bike lane lends it the aura of the familiar. The uninformed, or misinformed, will assume that it offers real protection. They are also introduced to a new buzzword, “cycle track,” which may have been unknown to them.
Sharrows are in use in many cities where there is not enough right way to accommodate bike lanes.
Shared lane markings, not the obsolete “sharrows” — are indeed used, but to refer to them and bike lanes as the only alternatives narrows the discussion, now doesn’t it?
Let me know if you have any more questions.
OK, then, why, Mr. Stallings, are you resorting to classic techniques of manipulative use of language? On that topic, allow me to recommend Prof. S. I. Hayakawa’s classic book Language in Thought and Action and to quote Robert Jay Lifton:
“The language of the totalist environment is characterized by the thought-terminating cliché. The most far-reaching and complex of human problems are compressed into brief, highly reductive, definitive-sounding phrases, easily memorized and easily expressed. These become the start and finish of any ideological analysis.”
As announced rather abruptly to the retailers who attend the Interbike trade show, next year’s show is to be held in Anaheim, California in early August rather than Las Vegas in late September/early October as it has been for the last several years. Manufacturers and wholesalers put on the show and pay for it, so they get to call the shots. Retailers get in free, but on the other hand, without them there is no show.
This year’s Interbike was marked by the absence of several of the larger bicycle manufacturers, including Cannondale and Trek. These have taken to holding their own shows in the summer, at several places around the country so as to keep the travel expenses down for their dealers.
As I was walking the floor at Interbike, I encountered mountain bike pioneer Gary Fisher. Almost immediately after we greeted each other, a man walked up carrying handwritten, photocopied petition forms protesting the Interbike move. August is in retailers’ high season in much of the USA. Sending personnel to the trade show would be a serious hardship, especially for the smaller shops.
Trek owns the Fisher Mountainbikes brand, so it’s fair to assume that Gary has some inside information. He told the petitioner that he would not sign, explaining that the move is largely about publicity. New York and Los Angeles are the nation’s two major media centers. Media don’t come to Las Vegas to cover the show. Gary understands publicity, and perhaps his background colored his explanation: his grandfather worked for the legendary Hollywood publicist Hal Wallace.
As for myself, I probably won’t be attending next year’s Interbike. I myself am in the media, as a Webmaster of the informational site sheldonbrown.com. That’s a new job for me and it’s why I attended Interbike this year. But I think that I made enough contacts to keep me going for more than a year, and in any case, August is my usual family vacation time!
I have just returned home from the 2010 Interbike bicycle trade fair in Las Vegas.
This was the year for electrically-assisted bicycles – over 40 booths displayed them. Here are some examples:
The Nirve Lahaina electric bike is essentially just a conventional bicycle with add-ons. The front brake is an inexpensive long-reach sidepull, marginal even without the added weight of a motor and battery. The rear wheel has a Shimano three-speed hub with a coaster brake.
Here’s another example, a Pedego electric bike configured more or less like a conventional bicycle, and with derailleur gears, but with an electric motor in the rear hub, and on its way to be a motorcycle with fat tires that would have unacceptable rolling resistance with pedal power only. The disc brakes should be adequate to their task.
The e-Solex electric bike shown below is configured more like a motor scooter, with a step-through frame that favors a rider with limited flexibility, or who wears a skirt. The saddle is adjustable upwards, for efficient pedaling. (Note other bike in the background, with raised saddle.) Solex was the classic mid 20th-century French moped add-on, a small gasoline motor that transmitted power through a roller on the front tire of a conventional bicycle. The e-Solex recalls this design, though the motor is actually in the rear hub and the cylinder over the front wheel is a baggage compartment.
At the show, there was even one cargo trailer with a motor, that could be hitched onto any bicycle and could help bring home a heavy load.
I didn’t expect to see so many electric bikes at the show. I have thought in the past that adding a motor to a bicycle would inevitably lead to atrophy of the pedals through disuse. Motorcycles began as a subspecies of bicycles in the first decade of the 20th Century. Again, in the mid-20th Century, bicycles with a small gasoline auxiliary motor evolved into mopeds, with vestigial pedals, and into motor scooters, with no pedals at all. Why?
