Month: August 2008

By Sewell Chan
The city’s Summer Streets program will have its debut Saturday morning. The Bloomberg administration plans to bar motor vehicles from a 6.9-mile north-south route in Manhattan for six hours each on three consecutive Saturdays. In an interview this morning with Fox 5, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg expressed hope — but not certainty — that the event would be a success:
Cars are important, but streets are there for everybody. And we’re going to try, for three days in a row – three Saturdays in a row – to see if the public wants to go out in the streets and reconnect with each other and bicycle and skateboard and walk and kibbitz and maybe a lot of restaurants will put tables out – something different.
He added, “This has been done in Bogotá for 30 years. They love it. It’s phenomenally popular and it probably will work here. If it doesn’t, at least we’ll have tried.”
Continue reading “Will Car-Free ‘Summer Streets’ Work?”

…
In recent years his [David Byrne] interest in bicycles has expanded from riding them to thinking seriously about the role they play in urban life, as he has started making connections with politicians and international design consultants keen to keep cars from taking over the city. So when the Department of Transportation asked him to help judge a design competition for the city’s new bike racks, he eagerly agreed — so eagerly, in fact, that he sent in his own designs as well.
They were simple shapes to define different neighborhoods around the city: a dollar sign for Wall Street; an electric guitar for Williamsburg, Brooklyn; a car — “The Jersey” — for the area near the Lincoln Tunnel. “I said, ‘Well, this disqualifies me as a judge,’ ” he recalled, “but I just doodled them out and sent them in.” He figured maybe they’d be used to decorate the contest Web site, nycityracks.wordpress.com.
…on Friday nine racks made from his own whimsical designs were installed around the city. “They immediately responded, saying, ‘If you can get these made, we’ll put them through,’ “ he recalled. “I was kind of shocked.”
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Continue reading “New York City Art & Design – Bike Racks?”

By Steve Gehrke, The Salt Lake Tribune
A 41-year-old man who allegedly used his truck to swerve into groups of bikers on Mirror Lake Highway over the weekend has been charged with third-degree felony aggravated assault and a pair of misdemeanors.
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Continue reading “Enraged motorist swerves into bicyclists, injures one”

After jumping out of the way, the four off-duty cops call 9-1-1 and have the driver arrested
By Lee van der Voo The Lake Oswego Review
In the end, hitting the gas may have been a very bad idea.
But a Portland driver who allegedly gunned his three-quarter ton truck at four pedestrians in a Lake Oswego parking lot is now in the Clackamas County Jail.
Turns out the joke’s on him.
Richard J. Halley, 55, is accused of racing his vehicle toward four men in the parking lot of the Albertson’s store at 11 S. State Street.
It happened at 12:20 p.m. Wednesday as the four men walked across the parking lot onto the sidewalk after just having lunch at the Subway.
…
He was charged with four counts of menacing, one count of reckless driving and one count of recklessly endangering. He is being held in the Clackamas County Jail on $45,000 bail.
…
Continue reading “Driver picks the wrong pedestrians to go after with his truck”

By Gwen Purdom, USA TODAY
High schools and colleges are steering students away from cars to save money on gas, save the environment and promote physical fitness.
This fall, Ripon College in Ripon, Wis., is offering freshmen free mountain bikes, helmets and locks in exchange for a promise not to bring a car to campus. The $300-per-student cost is funded by private donations.
The college’s president, David Joyce, says the project was meant to avoid building a parking garage, but its side effects are beneficial: less pollution, more exercise and savings on gas.
The timing was right, Joyce says: "We were either extremely brilliant or extremely lucky."
About 60% of the school’s 300 incoming students have signed up.
"Today’s teenagers deserve a lot of credit. They’re socially aware, they’re environmentally conscious," says Mike Martin, executive director of the National Association of Pupil Transportation. "When the price of gasoline takes effect, they’re smart."
On other campuses: …
"We have over 100 million bikes that are sitting around in garages and basements and back porches," Blumenauer says. "When people start to use them, it can be transformational."
Continue reading “Schools move to eject cars from campuses”

