Category: Biking Elsewhere

by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog

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According to the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, up to 20 or 30 percent of morning traffic can be generated by parents driving their children to school. Today, about three-quarters of school-aged kids in America get to and from school by car [PDF]. In 1969, half of all schoolkids walked or biked to school, but that rate has fallen to 13 percent, according to the SRTS Partnership.

This creates a dangerous mess of cars pulling over and merging back into traffic in front of schools — with small children walking around. The result: child injuries and deaths, especially on high-traffic streets with on-street parking. A 2007 Department of Justice report [PDF] found that, to make matters worse, delayed drivers often speed when congestion eases, in order to “make up time” and out of a perverse sense of road rage.

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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/09/05/september-brings-back-to-school-jump-in-traffic-congestion/

By KEITH BRADSHER, New York Times
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The crackdown by China’s third-largest city is the most restrictive in a series of moves by big Chinese cities that are putting quality-of-life issues ahead of short-term economic growth, something the central government has struggled to do on a national scale.
The measures have the potential to help clean up China’s notoriously dirty air and water, reduce long-term health care costs and improve the long-term quality of Chinese growth. But they are also imposing short-term costs, economists say, at a time when policy makers in Beijing and around the world are already concerned about a sharp economic slowdown in China.
“Of course from the government’s point of view, we give up some growth, but to achieve better health for all citizens, it is definitely worth it,” said Chen Haotian, the vice director of Guangzhou’s top planning agency.
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“There’s a recognition finally that growth at all costs is not sustainable,” said Ben Simpfendorfer, the managing director of Silk Road Associates, a Hong Kong consulting firm.
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He added, “What do we need gross domestic product for if we don’t have health?”
https://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/05/business/global/a-chinese-city-moves-to-limit-new-cars.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share

B’ Spokes: I am a big fan of this type of activism, no crosswalk? Well bring your own.
https://www.treehugger.com/cars/fighting-car-culture-instant-human-crosswalks-video.html

Excellent post by Herb Caudill, Greater Greater Washington though I think he misses a few points. Any mode of transportation that is better accommodated then other modes gets… well crowded. New York City subway and pedestrian malls for one example… and we all know the results when only cars are accommodated. The trick I think is to try and balance the different modes, in particular denser development *needs* denser modes of travel then what the automobile alone can provide. Congestion? We need to think first about getting mass transit and bike accommodations in there and only after that think about expanded capacity of the roads. The goal is to move more people per square foot of land use, not have each additional person "consume" a hundred times their floor space just for a car. Now for a few quotes:
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The central fact about cars, from a planner’s perspective, is that they take up space. Lots of space. And this matters because space in cities (a.k.a real estate) is scarce and therefore expensive.
Cars take up space when they’re moving and they take up space when they’re parked, and even though they can’t be simultaneously moving and parked, you have to plan for both states and plan for peak demand; so you have to set aside some multiple of the real estate actually occupied by the car at any given time.
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In the past, our policy response has been to just set aside more and more space for cars: More freeways, more roads, more lanes on existing roads, more parking garages and surface lots. This approach hasn’t worked, and there are two very practical reasons why:
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Read the rest here: https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post.cgi?id=16000

DALLAS (Aug. 27, 2012) — A new study from The Cooper Institute in collaboration with UT Southwestern Medical Center, shows that individuals who are fit at midlife have fewer chronic diseases in their Medicare years and spend less time with these diseases. The study, published this month in The Archives of Internal Medicine, is one of the first to look at the relationship between fitness and the burden of chronic illnesses in aging.
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Results showed that higher midlife fitness was strongly associated with fewer chronic conditions in later life. “What sets this study apart is that it focuses on the relationship between midlife fitness and quality of life in later years. By that I mean, fitter individuals aged well with fewer chronic illnesses to impact their quality of life,” says Willis. Those people in the study who were fitter had a lower burden of chronic conditions such as heart failure, coronary artery disease, diabetes, chronic kidney disease, Alzheimer’s disease and certain cancers.
Another unique finding of the study was that even among those participants who had died during the study, the fittest spent less time in their final years burdened with chronic health conditions. “We’ve determined that being fit is not just delaying the inevitable, but it is actually lowering the onset of chronic disease in the final years of life," said Berry, senior author of the study.
“This research illustrates perfectly what we’ve been practicing for over 40 years. A healthy and fit lifestyle allows us to square off the curve,” says Kenneth H. Cooper, MD, MPH, Founder and Chairman of Cooper Aerobics. “That means we want people to spend most of their lives in good health with an active lifestyle and less time with a chronic disease.”
https://www.cooperinstitute.org/pub/news.cfm?id=134

B’ Spokes: This is an amazing way to accommodate cyclists at a busy intersection. The bad news is that it is in Eindhoven, Netherlands… so it make take decades before the USA does anything similar.
More info, pictures and a video of the Grand Opening: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2012/08/23/spectacular-new-floating-cycle-roundabout/