The heavier machine with its motor made pedaling ineffective;
the motor also made pedaling irrelevant;
the motor made higher speed possible, and a larger and more powerful motor, in turn, required a heavier frame;
storing a gasoline-powered machine in a living area was not practical.
For these reasons, motorized two-wheelers diverged into entirely different categories from bicycles, with little or no overlap. Electrically-powered two-wheelers never succeeded in the market, as the dead weight of batteries made them more trouble than they were worth – no fun to ride, heavy to carry, with short range.
But now electric bikes have improved substantially thanks to lithium-ion batteries and rare-earth magnets. Concerns about air pollution also come to bear. An electrically-assisted bicycle can be stored in a living area. It can go up in an elevator, though it can’t easily be carried over the rider’s shoulder like a pedal bicycle. Electric two-wheelers have become popular in China (though still using lead-acid batteries there), and the corner may be about to turn in other countries as well, including the USA.
At the dirt demo days at Interbike, people on electrically-assisted bicycles were effortlessly cruising up the steep hill to the demo site in the 99-degree heat. Even in the dry, desert heat of southern Nevada anyone who pedaled up the hill would be wearing a coat of sweat-soaked dust before reaching the top.
There was even a sort of John Henry vs. the steam drill uphill race. Everyone was pedaling furiously, so everyone ended up sweaty, I’m sure. One particularly strong cyclist on a racing bike finished near the front, but a small-wheel, fat-tire electric bike was first.
At Interbike, I spoke with my colleague John Schubert, who suggested that electrically-assisted bicycles would be useful:
To allow a person incapable of producing enough power to make use of a bicycle for local transportation. This is obvious enough. With the Baby Boom generation aging, this can be a substantial market.
To make short “Dutch-style” utility-cycling and commuting trips possible without a person’s having to work up a sweat – important for many people.
To make longer “bigger, hillier US city” trips practical for people who would otherwise only consider shorter trips.
To allow a bicycle tourist to cover greater distances or keep up with a group of stronger riders. This is, to be sure, only possible where there are places to recharge overnight — but most campgrounds have electrical power. John tells a story of an elderly man who was thrilled to have participated in a multi-day tour which would have been impossible for him otherwise.
And entirely eliminating the complications and extra weight of pedal power, that small, electrically-powered motor scooters, would be practical for short-distance urban travel — and they exist, but they do not yet fit into a legal category in many places.
I would add one more point: that electrically-assisted bicycles will be much more appealing in hot climates than in cold ones. This is mostly a question of rider comfort, but also, battery performance decreases appreciably in the coldest weather. In impoverished countries with hot climates, bicycling of the very slow, energy-conserving variety has been a favored mode of transportation, but has given way to gasoline-powered motor scooters as soon as rising income made them affordable.
Whether electrically-assisted bicycles are going to find an important niche in the US market remains to be seen. Certainly, they are less expensive than mopeds or motorcycles; their environmentally-friendly and indoor-storage-friendly characteristics may appeal — but for the foreseeable future, the power-to-weight advantage lies with the internal combustion engine and its fuel tank.
Wherever electric or gasoline-powered two-wheelers steal a substantial part of the market for utility trips away from pedal cycles, expect some serious dislocation in planning. But that’s a topic for another article.
[I publish tom Revay’s comments here with his permission. My own comments here are in italics, like this one — John Allen]
On June 10, 2010, someone posted on the BostonAreaCycling e-mail list:
There is a new pro-bike website organized by the Bikes Belong Campaign that is collecting one million names in support of a better biking (100,000 by end of summer).
Boston Area cyclist Tom Revay replied in his usual colorful style –sorry, I didn’t get around to posting this till now, but Bikes Belong has drawn my attention, as I just attended the Interbike trade show, where it made its presence well-known:
Bikes Belong isn’t a campaign. It is the bicycle industry public lobby. It is not a non-profit.
And Bikes Belong isn’t a public membership organization. To join, you must be part of the bike industry at some level — retailer, distributor, manufacturer, etc — paying annual dues proportional to the size of your business. Bikes Belong’s purpose is to tap the Federal gravy train to build facilities that the bicycle manufacturers believe will help them sell bicycles.
