…
I’ve spent some time in the Dutch cities and suburbs. I’ve done it on foot, by car, by train, but it is best seen by bike. I even wrote about it for Urban Land in an article entitled Suburban Snapshots. What I found comparing American and Dutch master planned communities was many similarities that Brooks espouses – open space, pedestrian meeting places, the choice to live in a single family home with a yard, some toys, and perhaps even a boat in the back yard. People here and there like that stuff. It is an American Dream and a Dutch Dream.
The differences are some core values like transportation and affordable housing. Our suburbs have recreational bike trails. The Dutch have bike lanes that take you places you need in your everyday life. Transit is often an afterthought here. The Dutch take transit seriously. When they build new suburbs, few homes or places of work are more than 400 meters (the standard five minute walk) from a bus or rail station. New suburbs also include town centers with a major rail station. 30% of all new housing is affordable. Across the board. Sure it is top down planning, but it is right and largely represents the values of the population. We don’t do that here.
If you look at the built environment, in many ways the Dutch are providing the American Dream better than America is. In the built environment at least.
…
Continue reading “David Brooks, Denver and the American Dream”
REDUCING AUTO CONGESTION AROUND SCHOOLS
The study identifies several barriers that stand in the way of statewide and local efforts to reduce auto congestion around schools. These are grouped by category:
Overarching
• Reducing auto congestion is not part of schools’ primary mission or plans as providers of basic education. K-12 schools have few incentives or requirements to reduce auto congestion.
• There is no existing framework to encourage or require congestion reduction around schools. Elementary and secondary schools have been exempted from the CTR Law and generally have not developed a culture or administrative system to reduce employee or student auto use.
• Schools are not sited with the intention of being accessible by foot, bicycle, or transit.
K‐8
• The Safe Routes to Schools program offers benefits beyond safety and healthy physical activity for students. It is one of WSDOT’s tools to help residents reduce vehicle miles travelled (VMT) and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. However, it does not appear to be linked with or focused on other departmental transportation demand management (TDM) and commute trip reduction (CTR) strategies. Under its current formulation, its key indicators revolve around physical activity and safety, not measures of auto use and student drop offs.
High School
• Schools in our Programs of Interest did not employ disincentives to driving alone such as charging high school students to park or limiting drop-off and pick-up space in front of schools.
College/University
• While the post-secondary Programs of Interest charged for parking, they did not manage parking with the intention of reducing demand, unlike the model unlimited access pass programs referenced in Phase 1 of the study.
Continue reading “REDUCING AUTO CONGESTION AROUND SCHOOLS”
And you think we have it bad
I Dream of Denver
By David Brooks
Those dreams have been aroused over the past few months. The economic crisis has devastated the fast-growing developments on the far suburban fringe. Americans now taste the bitter fruit of their overconsumption.
The time has finally come, some writers are predicting, when Americans will finally repent. They’ll move back to the urban core. They will ride more bicycles, have smaller homes and tinier fridges and rediscover the joys of dense community — and maybe even superior beer.
America will, in short, finally begin to look a little more like Amsterdam.
Well, Amsterdam is a wonderful city, but Americans never seem to want to live there. And even now, in this moment of chastening pain, they don’t seem to want the Dutch option.
The Pew Research Center just finished a study about where Americans would like to live and what sort of lifestyle they would like to have. The first thing they found is that even in dark times, Americans are still looking over the next horizon. Nearly half of those surveyed said they would rather live in a different type of community from the one they are living in at present.
…
Continue reading “I Dream of Denver”
Bill protects ‘vulnerable’ road users
…
Under Ellis’ bill, co-authored by state Sen. John Carona, D-Dallas, drivers would have to get out of a traffic lane used by a vulnerable road user if another is available. Motorists should pass them at a "safe distance" of more than 3 feet if the motorist is in a car or light truck. Six feet would be considered safe for heavy trucks or commercial vehicles. Seven states, including Arizona, Florida and Oklahoma have similar laws on their books, according to Ellis’ office.
The bill also would require drivers making left turns at intersections to yield to bicyclists or other road users approaching in the opposite direction. Motorists also would be barred from intimidating or harassing bicyclists and pedestrians and would be prohibited from opening a vehicle door that interferes with their ride or walk.
