Month: October 2012

B’ Spokes: OK, this is funny but I can’t help but think that since this lady thinks deer can just cross somewhere else she is not exercising proper caution. Could this be a hint about the problems in trying to accommodate bike/peds… motorists still exercising no caution because we should/could be somewhere else.

By: PHILIP RIGGAN | Richmond.com
…
1. Obey speed limits.
2. Stop at stop signs and red lights. Yield.
3. Use your turn signals, be more predictable.
4. Be considerate. Most cyclists don’t want to "be in your way" any more than you want them out of your way.
5. Don’t honk. You have no idea how loud (and likely unnecessary) it is to honk.
6. Don’t wave cyclists into an illegal act. When you have the right of way, take it. Most cyclists know they have to act like vehicles and can wait their turn like they are supposed to.
7. Cut out the distracted driving. Change the music at the next light. Stay off the phone. Eyes on the road.
8. Don’t menace. If a cyclist on the road in front of you, be patient until you can move around them, but don’t drive too closely.
9. Clearly your car is bigger and cost more than a bike, but that does not entitle you to ownership of the roadway.
10. Check your rear-view mirrors before opening your vehicle doors to make sure you don’t "door" a cyclist.
…
Continue reading “Ten Reasons Cyclists Dislike Drivers”

[B’ Spokes: An axiom of government: What gets measured, gets done. So we need to redefine what is the Level of Service (LOS) for a given roadway:
*************************************************************************************************************************************************
…
What Is It?
Transportation engineering and planning have generally measured LOS as a ratio of actual traffic
volume to the theoretical capacity of the road. There are two solutions DOTs can try to ensure LOS
steers consistently towards high value investments: use LOS standards differently, and redefine them.
For instance, DOTs often measure LOS at the time of peak delay during the day and use that to decide
if capacity additions are warranted. In the extreme example where service is bad for one hour of the
day and then good for the remainder, a large amount of money may be spent to solve a problem that
only exists for a very short time, while the road is hugely underutilized for the rest of the time, making
the benefits low and the costs high.
Another important consideration is context. Some places are heavily congested because they are very
desirable places to be. These places are often centers of economic activity that rely on a high volume
of travel and may be harmed by wider roads or faster traffic. Since one of the goals of transportation
investments is economic development, it may be counterproductive to “fix the traffic” by means of
capacity expansion. Instead, it may be better to improve service by ensuring that people who choose
to travel by walking, biking, or transit can do so. However, traditional measures of LOS don’t measure
these changes, rendering these improvements virtually worthless as a means of improving the
measured LOS.
To capture the impacts of multi-modal improvements, LOS can be redefined to account for the
capacity and utilization of all modes. Measures of pedestrian, bicycling, and transit LOS mirror roadway
LOS measures in that they evaluate the adequacy/availability of the facility for accommodating existing
and new travel. These generally include measures of capacity such as the presence, density, and
extensiveness of sidewalks and bike lanes; measures of connectivity, frequency, quality, and size of the
transit system; and measures of utilization, such as people per square meter, volume of cyclists, and
number of public transportation users.
…
https://www.smartgrowthamerica.org/documents/the-innovative-dot.pdf

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog

Are you ready for some depressing statistics? Only 13 percent of children walk to school today compared with 66 percent in 1970, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Parents driving their kids to school make up 20 to 30 percent of morning traffic in urban areas, according to America Walks. We won’t even get into the subject of childhood obesity.

…

Safe Routes to School programs encourage students to increase their physical activity through walking and bicycling to school. In October of 2011, Vienna Elementary School started Walking Wednesdays. 3 parent coordinators send home flyers with the students encouraging them to walk or bike to school every Wednesday. The parent coordinators give students who walk or bike a foot token or special reflector for key chains that attach to their backpacks. Parents who walk or bike with their students drink free coffee.

With to this once-a-week commitment, Vienna Elementary School has gotten results. Scott McCall, volunteer Safe Routes to School Coordinator, says the principal is reporting students are more focused in class and more students are walking and bicycling every day of the week, not just Wednesday.

Vienna Elementary has achieved half of their student population walking or bicycling in one day and regularly has 20 bikes in their racks compared to 3-4 last year.

This example contrasts with another local school. In a letter in the Washington Post, a parent at Bailey’s Elementary reported she could more easily leave Nationals ballpark on opening day than pick her child up from school.

…

https://streetsblog.net/2012/10/05/turning-around-the-transportation-culture-at-a-school/

Suppose we set off on a 10 mile trip that looks like this.

B’ Spokes:

If you think your average speed would be 40 mph… Wrong. It’s much lower.

Well OK, but we would save lot of time by increasing our speed on the highway section from 60 mph to 100 mph… Wrong.

Fine, but we need faster roads to accommodate more cars as the faster the road the better the throughput is… Wrong.

The mathematical proofs to these and other questions can be found here: https://cycles.eli-damon.info/2012/10/03/driving-speed-traffic-psychology-and-mathematics.aspx

I’ll note my intention on sharing this is to help dispel our societies fixation on “zoom-zoom” or more correctly spelled out as “Faster vehicles cannot be delayed in the slightest while slower cyclists and pedestrians will not mind at all going even slower with additional road crossing delays and going out of their way by 20 minutes or so, as even a two second delay to a motorist is an extreme hardship.”

We need to reinstate the mentality of “You get there when you get there” as well as “Drive carefully” and get rid of freeway type engineering (where bike/peds are prohibited) on local streets (where bike/peds are present).