Month: September 2011

[B’ Spokes: If police on bikes have a problem with hit-and-runs what hope does the common cyclists have? Not to discount "an enhanced light package" but more then just putting the responsibility on cyclists needs to be done. ]
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Jenna Sachs, FOX6 Reporter – WITI-TV, MILWAUKEE —
A Milwaukee bike cop is hit by a hit-and-run driver Thursday night. A week earlier, a suspected drink driver hits three bike officers and took off. Now Milwaukee Police Chief Ed Flynn is speaking out.
Milwaukee has 87 bicycle officers. Chief Flynn showed off a police bicycle Friday. It was upgraded by one of his officers with an enhanced light package. The new bike has flashing lights on the handlebars and above the back wheels.
Right now, police bikes have a single light in the front and back. Officers also wear reflectors. But Chief Flynn has instructed his staff to replicate the changes made from the new bike. He’s already identified about $10,000 in funding to cover the changes to the bikes.
"I think it illustrated conclusively, the dangers officers face every day not just from armed criminals, with whom we’re had some experience this year, but also with the drunken and the foolish behind the wheels of a car," said Chief Flynn.
24-year-old Guandencio Ruiz-Ramirez was charged Friday for hitting three bicycle officers while driving drunk a week ago.
Officer Al Tenhaken, the officer injured Thursday night, is recovering at home.
Continue reading “A new problem "the foolish behind the wheels of a car"”

Continue reading “Retail New Passenger Car Sales – now half of peek”

from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Tanya Snyder

Image: James Yamasaki / The Stranger

Under the headline, “Okay, Fine, It’s War,” Seattle’s The Stranger blog this week published a manifesto “of and by the nondrivers themselves.” They’re sick of being called “militants” for caring about pedestrian safety, and they’re tired of the specter of a “war on cars.”

We heartily recommend that you read the whole thing, but here are some of our favorite parts. Like this, from the first plank of the manifesto: “The car-driving class must pay its own way!”

For cars we have paved our forests, spanned our lakes, and burrowed under our cities. Yet drivers throw tantrums at the painting of a mere bicycle lane on the street. They balk at the mere suggestion of hiking a car-tab fee, raising the gas tax, or tolling to help pay for their insatiable demands, even as downtrodden transit riders have seen fares rise 80 percent over four years.

No more! We demand that car drivers pay their own way, bearing the full cost of the automobile-petroleum-industrial complex that has depleted our environment, strangled our cities, and drawn our nation into foreign wars. Reinstate the progressive motor vehicle excise tax, hike the gas tax, and toll every freeway, bridge, and neighborhood street until the true cost of driving lies as heavy and noxious as our smog-laden air. Our present system of hidden subsidies is the opiate of the car-driving masses; only when it is totally withdrawn will our road-building addiction finally be broken.

They go on to demand better, more expansive transit, safer streets and sidewalks, and traffic calming. And this:

This antagonism [between car driver and nondriver] traces directly to the creation of the modern car driver, a privileged individual who, as noted, is the beneficiary of a long course of subsidies, tax incentives, and wars for cheap oil. But the same subsidies that created this creature (who now rages about the roads while simultaneously screaming of being a victim in some war) can—and must, beginning now—be used to build bike lanes, sidewalks, light rail, and other benefits to the nondriving classes.

That’s the kind of manifesto we can get on board with.

After the manifesto, The Stranger goes on to report on the rising numbers of crashes between cars and cyclists, the violent anti-bike rhetoric being spewed by car drivers that are the  “victims” of some imagined war on cars, the massive disparity between funding for car infrastructure and everything else, and the heroes of the non-driver, beloved both for their advocacy and their tight asses. Read it, read it all.

Continue reading “If Safer Streets Mean War, We’re Ready for Combat”

Excerpt

A second example of a failure to anticipate the health effects of policy and planning decisions is
apparent in examining the health effects of transportation infrastructure. The Interstate Highway Act of
1956 introduced the development of a transportation infrastructure that has had multiple implications for
health, both favorable and unfavorable. Over the last several decades, the transportation infrastructure
has focused on road-building, private automobiles, and transportation of goods and has resulted in “an
unprecedented level of individual mobility and facilitated economic growth” (APHA 2010, p. 2). It has
shaped land-use patterns throughout the United States and has had implications for air quality, toxic
exposures, noise, traffic collisions, pedestrian injuries, and neighborhood physical and social features
potentially linked to health (Frank et al. 2006).

Transportation accounts for 30% of U.S. energy demand, and in 2008, tailpipe emissions from
motor vehicles and impacts from fuel production contributed an estimated $56 billion in health and
related damages (NRC 2010).1 The costs partly reflect transportation-investment decisions that are
focused on maximizing the safety and efficiency of automobile use and have resulted in important
efficiencies in motor-vehicle transportation. The decisions have also led to transportation systems that
discourage pedestrian and bicycle travel because of sheer distances between destinations, lack of adequate
infrastructure for pedestrian travel, and increased hazards associated with pedestrian traffic—for example,
unsafe pedestrian crossings and absence of pedestrian routes that are separate and safe from motor
vehicles (APHA 2010). Personal and societal costs of the transportation decisions include nearly 34,000
deaths in 2009 due to motor-vehicle collisions; more than 12% of the deaths were of pedestrians (NHTSA
2010). The emphasis on motorized transport has been associated with more driving (Ewing and Cervero
2001; Frank et al. 2007), less physical activity (Saelens et al. 2003; Frank et al. 2005, 2006; TRB 2005),
higher rates of obesity (Ewing et al. 2003; Frank et al. 2004; Lopez 2004), and higher rates of air
pollution (Frank et al. 2000; Frank and Engelke 2005; Frank et al. 2006). A partial accounting of costs
associated with the health effects, shown in Table 2-1, totals about $400 billion in 2008.

There is evidence that adverse health effects associated with transportation disproportionately
affect members of racial and ethnic minorities and those in lower socioeconomic strata and thus
contribute to persistent racial, ethnic, and socioeconomic disparities in health (Houston et al. 2004;
Apelberg et al. 2005; Ponce et al. 2005; Wu and Batterman. 2006; Chakraborty and Zandbergen 2007).
In the absence of systematic assessment of health effects and their associated costs, the implications of
transportation decisions for health and health inequities cannot be factored into the process of making
decisions about transportation infrastructure. As a result, the health-related effects and their costs to
individuals and society are hidden or invisible products of transportation-related decisions.

Continue reading “Improving Health in the United States: The Role of Health Impact Assessment”