Month: October 2012

By Staten Island Advance Editorial
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Earlier this year, the Advance documented what we found to be a “culture of aggression” by Island motorists. Stuck behind a car deliberately driven at the speed limit, motorists in a hurry resorted to honking horns, changing lanes and speeding by – often making their frustrations known with shouts and gestures.
“Just about every day on every street on Staten Island we have people speeding,” said City Councilman James Oddo about the danger.
The fact is, speed kills. As Transportation Alternatives, an advocate for safer streets, points out: “Hit someone at 30 mph, there is an 80 percent chance they will live. Hit someone at 40 mph, there is a 70 percent chance they will die.”
What is the city doing to limit speeding here?
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https://www.silive.com/opinion/editorials/index.ssf/2012/10/an_epidemic_of_speeding_on_sta.html

by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog
OK, everybody, pack your bags. We’re all moving to Massachusetts.
The Bay State’s transportation secretary, Richard Davey, has launched a “mode shift” campaign, saying in no uncertain terms that it’s time for people to get out of their cars and onto trains, buses, bikes, and their own two feet. His goal is to triple the share of trips taken by those modes, as opposed to single-occupancy vehicles, by improving transit service and active transportation amenities like lighting, sidewalks, curb cuts and rail-trails.
Here’s the part that gives me the shivers: “I have news for you,” Davey said at a news conference yesterday. “We will build no more superhighways in this state. There is no room.”
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Davey says a shift toward sustainable transportation will “foster improved quality of life by improving our environment and preserving capacity on our highway network; by letting other travel options absorb travel demand that contributes to highway congestion that is slowing our potential for economic growth.” He also says the mode shift will “achieve positive public health outcomes by providing more healthy transportation options.”
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Richard Davey is the only state transportation chief who doesn’t own a car .
https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/10/10/massdot-secretary-we-will-build-no-more-superhighways/

from Road Rights by greg

Illustration: Harry Campbell [A local Baltimore cyclist BTW]

For cyclists who ride for fitness, electric-assist ­bicycles, or e-bikes, may seem to miss the point. But when it comes to pedaling for transportation, more people might decide to get around on two wheels if they had access to one of these motorized machines. However, where and even ­whether it’s legal to ride an e-bike depends on a complex mix of federal, state, and local laws. Here are some of the rules involved.

Under federal law, if an e-bike has pedals that the rider can use to power the bicycle without the assistance of the electric motor, a motor of less than 1 horsepower, and a top motor speed below 20 mph, it is defined as a “low-speed electric bicycle,” and legally is considered a bicycle. But if the e-bike does not meet those requirements, it is classified as a motor ­vehicle. The federal law does not apply to e-bikes that are owner-assembled from a kit or from scratch—but some states do regulate such models. How­ever, even when e-bikes are legally considered bicycles, federal law specifies that they may not be used on bike paths that have been built with the ­assistance of federal funding, unless a state or local law specifically­ permits ­e-bikes on bicycle or pedestrian paths.

E-bikes are also regulated by each state. When checking the specifics of your local laws, consider these questions.
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Read the rest here: https://bicycling.com/blogs/roadrights/2012/10/15/power-to-the-people/

By Mary Lauran Hall, New Organizing Institute

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Riding a bicycle to work isn’t just a FUN way to get around, it’s also good for you! It’s even more fun when you have friends who bike with you. Here are some ideas for how to organize your office to be more bike friendly, and recruit your coworkers to start biking

• Start a bike group. The group can launch bike-to-work programs, serve as a liaison for building management, and advise leadership on bike-friendly facilities, incentives, and education. It can also serve as a forum for team members to exchange information and to promote safe cycling to others within the organization. 
• Find your local bike advocates. These groups can plug you into local bike-to-work day events and help you determine which streets around your office are best for riding. The Alliance for Biking and Walking has a great tool to find your state or local bike advocacy group.
• Provide facilities for bike commuting. Ideally, every office would allow bikes in the elevator or offer sheltered bike parking. If your building doesn’t, strike up a relationship with building management to discuss options for bike storage. Many local bike advocacy groups and departments of transportation will also install sidewalk bike parking upon request. 
• If you can, invest in an office bike. Buy a lightweight commuter or folding bike for the office so that staff can travel to nearby meetings by bicycle. Don’t forget lights and a good lock! 

We all need encouragement and support to try something new, and drastically altering a morning commute can be a little intimidating. With the help and support of your coworkers, it is a little easier and you are on your way to a healthier and more eco-friendly commute!

What’s your eco-friendly way to commute to work? Let us know in the comments on our blog.

Mary Lauran Hall is the Communications Coordinator at America Bikes.

Continue reading “Encourage biking to the office”

B’ Spokes: Just to note there is something similar going on in Maryland (but not so over the top and in your face.) Stay tuned for correction.

Via Streets Blog

Our friends at Boston Biker say this is the wrong approach:

This is some seriously violent imagery for a public safety campaign.

The idea being that you make not wearing a helmet socially unacceptable by appealing to the fear people have of getting injured. Anti-smoking campaigns work in a similar way, appealing to people’s fear of mortality in order to get them to make different choices. However there are some important differences.

1. Smoking is an addiction, addictions require stronger pushes to get people to fight them.
2. Cycling is GOOD FOR YOU! Showing bloody images of people on posters is not going to encourage people to cycle.
3. More cyclists seem to equal safer cyclists. Several studies have shown that increasing the number of cyclists on the road will actually make them safer.
4. Most fatal crashes involve vehicles and cyclists. Helmets are good, but driver/cyclist education, better engineered roads, and enforcement will go a lot further in preventing these crashes than helmet usage will.

So adding it all up, these bloody ad campaigns might actually do more harm than they avoid.

I just love Bikeyface and here she does an amazing job of contrasting car advertising with the reality of owning a car. And she does not stop there, she goes one step further to show some of the advantages of being on a bike in the same situation that is disadvantageous for being stuck in a car.
https://bikeyface.com/2012/10/11/the-myth-of-the-open-road/

by Tanya Snyder, Streets Blog
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When people are injured or killed in car crashes, it somehow never casts a pall over driving or U.S. car culture or the way our cities and towns are designed. Get hurt on a bike and your loved ones will line up to beg you never to ride again, but get hurt driving and no one will ever consider that you could break up with your car.
https://dc.streetsblog.org/2012/10/12/biden-ryan-trade-automobile-horror-stories-talk-up-car-jobs-in-vp-debate/

By Todd Litman, Planetizen

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Conventional congestion evaluation tend to be biased in various ways, as summarized in the
following table. For example, conventional evaluation recognizes that wider roads improve
automobile access but ignore their tendency to reduce walking and cycling access (called the
barrier effect), and it favors a hierarchical road system that has higher-speed arterials over a
more connected road system that has lower travel speeds but shorter travel distances. As a
result, mobility-based planning can result in congestion reduction strategies that reduce overall
accessibility by creating sprawled, automobile-dependent communities where activities are
widely dispersed and alternatives to driving are inferior.

…

Conventional urban transport planning tends to consider traffic congestion the dominant
planning problem, but more comprehensive and objective analysis indicates that traffic
congestion is actually a moderate cost overall – larger than some but smaller than others – and
roadway expansion is generally less effective and beneficial overall than other congestion
reduction strategies.

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Continue reading “Toward More Comprehensive Understanding of Traffic Congestion”