Month: November 2011

Tree Hugger as introduced a very valid point to this topic:
"But the fact of the matter is, those stop signs are there to regulate speed, not right of way"
https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/why-cyclists-blow-through-stop-signs-its-physics.html

[B’ Spokes: While reading the following article I could not help but think how much better Baltimore would be with good mass transit and really nice bicycle network. But our mass transit is controlled by the state who looks at it like an expense and thinks more highway expansion at the expense of mass transit and bicycling is the answer. My position is simple keep things in reasonable proportion, sure do what highway expansion you can afford but not at the cost of mass transit and bicycling. The state’s current policies is a downward spiral, making cars the ONLY way to get around then you need a lot more really really expensive car infrastructure to support that. We need to get the state to support transportation choice.]
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By CHRISTOPHER B. LEINBERGER
DRIVE through any number of outer-ring suburbs in America, and you’ll see boarded-up and vacant strip malls, surrounded by vast seas of empty parking spaces. These forlorn monuments to the real estate crash are not going to come back to life, even when the economy recovers. And that’s because the demand for the housing that once supported commercial activity in many exurbs isn’t coming back, either.
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It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse.
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Over all, only 12 percent of future homebuyers want the drivable suburban-fringe houses that are in such oversupply, according to the Realtors survey. This lack of demand all but guarantees continued price declines. Boomers selling their fringe housing will only add to the glut. Nothing the federal government can do will reverse this.
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The good news is that there is great pent-up demand for walkable, centrally located neighborhoods in cities like Portland, Denver, Philadelphia and Chattanooga, Tenn. The transformation of suburbia can be seen in places like Arlington County, Va., Bellevue, Wash., and Pasadena, Calif., where strip malls have been bulldozed and replaced by higher-density mixed-use developments with good transit connections.
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Continue reading “The Death of the Fringe Suburb”

By: Deb Lee, newsnet5.com
CLEVELAND – Members of the local cycling community said they believe Monday’s conviction in the death of a Cleveland cyclist is validation for all of them.
Sylvia Bingham, 22, was killed when her bike collided with a 26,000-pound truck driven by Herschel Roberts, 63. The collision occured at East 21st and Prospect in Cleveland.
In finding Roberts guilty of aggravated vehicular homicide, Judge Daniel Gaul said that Roberts had just passed the bike and therefore he should have known that the bike was right behind him as he was about to make a right hand turn.
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Continue reading “Truck driver headed to prison in vehicular homicide of cyclist, local bicyclist reacts”

via Greater Greater Washington (highlight)
The World Health Organization reports 12.3 annual traffic deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in the United States. Compare that with 3.85 in Japan and 4.5 in Germany. If the U.S. achieved similar rates, more than 20,000 deaths would be prevented each year.
Continue reading “20,000 preventable and unnecessary annual deaths in the U.S.”

From U.S. PIRG

Executive Summary

Highway advocates often claim that roads “pay for themselves,” with gasoline taxes and other charges to motorists covering – or nearly covering – the full cost of highway construction and maintenance. They are wrong.

Highways do not – and, except for brief periods in our nation’s history, never have – paid for themselves through the taxes that highway advocates label “user fees.” Yet highway advocates continue to suggest they do in an attempt to secure preferential access to scarce public resources and to shape how those resources are spent.

To have a meaningful national debate over transportation policy – particularly at a time of tight public budgets – it is important to get past the myths and address the real, difficult choices America must make for the 21st century. Toward that end, this report shows:

· Gasoline taxes aren’t “user fees” in any meaningful sense of the term – The amount of money a particular driver pays in gasoline taxes bears little relationship to his or her use of roads funded by gas taxes.

· State gas taxes are often not “extra” fees – Most states exempt gasoline from the state sales tax, diverting much of the money that would have gone into a state’s general fund to roads.

· Federal gas taxes have typically not been devoted exclusively to highways – Since its 1934 inception, Congress only temporarily dedicated gas tax revenues fully to highways during the brief 17-year period beginning in 1956. This was at the start of construction for the Interstate highway network, a project completed in the 1990s.

· Highways don’t pay for themselves — Since 1947, the amount of money spent on highways, roads and streets has exceeded the amount raised through gasoline taxes and other so-called “user fees” by $600 billion (2005 dollars), representing a massive transfer of general government funds to highways.

· Highways “pay for themselves” less today than ever. Currently, highway “user fees” pay only about half the cost of building and maintaining the nation’s network of highways, roads and streets.

· These figures fail to include the many costs imposed by highway construction on non-users of the system, including damage to the environment and public health and encouragement of sprawling forms of development that impose major costs on the environment and government finances.

To make the right choices for America’s transportation future, the nation should take a smart approach to transportation investments, one that weighs the full costs and benefits of those investments and then allocates the costs of those investments fairly across society.

Continue reading “Do Roads Pay For Themselves? Setting the Record Straight on Transportation Funding”

Li Chen, M.S., Cynthia Chen, Ph.D.1, Raghavan Srinivasan, Ph.D., Claire E. McKnight, Ph.D.2, Reid Ewing, Ph.D. and Matthew Roe, M.S.3
1 university of washington
2 City College of New York
3 New York City Department of Transportation
Correspondence: qzchen@uw.edu
Objectives. We evaluated the effects of bicycle lanes on different categories of crashes (total crashes, bicyclist crashes, pedestrian crashes, multiple-vehicle crashes, and injurious or fatal crashes) occurring on roadway segments and at intersections in New York City.
Methods. We used generalized estimating equation methodology to compare changes in police-reported crashes in a treatment group and a comparison group before and after installation of bicycle lanes. Our study approach allowed us to control confounding factors, such as built environment characteristics, that cannot typically be controlled when a comparison group is used.
Results. Installation of bicycle lanes did not lead to an increase in crashes, despite the probable increase in the number of bicyclists. The most likely explanations for the lack of increase in crashes are reduced vehicular speeds and fewer conflicts between vehicles and bicyclists after installation of these lanes.
Conclusions. Our results indicate that characteristics of the built environment have a direct impact on crashes and that they should thus be controlled in studies evaluating traffic countermeasures such as bicycle lanes. To prevent crashes at intersections, we recommend installation of "bike boxes" and colored lane markings at intersections. (Am J Public Health. Published online ahead of print November 17, 2011: e1-e7. doi:10.2105/AJPH.2011.300319)
Continue reading “Evaluating the Safety Effects of Bicycle Lanes in New York City”

from Streetsblog Capitol Hill by Angie Schmitt
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According to a recent article in Gizmodo, it didn’t have to be this way. Writer Rachel Swaby says America’s predicament has its roots in a fateful decision made more than 50 years ago: to pour asphalt over packed dirt rather than concrete.
This made roads cheap to build — encouraging the proliferation of car transportation and freight trucking. But it also made roads very expensive to maintain.
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https://streetsblog.net/2011/11/16/the-high-cost-of-cheap-roads/