Month: April 2013

From Bike Arlington

by Kathryn Reid Moore, Streets Blog
First there was “Click It or Ticket.” Then there was Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Now, U.S. DOT is campaigning to end another life-threatening behavior: disrespecting cyclists.
“We need to develop zero tolerance for people who don’t respect cyclists,” Secretary Ray LaHood said yesterday at the first of two national bike safety summits hosted by U.S. DOT this month. “That’s the campaign we’re kicking off today.”
At yesterday’s summit in Tampa, Florida, LaHood announced a new, long-term, national-level campaign to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety through aggressive education, enforcement and engineering.
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https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/04/12/lahood-zero-tolerance-for-drivers-who-disrespect-cyclists/

BY DAVE SCHLABOWSKE, Wisconsin Bike Fed
I can’t tell you how many times people complain about “cyclists” who run red lights, blow through stop signs, ride without lights at night or and don’t pay for the roads. If I had a dollar for every time someone told me that cyclists should be taught the rules of the road and given a test like motorists, I could retire and move to Copenhagen where those things actually happen.
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To the credit of our citizen advocate, who had the support of a Bike Fed staffer and one of our paid lobbyists in the meeting, she responded with facts and a rational argument that all road users have a right to expect people in cars to obey the laws. In fact the group did such a good job making the case for Vulnerable Users Law, that the legislator eventually apologized and said he would likely support the bill if it comes to a vote on the floor. While that is great, and it shows the importance of talking to the people we vote for about issues we care about, it also points to a genuine public relations problem bicycling has.
There seems to be an almost universal perception that as soon as someone puts a leg over a bicycle, they stop obeying traffic laws. I think this is because the laws that are easy to break and get away with on a bicycle are much more obvious. Having studied traffic safety for more than a decade, it is my contention that people break the traffic laws they can get away with, no matter what mode of travel they are using. People in cars know they can get away with driving 5-10 mph over the speed limit and that they don’t have to stop for someone trying to walk across the street in a crosswalk. People walking know they can cross against the “Don’t Walk” light at a signalized intersection if no cars are coming, and people on bicycles know they can run red lights or stop signs in similar situations. But what are the actual statistics? Are people on bicycles more likely to break laws than people in cars?
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So what did these studies find? Get ready for a big shock, but my studies found that in general, people riding bicycles tend to be more law-abiding than people driving cars. The percentage of people riding bicycles that made illegal maneuvers (ran red lights, rode on sidewalks, or rode against traffic) through the intersections where we did the counts varied from 11% to 48%. To say it another way, the majority of people who ride bikes obey the law. This definitely runs counter common perceptions.
What about people driving cars? How law-abiding are motorists? Milwaukee DPW has done a lot of radar speed studies because so many people complain about speeders on the street where they live. The results of the speed studies vary, but in almost every case the results show a bell curve shifted to the right of the posted speed limit, as in this speed study to the left.
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There have been a couple pretty good studies done to check the effectiveness of these signs. The first study was done in Whitefish Bay by Bay Ridge Consulting. In that study, before Whitefish Bay installed the in-street yield to pedestrian signs, 94% of motorists failed to yield to pedestrians in the crosswalk.
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https://wisconsinbikefed.org/2013/04/15/our-pr-problem-self-righteous-spandex-wearing-scofflaws/

By JOAN LOWY, Huffington Post
WASHINGTON — Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood, a weekend bicyclist, might consider keeping his head down and his helmet on. A backlash is brewing over his new bicycling policy.
LaHood says the government is going to give bicycling – and walking, too – the same importance as automobiles in transportation planning and the selection of projects for federal money. The former Republican congressman quietly announced the "sea change" in transportation policy last month.
"This is the end of favoring motorized transportation at the expense of non-motorized," he wrote in his government blog.
Not so fast, say some conservatives and industries dependent on trucking. A manufacturers’ blog called the policy "nonsensical." One congressman suggested LaHood was on drugs.
The new policy is an extension of the Obama administration’s livability initiative, which regards the creation of alternatives to driving – buses, streetcars, trolleys and trains, as well as biking and walking – as central to solving the nation’s transportation woes.
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https://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/04/14/bicycle-policy-ray-lahood_n_536791.html?utm_hp_ref=fb&src=sp&comm_ref=false

A For Your Information, if you are interested in this sort of thing:

The link to the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BzcxzCMh1GMhanltUWtNemhRR3M/edit?usp=sharing

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[B’ Spokes: I saw only two cars come to a complete stop where they are legally required to stop. I’ll share one of my assertions, When a motorist goes from 30 mph to 10 mph it looks like they are being cautious but when a cyclist going 10 mph slows to 8 mph it looks like they haven’t done a thing and are not being cautious. This is wrong! People are people no matter what vehicle they drive and what people feel is a cautious speed is roughly the same. So please stop singling out cyclists, this is a society problem and not unique to cyclists at all.]

Continue reading “Today’s todo list”

By CHRIS MCCAHILL AND NORMAN GARRICK, The Atlantic Cities
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We found that cities with higher rates of driving have fewer people – a difference of more than 4,000 people per square mile for each 10 percent change in automobile use. As the Penn model suggests, this has to do with the amount of land used to move and store all those cars.
As it turns out, the amount of land used for parking is a key indicator of how seriously automobile infrastructure has impacted an urban environment. We were able to determine the amount of off-street parking in each of our cities by looking at aerial photographs. What we found was shocking. In cities with higher rates of automobile use (roughly 30 percent more driving), about twice as much land is committed to parking for each resident and employee.
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As it turns out, the amount of land used for parking is a key indicator of how seriously automobile infrastructure has impacted an urban environment. We were able to determine the amount of off-street parking in each of our cities by looking at aerial photographs. What we found was shocking. In cities with higher rates of automobile use (roughly 30 percent more driving), about twice as much land is committed to parking for each resident and employee.
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https://www.theatlanticcities.com/commute/2013/02/cars-and-robust-cities-are-fundamentally-incompatible/4651/