"Wanted to add that the word ‘diet’ is about the most universally-hated word in the history of the world. I’m thinking that telling a bunch of entitled, relatively-powerful people (drivers) that we’re about to force them to go on a diet is not the smartest political move. Ironically, if people actually had the opportunity to walk and bike places, so many people both here in the US and, increasingly, around the world, wouldn’t be so tormented by the word ‘diet’."
https://googlemapsbikethere.org/2011/04/15/50-contest-a-new-term-for-road-diet/
Only cyclists run red lights – [video]
This video captures school buses, fuel trucks and a lot more:
Gas prices could soon break July 2008 record
By Gary Strauss, USA TODAY
Gasoline prices, on the rise for more than three weeks, could top all-time highs by Memorial Day.
Nationally, a gallon of regular averages $3.81 — up 10 cents in the past week and nearly 96 cents above year-ago levels. Industry experts say prices could surpass July 2008’s record $4.11 as seasonal demand, speculators and political uncertainty in Libya and the Middle East propel crude oil prices.
“We could easily tack on another 30 to 40 cents a gallon,” says Darin Newsom, senior analyst at energy tracker Telvent DTN.
In some areas, gas has already hit those levels. In Los Angeles, regular averages $4.20 a gallon. In Chicago, it’s averaging $4.17.
Typically, prices peak around July 4, the height of the summer driving season. But escalating prices are already crimping demand and could derail vacation travel, says Tom Kloza, chief oil analyst at the Oil Price Information Service.
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Related: 4 months ago; National gas price average breaks $3 barrier https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20101223185040673
Continue reading “Gas prices could soon break July 2008 record”
Road Diet [video]
[B’ Spokes: Keep in mind that Baltimore County (Green Tree Ln) is the worst example of a road diet in that they made cycling conditions worse not better, but that is not the norm.]
Moving Beyond the Automobile: Road Diets from Streetfilms on Vimeo.
What’s a road diet? Quite simply, traffic-calming expert Dan Burden told Streetfilms, “A road diet is anytime you take any lane out of a road.”
The first time people hear about a road diet, their initial reaction likely goes something like this: “How can removing lanes improve my neighborhood and not cause traffic backups?” It seems counterintuitive, but taking away lanes can actually help traffic flow smoother while improving safety for everyone.
Road diets are good for pedestrians: They reduce speeding and make vehicle movements more predictable while shortening crossing distances, usually through curb extensions or center median islands. They’re good for cyclists: Many road diets shift space from car lanes to create bike lanes. They’re good for drivers: Less speeding improves safety for motorists and passengers, and providing left-turn pockets allows through traffic to proceed without shifting lanes or waiting behind turning vehicles.
And here’s something to keep in mind during this era of lean budgets: Road diets are a highly-effective infrastructure improvement that can be implemented quickly and at low cost.
30 mph traffic is too fast for children to judge accurately, study finds
Author: Philip Langdon
New Urban Network
Adult pedestrians can accurately judge the speeds of vehicles traveling toward them at up to 50 mph, say researchers at Royal Holloway College, University of London, England. But for elementary school children, it’s a different matter. Children simply don’t have the perceptual ability to make an accurate judgment.
“This is not a matter of children not paying attention, but a problem related to low-level visual detection mechanisms, so even when children are paying very close attention they may fail to detect a fast approaching vehicle,”said John Wann, a professor in the university’s Department of Psychology.
Wann led researchers who measured the perceptual acuity of more than 100 elementary school pupils, the university said in a news release describing the study’s results. The judgments of children of primary school age "become unreliable once the approach speed goes above 20mph, if the car is five seconds away," the university said.
“These findings provide strong evidence that children may make risky crossing judgements when vehicles are travelling at 30 or 40 mph," Wann concluded. He emphasized that "the vehicles that they are more likely to step in front of are the faster vehicles that are more likely to result in a fatality."
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Which Was Worst: Katrina, or Car Culture?
By Christopher Hume
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One also can’t help but notice that the devastation wrought by Louisianans upon Louisiana far outweighs anything a hurricane can do. The mighty Mississippi, invisible behind vast levees, is lined with trailer parks and oil refineries. The bayous are degraded, the cypress swamps compromised beyond recovery. It is a landscape of desolation, broken only by the exquisite remnants of 19th-century plantation culture, as refined as it was corrupt.
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And despite the vast differences between New Orleans and Toronto, the automobile has brought a startling degree of sameness, similarity, even homogeneity, to the two centres. Notwithstanding the modernist architecture that turned cities around the world into copies of one another, it is the car that reduces even the most idiosyncratic urban form to a monotony of asphalt and empty spaces, not to mention congested highways and traffic reports.
And despite the vast differences between New Orleans and Toronto, the automobile has brought a startling degree of sameness, similarity, even homogeneity, to the two centres. Notwithstanding the modernist architecture that turned cities around the world into copies of one another, it is the car that reduces even the most idiosyncratic urban form to a monotony of asphalt and empty spaces, not to mention congested highways and traffic reports.
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Not until one leaves the isolation of the automobile does the rest of the landscape reveal itself — the palm trees, the heat, the smells, the architecture … . Not until one steps out of the car does one cease to be an observer and become part of the landscape.