I have no doubt they’re right — they have smart people who figure out demand models for bicycles in areas with and without certain facilities, I’m sure — but basically what they want is to use taxpayer money to make themselves wealthier, just like energy lobbies, tobacco lobbies, drug company lobbies, insurance lobbies, and so on, do.
Is there anything wrong with that? Nope. But that doesn’t mean I want to support them in doing it, either.
And their definition of “better biking” is “anything that helps the bike industry get more money, without spending their own capital.”
[“Tom quotes again from the other person’s e-mail. “Peopleforbikes” is the name of Bikes Belong’s campaign to collect signatures.]
While millions of Americans like us ride for their health, for the environment, etc. until now, only a tiny fraction of riders have stood up to help improve bicycling in America. Peopleforbikes.org hopes to change all that. They’re building a national movement with the clout and influence to get things done.
No, it’s not a “national movement” — this isn’t about civil rights, don’t be confused.
What they want is to be able to walk into your own Congressman Bilbo’s office and say, “Hmmm, says here we got 2231 people in your district who want you to support the Great Swamp Boggity Bog Trail amendment to the current transportation bill … say, didn’t you win by less than 2000 votes a couple years ago?”.
It’s revealing, I think, that the “Who we are” page on that website doesn’t really tell you who they are. If you knew, maybe you’d figure that they should chop their own wood, rather than having you pay someone to it for them … ya think?
But by all means, sign the pledge, if you want to. Just understand, this isn’t some kind of “grassroots campaign.” It’s an industry lobbying effort. And claiming it’s anything else is just political obfuscation. (And I wrote that instead of using the term “bull****,” since this is a family oriented group.)
— Tom Revay
[The asterisks are mine, as Tom appears to have trampled a bit on his own family orientation, intentionally, I’m sure — the man has a fine sense of irony.]
There is a long history of “Astroturf” self-promotion campaigns by industry masquerading as grassroots popular movements.
In the title of this post, I paraphrase a line you may recall. Actually, what the president of General Motors said wasn’t quite “what’s good for GM is good for the country” — that is the improved popular version — but instead, that he couldn’t conceive that he had any conflict of interest,
“because for years I thought what was good for the country was good for General Motors and vice versa.”
— said in a Congressional hearing reviewing his nomination as Secretary of Defense by President-elect Eisenhower. There was, to be sure, a question of GM’s big government contracts, but also, in the decades-long afterglow of the statement, the question of the nation’s transportation choices.
So, today, this message appears in my e-mail:
As you’re preparing for Interbike, I’m reaching out to let you know that Bikes Belong will be showcasing their unprecedented, nation-wide initiative, PeopleForBikes.org at this year’s event.
While millions of Americans ride bicycles and recognize the economic, social and physical benefits of riding, only a fraction have stood up to help improve bicycling in America. The goal of PeopleForBikes.org is to gather and unify one million voices in support to encourage government leaders to support legislation that improves bike paths, lanes, trails and other facilities from coast to coast.
Throughout the summer Bikes Belong has been working hard to build awareness for this initiative with a presence at bike festivals and events – including a partnership with New Belgium’s Tourr de Fat, social media efforts and support from more than 1,000 bicycle retailers across the country.
To date, almost 70,000 people have signed the pledge to improve the future of biking in this country for every type of rider.
If you’d like to learn more, Tim Blumenthal, president of the Bikes Belong Coalition and director of PeopleForBikes.org, will be on-hand at interbike and I’d be happy to coordinate a time for you to connect with him.
Please contact me with questions and interest.
Best,
Troy Tepley
For PeopleForBikes.org
612.305.6256
troy.tepley@exponentpr.com
Let’s be clear about this: Bikes Belong is a bicycle industry lobby. It is gathering signatures to support its agenda, which may not be your agenda. I’ve been receiving Bikes Belong e-mails for years now and mostly, they have announced seed-money grants for bicycle paths which, as hoped, will attract more people to purchase bicycles. Many of the paths have had very little relevance to transportation needs. As the e-mail says, “bike paths, lanes, trails and other facilities from coast to coast.” Education? Rights to the road? Traffic law improvements? All have been marginal to the efforts of Bikes Belong.
