Month: May 2011

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Human-powered copter ready to rise

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By John Roach

On Wednesday, Judy Wexler will pedal furiously, hoping to generate the force needed to lift a human-powered helicopter off the ground and win a $250,000 prize.

The biology student at the University of Maryland is a competitive cyclist with a desirable power-to-weight ratio and endurance, noted Brandon Bush, a graduate student in the university’s school of engineering and project team member.

…
The University of Maryland will live stream Wednesday’s test between 9 a.m. and 12 a.m. ET. Click here to check it out.
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Traveling Ukulele Player Aaron Lee To Play Velocipede

Thursday at 9:00pm – Friday at 12:00am
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Location

Velocipede Bike Project

4 W Lanvale St
Baltimore, MD

Created By

More Info

Aaron Lee rides his bicycle between concerts. For each concert he partners with a group or organization that has a community focus. In this way, the tour promotes living simply and sustainably, acting locally and the power of community. Lee performs original ukulele songs that intentionally and creatively include the word ukulele somewhere in the lyrics. The performance will leave you with a smile on your face, a ukulele song in your head and a greater sense of community.

For more info, visit Aaron’s website.
https://ukulelebybicycle.blogspot.com/

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The Ineluctable Politics of Transport Funding

Another springboard, this time from The Transport Politic

They have this quote:
» If we insist on charging car users to fund transit, we have to accept increasing highway spending in exchange for more public transport subsidies.

Which would more accurately put:
If we insist on not charging motorists for police, emergency services, long term road maintenance, (and they do not even pay a 100% of the new roads or general maintenance of the roads they use,) they will continue to need far greater subsidies then what has been “taken” by transit and other “non-motorized” uses.

Transit users pay into the system basically the same way auto users pay into the system, that it is to say what is paid in as “user fees” does not pay for everything that is used. It’s time to call a halt to this scam, as much as we would like to support more cars no one can afford it it. That’s is what is meant by not sustainable.

We are at a point if we gave all the money by motoring to motoring and all the current subsidies to mass transit and alternate uses it would be a huge boon to mass transit and other alternate modes of transportation and a huge loss to motoring.

Taxes for motoring have not kept up with the need and I don’t want to hear motoring is expensive enough without new taxes as that is precisely the point that has been proven… Support for motoring is really, really expensive and individuals don’t want to pay for it and we do not want to pay for it as a society.

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The solution is defining our problems

I am using Cap’n Transit as a springboard with this chart:
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The faster cars can drive the more things that are convenient to get to and all those pesty little things in the lower right corner of the chart can be damed.

This kind of thinking has gone to such extremes like in Fells Point where minimizing delays only for motorists at minor intersections with no thought of improving throughput of the street as a whole (think synchronizing lights)

We need better and diverse solutions for all problems shown. Access and comfort are for all people and not just cars. Access and comfort is not a game to be won by shear MPH alone.

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City clarifies stance on Fells Point lights

Apparently per the linked article in the Sun, the City can make intersections pedestrian hostile without a study but need a study to restore even what was there prior to the improvement for motor vehicles. Jamie Kendrick seems to imply accommodating motoring traffic at 4 AM is the bigger priority then accommodating all users safely during peek travel times. This seems to go against State law:

§ 2-602. Public policy.

The General Assembly finds that it is in the public interest for the State to include enhanced transportation facilities for pedestrians and bicycle riders as an essential component of the State’s transportation system, and declares that it is the policy of the State that:

(1) Access to and use of transportation facilities by pedestrians and bicycle riders shall be considered and best engineering practices regarding the needs of bicycle riders and pedestrians shall be employed in all phases of transportation planning, including highway design, construction, reconstruction, and repair as well as expansion and improvement of other transportation facilities…

The following stats should make it clear that Maryland/City traffic engineers have been clueless for a long time and I’ll call BS in a lot of what they are saying.
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Pedestrians involved in traffic crashes, Baltimore City represents 32% !!!

County 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 AVG. %
Baltimore City 934 972 973 874 832 917 31.9

2009 Bike/ped fatalities by county

County Person Type

 Total Killed
Driver Passenger Motorcyclists Pedestrian Pedalcyclist Other/Unknown
Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent Number Percent

BALTIMORE CITY (510)

10

26.3

6

15.8

4

10.5

16

42.1

2

5.3

0

0

38

6.9

Total

269

49.2

83

15.2

69

12.6

113

20.7

11

2

2

0.4

547

100

That’s right more pedestrians then drivers were killed and 42% of Baltimore traffic fatalities are pedestrians, yet we need a “study” to see if safety improvements are warranted for pedestrians, after all we have 4 AM motoring traffic to consider.
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Trail (shared use path) courtesy tips

from Rebuilding Place in the Urban Space by Richard Layman

For Norm File2473

This is from Victoria BC from John Luton’s Flickr stream. It bugs me to no end that there aren’t “rules/etiquette” signs posted on DC’s Metropolitan Branch Trail. Uniformly I have found that bicyclists ride to the right. But pedestrians are all over the trail, either walking in the direction of traffic or against it.

But since etiquette signs aren’t posted, why should we be surprised?

(Otherwise, I love the trail–other than the lack of adequate signage generally.)

[B’ Spokes: And if there ever becomes a problem the first thing to go up is a 15mph speed limit for cyclists, when keeping all traffic to the right would make a lot more more sense.]
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