Via Coloradoan
A confrontation between a sheriff’s deputy and bicyclist in Fort Collins last month led to a $22 ticket for the rider and an internal investigation into the deputy’s behavior.
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Malisani ticketed Baker for failing to move to the right as the deputy passed the cyclist.
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Alderden repeatedly told cyclists they needed to get out of the way of drivers.
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The ticket given to Baker says he failed to move to the right when being overtaken. But the current law no longer requires that.
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“We all need to understand what the rules are, what the laws say. And the rules in this case are very clear,” said bicycling advocate and safety instructor Rick Price,
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Malisani, Baker said, passed by him and his bike with inches to spare.
“I just rode off, but the shocking thing was when the officer then passed by me … he was about a foot, maybe nine inches away,” Baker said. “It’s unbelievably different when the car that’s stalking is you an officer who is supposed to serve and protect.
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Fort Collins police officers have received specific training on bike laws. Sheriff’s deputies have not.
https://www.coloradoan.com/article/20130501/NEWS01/305010039
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[B’ Spokes: As much as I would love to require every police officer to get training on bike laws, maybe a compromise position would be to prohibit those officers who have not received bike law training from giving tickets to cyclists.]
Study: In Baltimore, One in Six Drivers Pass Cyclists Illegally
by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog
This is one of the worst parts of biking on a typical American street: You’re riding your bike and you hear a car coming up from behind you. It’s loud; you can tell it’s going fast. Does the driver see you?
WHOOSH … the car passes you at arm’s distance. Nothing like a little trip through the blood pressure spectrum first thing in the morning.
Discourteous, dangerous and illegal passing by cars is uncomfortably common, according to a new study out of Baltimore [PDF], even as three-foot passing laws are beginning to become the norm. But it looks like plain old painted bike lanes make a difference. Seth at Baltimore Velo files this report:
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Center for a Livable Future at the Bloomberg School of Public Health published a study this week that takes a look at how well the law is being followed by vehicles. Unfortunately, the answer is not very well.
Here are some key findings of the groundbreaking study:
- Overall, bike lanes in Baltimore improve cyclist safety
- Without bike lanes, drivers had trouble sharing the road with cyclists
- One in six Baltimore drivers, or about 17 percent, violated the 3-foot law
- Researchers found a 20 percent increase in motorist adherence to the 3-foot law for bike lane streets compared to standard streets
Having this quantifiable data makes a very compelling case for the city to continue (and increase) its funding for dedicated bike lanes around the city.
https://streetsblog.net/2012/04/13/study-in-baltimore-one-in-six-cars-pass-cyclists-illegally/
That’s a great slogan. :p
So this is the question, does MD’s 3′ law allow unsafe passing in this situation or not?
[B’ Spokes: From testimony it appears that tucks want to be able to pass cyclists in this situation without crossing the double yellow. While their testimony mentioned “safe” passing I don’t see how that’s even possible with a truck. So while other places make trucks pass cyclists with greater clearances, Maryland seems to want to say to motorists anytime you can’t safely pass a cyclist you can still pass. An interpretation I don’t think will hold up in court, BTW.]
Before the (next) deluge: Midwestern floods remind us of sprawl’s toll
[B’ Spokes: This has relevance for Maryland and the so called "rain tax" as our roads and poor use of public lands should be taxed along with other impervious surfaces. Well we can’t have government tax itself but we can try to get better policies so we don’t pay the price of governments ineptness. (I’ll note other places have a tax for this too but the more common way is just an addition to the sewer tax.) I will also point out in my travels in Arizona they use water retention areas to form a grade separated road crossing for trails. It’s really cool not have to cross hardly any roads when on the trails in Arizona. ]
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Via Switchboard of the Natural Resources Defense Council
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Does suburban sprawl – spread-out, automobile-dependent strip malls, big-box stores, wide arterial roadways, and unending large-lot housing – cause flooding? Absolutely not. (Sprawl doesn’t make it rain, although I can put together a very plausible theory about increased driving, tailpipe emissions, global warming, and severe weather events.) But does sprawl aggravate flooding? Oh, yeah. Here’s how:
When it rains, the water needs somewhere to go. Ideally, that someplace is a forest or meadow, which filters and absorbs the water into the ground. But when, instead of natural vegetation, we have rooftops and pavement, the natural process is broken and the water runs off, gaining volume and velocity. If the rainfall is hard enough and/or steady enough, flooding occurs; and floodwaters increase as runoff increases. Nature, already overburdened by severe precipitation, is prevented entirely from doing its job at limiting the accumulation of flood waters when impervious surface is in the way.
What does this have to do with suburban sprawl? Spread-out, low-rise development contributes more rooftops and pavement per unit of development to the watershed than do walkable neighborhoods. Imagine a 200,000-square-foot, one-story Walmart Supercenter surrounded by 15-20 acres of surface parking. When it rains on Walmart’s property, there’s no way the water can get into the ground through naturl filtration processes. Now multiply that by all the other parking lots required for strip malls and office parks, and all the widened and extended road surfaces needed to accommodate traffic heading to the retail and spread-out housing.
Now imagine a different scenario: The same amount of floor space is accommodated by a combination of even two- to four-story buildings, and housing built more compactly to a walkable scale. Imagine that the pattern reaches sufficient critical mass to support decent transit service and the substitution of walking, bicycling, and transit use for some of those car trips, thus reducing the amount of road surface needed. Where there is parking, imagine that some of it, rather than spread out on surface lots, is placed in multi-story, above- or below-ground garages such as those found in urban areas. With rainwater hitting a smaller footprint of pavement and other hard surfaces, there is less runoff.
