(SAN FRANCISCO, CA) — A notoriously dangerous San Francisco intersection underwent a big
safety fix this week, the city’s first on-the-ground bicycle-safety enhancement in two years. The
SF Municipal Transportation Agency installed a traffic light specifically for bicyclists and
pedestrians at the Fell and Masonic intersection, along the Golden Gate Park Panhandle, an
intersection that had posed mounting safety hazards to bicyclists and pedestrians. …
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Cities rethink wisdom of 50s-era parking standards
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Like nearly all U.S. cities, D.C. has requirements for off-street parking. Whenever anything new is built — be it a single-family home, an apartment building, a store or a doctor’s office — a minimum number of parking spaces must be included. The spots at the curb don’t count: These must be in a garage, a surface lot or a driveway.
D.C. is now considering scrapping those requirements — part of a growing national trend. Officials hope that offering the freedom to forgo parking will lead to denser, more walkable, transit-friendly development.
Opponents say making parking more scarce will only make the city less hospitable. Commuters like Randy Michael of Catharpin, Va., complain they are already forced to circle for hours in some neighborhoods.
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CERN and the Bicycle
Interesting article about the early days of CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) where they used bicycles to transmit data (on tapes) from one computer to another. And what’s the best way to get around a 17 mile Hadron Collider by bike of course!
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Texting while driving ‘more dangerous than drugs or alcohol’
[And there is still no law against it?]
LONDON (AFP) – Texting behind the wheel is more dangerous than driving while under the influence of alcohol or cannabis, researchers said Thursday.
Research carried out on 17 young drivers (aged 17-24) using a simulator found that reaction time slowed by 35% when they were writing or reading text messages while driving. In comparison, reaction time deteriorated by 21% for those under the influence of cannabis, and by 12% at the legal alcohol limit.
Transport Research Laboratory (TRL) — which carried out the study for the RAC Foundation — also found that steering control worsened by 91% for those who were distracted by texts, compared to 35% when cannabis was involved.
The tests also showed that texters were less able to maintain safe distances from other cars and they tended to drift out of their lane more often.
RAC Foundation director Stephen Glaister said the research "clearly shows that a motorist who is texting is significantly more impaired than a motorist at the legal limit for alcohol."
TRL researcher Nick Reed added: "When texting, drivers are distracted by taking their hand off the wheel to use their phone, by trying to read small text on the phone display, and by thinking about how to write their message. This combination of factors resulted in the impairments to reaction time and vehicle control that place the driver at a greater risk than having consumed alcohol to the legal limit for driving."
Nearly half of all drivers aged 18 to 24 in Britain admit to texting while driving, according to an earlier RAC poll of over 2000 young drivers.
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Bicycle polo in Baltimore-Pickup Games
Mt. Washington bike polo is in its fall season and would like to invite anyone interested in trying it out to come out for a Sunday pickup game. We play the field version of the game and start at 4:00 on Sunday afternoon weekly, until the time change, when we play at 3:00. For more info, map of the field, and links to the rules, visit us at: https://groups.google.com/group/mt-washington-bike-polo
What to make of $4.00 gas
Registration open for CTC Transportation Summit
The Corridor Transit Corporation, the manager of Howard Transit and Connect a Ride, will be holding it’s annual Transportation Summit on Thursday, November 13th at the BWI Marriott in Linthicum. This year the CTC summit will be focusing on creating regional and acheivable solutions to Central Maryland’s transportation problems. Learn more about the CTC summit here.
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Join OLC at the Rally for the River this Sunday
The Jones Falls Watershed Association will be hosting the Rally for the River this Sunday, September 21st, on the Jones Falls Expressway (I-83) in Baltimore from 8AM to 2PM. The Rally is a great way to get the rare chance to bike and walk all over the big bad highway that lords over the Jones Falls river valley. There is a nominal $5 fee to participate. Parking is available at the Cold Spring Lane exit. One Less Car will be in attendance, so stop by our booth for free bike maps, transit maps, etc. etc.
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Tour du Port 2008 will be new and improved!
Last year’s Tour was great but we think the 2008 edition of One Less Car’s biggest fundraiser will be even better. Here’s why:
No more long waits at the registration table in the morning. Everyone who registers online will soon be getting a paper ride number in the mail. The number will identify you as a TDP rider. When you show up on the morning of the event just have the number visibly attached to your clothing and you will be ready to go!
The food and entertainment will be REAL good. When you get back from your ride you’ll be treated to a pizza party provided by S’ghetti Eddie’s, one of North Baltimore’s best places for tasty comfort food. And we’ve ditched the D.J. in favor of a cool live band!
Location, Location, Location. This year’s ride will be at the Canton Waterfront Park at 3001 Boston Street. We’ll be right on the waterfront and just a few minutes ride from all the goings on at the annual Fell’s Point Fun Festival.
Baltimore’s "cyclist in chief" Mayor Sheila Dixon will be our Grand Marshall. You can join the Mayor as she leads the riders out at 7:30AM. Will you be able to keep up with the leader of our fair city?
So, if you haven’t signed up, now is the time! We will close registrations at 2000 participants. The last day to register online is September 30th. Click here for the Tour du Port 2008 site. We hope to see you there! https://www.onelesscar.org/TDP/2008/
And remember – all registration fees go towards One Less Car’s statewide advocacy efforts!
Richard Chambers, Executive Director
Pride in protecting people by running bicyclists off the road
It seems whenever bicyclists take to the streets in mass wither it’s because of nice weather, the cost of gas or just to lose some pounds or just to be healthy some motorists feel obliged to offer some discouragement. It used to be just verbal taunts and while not cool it was sort of like an initiation to a fraternity but times change, now it seems more motorists are using their vehicles to “scare” bicyclists off the road by threatening the cyclists life. But what’s really scary is the extent that this behavior has penetrated all segments of our society, in May we had a hit and run school bus who “needed” to get to a red light ahead of a cyclist and just last weekend I had a car with firefighter tags nearly run me off the road passing me unsafely on a blind curve just to block traffic to make a left turn a few hundred feet ahead to watch a ball game, totally senseless endangerment of life. Baltimore City has been making tremendous efforts to be a Bicycle Friendly City but with such going on it’s easy to see why they only got an honorable mention from the League of American Bicyclists.
I know some of you are probably thinking that some of the blame needs to go on the cyclists as well, as roads connecting neighborhoods to parks are no place to ride a bike, or the cyclists was not riding safely. In a recent poll of motorists here are motorists’ safe bicycling recommendations: Ride on the sidewalk even when there is no sidewalk, ride against traffic, ride with traffic or the preferred simple version; wherever a cyclist is they should be riding somewhere else. The sad fact is few know what the law is and what constitutes safe bicycling, so please do not take the law in your own hands, call the police if what you see is bothering you so much, if it is not worth that bother then just let it go, just think of all the money that is “saved” by not having decent accommodations for cyclists that is going into all the road improvements just for motorists, by doing this in maybe in 100 years we’ll save up enough money for some serious highway expansion, assuming we can still afford gas by then. If that does not get your attention please note across the nation more motorists are spending time behind bars for harassing cyclists, it’s not worth it. We need to seriously end the thinking that all roads should be dangerous to ride a bike on and it is ok for motorists to enforce that, motorists have bike free roadways called expressways everything else is public roads for use by all members of the public.
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