Category: Biking Elsewhere

Via U.S. Department of Transportation
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Last month at the National Bike Summit, I said "It’s time to take the bicycling renaissance to the next level." And I proposed to help do that by changing the conversation from "Bicycling has earned a seat at the transportation table," to "Like all forms of transportation, bicycling must be safe."
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After all, whether you’re driving a tractor-trailer, sitting in the back seat of a minivan, or pedaling a bike, the road safety you enjoy shouldn’t depend on the number of wheels you’re riding on.
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When I say that safety is this Department’s number one priority, there’s no exception for bikes. With more bicyclists on our streets, helping them ride safely is not a luxury; it’s part of our obligation.
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https://fastlane.dot.gov/2013/04/bike-safety-summits-get-the-green-light.html

By ISAAC RIDDLE, NEXT CITY
For car owners, the only good news to come out of this year’s “Your Driving Costs” study, an annual report from AAA, is that the price of tires and tire maintenance has not gone up. But all other costs of car ownership, from gas to insurance, have collectively increased by nearly 2 percent since last year.
Looking at overall maintenance costs, insurance and gasoline prices based on a year of driving 15,000 miles, the study found that the average sedan costs 60.8 cents per mile, or $9,122 a year. When broken down, maintenance costs rose by 11.26 percent, the price of fuel rose by just under 2 percent and insurance costs rose by nearly 3 percent.
SUVs continue to reign in the price department, putting drivers with a penchant for big cars back an average of $11,599 a year. Conversely, small sedans represent the most cost-effective option, at $6,967 a year.
And that’s not even accounting for parking fees and potential tickets.
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https://nextcity.org/daily/entry/aaa-cost-of-car-ownership-on-the-rise

by Brendon Slotterback, Streets.MN
Standing side by side with many state DOT heads, US DOT Secretary Ray La Hood and Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today announced a new public safety campaign to encourage less driving, lower speeds, and encourage more cycling and walking to meet the nation’s transportation needs.
“For too long, the assumption has been that the negative impacts of auto travel are just the price we must pay for modern life”, said Secretary LaHood, “Well, no longer. It’s time to build a people-centered transportation system. We have the tools and policies to make change now, and we need to get to work.” LaHood urged DOTs and municipalities to begin immediately by reducing speed limits on residential streets, narrowing streets, and installing protected cycling facilities. LaHood also pointed to the benefits of the change, citing the continuing decline in vehicle travel nationwide. “Cities, counties and states no longer need to pour money into new infrastructure that will serve fewer and fewer drivers while their existing roads crumble. We’ll be doing our pocketbooks and the climate a favor while we reactivate our streets and improve public health”.
“The use of motor vehicles, like smoking, heart disease and other public health threats, pose a grave risk to our children, friends and neighbors,” said Secretary Sebelius. Sebelius cited motor vehicle crashes as the leading cause of death among US children, and pointed to the link between childhood asthma and heavily congested streets in announcing that she would make the reduction in use of the automobile a top priority for her agency. “Just as we pulled out all the stops to address smoking, especially among teens, we will make it a priority to not only build a new transportation system, but engage the public in a broad dialog about the automobile’s impact on our health and the health of our planet”.
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https://www.streets.mn/2013/04/01/us-dot-and-hhs-announce-cars-kill-campaign-to-reduce-driving/

[B’ Spokes: Off topic sort of but I do enjoy commercials that include something about bikes.]

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Continue reading “How to be cool”

[B’ Spokes: My thought is if the problem is too many pedestrians then the should be accommodated otherwise if the problem is sporadic occurrences of pedestrians (the most hazardous) then when the pedestrian signal is called for also make the left turn a separate phase, there should be tolerance for this happening once and a while.]
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by Tanya Snyderm Streets Blog
Drivers turning left are a leading cause of pedestrian crashes in urban areas. Where drivers can only turn left with a green left-turn arrow, pedestrians are more protected. But when drivers are watching oncoming traffic for a chance to make their turn, they tend not to be as vigilant as they should to watch for pedestrians. In fact, 5 to 11 percent of drivers don’t look for pedestrians in the crosswalk at all.
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Pedestrian advocates also favor a signal phase exclusively for people on foot, such as a Barnes dance, where pedestrians can cross in all directions, even diagonally, and all traffic is stopped.
But are dedicated signals the solution?
“The downside of protected or leading lefts is that it adds another phase to the signal, and means that ‘through traffic’ will sit stopped at a red light longer than if left turns shared the green time with through traffic,” said Gary Toth, a former New Jersey DOT official. “The more complicated the signal phasing gets, the more that the traffic signal ‘clogs’ up the intersection.”
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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/04/04/study-too-many-drivers-dont-even-look-for-pedestrians-when-turning-left/