[An article about hostile motorist/cyclists interactions]
By JAN HOFFMAN – New York Times
…
“We’ve had a car culture for so long and suddenly the roads become saturated with bicyclists trying to save gas,” Mr. Cooley said 10 days after the attack, still feeling scrambled, in pain and traumatized. “No one knows how to share the road.” He doesn’t plan to bike to work again this season.
Every year, the war of the wheels breaks out in the sweet summer months, as four-wheelers react with aggravation and anger to the two-wheelers competing for the same limited real estate.
…
Like Mr. Cooley, the newbies are lured by improved bike lanes as well as the benefits of exercise, a smaller carbon footprint and gas savings. But talk about a vicious cycle! With more bikes on the road, the driver-cyclist, Hatfield-McCoy hostility seems to be ratcheting up. Cycling: good for the environment, bad for mental health?
…
Psychologists and traffic experts say the tension rises from many factors, including summer road rage and the “my hurry matters more than your hurry” syndrome, exacerbated when drivers feel captive to slower-moving cyclists.
And then there’s old-fashioned turf warfare.
…
The ability of drivers and cyclists to trash talk and then disappear into the anonymity of traffic further poisons the atmosphere. Dave Schlabowske, the bicycle and pedestrian coordinator for Milwaukee, recalled a car pulling alongside as he pedaled to a meeting: passenger, a child of about 6, rolls down window. No seat belt.
Driver, male, fixes Mr. Schlabowske with a glare, and then gives instruction to small child. Obediently, child complies: he flips Mr. Schlabowske an obscene gesture, shouts complementary epithet. Looking triumphant, driver peels off.
To some extent, the hostility is a byproduct not only of the abdication of common sense, but of widespread ignorance of state and local laws. In every state, cyclists have the same rights and responsibilities as drivers of motor vehicles. But in the particulars, state vehicle codes and municipal ordinances vary. Consider the frustrated driver who shouts to a cyclist, “Get on the sidewalk!”
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The anticyclist hostility even follows riders into court. Just ask a bike lawyer. For as surely as night follows day, with more riders on the road, there is a small but growing peloton of lawyers specializing in bike law, usually representing injured cyclists.
Gary Brustin, a cyclist and California bike lawyer, said anticyclist fervor makes jury selection daunting. “They are white-hot about us,” Mr. Brustin said. “They are seething.” In California, bicycle plaintiffs lose two out of three cases that go to trial.
The anger has not gone unnoticed by officials around the country. A dozen states now mandate at least a three-foot passing gap. In June, South Carolina passed an antiharassment law to protect cyclists. … Complete Streets bills seek to require that roads be designed for all users.
…
Continue reading “My hurry matters more than your hurry”

[Excerpts from Getting Australia Moving]

“We…have created an environment that
makes it very convenient for people to
be inactive, and subsequently develop
unhealthy behaviours. The only way to
combat this is to make it equally
convenient for people to become active,
and moreover, easier for them to inherit
a better quality of life”.

Libby Darlison,
Chair, Premiers Council on Active Living, NSW.

SOME KEY POINTS:

• The more cyclists there are,
  the safer it becomes.
• Motorists behaviour largely
  controls the likelihood of collisions
  with people walking and cycling.
• Comparison of pedestrian and
  cyclist collision frequencies
  between communities and over
  time periods need to reflect the
  amount of walking and bicycling.
• Efforts to enhance pedestrian and
  cyclist safety, including traffic
  engineering and legal policies,
  need to be examined for their
  ability to modify motorist behavior.
• Policies that increase walking and
  cycling appear to be an effective
  route to improving road safety.

