Biking in Baltimore
[B’ Spokes: I wish there was this kind of creativity here. We are pretty much stuck with just ticketing j-walkers as the most anyone will do around here. ]
A sampling from the article by NPR
https://www.npr.org/2011/12/03/143053082/haiku-traffic-signs-bring-poetry-to-nyc-streets
[B’ Spokes: Keep in mind NYC’ bike/ped fatality and crash rate is a lot lower then Baltimore, and you can basically say the same thing about Baltimore police as they are saying about NYPD.]
Streetfilms Shortie – Rally for Traffic Justice 11/20/2011 from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
From League of American Bicyclists
Three of America’s largest cycling organizations — Adventure Cycling Association, Alliance for Biking & Walking, and the League of American Bicyclists – wish to thank the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for the significant improvements the agency made last week in an important technical advisory (TA) regarding the application of rumble strips on U.S. roadways.
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The newly revised TA, released on November 16, 2011, is a substantial improvement. It includes a new section about the accommodation of all roadway users (Section 9), with a special emphasis on the needs of cyclists, and lays out “a number of measures that should be considered to accommodate bicyclists,” including wide shoulders, bicycle gaps (intervals without rumble strips that allow cyclists to safety cross back or forth), and customized rumble treatments to allow more space for cyclists. The new TA also includes a significantly improved section on public outreach and involvement.
There are still sections of the new TA that raise concerns for cyclists, including Section 7b, which identifies the optimal “length” (or width) of rumble strips as 16 inches, a dimension which can make it more likely that these strips will cut into useable road shoulder space for cyclists.
It will be important for local citizens and organizations to pay close attention to the proposed addition of rumble strips on existing roadways and when roads are being built, reconstructed or repaved.
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https://networkedblogs.com/qLxqj
By Mighk Wilson
Streets are our predominant public spaces in our cities and neighborhoods. If you measure all of our streets compared to that of our parks and plazas, the streets cover far more area. Historically the street was the gathering place for commerce and socializing, not merely a place for transportation. But then came the automobile. And since the earliest auto owners — not to mention the manufacturers and gasoline companies — were rich and well-connected, they were the ones who rewrote the traffic laws in the 1910s to favor speed over access. By the late 1920s, after gasoline taxes had been instituted in many states, people came to think of our streets as commodities to be bought with gas taxes for the purpose of moving motor vehicles at high speed. Only two decades earlier our streets were seen as a Commons that was managed for the benefit of everyone and for purposes beyond mere transportation. One could say that our streets today are ruled by a form of tyranny; the Tyranny of Speed. If you aren’t going or can’t go fast, you don’t belong.
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Read more: https://mighkwilson.com/2011/11/occupy-the-lane/
[B’ Spokes: From the Onion, I just love how they portray us as the privileged class.]
Tree Hugger as introduced a very valid point to this topic:
"But the fact of the matter is, those stop signs are there to regulate speed, not right of way"
https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/why-cyclists-blow-through-stop-signs-its-physics.html
[B’ Spokes: While reading the following article I could not help but think how much better Baltimore would be with good mass transit and really nice bicycle network. But our mass transit is controlled by the state who looks at it like an expense and thinks more highway expansion at the expense of mass transit and bicycling is the answer. My position is simple keep things in reasonable proportion, sure do what highway expansion you can afford but not at the cost of mass transit and bicycling. The state’s current policies is a downward spiral, making cars the ONLY way to get around then you need a lot more really really expensive car infrastructure to support that. We need to get the state to support transportation choice.]
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By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.
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It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.
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Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this.
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The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with good transit connections.
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Continue reading “The Death of the Fringe Suburb”
By: Deb Lee, newsnet5.com
CLEVELAND – Members of the local cycling community said they believe Monday’s conviction in the death of a Cleveland cyclist is validation for all of them.
Sylvia Bingham, 22, was killed when her bike collided with a 26,000-pound truck driven by Herschel Roberts, 63. The collision occured at East 21st and Prospect in Cleveland.
In finding Roberts guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide, Judge Daniel Gaul said that Roberts had just passed the bike and therefore he should have known that the bike was right behind him as he was about to make a right hand turn.
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Continue reading “Truck driver headed to prison in vehicular homicide of cyclist, local bicyclist reacts”
via Greater Greater Washington (highlight)
The World Health Organization reports 12.3 annual traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States. Compare that with 3.85 in Japan and 4.5 in Germany. If the U.S. achieved similar rates, more than 20,000 deaths would be prevented each year.
Continue reading “20,000 preventable and unnecessary annual deaths in the U.S.”
From U.S. PIRG
Highway advocates often claim that roads “pay for themselves,” with gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists covering – or nearly covering – the full cost of highway construction and maintenance. They are wrong.
Highways do not – and, except for brief periods in our nation’s history, never have – paid for themselves through the taxes that highway advocates label “user fees.” Yet highway advocates continue to suggest they do in an attempt to secure preferential access to scarce public resources and to shape how those resources are spent.
To have a meaningful national debate over transportation policy – particularly at a time of tight public budgets – it is important to get past the myths and address the real, difficult choices America must make for the 21st century. Toward that end, this report shows:
· Gasoline taxes aren’t “user fees” in any meaningful sense of the term – The amount of money a particular driver pays in gasoline taxes bears little relationship to his or her use of roads funded by gas taxes.
· State gas taxes are often not “extra” fees – Most states exempt gasoline from the state sales tax, diverting much of the money that would have gone into a state’s general fund to roads.
· Federal gas taxes have typically not been devoted exclusively to highways – Since its 1934 inception, Congress only temporarily dedicated gas tax revenues fully to highways during the brief 17-year period beginning in 1956. This was at the start of construction for the Interstate highway network, a project completed in the 1990s.
· Highways don’t pay for themselves — Since 1947, the amount of money spent on highways, roads and streets has exceeded the amount raised through gasoline taxes and other so-called “user fees” by $600 billion (2005 dollars), representing a massive transfer of general government funds to highways.
· Highways “pay for themselves” less today than ever. Currently, highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways, roads and streets.
· These figures fail to include the many costs imposed by highway construction on non-users of the system, including damage to the environment and public health and encouragement of sprawling forms of development that impose major costs on the environment and government finances.
To make the right choices for America’s transportation future, the nation should take a smart approach to transportation investments, one that weighs the full costs and benefits of those investments and then allocates the costs of those investments fairly across society.