Category: Biking Elsewhere

This is just to document that some drivers think lawful bicycling is wrong and “some” assault should be allowed.

Video in the read more section
Continue reading “Fools Can’t Bike.”

B’ Spokes: While this is in DC, it is still pretty cool and the council member seems to really get the issue, oh he bikes, no wonder.
https://www.myfoxdc.com/dpp/news/dc/dc-council-member-tommy-wells-discusses-improving-bicyclists-rights-091611#ixzz1YT7sbqEY

[B’ Spokes: In case anyone is thinking of going.]
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from WABA Quick Release by Greg Billing
[Thursday, Sept. 22 – Sunday, Oct. 2]
The 2011 United States Department of Energy Solar Decathlon brings twenty college teams from the around the country and world to compete this month in Washington DC to build the most energy efficient solar powered house. The project teams have been working for the past two years to design, build and transport an 800 square foot house to be judged in 10 different categories (hence a decathlon) including engineering, architecture, communications and more.
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Learn more about the Solar Decathlon at solardecathlon.gov and about WABA’s bicycle routes and valet for this event at https://www.waba.org/events/solardecathlon.php. We would like to thank Perkins + Will for their generous support of the Solar Decathlon and the bicycle valet.
Take our advice – bike to the Solar Decathlon!
https://www.waba.org/blog/2011/09/best-way-to-get-to-the-solar-decathlon-on-a-bike/

[B’ Spokes: If police on bikes have a problem with hit-and-runs what hope does the common cyclists have? Not to discount "an enhanced light package" but more then just putting the responsibility on cyclists needs to be done. ]
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Jenna Sachs, FOX6 Reporter – WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE —
A Milwaukee bike cop is hit by a hit-and-run driver Thursday night. A week earlier, a suspected drink driver hits three bike officers and took off. Now Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn is speaking out.
Milwaukee has 87 bicycle officers. Chief Flynn showed off a police bicycle Friday. It was upgraded by one of his officers with an enhanced light package. The new bike has flashing lights on the handlebars and above the back wheels.
Right now, police bikes have a single light in the front and back. Officers also wear reflectors. But Chief Flynn has instructed his staff to replicate the changes made from the new bike. He’s already identified about $10,000 in funding to cover the changes to the bikes.
"I think it illustrated conclusively, the dangers officers face every day not just from armed criminals, with whom we’re had some experience this year, but also with the drunken and the foolish behind the wheels of a car," said Chief Flynn.
24-year-old Guandencio Ruiz-Ramirez was charged Friday for hitting three bicycle officers while driving drunk a week ago.
Officer Al Tenhaken, the officer injured Thursday night, is recovering at home.
Continue reading “A new problem "the foolish behind the wheels of a car"”

Continue reading “Retail New Passenger Car Sales – now half of peek”

from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Tanya Snyder

Image: James Yamasaki / The Stranger

Under the headline, “Okay, Fine, It’s War,” Seattle’s The Stranger blog this week published a manifesto “of and by the nondrivers themselves.” They’re sick of being called “militants” for caring about pedestrian safety, and they’re tired of the specter of a “war on cars.”

We heartily recommend that you read the whole thing, but here are some of our favorite parts. Like this, from the first plank of the manifesto: “The car-driving class must pay its own way!”

For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. They balk at the mere suggestion of hiking a car-tab fee, raising the gas tax, or tolling to help pay for their insatiable demands, even as downtrodden transit riders have seen fares rise 80 percent over four years.

No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air. Our present system of hidden subsidies is the opiate of the car-driving masses; only when it is totally withdrawn will our road-building addiction finally be broken.

They go on to demand better, more expansive transit, safer streets and sidewalks, and traffic calming. And this:

This antagonism [between car driver and nondriver] traces directly to the creation of the modern car driver, a privileged individual who, as noted, is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil. But the same subsidies that created this creature (who now rages about the roads while simultaneously screaming of being a victim in some war) can—and must, beginning now—be used to build bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and other benefits to the nondriving classes.

That’s the kind of manifesto we can get on board with.

After the manifesto, The Stranger goes on to report on the rising numbers of crashes between cars and cyclists, the violent anti-bike rhetoric being spewed by car drivers that are the  “victims” of some imagined war on cars, the massive disparity between funding for car infrastructure and everything else, and the heroes of the non-driver, beloved both for their advocacy and their tight asses. Read it, read it all.