A Victorian Parliamentary inquiry into
violence associated with motor vehicle
use received a large number of
submissions from the cycling
community reporting instances of road
violence. Several submissions
suggested that the presence of cyclists
on the road was a trigger for road
violence against cyclists (Drugs and
Crime Prevention Committee, 2005).
Driver knowledge of the road rules as
they relate to people on bicycles has
been found to be generally poor. Only
one in five (19%) of drivers knew that it
was legal for cyclists to ride two
abreast, 44% that cyclists were
allowed to ride along a clearway, and
63% that cyclists were allowed to
occupy a whole lane (Rissel et al,
2002). Importantly, this lack of
knowledge regarding vital aspects of
the road rules has been found to be
associated with a negative attitude
amongst motorists towards people on
bicycles (Rissel et al, 2002). The hostile
reception reported by bicyclists from
motorists is a consistent theme when
surveying people who ride bicycles.
Daley et al (2007) found that many
occasional and regular riders perceived
the average Sydney driver as impatient
and intolerant. Some thought drivers
were more likely to respect cyclist’s
safety and rights if bicycles were more
frequently encountered on the roads
and this is supported by Robinson
(2005) who found that the more
cyclists there are, the safer it becomes.
Riders described altercations where
motorists took out frustrations on
them, often triggered by the motorist’s
view that their journey was delayed by
the rider. Riders felt there was a
skewed driver perception that a cyclist
held up traffic, rather than seeing them
as a legitimate part of the traffic
system. It is this lack of
acknowledgement towards people on
bicycles that has been found by Greig
(2001) to be a significant deterrent
towards regular cycling.
Continue reading “Poor behaviour on the road is a barrier to cycling”

Compared to Americans, Europeans are way out in front
By Adam Voiland
Transportation planners in the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark have invested heavily in bicycle paths and lanes, discouraged the use of cars, and gone to great efforts to protect the legal rights and safety of cyclists. A few stats:
1 percent of trips in the United States are made on a bicycle. That’s 10 percent in Germany, 18 percent in Denmark, and 27 percent in the Netherlands. In Portland, Ore., 3.5 percent of trips to work are made by bike, the highest share among the 50 largest American cities. The lowest: Kansas City, Mo., at a paltry 0.02 percent.
37 percent of short trips (under 2.5 kilometers, or 1.5 miles) are made on a bicycle in the Netherlands, compared with 2 percent in the United States. 1.1 cyclists are killed per 100 million km cycled there; in the United States, 5.8 cyclists are killed per 100 million km.
Motorists are legally responsible for collisions with children and elderly cyclists in the Netherlands and Germany even when cyclists are disobeying traffic rules. (Not generally true here.) However, bicyclists who disobey the rules of the road there are more likely to be ticketed.
Alcohol use, by driver or cyclist, was reported in more than one third of U.S. crashes that resulted in cyclist fatalities in 2006.
Continue reading “Bike Commuting By the Numbers”

Neither age nor inexperience need be a barrier to biking
By Adam Voiland
If $4-a-gallon gas has you looking for relief, consider: A concerted effort is underway to attract casual bike riders into the fold. The lure is a range of new commuting bikes that promise to make everyday travel by bicycle as comfortable and fashionable as it is cheap. And if time is the excuse you give for being a bit of a slug, what better way to fit a workout in than to make it your transportation? "It’s convenient; it keeps me fit; and it’s economical," says Scott Infanger, a professor at the University of North Alabama in Florence, Ala., who regularly bikes his daughter, Elizabeth, 7, to school on the way to his nearby office in an effort to teach her that bicycling is a legitimate way to travel. With Elizabeth hitched behind on a trailer bike, it takes about 10 minutes to get her to school, Infanger says, about the same amount of time the 1½-mile trip takes by car.
In a country where most grown-ups regard bicycles as kid stuff, there are plenty of signs that attitudes are beginning to shift. Bike stores and manufacturers across the nation are reporting a significant uptick lately in sales. "They’re selling out of all the commuting bikes—all bikes, by the way—that they can get their hands on," says Bill Fields, a consultant who has followed the bicycle industry for decades and anticipates a 20 percent bump in the "comfort bike" category, which includes commuting bikes, by year’s end. Meantime, a bill that will allow employers to offer financial incentives to bicycle commuters is winding its way through the House and Senate. A bike-sharing program launching this month in Washington, D.C., which allows members to use bikes from 10 rental locations with the swipe of a card, has spurred interest in other cities. And, in Austin, Tour de France legend Lance Armstrong recently opened a cycling shop that caters not to racing enthusiasts but to commuters. Barack Obama has met with bicycle advocates and promised to increase funding for bicycling projects.
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Continue reading “Comfy New Commuter Bikes for Getting Around Town”