Category: Biking Elsewhere

Someone needs to get this to MTA.

In response to the concerns expressed by several members of AASHTO’s Board of Directors, President Martinovich has directed AASHTO for the time being to withdraw its request that FHWA rescind its guidance on the meaning of “due consideration” of bicycle and pedestrian needs. This will give AASHTO an opportunity to meet with bicycle and pedestrian advocacy groups on May 19 to discuss this issue. It will also allow time for AASHTO’s Board of Directors at our annual meeting in October to discuss this issue and provide policy direction on how best to deal with it. Several state DOT CEOs have expressed the concern that this issue is not one that the Board was briefed on, or one on which they were asked to take a position. We will brief the Board more fully on this matter at our meeting May 6.
Background. April 1, 2011, I responded to a U.S.DOT notice asking for a review of regulations to identify those we found to be outmoded, ineffective, or excessively burdensome. After consultation and input from the states, AASHTO submitted a list of approximately 30 regulations that States wanted improved.
One of the recommendations states submitted was for a change to FHWA’s guidance on implementing the statutory requirements related to bicycle and pedestrian facilities in the planning and design of highway projects. Our intent in making the request that the guidance be changed is to streamline the effort and paperwork required to justify why bicycle or pedestrian facilities may or may not be appropriate on a given federal aid project.
The statutory language calls for bicyclists and pedestrians to be given “due consideration” in the development of comprehensive transportation plans, and to “be considered, where appropriate, in conjunction with all new construction and reconstruction of transportation facilities.” We have no problem with this requirement.
What we have objected to is FHWA guidance which increases the level of requirement from “consideration” to “accommodation.” The guidance says “that bicyclists and pedestrians will be accommodated” which is a much more expansive requirement in that states must prove exceptional circumstances when not providing for bicyclists and pedestrians as part of a federal aid highway project.
We reported on AASHTO’s recommendations regarding regulatory change in the AASHTO Journal April 8. The article contained links to AASHTO’s submittal letter and to a 15-page supplemental document which contained the text of our recommendations regarding the bicycle and pedestrian guidance.
Our comment on FHWA’s guidance has apparently caused concern in the bicycle community. When contacted in this regard by the League of American Bicyclists and the National Center for Bicycling and Walking, I offered to meet with them and others to hear their concerns and to explain what we recommended and why. A meeting has been scheduled for May 19 here at AASHTO.
You may receive similar contacts from bicycling and pedestrian interests in your state or community. We hope you will share with them our support for bicycling and pedestrian facilities, as well as our interest in limiting FHWA’s guidance to what was defined in the law.
Here is a link to the full explanation as submitted to USDOT, https://bit.ly/RegulatoryReviewRequest.
Continue reading “WITHDRAWAL OF AASHTO REGULATORY RECOMMENDATION REGARDING USDOT BICYCLE AND PEDESTRIAN GUIDANCE”

This was filmed in the UK so their left turn is like our right turn.
The main point here is at intersections stay in-between cars/trucks or follow behind cars/trucks and never put yourself purposely alongside a truck. Stay safe out there, it’s easy to do just be mindful.

I really don’t like "podcasts" but this might be worthwhile if you have "anger management" issues and the very typical "one finger salute." I found it interesting that "just don’t do it" advice Bob considers an "Olympic event" and has suggestions for starting before that point. My personal advice is to empower you with this response: "If you think my riding is illegal call the police. If you take the law into your own hands, I call the police and you go to jail." No need for anger, no need to argue where cyclists should be riding, just a understandable "don’t act out with your car message."
He also goes into some details about the value of vulnerable user laws. Imagine if there was a new third vehicle type that could instantly cut cars in half in an accident. Do you really think society would not invoke stricter penalties for accidents cause by such vehicles? (Or do you think standard speeding ticket fine would be enough?)
Continue reading “Keeping Your Cool, Bob Mionske”

B’ Spokes: This case in the U.K. is frightfully similar to John Yates death here in Baltimore and Alice Swanson’s death in D.C. Too much emphases on faulting cyclists for riding in truck drivers “blind” spot and not on why the heck are we building trucks with blind spots that target bicyclists and pedestrians?

Worst still, Paula has become a statistic. On London roads alone, cyclists die at a rate of about one a month and a disproportionate amount of those fatalities are women struck by left-turning lorries. The sides of a heavy goods vehicle, articulated or not, quickly form a lengthy blind spot that extends behind the cabin like a shroud. Despite their drivers’ best efforts (and a 2009 EU directive demanding a retrofit of mirrors on some vehicles) these enormous beasts have a lack of peripheral vision and an all-too-well documented reduced awareness of what is directly beyond them.

Worst of all is the possibility that Paula’s death might easily have been prevented by a more proactive attitude to road safety in a city that remains alarmingly ambivalent to its cyclists. In Camden borough, cycle lanes are scarce and at the junction where Paula died, only one connecting road has a cycle box. Despite the efforts of the London Cycling Campaign, the borough has not given its HGV drivers cycle-awareness training, and neither have most others.

