Category: Biking Elsewhere

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Pregnant woman expected to survive hit & run

INDIANAPOLIS
The hit and run accident occurred at about 7:30 p.m. Monday at Maryland Street and Elder Avenue.
Police say the truck dragged 24-year-old Maria Isabel Benitez-Acateco about 100 feet after turning right on Elder Avenue.
Witnesses told police they saw the driver of the vehicle get out of the truck and pull the woman from underneath the truck before fleeing the scene.
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In Delaware, Complete Streets Mandate comes to mean “Routine Accommodation”

[B’ Spokes: While Maryland was rated by LAB in having the best policies, some how Delaware’s comments sounds much like what happens here, no commitment to make dedicated, stand-alone, or strategic investments in on-road bicycling. In fact routine road accommodations has given us ZERO% progress over the last seven years. Thanks SHA for all your hard work, I’m sure things would be worse without your attention.]
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by Bike Delaware

When Governor Jack Markell signed Executive Order #6 on April 24, 2009, ordering the creation of a “Complete Streets” policy at DelDOT, many Delaware bicyclists were giddy. If the Delaware bicycling community were blessed with its own version of Martin Luther King Jr., he might have yelled out “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

In reality, however, an informal “Complete Streets” policy has been in effect at DelDOT for a number of years, just with a much less exciting name: “routine accommodation.” And, as DelDOT has pointed out, such multi-modal accommodation has been happening routinely in DelDOT projects, just with less fanfare and without the sexy name of “Complete Streets”.
So, what has “routine accommodation” meant for bicycling in Delaware? The most important thing to keep in mind is that “routine accommodation” is not a commitment to make dedicated, stand-alone, or strategic investments in bicycling (or walking, for that matter). Instead, it’s a commitment to keep these other ways of getting around in mind while improving roads for car and truck travel. The policy explicitly applies to “road reconstruction” and projects that “widens [sic] the pavement width“.

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Tour de Links – Pooped

by washcycle

Maillot Jaune: A study in NYC determined that drivers often drive in, and park in, bike lanes. Even protected ones. I’m shocked. “Stringer staffers measured bike lane violations at 11 locations during the morning and evening rush between October 5 and October 7. Motorists blocking bike lanes, wrong-way cycling, and pedestrians wandering into the lane were the most widespread types of misuse. Out of 275 motor vehicles blocking bike lanes, 35 were part of the city’s fleet. Of those, 19 were cops….The Borough President is recommending that NYPD crack down on bike lane-blocking motorists. He suggests putting traffic enforcement agents on bikes to patrol lanes and issue summonses to both motorists and cyclists”  You can see the result of the study here. I’m also shocked that the media sensationalized the story.

Podium – A jogger wearing headphones made a sudden u-turn on Dallas’ Katy Trail. She was hit by a cyclist (who was reportedly not speeding and calling out before passing) and subsequently died. BikePortland reminds users to not wear headphones, look before turning and pass at a speed that allows for a crazy Ivan.

Podium – An Indiana bicyle cop was killed in a hit and run crash. And a philanthropist was killed during the final leg of a cross-country bike ride to raise money for victims of last summer’s oil spill.

Maillot Vert: Isaac Johnson was a black inventor who invented a type of folding bicycle frame back in 1899, but he did not invent “the bicycle frame” as is sometimes claimed.

Maillot a Pois Rouge: Greg Cohen at the National Journal thinks we should make roads that are more forgiving of distracted drivers, which prompted a response by LAB’s Andy Clarke. Meanwhile Maryland started banning the use of handheld phones while driving on Oct 1 but only as a secondary offense, which may do little good. It’s talking on the phone while driving that is truly dangerous, not holding the phone in your hand. Furthermore, some research shows that laws banning handheld devices can be more dangerous, because drivers continue to use them anyway, but with the added distraction of trying to hide their use and pull their eyes farther from the road in the process.

Maillot Blanc: A company in florida is selling “DUI scooters” – scooters targeted to drivers who’ve lost their licenses due to a DWI. That would never catch on in Maryland. No one loses their license. When I was in London, there was a service you could hire if you’d drank too much to drive home. A sober person would meet you at your car and put their folding bike in your trunk. They’d drive you home and then ride their bike back (some of them had foldable scooters, which is why I’m connecting the two).

Lanterne Rouge: After seeing a driver nearly hit a cyclist, a woman threw a bag of dog poop in the driver’s face. I don’t condone that, but at least SOMEONE enforces the law. She was charged with assault and battery with a weapon. A weapon? Only if it was a great dane.

 

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Miles Not Gallons Could Be Key to Road Upkeep

By Emily Badger
The fuel efficiency of cars in America has been steadily improving for years, and this is, undeniably, a good thing. It turns out, however, that we’ve built into our transportation system a terrible, inherent contradiction: As we need less gas to get from point A to point B, less revenue is generated by the gas tax that paves the road between those two places.
America’s transportation system is crumbling — a new report out this week paints the picture in particularly grim detail — and the advancements we cheer in hybrid technology and electric batteries are going to make it increasingly difficult to fix things.
Part of the problem, says Jeff Shane, is treating the gas levy as a sin tax, an intentionally self-destructing fee placed on products (cigarettes, tanning beds) in the hopes that people will eventually stop using them (and with the understanding that their associated revenue will dry up). Of course, this doesn’t work too well if you actually need all those pennies to build something.
“Tying the funding of our transportation system to a tax levied on a commodity, the consumption of which we’re trying to discourage, is probably not the best way to go,” said Shane, a partner at the Hogan Lovells law firm in Washington and a former undersecretary for policy at the Department of Transportation. He directed a transportation conference at the University of Virginia’s Miller Center, which led this week to the new report, “Well Within Reach: America’s New Transportation Agenda.”
What’s needed now is not a higher gas tax, but a whole new way of looking at how we pay our fair share for using public roads. The report’s authors home in on what has become the consensus favorite solution of transportation wonks. We shouldn’t fill road coffers according to how much gas we buy, but how many miles we drive.
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