Continue reading “If Safer Streets Mean War, We’re Ready for Combat”

Excerpt

A second example of a failure to anticipate the health effects of policy and planning decisions is
apparent in examining the health effects of transportation infrastructure. The Interstate Highway Act of
1956 introduced the development of a transportation infrastructure that has had multiple implications for
health, both favorable and unfavorable. Over the last several decades, the transportation infrastructure
has focused on road-building, private automobiles, and transportation of goods and has resulted in “an
unprecedented level of individual mobility and facilitated economic growth” (APHA 2010, p. 2). It has
shaped land-use patterns throughout the United States and has had implications for air quality, toxic
exposures, noise, traffic collisions, pedestrian injuries, and neighborhood physical and social features
potentially linked to health (Frank et al. 2006).

Transportation accounts for 30% of U.S. energy demand, and in 2008, tailpipe emissions from
motor vehicles and impacts from fuel production contributed an estimated $56 billion in health and
related damages (NRC 2010).1 The costs partly reflect transportation-investment decisions that are
focused on maximizing the safety and efficiency of automobile use and have resulted in important
efficiencies in motor-vehicle transportation. The decisions have also led to transportation systems that
discourage pedestrian and bicycle travel because of sheer distances between destinations, lack of adequate
infrastructure for pedestrian travel, and increased hazards associated with pedestrian traffic—for example,
unsafe pedestrian crossings and absence of pedestrian routes that are separate and safe from motor
vehicles (APHA 2010). Personal and societal costs of the transportation decisions include nearly 34,000
deaths in 2009 due to motor-vehicle collisions; more than 12% of the deaths were of pedestrians (NHTSA
2010). The emphasis on motorized transport has been associated with more driving (Ewing and Cervero
2001; Frank et al. 2007), less physical activity (Saelens et al. 2003; Frank et al. 2005, 2006; TRB 2005),
higher rates of obesity (Ewing et al. 2003; Frank et al. 2004; Lopez 2004), and higher rates of air
pollution (Frank et al. 2000; Frank and Engelke 2005; Frank et al. 2006). A partial accounting of costs
associated with the health effects, shown in Table 2-1, totals about $400 billion in 2008.

There is evidence that adverse health effects associated with transportation disproportionately
affect members of racial and ethnic minorities and those in lower socioeconomic strata and thus
contribute to persistent racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health (Houston et al. 2004;
Apelberg et al. 2005; Ponce et al. 2005; Wu and Batterman. 2006; Chakraborty and Zandbergen 2007).
In the absence of systematic assessment of health effects and their associated costs, the implications of
transportation decisions for health and health inequities cannot be factored into the process of making
decisions about transportation infrastructure. As a result, the health-related effects and their costs to
individuals and society are hidden or invisible products of transportation-related decisions.

Continue reading “Improving Health in the United States: The Role of Health Impact Assessment”

As for O’Carroll’s case, he says Boston Police dismissed his complaint when he first approached them. But after his video of the confrontation made rounds on YouTube, police contacted him. A spokesperson tells us police are investigating and, “actively pursuing the driver.”
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B’ Spokes: Rather shameful that police have to be guilted into action but at least for one cyclist there is a victory.
Read the full story (with the video:) https://boston.cbslocal.com/2011/09/15/helmet-camera-captures-carbike-confrontation-in-boston/

by Tony Dutzik – Huffington Post
A few years ago, a strange thing happened: Americans started driving less.
How strange was it? For 60 years, up until 2005, the number of miles driven on America’s roads increased by an average of 3.7 percent per year – that’s more than twice as fast as population growth. Today, however, Americans are driving just about as much as we did six years ago overall. And on a per-capita basis, as researchers from the Brookings Institution have pointed out, the number of miles driven actually peaked a decade ago.
As President Obama and Congress debate infrastructure investments – both as part of the president’s jobs strategy and the ongoing debate over reauthorization of the transportation bill – it is important to know whether the trend away from ever-increasing amounts of driving is real or a temporary blip. If the trend is real, it would suggest that our transportation policies – the broad outlines of which were established when "Leave It to Beaver" was on TV and America still produced most of its own oil – need a serious rewrite for the 21st century.
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Some cultural observers suggest that these trends are part of a larger generational shift – one in which digital connectivity trumps horsepower, and iPads and Androids take the place of an earlier generation’s ’57 Chevys as symbols of consumer aspiration and freedom.
Other factors are at work as well. The easy mortgage credit that once financed the construction of McMansions in auto-oriented exurbs is gone.
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Gasoline prices aren’t going down any time soon. And more Americans continue to look for opportunities to walk or bike where they need to go – both to save money and to enjoy better health.
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Why then is Washington arguing about how much to spend building our grandfather’s transportation network?
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Continue reading “In the Public Interest: Americans Are Driving Less. Washington Should Pay Attention.”