Improvements are easy to do yet MVA refuses to add a page or two to the Commercial Drivers Licence manual for improved safety around cyclists insisting that horn tapping and labeling cyclists has hazards is sufficient. And there is no directive for improved mirrors in Maryland as if mirrors are really expensive and killing someone is really cheep.

But as long as the society keep blaming the victim any improvements on the truck drivers side seems like an impossibility.
Continue reading “Worst of all is the possibility that Paula’s death might easily have been prevented by a more proactive attitude to road safety”

[B’ Spokes: This is a great idea, put a time scale for a mode of travel on the map. Can you imagine if the State Bike Map had half hour grid lines? It’s also very cool showing what’s available to go to that’s nearby.]

Each monolith is strategically placed and has:

• An easy-to-read map that is orientated to the users point of view;
• 5 and 15 minute walking distances;
• 3D drawings of key shops and buildings in the area.

Changing Londoners mental maps

Continue reading “Legible London Gets People Walking”

By Mighk – Commute Orlando

“‘I’ll see it when I believe it’ is more accurate than ‘I’ll believe it when I see it.’”

– Social psychologist Karl Weick

Regular readers of this blog know we recommend an assertive lane position when the lane is too narrow to share.  Our rationale was initially that when a cyclist is in the right wheel track, some motorists will still attempt to squeeze past within the lane instead of making a full lane change.  That’s still true.  But we’ve also observed that a more assertive lane position — either in the center of the lane or just left of center — gets motorists to change lanes earlier on roads with more than one lane in each direction.

Our hypothesis was that from a significant distance, a cyclist in the right wheel track (where the League of American Bicyclists has long recommended cyclists travel if the lane is too narrow to share) looks like he or she is on the edge line, so the motorist stays in that lane until he or she gets close enough to realize there’s not really adequate width for safe passing.  By then the opportunity for changing lanes may have closed.  The motorist then either waits and stews, or “shoves” his way through between the cyclist and the traffic in the next lane.

When the cyclist is in the center of the lane, it’s immediately clear to the motorist that passing within the lane is impossible, so the driver changes lanes at the earliest opportunity.

The added benefit we’ve discovered using a video camera on the dashboard of a following car is that drivers farther back are alerted to the situation by the lane changers ahead of them, and get to see the cyclist themselves at an earlier opportunity.

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Continue reading “Lane Positioning”

from Commute Orlando by Jason

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¹ in gallons, assuming 20 mpg
² AAA estimates

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Continue reading “Savings”

from Business Insider by Henry Blodget
Well, it’s official: Sitting all day is bad for you.
It makes you fat.
It makes you weak.
It makes you more likely to keel over dead.
How do we know?
Because "inactivity researchers" have finally cracked the code.
Specifically, they have figured out why some people get fat when they eat too much and other people don’t get fat, even when they eat the same amount:
The people who get fat get fat because they sit around all day. The people who don’t get fat don’t sit around as much.
Importantly, the difference between the fatties and the non-fatties in the study had nothing to do with exercise. None of the folks in the "inactivity" study were allowed to exercise. The folks who didn’t get fat didn’t exercise–they just didn’t spend as much time sitting. Instead, they stood. They walked. They took stairs instead of elevators. They fidgeted. Etc.
And sitting doesn’t just make you fat. It makes you sick, too.
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[B’ Spokes: Yet so much of our built environment discourages the simple act of walking, from parking right next to the front door of a business and our homes to fire alarms installed on stair well doors to meet fire codes.]
Continue reading “Sitting Can Kill You”

[B’ Spokes: This is in the UK but the same attitude needs to happen here. I’ll jump to the end of the article.]
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By Cahal Milmo and Kevin Rawlinson
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Nine steps towards safer cycling
The London Cycling Campaign, which promotes safer cycling in the capital, has produced a nine-point-plan for reducing the toll of death and injury among cyclists:
* Enforce speed limits and clamp down on drivers who use mobile phones.
* Crack down on hit-and-run drivers, who account for a large portion of serious road injuries. [Note: Maryland Hit-and-run drivers are ~20% of bike/ped fatalities vs ~1% overall.]
* Introduce 20mph speed limits in all built-up and shopping areas of Britain’s towns and cities.
* Require all lorries to carry full safety equipment to help them avoid collisions with cyclists: six mirrors, sensors and safety guards. (See www.no-more-lethal-lorries.org.uk/)
* Require organisations which run lorries and other large vehicles to provide their drivers with cyclist awareness training, as already practised in four London boroughs.
* Include a "cycle awareness" section in the driving theory and practical tests
* Allocate more road space to cycling, as has been done in The Netherlands and Denmark, among other places.
* Provide all children with access to Bikeability cycle training, the current version of the Cycling Proficiency test
* Encourage less car use and more. cycling so that, as in The Netherlands and Denmark, collision rates for cyclists are reduced.
Continue reading “Save our cyclists: Clamour for flood of avoidable road deaths to be stemmed”