Month: February 2010

LAPD Chief Charlie Beck is vowing to make his department more responsive to the rights of cyclists, responding to growing complaints from bikers who say the city isn’t doing enough to protect them from careless and aggressive motorists.
Beck made his pledge Wednesday during a City Hall meeting with bicycle advocates, who want the department to do more to crack down on motorists who don’t respect cyclists’ right to the road.
Beck said bike riders are "our most vulnerable commuters" and that the Los Angeles Police Department needed to do a better job of protecting them.
"We hear you, we know we need to do a better job for you," Beck said.
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Continue reading “LAPD Chief Charlie Beck vows to better protect cyclists”

When travel speed increases by 1%, the injury crash rate increases by about 2%, the serious injury crash rate increases by about 3%, and the fatal crash rate increases by about 4%. The same relation holds in reverse: a 1% decrease in travel speed reduces injury crashes by about 2%, serious injury crashes by about 3%, and fatal crashes by about 4%.
Continue reading “Lower Speed Limits Increase Safety”

From: Google Maps Bike There

Google is facing space problems at its worldwide headquarters, nicknamed The Googleplex, in Mountain View, California (about half-way between San Francisco and San Jose). Check out the story and a video report here:

Internet search giant Google has asked the city of Mountain View to allow homes and storefronts to be built near its headquarters.

At a City Council and Planning Commission meeting Tuesday night, officials considered a letter from Google. The letter said the company wants plans for a stretch of Shoreline Blvd near its headquarters to include more housing.

Every day, fleets of buses coming from all over the Bay Area take Google’s employees to their offices. Google said in its letter that building more homes nearby would be more sustainable.

In the video, notice all the cars. Notice how wide the roads are, with the unbuffered, unprotected, non-grade-separated, split-by-gutters bike lanes. Notice how loud the cars are — even blocking out much of the audio in the video clip. As beautiful as the Mountain View area is, including and especially the Googleplex area, it seems shocking that anyone would allow cars to so completely overwhelm a place of such natural beauty. It’s really a crime.

Google has talked a lot about renewable energy and all sorts of very high-tech ways for us to live better and greener, and they’ve done quite a bit — relatively speaking, with bikes — but they’ve not done enough. Google can save and profit from becoming more bike-friendly. People, including potential genius future employees and their families, love bike-friendly.

At some point, we need to convince someone high up at the company that bikes are a serious, if old-fashioned, technology. Bike technology can solve many of Google’s growing pains.

Bikes can also make a place a great place to be — a great place to work, play, live. I just returned to San Francisco after a quick weekend in Fullerton/Los Angeles — a very car-dominated place, relatively speaking (and I’m still completely enamored with LA culture and LA people). On my Monday morning bicycle ride into work in SF, I just thought, “Wow — so civilized.” Or, more accurately, “Wow — so much less uncivilized.”

All the talk of ’sustainability’ really misses that important aspect of bike culture vs. car culture — quality of life. In the video, a person walking their dog near the Googleplex says, “…I wouldn’t want to live here.” Ouch.

Continue reading “Google Village”