Category: Biking Elsewhere

Continue reading “MidSouth Complete Streets (Full Version) [Video]”

B’ Spokes: In June 1905 that is. A nice romp down memory lane (with some old time photos):
https://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/roosevelt/

[B’ Spokes: What do you do when the police turn a blind eye to rampant crime and murder? You call for a super hero! ;)]

From The Atlantic Cities

https://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/02/if-only-every-city-had-masked-lucha-libre-defender-pedestrians/4804/

By Mary Lauran Hall, Alliance for Biking and Walking
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What should advocates do when bicyclists are consistently incorrectly cited by local police? The Washington Area Bicyclist Association has a pretty good answer.
For the past several years, Shane Farthing, WABA’s executive director, had been aware of a disturbing pattern. Advocates consistently heard accounts from bicyclists who had been injured in crashes and had received citations that just didn’t make sense from Metropolitan Police Department officers. Many said they had been fined for breaking a law that was not applicable to the incident. In some cases, officers had assigned blame to an injured cyclist based only on a driver’s statement, without actually interviewing the bicyclist or witnesses. Some had even been cited for violating laws that did not exist.
These accounts led Shane and his employees to believe that MPD officers were not receiving adequate training on enforcing laws pertinent to bicyclists. In response, WABA launched a campaign “to advocate for and secure funding for the holistic training of MPD officers of the application of the law to bicyclists.”
The enforcement campaign kicked off in February of 2011, when WABA requested and received a DC Council Committee on the Judiciary hearing to assess MPD’s enforcement of laws pertaining to bicyclists. In response to the advocates’ testimony, the DC Office of Police Complaints issued a report confirming poor work by the Police Department. The report prompted several councilmembers and staffers to request that WABA provide better documentation of the types of incidents cyclists described in testimony.
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Despite egregious errors, the police department did not indicate willingness to make meaningful changes.
“Every time we would go to testify, the MPD would say that they already had these trainings in place and there was no problem,” said Shane. “We were in a he-said-she-said situation.”
WABA’s biggest challenge was furnishing solid evidence. “The limitation we faced at every stage was a lack of data,” Shane recalled. “Our crash tracker had a small sample size.”
“So we decided to put together good FOIA requests to analyze these crash reports.” Using the Freedom of Information Act, WABA would obtain the actual police reports that were relevant to the trends advocates had spotted in Crash Tracker responses.
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https://www.peoplepoweredmovement.org/site/index.php/site/blog/4354/

[B’ Spokes: Here are some concepts in safe passing laws that the Maryland legislature has failed to incorporate.]

This law touches on three important concepts:

1. Due care – By saying that a driver must exercise due care the law creates a relationship of responsibility for the driver of a vehicle approaching a bicyclist. Language stating a due care requirement may make it easier for bicyclists to hold a driver liable if hit.
2. Defined distance – By stating that a reasonable and prudent distance is one of at least 3 feet the law makes it easy to publicize what is regarded as a safe distance and reinforces the most commonly required safe passing distance.
3. Variable distance – By stating that a reasonable and prudent distance is one that varies with increased speed, the law makes it clear that three feet is not an absolute. What is safe can vary depending upon speed and road conditions. Recognizing this is rare amongst state laws that define a safe distance.

From: https://blog.bikeleague.org/blog/2013/01/bike-law-university-summary-of-state-safe-passing-laws/

Very cute, here’s a sampling of suggestions:

Showers:

OK maybe in a better location. 😉

How about Bike At Work day?

Read/see more: https://blog.bikeleague.org/blog/2013/01/let-denis-ride-and-then-become-a-bicycle-friendly-business/

by David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington

District agencies are running a much-needed, but brief, sting operation today to enforce the laws against making U-turns across the Pennsylvania Avenue bike lanes. Meanwhile, a number of readers have written in with worries that a pedestrian enforcement campaign is targeting the wrong people for the wrong behavior.

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Reader David Joseph wrote:

I walk this intersection twice a day and without fail drivers make illegal turns, pull into the crosswalk, or otherwise endanger pedestrians. I recently asked an MPD officer who was giving warnings to pedestrians why they werent talking to drivers who are the real danger. His answer was simply that they were given orders to talk to pedestrians and issue tickets for jay walking, and he was following those orders.

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With driver speeding, especially with the latest speed camera bill, we’ve made a decision to tolerate a certain amount of unlawful speeding (10 mph over the limit)
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The District needs to focus on the most unsafe behavior. Sometimes, that’s pedestrian behavior, but more often it’s not.
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https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/17541/is-ped-enforcement-campaign-blaming-the-victim/

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog
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But when it comes to promoting the kind of projects America should be building, the Obama administration has touted some real stinkers in addition to some very laudable stuff.
Today’s Fast Lane blog post from U.S. DOT is a great example of the cognitive dissonance between the administration’s expressed priorities and what happens in practice.
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https://streetsblog.net/2013/02/22/despite-fix-it-first-rhetoric-obama-still-promoting-highway-expansions/

By Steve Mouzon, Better! Cities & Towns
Walk Appeal promises to be a major new tool for understanding and building walkable places, and it explains several things that were heretofore either contradictory or mysterious. It begins with the assertion that the quarter-mile radius (or 5-minute walk,) which has been held up for a century as the distance Americans will walk before driving, is actually a myth.
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https://bettercities.net/news-opinion/blogs/steve-mouzon/18645/walk-appeal
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[B’ Spokes: Shows wonderful examples where people are willing to walk up to 2 miles and all the way down to 25 feet. I will also note that the same people that assume the quarter-mile walking radius also design bus stops with a one mile walk to get across the street.]

Via: Streets Blog