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Driver charged for hitting a j-walking a pedestrian
[B’ Spokes: What bothers me in too many of our local stories is no mention of the driver tried to stop and avoid hitting the pedestrian as that is a legal obligation in Maryland.]
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Distraction and tragedy
Lives changed forever, needlessly
By Erika Stutzman
T he National Safety Council estimates that at least 1.6 million vehicle crashes — 28 percent of the total — are caused each year by drivers using cellphones or texting. Some of these crashes are fatal.
So it`s not shocking, at least statistically, that a woman was sentenced this week for careless driving in a fatal accident in Boulder during the very month called National Distracted Driving Awareness Month.
Kathryn Wulliman, 28, hit and killed pedestrian Dorothy Hoffins, 85 as Hoffins crossed Lookout Road in Gunbarrel last summer. Wulliman said she didn`t see Hoffins, who didn`t cross in a cross walk or with the benefit of stopped or slowed traffic. Wulliman explained she was entering information in to her windshield-mounted GPS device at the time. She was fined and sentenced to 240 hours of community service, which of course sounds like a light sentence, but nonetheless reflects the late woman`s choice to make a treacherous crossing.
Texting while driving is illegal in Colorado. The text of the law applies not just to text messages, but "other similar forms of manual data entry or transmission."
There`s no reason not to take the driver at her word: She said she never saw the pedestrian at all. And since common sense tells us that most drivers aren`t driving around looking for pedestrians to kill, it rings true.
The family members didn`t want the driver to get jail time, which is compassionate, and the defense attorney did his job by pointing out Hoffins should not have crossed the street the way that she did.
But it should be repeated time, and time again, that if Wulliman had pulled over at some point — into the strip mall lot farther west, the gas station, into any of the neighborhood side streets or parking lots that dot the road — she could have entered her GPS data at a full stop. Continuing on her way, she may have been surprised or even alarmed to see a pedestrian walking across a busy, fast-paced street where there is no crosswalk, but she would have seen her. Hoffins` friends and family members wouldn`t have suffered such a horrendous loss, and Wulliman wouldn`t have to live the rest of her life knowing that she killed a fellow human being with her car.
Continue reading “Driver charged for hitting a j-walking a pedestrian”
Seattle to spend $1 million to fix unsafe grates for cyclists
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“There’s clearly a lot of work to be done,” said Seattle City Councilman Mike O’Brien. “And you know it’s kind of a balancing act — Seattle Public Utilities is almost a billion dollar a year operation and so we’re spending a modest amount on improving the grates.”
SPU says it has about $60,000 set in its annual budget each year for this type of work.
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Jukes of hazard
By Daryl Lang
Is there a worse car spot on TV right now than the “Donut Action” commercial for the Nissan Juke? Take a look:
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Are you kidding me, Nissan? In just 60 seconds, the viewer has to read not 1 but 4 disclaimers warning that the behavior in the commercial is dangerous. And it is! Driving while distracted, passing city traffic using your turbocharger, leaping through a freakin’ window, skidding through a parking structure, and far more showboating than the situation calls for.
If the ad were a masterpiece of slapstick comedy—if the humor overpowered the disturbing shot of large truck about to plow into a young driver—it might be deserving of a pass. There’s almost a tragic, Office/Office Space-style mood to it. There’s something funny about having a job so lame that you’re a hero for providing donuts. But it’s not funny enough.
This ad is uncomfortably close to the kind of real behavior that sends young drivers—likely Juke owners—to the emergency room. You can easily imagine an alternate ending: Kowalczyk speeds to run some trivial errand in his freshly waxed sportcross, clips the curb, mows down a cyclist, and rolls over in a ditch, blood oozing down his forehead. (Announcer: “The all-new Nissan Juke. With dual-stage front airbags!”)
Cars are dangerous. And while it’s common to see dangerous driving in commercials, it’s usually for beauty shots—a truck bounding over rocks, or a sporty car taking a tight corner on a mountain road. Here it’s used as part of a story that echoes a real-world situation. I doubt any kid is going to smash a Juke into a truck because of this commercial, but it sends a message that aggressive driving is fun and sexy. This ad shouldn’t have aired.
A Visionary Plan to Eliminate Traffic Congestion in NYC
from Project for Public Spaces by Project for Public Spaces
April 1, 2011
SADDLE RIVER, NJ- An unlikely coalition of retired traffic engineers, trucking company executives, suburban politicians and New York Post reporters unveiled here today a new proposal to eliminate all traffic congestion in New York City by 2025. The bold plan involves widening all roads to a minimum of twenty lanes and deporting all bike riders to the Netherlands.
Traffic will flow smoothly on Fifth Avenue if the proposed congestion relief plan for New York is adopted. Crosswalks, however, have become considerably longer.
The genius of the idea is that not only will there be plenty of space for cars in the short term, but because so many homes and businesses will be removed no one will ever have a reason to visit the city in the future. This will also solve the city’s transit budget woes, since no one will need to use the subway.
The millions of people who lose their homes or jobs as the city comes to resemble the outer suburbs of Cleveland, can move into the vast underground space vacated by the subway trains- another sustainable aspect of the plan.
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