With its “PeopleForBikes” campaign — whose promotional materials and dot-org Web domain create the impression that its backers are ordinary people rather than corporations — Bikes Belong is now turning its sights toward urban cycling. Given Bike’s Belong’s track record of promotion of facilities over other aspects of bicycle programs, and its lack of discretion about the facilities it promotes, I am, let’s say, wary.
The PeoplefroBikes campaign has now gathered more than 3 times as many signatures as the League of American Bicyclists, the national bicycling advocacy organization, has members. Shows what a good publicity campaign with money behind it can achieve. Does not necessarily show that the people who signed on have a very clear idea of what they are signing onto.
The summer heat has abated and the weather has been nice lately.
As I returned from a bike club ride on the Labor Day Monday holiday, the Minuteman Rail Trail was in heavy use. I rode slowly and cautiously, among the lots of families including little kids on their little bikes, who would dart out in front of another cyclist without a clue.
In Lexington, after riding around a group of ten-year-old boys who had parked their bicycles on the path, I moved over to Massachusetts Avenue. Ahead of me, a man was standing over his bike with one foot on the curb and the other on the left pedal. He was adjusting his trousers — maybe a trouser leg had become caught in the chain? That his shoelaces were untied should probably have warned me to give him more than four feet of clearance. He lurched out from the curb on his bicycle, like a zombie in the movie Night of the Living Dead. I yelled, and maybe that is why he weaved back toward the curb just in time for me to avoid crashing into him.
Last Saturday, headed into downtown Waltham to the Farmer’s Market, I was crossing an intersection when a 30-ish man with Bart Simpson greasy spiked blond hair, a bright orange T shirt and paint-spattered trousers, on a bicycle, crossed some three feet in front of me. He had the stop sign. It’s good that I keep my bicycle’s brakes in top condition.
On another day, as I sat in a restaurant eating my lunch, I watched bicyclists ride every which way through a downtown intersection, on red lights and green lights, walk signals and don’t-walk signals.
Yesterday, I was running some errands that needed the car. I was waiting for a stop sign when a 12-year-old boy riding on a sidewalk zoomed out in front of me from behind a fence to my right. If I had pulled forward a second earlier, he would have launched himself over the hood of my car. There was no way either he or I would have seen the other in time to avoid the crash. Oh, yes, he was wearing a helmet. Good for him.
Am I supposed to like these people, to get that warm-hearted feeling, oh how nice it is that you ride a bike? When people like these come out of the woodwork on nice days, is that what is called safety in numbers?
Now, just to make a couple things clear: Please let’s not peg me as a bicyclist hater. I have cycled over 1800 miles so far this year myself, about half for transportation and half or recreation. On the other hand, neither am I a spandex-clad whirlwind. Yes, I wore spandex for the club ride. I wear street clothes for utility cycling. Whatever I am wearing, I am no speed demon. I’m 64 years old and my cruising speed on level streets is around 15 miles per hour when I’m feeling good.
I have had problems with a few spandex-clad whirlwinds myself, the ones who will buzz past with no verbal warning and one foot of lateral clearance on the big club rides. My theory is that they are aping racers they watch on TV in the Tour de France. Guess what? Riding in close quarters is by mutual agreement in mass-start road races. It is as inappropriate on a Sunday club ride as NASCAR tactics are when driving a car around town. This is not also to speak of the fitness-club crowd who burst out of their winter spin classes like moths from their cocoons, to ride up and down the paths, because they somehow think that it is safer than riding on the road to weave in and out at 25 miles per hour among the dog walkers and aforementioned kids on bikes.
Octavia Boulevard in San Francisco was reconstructed with frontage roads in 2003, as described here. Construction of such boulevards has been very rare in the USA since the 1920s. The intent with Octavia Boulevard was to reclaim a neighborhood which had been blighted by an elevated freeway. The effort can be considered generally successful, but I have some concerns about the design, especially as it affects bicyclists.
The several blocks of Octavia Boulevard are shown in this Google Maps view. Note the shared-lane markings in the frontage roads and the lines for right turns from the inner lanes. Such right turns require a separate signal phase to avoid conflicts with through traffic in the frontage roads. A separate phase is not provided, but rather, the frontage roads have flashing red lights, as described on page 8 of a longer document describing the Octavia Boulevard project.. Quoting:
The side lanes ought to be controlled by stop signs and the central lanes by traffic signals. Concern over this unusual arrangement (which has been shown to work just fine on Chico’s Esplanade) prompted the installation of flashing red lights at the access road intersections, which drivers have difficulty interpreting.
