Month: September 2011

Once you stood here bold and proud
But so many cars zoomed by quite loud
Now that your existence is all but wiped out
I fear I may be next to be snuffed out
If I occupy the space you once stood.

[B’ Spokes: I’m going to take excerpts from this NPR story and intermix comments relevant to Maryland and its unique rules on how it “dispenses”* federal aid. My comments in square brackets.

*Maryland has a lower then national average for spending federal aid on bike/ped projects hence the term “dispense” is being a bit generous.]

by BRIAN NAYLOR -NPR

…
Cities are adding bike lanes with the help of a federal program that gets its money from the highway bill.
[Everywhere but Maryland allows building of bike lanes with Federal money. Well to be technically correct Maryland has some tolerance for funding bike lanes if they are part of the trail but no part of an on-road network.]

…
Washington is hardly alone in marking off bike lanes in its streets; New York has done it, as have Seattle and Minneapolis and any number of cities across the country.

…
Backers of the infrastructure point out that the amount of spending on bike paths and pedestrian improvements amounts to about 1.5 percent of transportation spending — a tiny fraction of what’s needed to pay for bridge repairs, and not what’s keeping those bridges from getting fixed.

“This is a national issue of having created safety problems in community after community, where we need to go back and give people safe ways to get out there, to be active, to get where they need to go,” he says, “and this is not a frill, this is a very critical piece of our infrastructure.”
[Note the stress on “community” but in Maryland the local communities cannot spend federal money on “sidewalks and better-marked crosswalks” even though we have the 4th highest pedestrian fatality rate. These things are not allowed to be funded through federal money nor is planing to get these things fixed main streamed liked other transportation networks and other maintenance issues by the localities. If you think bridges are in disrepair, think about the bicycle infrastructure that has rotted away to dust so you can no longer tell that roads were built for the bicycle and other uses also benefited as well, roads were the first multi-use path if you will.

I can’t tell you how many times I look at the location of a pedestrian fatality and there on a busy state road are two faded lines that are supposed to say crosswalk
but instead say: “So many cars have zoomed by here that they have erased the crosswalks existence, you’re next if you use this space.” And then there is the issue of only one “crosswalk” and only on one side of a busy street, like that is really going to improve pedestrian safety. :/ You need to accommodate people near where they want to cross, this has been shown in studies and no you can’t expect any reasonable person to go through 3 light cycles just to cross the street, that kind of thinking is just epic fail. ]

…
It’s not clear what lies ahead for the transportation enhancements program in the long term. Republicans in Congress want to give states the flexibility to opt out of it, and that worries safety advocates who say that without prodding from Washington, some states will focus only on cars to the detriment of everyone else on the road.
[Maryland with its stance of “Ya we support bikes… but never, ever on local roads.” is in my opinion outrageous. Baltimore City is lucky being the only locality to mange both state roads and local roads so rather then being limited to consider bike lanes only on state roads like Fall Rd it could consider an alternate like Roland Ave., other localities are not that fortunate the state says sorry we can’t put bike lanes on ____ road and we are not going to give you any money for an alternate bike route either, MDOT needs to profit whenever and wherever we don’t accommodate bikes so we can show off how much under budget we can go. Baltimore got $3 million from the state for phase one of our bike master plan, other localities do not have that as an option and I really have to ask why not?]
Continue reading “Bike Infrastructure Hits Congressional Speed Bumps”

[B’ Spokes: This is worth highlighting as it’s even more applicable to bike/ped planning. Imagine being denied funding because what we want as a group is too cheep? Yet it happens all the time with bike/ped and this relates to our alert: Demand more for bike/ped https://www.baltimorespokes.org/article.php?story=20110921214018820 ]
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Excerpt from Greater Greater Washington:
Finally, our system of government and media has a bias toward transportation megaprojects over many smaller ones. A huge project gets headlines and attention. Leaders, from local to federal, like to be associated with big public works. Big projects make people feel that something significant is getting done.
This is unfortunate, since a larger number of smaller transportation improvements can make more of a difference for less money. As I noted in the Post, Capital Bikeshare (which was itself a big deal) could be built 18 times over for the price of the massive Gainesville interchange rebuild alone. Individual bike lanes, sidewalks, roundabouts, street reconnections, bus lanes, bus service enhancements, and more each cost little but add up to a lot of value.
The 2030 Group/Bob Chase/Rich Parsons survey of unnamed transportation experts fell (or deliberately leapt) into this trap, asking transportation engineers what their short list of 10 big projects would be to address regional mobility. Naturally, those engineers picked 10 very large projects even if 100 or 1,000 small ones would do more.
Continue reading “Bike/ped funding denied because it’s too cheep”

By Ashley Halsey III, Washington Post
…
More than 51 percent of Virginians and 47 percent of Maryland residents drive to another county for work. Only New Jersey, whose workforce feeds into Philadelphia and New York, comes close.
…
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[B’ Spokes: If we drive more just to do daily activities like work, is the metric "crashes per miles driven" an accurate comparison of how safe it is to drive in Maryland compared to elsewhere? MDOT would like you to think it is, I think it’s a lot like saying a breakfast sandwich of one egg and one sausage is healthier then a breakfast of two eggs and two sausages so people in Maryland will typically have three breakfast sandwiches because they are healthier per unit eaten. That’s to say it’s not how you dived up the totals but what you normally do in a course of a day is the important information.]
Continue reading “Census: More Maryland and Virginia drivers commute to another county than other people in the U.S.”

[B’ Spokes: I find it interesting to read drivers questions about cyclists, so if you do too there is a link in the "Read more" link. But I’ll highlight one good bit from Dr. Gridlock:]
But to me, the bottom line is that if you believe in sharing the road, you share the road. You don’t decide that one category of traveler is the official representative for the entire category and if that person violated the rules than no one else in that category is entitled to courtesy.
Continue reading “Dr. Bikelock – Cyclists who refuse to get on the bike path”