By Jeffrey Tumlin

1. Measure what matters: “[Transportation planners] make projections but never go back and see if it was the right plan.”
2. Make walking a pleasure: Successful planning design in all cities are measured by this. “Walking is engineered out of daily life…my industry has made walking effectively illegal…Don’t ever sacrifice walking for any other mode of transportation, even biking.”
3. Put the needs of daily life within walking distance: With poorly planned neighborhoods and no walking and higher traffic volumes, less people know their neighbors and have less connection to their surroundings.
4. Make biking safe and easy for everyone: There is no better way to attract people to cycling than to build bike lanes and provide facilities and access. Improves safety, health, retail sales, etc.
5. Make transit Fast, Frequent, Reliable and Dignified: Mass transit is driven by labor costs, not cost of vehicles — demand nice, dependable, efficient buses. Give mass transit priority — make everyone feel welcome and valued.
6. Adopt good street design manuals: Good design starts with place. The best transportation plan is a good land use plan.
7. Make traffic analysis work: The transportation death spiral = Congestion -> Fix by widening roadway -> Brings faster driving -> Leads to more people driving, more congestion. Slower traffic is safer.
8. Price is Right: Control supply and demand for roadways by choosing between spending more money to fix roads, or spending more time to wait through congestion.
9. Manage and price parking: “Every city is stupid about parking.” The average cost is $25,000 per parking space and most cities will come to find that they could have better spent that money on something else. Better manage the spaces you already have to fill the empty ones before building new ones. Cities should invest in technology to direct people to open parking and use current inventory of spaces. Vary the prices for parking based on location, time of day, day of the week. Allow the money collected at meters to benefit the street or neighborhood where the money was collected.
10. Create a better vision: The auto industry “used the belief that the automobile will change our lives” by making us more sexy, successful and powerful.

Found via Urban Places and Spaces

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog
Jeffrey Tumlin was managing transportation programs at Stanford in the mid-1990s, when he made an important finding: It was cheaper for the university to pay people not to drive than to build new parking structures.
Offering employees just $90 a year not to drive to campus was enough to entice many of them to use transit, carpools, or bicycles. Meanwhile, the annualized cost of each parking space can range from about $650 for surface spots in suburban locations to over $4,000 for structured spaces in cities, according to the Victoria Transport Policy Institute
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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/04/16/transport-u-colleges-embrace-policies-to-reduce-driving/

Found via The WashCycle

[B’ Spokes: I’ll pull a couple of examples from this article that I think the Baltimore area needs to pay attention to. And for those of you not familiar with Strong Towns, a stroad is something that is supposed to function as a street and a road but fails at both miserably.]

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By CHARLES MAROHN, Strong Towns

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Examples #2: A street in a city is in disrepair and a maintenance project is planned. In evaluating the project, it is discovered that new growth and a rise in property values along the street has doubled the revenue the city is getting from within the project area to $400,000 per year. An enhancement that would widen sidewalks, installed decorative lighting and make other improvements would add $50,000 per year to the long term costs of the project, bringing the total annual cost to $100,000 per year. The city goes ahead with the project with the knowledge that the tax base has grown a sufficient amount to cover the long term costs.

Example #3: A STROAD runs through the city, bisecting two neighborhoods in a way that artificially separates them. Development along the STROAD is not very productive, providing an annual revenue stream of only $400,000. The cost to maintain the STROAD alone is $600,000 per year, which does not include costs for policing, responding to accidents and other normal city costs. The city secures a grant from the federal and state governments to put the STROAD on a road diet, narrowing the overall surface, connecting the adjacent neighborhoods and improving the overall prospects for the corridor. As a result of the project, the annual cost to maintain the STROAD (now a street) decreases to $300,000, an amount now covered by the corridor’s revenue stream. The growth in value expected along the corridor — if it materializes — will only enhance the city’s already marginally-positive position.

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https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2013/4/8/city-as-banker-and-venture-capitalist.html