I find that statement confusing. Maybe the flashing lights offend the author’s aesthetics? Flashing red lights convey exactly the same meaning as stop signs. They require traffic on the frontage roads to yield to cross traffic, and also to turning traffic from the center roadways, so that traffic does not back up and block through traffic. This arrangement is reasonable when the frontage roads serve only local traffic, but on Octavia Boulevard, they serve through bicycle traffic. Through-traveling bicyclists will either be delayed by motor traffic, or ignore the signals.
That the author of the report has little concern for bicyclist convenience also is indicated by the following statement (also on page 8):
Also, the surface of the local access roads was finished in asphalt, whereas it should be some material that marks them as part of a pedestrian realm, such as concrete like the sidewalks or cobbled pavers to match the medians. This was proposed during schematic design, but never made it into construction—and ought to be corrected.
This is one example among many of new-urbanist pedestrianism compromising the design of a bicycle facility. A lane used by through-traveling bicyclists and local motor-vehicle access is not pedestrian space, it is vehicular travel space. Pedestrians need to be — and are required by law to be — attentive and yield right of way, except at crosswalks. Cobbled pavers aren’t much fun to ride a bicycle on, either.
Now, let’s look at some different examples of boulevard design — first, a clever one in Taichung, Taiwan. A long segment of the Taichunggang (Taichung Harbor Road) with frontage roads (complained about the narrowness of bus lanes, and the complaint is probably one reason the lanes were later widened.
Contrast this with the San Francisco document’s complaint that the frontage roads are too wide:
Most apparent is that the local access roads are too wide—for a through-lane next to a parking lane, they were made eighteen feet wide, rather than 16.5 feet. A narrower space would have contributed more to traffic calming.
Right, calm traffic by making the frontage road more dangerous and congested –essentially, slow traffic by making motorists wait for bicyclists and everyone wait for turning traffic. On Octavia Boulevard, the local access roads are already too narrow for side-by-side bicycle/motor vehicle lane sharing. If these lanes were to serve right-turning traffic in any large volume, they would have to be even wider.
The longer San Francisco document cites a book with an interesting title:
I haven’t read it yet but I hope to — though, as one of its authors is the author of the San Francisco document, I’m concerned that it may similarly advocate placing bicyclists in the pedestrian realm.
Bicycle touring is a great way to break out of daily routine, and beyond that, into the unexpected. That’s one reason I like it.
My son Jacob, age 19, and I took on a little 2-day bicycle tour Thursday and Friday. It was his first bicycle tour ever.
Last Thursday morning, we drove to Falmouth on Cape Cod, parked at a friend’s house and rode the Shining Sea path to the Steamship Authority ferry terminal in Woods Hole — took the ferry to Martha’s Vineyard and stayed overnight at the HI-AYH hostel — which is really nice these days. They even make pancakes for breakfast, included in the modest price (but do bring earplugs in case someone snores — dorm accommodations).
At the hostel, we encountered Francine, who had been a participant in a bicycle tour to the Cape that I led 25 years ago, and which had stayed at the same hostel. Jacob got to hear Francine’s angle on funny stories from that tour which I had just told him the same day. I spoke with a couple of German university students who confirmed that the German spelling reform has led to confusion, just as my Bicycling Street Smarts translator tells me.
Friday morning, after leaving the hostel, while riding on the path in the state park, we got stopped for two security checks, including baggage inspection. About a mile after the second security check, a group of about 30 cyclists approached. One face was instantly recognizable.
I raised my little digital camera and pressed the button, then lowered it.
“Good morning, Mr. President” I said.
“Good morning, he replied.
After the group had passed, I checked my camera. It had been in “review” mode. No picture.
Given the security issues, I decided it would be very much the best just to keep on riding rather than to turn around and chase after the crowd to get a picture.
Not bad though for Jacob’s first bicycle tour. Jacob wants to go touring again. We were well-matched for speed on this one, but if he rides enough, we’ll have to ride the tandem because I won’t be able to keep up with him otherwise!