[B’ Spokes: I thought this point bears highlighting.]
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Excerpt by David Alpert, Greater Greater Washington
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What about lower? What would happen with a $5-10 fine? At that range, some people, especially ones with more money, might conclude that they are in a hurry and just treat it as a toll. It might be interesting to try something like this in the 1-10 mph over the limit range, which some jurisdictions (like Maryland) exclude entirely.
Exempting slight speeding is not really good policy, as it just means every driver treats a 30 mph sign as meaning 40 mph limit, and 10 extra mph of speed makes a pedestrian about 40% more likely to die in a crash. On the other hand, many drivers have become conditioned to believe that such speeding is fine. What about charging a very small amount for such an infraction, to acclimate people to the idea that it’s both illegal and dangerous, but gently?
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https://greatergreaterwashington.org/post/15750/what-is-the-right-level-for-speed-camera-fines/

[B’ Spokes: I love the idea of extra measures to get drivers to stop and yield to trail traffic (like they are legally obligated to do.) I would love it if Maryland also took up the attitude of "Let’s observe the actual behavior." instead of through some sort of hocus-pocus under the guise of engineering (that time and time again it has been shown that a lot of so called cause and effect "facts" are just plain wrong or at least more complicated then generally assumed.) ]
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WTOP
WASHINGTON – The zigzag white lines on Belmont Ridge Road in Ashburn are supposed to warn drivers of the popular W&OD bike crossing.
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However, Dittberner also says drivers are slowing down and yielding more. A VDOT study, conducted by the department’s research arm, affirms his statement.
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https://www.wtop.com/159/2977309/Debate-on-experimental-safety-measures-on-Va-road
(This link also has a picture of the treatment.)

by Tanya Snyder, DC Streets Blog

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Yesterday, a bipartisan group of six governors and ex-governors celebrated the new support of the Partnership for Sustainable Communities – the collaboration of HUD, DOT, and EPA — for the Governor’s Institute. This kind of collaborative work, among federal agencies and with the states, is “common sense writ large,” said U.S. DOT Deputy Secretary John Porcari at the event. “But it wasn’t done in the past.”

States are where the rubber hits the road, he said, and the federal government needs to help them take smart action.

The Institute’s staff advises states on everything from agriculture and economic development to transportation and housing. They hold workshops in states, hosted by the governors themselves, to give specific advice tailored to the needs and particularities of that places.

Its prescriptions are well grounded in the smart growth philosophy. For example, the Institute’s 14 policies for transportation include strategic planning, a “fix-it-first” approach, and complete streets. They evaluate communities based on street grid connectivity and transit-oriented development, not old-school criteria like vehicle level-of-service.

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But the economic question goes far deeper than just temporary construction jobs. As William Fulton, vice president for policy and programs at Smart Growth America and former mayor of Ventura, California, blogged this week on CNN.com, “Where businesses go, where houses go, where roads go, where sidewalks go, where farms and natural spaces go – all of these things collectively affect a community’s economic performance and the cost of providing services there. Put things closer together, the services cost less. Put things farther from each other, the services cost more for the jurisdiction and its taxpayers.”

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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/08/02/governors-get-on-board-with-smart-growth/

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From A Governors’ Guide to Growth and Development

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Transportation departments generally rank the performance of roads by their level-of-service, but employing this standard can inadvertently discourage or block development in urban core areas, because they typically rank low on standard level-of-service measures. Many jurisdictions, for example, have responded to growing traffic congestion by developing performance standards to ensure that traffic speeds are maintained as areas become more developed. But these standards ignore the role that walking, biking, and transit play in more densely developed areas. Design decisions based on high level-of-service performance measures can end up serving only the motorist at the expense of the very communities that the road is supposed to serve. Decisions made only for the peak hour may tune the roadway to work well for motorists during those hours, but render the road over-designed for the rest of the day and ineffective for all other users. To remedy this, state transportation departments should review how they apply level-of-service standards and, if necessary, work with local governments to revise how the level-of-service is measured.
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By Richard J. Jackson And Michael Mehaffy, The Atlantic Cities
America is facing an alarming epidemic. In 1960, fewer than one in 10 American children were overweight or obese, but today, that number is one in four. Formerly very rare (and very serious) childhood diseases like Type 2 diabetes have become increasingly common.
It’s not just kids who are being affected: a quarter of adults are now obese, way up from one in 10 in 1990. That’s contributing to soaring health costs – over $190 billion a year, or 20 percent of all health care spending, according to a recent Cornell University study.
What’s the cause? Some analysts point to the growing consumption of junk food and sedentary lifestyles, and they’re certainly right. But there’s also evidence of a close correspondence between obesity and unwalkable, car-dependent neighborhoods. People in these neighborhoods are likely to be more sedentary, heavier and less fit, a deadly combination that begins when we are young.
For those over 40, a little experiment is telling. In our talks, we often ask our audiences how many of them walked or biked to school. Most hands usually go up. Then we ask them how many of their kids, grandkids or friends’ kids now walk or bike to school. Almost no hands go up. We have wrought a huge change in the lifestyles of our children, one that is taking a tragic toll. We chose to do it when we created unwalkable (and unbikable) suburban environments. No wonder our kids stay indoors, or worse, get lured into a drive-through lifestyle, with rafts of fast food and little activity.
Safe, walkable neighborhoods are not just an amenity, they’re a matter of life or death. They create environments where we can live active, engaged lives. And more walking brings more social interaction, more time outdoors, more recreation, more smiles and more "life" in every sense.
But in modern times, aren’t we stuck with these car-dependent neighborhoods? No, we aren’t.
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https://www.theatlanticcities.com/design/2012/06/grave-health-risks-unwalkable-communities/2362/