Would the difference be great enough to prevent flooding altogether during the most severe weather events? Probably not. But it could make a difference in the volume of water running off into the flood.
EPA has done some calculations on the residential part of the issue. Suppose your metropolitan area is going to grow by 10,000 homes over the next several years. If those homes are built one to an acre, a hypothetical storm might produce 187 cubic meters of runoff; but reducing the watershed coverage to an average of four homes per acre, the runoff from those same new homes would be reduced to 62 cubic meters. Build the homes at eight to an acre, and the runoff would reduce further, to 49.5 cubic meters. The main reason for the difference is the amount of roadway required to service the homes is much greater at low densities than at moderate densities.
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https://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/kbenfield/before_the_next_deluge_midwest.html
Carbon dioxide now at highest level in 5 million years
By Doyle Rice, USA TODAY
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Increasing amounts of carbon dioxide and other gases caused by the burning of the oil, gas and coal that power our world are enhancing the natural "greenhouse effect," causing the planet to warm to levels that climate scientists say can’t be linked to natural forces.
Carbon dioxide levels were around 280 ppm prior to the Industrial Revolution, when we first began releasing large amounts into the atmosphere by the burning of fossil fuels.
For the past 800,000 years, CO2 levels never exceeded 300 parts per million, according to Scripps, which measures CO2 levels along with several other agencies, including NOAA. Records of past levels of CO2 are found in samples of old air preserved as bubbles in the Antarctic ice sheet, Scripps reports.
"The 400-ppm threshold is a sobering milestone, and should serve as a wake up call for all of us to support clean energy technology and reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, before it’s too late for our children and grandchildren," said Tim Lueker, a Scripps oceanographer.
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https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2013/04/24/carbon-dioxide-keeling-curve-global-warming/2110445/
New Chicago Plan: Pedestrians Come First
By EMILY BADGER, The Atlantic Cities
Tucked inside the new Complete Streets Design Guidelines that the city of Chicago is about to debut, pasted onto page 10, is a reproduction of a Chicago Tribune news blurb from May 6, of 1913 with this irresistible headline: “SPEEDER WANTS ALL STREET: Motorist Complains to Judge Because Pedestrian Gets in Way.”
Pedestrian advocates exactly a century later will be happy to know that our 19-year-old anti-hero, Harold Bracken (son of a saloonkeeper!), was fined by the court $200 for knocking over a pedestrian on Michigan Avenue with his speeding car. An equally awesome detail: Our injured pedestrian got up, jumped into a passing car, caught up with Bracken and had him arrested. In doling out the fine, a municipal judge declared, "The Streets of Chicago belong to the city, not to automobilists."
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"My feeling is that we have to swing the pendulum in the other direction," says Gabe Klein, commissioner of Chicago’s Department of Transportation. "The fact is that the transit user is also a pedestrian, a cyclist is also a pedestrian, an auto user is also a pedestrian. You may not chose the other modes every day, but every day you’re a pedestrian."
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https://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/chicago-commits-put-pedestrians-first-transportation-planning/5256/
Here’s What Americans Don’t Get About Cycling — And Why It’s A Problem
[B’ Spokes: I found the argument against employers providing showers very provocative.]
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By Alex Davies, Business Insider
The 2013 Copenhagenize Index of the world’s most bike-friendly cities is out, and not a single American metropolis made the top 20.
That’s a problem — and not just a health-related one, said Mikael Colville-Andersen, CEO of Copenhagenize, the consulting and communications company that published the Index.
By failing to embrace cycling culture, American cities are losing out on significant financial benefits, Colville-Andersen told Business Insider. Studies show that every kilometer cycled in Denmark earns the country €.23 (partly because cyclists have been shown to spend more money in local stores), he said.
And even with significant taxation of automobiles, every kilometer driven in Denmark costs the country €.16.
The problem in the U.S. is all about perception, said Colville-Andersen. Many commuters see cycling as a form of exercise, not convenient transport, and cities are still being built around automobiles.
How Americans See Cycling
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https://www.businessinsider.com/what-americans-dont-get-about-cycling-2013-4
When Laziness Pays: Getting Your Groceries Delivered Is Good For The Environment
[B’ Spokes: Of course getting groceries by bike is better but for those of you looking to go car light, this is a good second option.]
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By Francie Diep, Popsci
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Even companies that don’t optimize their trucks’ driving routes, and instead just deliver when their customers want them to, create fewer emissions than all of those households would driving by themselves, according to a paper from two civil engineers at the University of Washington in Seattle. Every scenario the engineers examined was a win for delivery, which always saved on emissions by at least 17 percent for their study area around Seattle.
The savings would increase for less dense cities. They’re also better if companies have more customers and are able to optimize delivery routes, which led to 80 to 90 percent less carbon dioxide emissions compared to individual household grocery trips.
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https://www.popsci.com/environment/article/2013-04/home-delivered-groceries-saves-emissions-study-finds
Posters of Angry Eyes Actually Scare Off Bike Thieves
By JOHN METCALFE, The Atlantic Cities
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In England, researchers studying the psychology of surveillance recently discovered that putting posters of glaring eyes above bike racks seemed to ward off thieves. It was no small effect, either: In the three racks they monitored, the number of stolen cycles went down by an incredible 62 percent. There is a big caveat to their findings, though, which we’ll get to in a minute.
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https://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/04/posters-angry-eyes-actually-scare-bike-thieves/5420/