A showcase example for Federal promotion of special bicycle facilities in the USA has been laid down on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, DC, with bike lanes extending between the Capitol and the White House. It’s quite a show, but it didn’t turn out exactly as planned.
Well, on with the show. On June 7, 2010 — as described in a press release and videos — [Revised version as of 2016 without photo but with link to photo gallery][Article announcing the event] [Version of article as of August, 2016] [Press release] League of American Bicyclists President Andy Clarke, Representative James Oberstar (D-MN), NBA basketball star Caron Butler and the Crown Prince of Denmark were out on Pennsylvania Avenue expressing their enthusiasm for the bike lanes, riding bicycles supplied by Specialized, a major American bicycle supplier. Why the Crown Prince? American bicycle facilities advocates hold Denmark up as an example. Why industry involvement? Because the industry sees special facilities for urban cycling as the key element in propelling the next wave of bicycle sales. Why politicians? Because public funding would have to pay for the facilities. Why Caron Butler? I don’t know! [Update: the blog post and press release indicate that Butler funded a bicycle giveaway program for children.]
Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes, May 11, 2010
But, in its press release, the League of American Bicyclists borrowed a basketball expression, describing the Pennsylvania Avenue project as a “slam dunk.”
This wasn’t the first praise for the project. A month earlier, on May 12, the photo at the right appeared in a message sent to an e-mail list of the Alliance for Bicycling and Walking (a consortium of state and local advocacy groups) among other lists. The iconic bicyclist is riding off into the sunrise, toward the Capitol. In the background, tourist buses queue for their first run of the day. Accompanying text, by League of American Bicyclists board member Tim Young, reads:
I was just in Washington and rode the new Pennsylvania Ave Bike Lanes, so fun the paint was still drying. Awesome to ride from the White House on one end to Congress on the other, and have such huge dedicated space for bikes. You have to ride it!
Center lane was an unexpected design for me, but it works if you follow the signals and signs. Its casual riding, so much room and buffer, and the road is not that busy for its size, I understand about 30,000 ADT. You can see from this photo the massive bus use, so the curb lane is full of conflicts. The center rides fine. The only unhappy campers were taxi drivers wanting to make U turns mid block.
Photo: Mike Tongour, Bikes Belong lobbyist, rides towards Capital Hill.
(Bikes Belong is a bicycle industry lobbying organization which, among other efforts, lends substantial financial support to the League.)
Young may, however, have spoken too soon about the ample width of the bike lanes. They had been installed over the weekend of May 1 and 2; promptly on Monday, May 3, the Mid-Atlantic Division of the American Automobile Association issued a press release suggesting that they would worsen traffic congestion. (That press release is no longer available on the AAA Web site, but I have made it available.) It has in turn been widely criticized by bicycling advocates, for example here, and the criticism has been echoed in some media outlets, for example, here and here. The Washington Area Bicyclist Association, the local bicyclists’ advocacy group, asked its members to support the lanes, here.
Bicycling advocates pointed out that Pennsylvania Avenue was already relatively lightly traveled, as the blocks nearest the White House had been permanently closed to motor traffic following the 1995 bombing of the Federal Building in Oklahoma City. An AAA poll, cited in the press release, indicated that only 20% of members would feel compelled to become bicycle commuters if traffic congestion worsened. The bicycling advocates turned this finding on its head: 20% is a higher bicycling mode share than in any US city. Copenhagen’s bicycle mode share is hardly any larger, though its bicycle-to-work/school mode share is around 37%.
Gabe Klein, director of the Department of Transportation, called to clarify that the delay in the opening of the bike lanes on Pennsylvania Avenue might not result in the lanes growing tighter.
Klein disclaimed bowing to any pressure and said the lanes needed to be “redesigned” to enhance the safety of bicyclists.
The article also described a Bike to Work Day rally to be held the next morning in support of the lanes and to be addressed by Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Portland, Oregon).
Two weeks later, on June 7, Clarke, Oberstar, the Crown Prince and NBA basketball star Caron Butler were out in the bike lanes for their media event. Clarke returned to his office to describe the project as a “slam dunk.” In the light of the proposed changes, this event can be construed as support of the project in the face of a threat.
Slam dunk indeed. It turned out that bicyclists were slammed, and dunked.