"Everyone is affected by this bill," Wang said, "because everyone has been broken down by the side of the road before. … No one has the right to harass you or throw things at you."
…
Continue reading “Bill protects ‘vulnerable’ road users”
3feet2pass.com – 3 foot safe passing distance
OUR MISSION is to establish a minimum 3 foot safe passing distance between cars and cyclists in the USA, North America… The WORLD.
Continue reading “3feet2pass.com – 3 foot safe passing distance”
Speeder City
[Per capita Baltimore has about twice the crash rate of New York City, what’s valid in NYC should be doubly valid here.]
“New York City can’t keep looking the other way while speeding takes the lives of children, grandparents and neighbors by the dozens,” Wiley Norvell said. “Speeding contributes to three times as many crashes as drunk driving, and yet Albany has denied New York City the one tool needed to enforce against this crime: speed enforcement cameras.”
— NY Daily News, 2/12
|
|
T.A. surveyed over 15,000 vehicles at 13 locations throughout the five boroughs. |
Thirty-nine percent of New York City drivers speed, according to a new T.A. study, Terminal Velocity: NYC’s Speeding Epidemic (PDF).
Although any cyclist, pedestrian or person with a pair of eyes could have assumed as much, this survey of over 15,000 vehicles at 13 locations throughout the five boroughs provides the data to back up that long anecdotal estimation.
The study found: on East Houston Street, 70% of drivers sped through a school zone; on Rogers Avenue in Brooklyn, 88% answered the call of a lead foot; and on Hylan Boulevard, Staten Island’s most dangerous road, cars were often clocked traveling more than 60 miles per hour.
Each of these horrifying figures not only shows the below-bar quality of the NYPD’s speeding enforcement programs, but also indicates that speeding drivers put hundreds of thousands of pedestrians, cyclists and drivers at risk every day.
Speeding contributes to roughly 2,400 motor vehicle crashes in New York City each year–nearly three times the number attributed to drunk driving. The likelihood of a crash resulting in a pedestrian fatality increases exponentially with speed; a pedestrian struck at 40 mph has only a 30% chance of survival.
Something must be done to address NYC’s speeding epidemic. To this end, T.A. is calling on the City to design streets for lower speeds, for the NYPD to collect data that documents the frequency of speeding, and for the State Legislature to pave the way for speeding enforcement cameras in NYC.
Join The America Bikes Coalition
[From League of American Bicyclists and yes this is yet another alert as this moves forward.]
| Join The America Bikes Coalition | |||||||
|
|||||||
Tired of unsafe passing, cyclist tries adding driver’s ed to shirt
…
Mizereck was pretty sure many drivers weren’t aware of Florida’s law.
…
“I was riding down the road, and I thought, ‘Why don’t I just put something on the back of the jersey telling people what they need to do?'”
From that thought came the 3 Feet Please jersey – a vivid yellow bicycling shirt.
…
Continue reading “Tired of unsafe passing, cyclist tries adding driver’s ed to shirt”
Why do tubes filled with CO2 go soft so soon?
The rate of loss
Dear Lennard,
Since a CO2 molecule is larger than either an oxygen or nitrogen molecule, why does it leak out of a bicycle tire faster?
Glenn
Dear Glenn,
Upon receiving your question, I put CO2 in a clincher tire with a Michelin butyl inner tube (latex tubes leak air quickly, as you’re probably aware). This particular tire and tube hold air pressure faithfully for weeks on one of my road bikes without needing pumping. And sure enough, within three days after inflating with CO2 to 90psi, the pressure had dropped to 45ps
…
Permeation by diffusion predicts gas leakage rates proportional to the inverse of the square root of their molecular weights. Using air as a reference the predicted leakage rates for common gases are: helium 2.7, air 1.0, nitrogen 1.02, oxygen 0.95, argon 0.85, carbon dioxide 0.81.
It turns out however that the leakage rate of CO2 is huge, and the reason is that it is actually soluble in butyl rubber and is thus not constrained to normal permeation loss, it can transfer straight through the bulk rubber resulting in severe tire pressure loss on the order of a single day.
Continue reading “Why do tubes filled with CO2 go soft so soon?”