On the next day, June 8, the Post published an article describing the planned modifications. Travel lanes that had been converted to bike lanes were to be restored, and the bike lanes moved to the median (growing tighter, in spite of what Mr. Klein had said). The article reports that the AAA applauded this change, while the Washington Area Bicyclist Association expressed concerns about conflicts between bicyclists and pedestrians.
The changes were made. On June 22, the lanes officially opened. On July 3, independent journalist Matt Johnson rode the lanes and took photos. He wrote an article and posted his photos on Flickr. He gave anyone permission to use them, with attribution. I thank him.
The title of Johnson’s article, “Pennsylvania Avenue Bike Lanes Still have a Few Flaws“, suggests that the lanes had been improved. The contents of the article and the photos show quite the opposite. The space for bicyclists had been significantly reduced, and bicyclists were thrown into conflict with pedestrians at intersections.
Here’s a photo of the bike lanes, looking west across 9th Street NW, taken in mid-May. The layout is already rather strange, with turning bicyclists — including right-turning bicyclists — directed to merge left. The right-turning bicyclists have to re-cross the stream of through-traveling bicyclists to get to the crosswalk which they are supposed to use.
Bike lanes at 9th St. NW, mid-May, 2010
Below is another photo which Johnson took at the same location on July 3. (You may click on either photo for a larger view.)
Bike lanes at 9th St. NW, July 3, 2010
The space between the two lanes of opposite-direction bicycle traffic is gone — the available width is indeed tight if the lanes are to carry any substantial volume of bicycle traffic. But the intersections are weirdest of all. Through-traveling bicyclists now ride up and over the median refuge where pedestrians wait. The bike lanes are now immediately adjacent to the black, handlebar-snagging bollards that protect the traffic-signal poles. Turning bicyclists have it stranger yet: they are aimed straight at the traffic signal at the center of the median.
The one change that anyone could contend is a safety feature is the row of flex posts between each bike lane and the adjacent travel lane, intended to keep motorists from encroaching into the bike lane. Safety feature? Well, maybe. A flex post is harmless to a car, but it can easily take down a bicyclist.
Enough for now. This article is intended as a brief history. I’ve addressed technical issues only to the extent necessary to move the history along. I’ll be addressing them in detail in another post.
[Update: I have posted a video of a ride on these bike lanes, with narrative description. It addresses technical issues.]
Also see Keri Caffrey’s videos of Washington, DC infrastructure.
Though they are not first to do this, Dutch researchers have calculated the effects of different travel mode choices on life expectancy. The study is called Do the Health Benefits of Cycling Outweigh the Risks? The researchers based their calculations on an examination of traffic accidents, exercise and air pollution.
Good enough, but excuse me if I’m about to restate the obvious. There are also a quality-of-life issues, and they aren’t the same for everyone — far from it.
Time spent traveling and earning income to pay for the travel can add up to many years of a person’s life. This time could be enjoyable, or a dull chore, or a drudge. The cost may be trivial to one person, but a major burden to another.
The ability to work, read or converse is a time saver with public transportation or carpooling; less so for walking, even less for bicycling; not for driving alone unless perhaps listening to an audiobook or talking on a cell phone — well, let’s not go there. Aerobic exercise when bicycling or walking is a time saver for people who value the exercise, and it also increases life expectancy. Need I say, physical fitness also increases quality of life.
Time may be spent waiting for the bus or train to arrive, waiting in a traffic jam, waiting for traffic signals, hunting for a parking space, walking from and to that parking space.
Owning and operating a private car is expensive to the individual; public transportation, generally less so; bicycling, even less and walking only wears out shoes occasionally. However, the infrastructure costs of all of these modes of travel are largely subsidized from public funds.
At this point, we get into issues of the individual vs. society. Examples: a private motor vehicle is a major time saver unless there are too many of them, causing traffic congestion, air pollution, global warning. Then the interests of society at large suggest investment in other modes, while the interest of individuals still favors the private car — for other reasons as well, particularly weather protection, convenience in transporting passengers and cargo, and the low marginal cost of each mile of travel relative to the fixed cost of car ownership.
Which leaves us more or less the situation we are in now. Investment in public transportation as well as innovative solutions such as convenient car and bicycle rental can help shift the balance, but worldwide, the private car continues its upsurge.
