Month: October 2013

B’ Spokes: You’ll note that a featured story here shows a cyclist in a bike lane getting doored. I like bike lanes as much as the next guy but if they can’t be fully out of the door zone something different should be done. And no I don’t think "You can always bring a civil suit." Is much of a deterrent nor does it serve much in the way of informing the general public about the issue.
And the bigger issue is we have motorists who want us to ride far right in the door zone and think we are being very rude, if not illegal when we ride out of the door zone. In a discussion with our Director of Bicycle and Pedestrian Access who does have some background in law said that a car door is only considered a hazard (the lawful requirement we need in order to avoid) when a person is present in the car. There is a lot I can say about that but this news report should suffice as a good enough rebuttal.
https://www.cbc.ca/player/News/TV%20Shows/The%20National/ID/2412614582/

Via: https://www.copenhagenize.com/2013/10/the-massive-potential-of-shifting-trips.html

B’ Spokes: A typical Baltimore downtown street with cyclist “encouraged” to ride in door zones, ramps that put wheelchair users into the path of cross street traffic and low visibility crosswalks. But can it be improved?

For this and more: https://nacto.org/usdg/

B’ Spokes: More detail about a film project that could be very instrumental in changing how we look at transportation. Please help their Kickstarter campaign if you can.]
https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/10/17/bikes-vs-cars-director-fredrik-gertten-sets-out-to-expose-the-car-lobby/
Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/fredrik-gertten/bikes-vs-cars-we-are-many

by Angie Schmitt, Streets Blog
In the six years that Janette Sadik-Khan has headed the New York City Department of Transportation, streets have been transformed. Across the five boroughs, 26 acres of asphalt were converted into 50 pedestrian plazas. New bus lanes are speeding transit trips on major thoroughfares in Manhattan, the Bronx, Staten Island, and soon Brooklyn. The city added dozens of miles of protected on-street bike lanes — groundbreaking designs for an American city — and 350 miles of bikeways overall. The biggest bike-share system in the country launched this May, and now regularly sees 40,000 trips per day.
…
These changes have improved safety, boosted retail performance, and elicited impressive public approval ratings despite TV and tabloid coverage that tended to be outlandishly negative. Sadik-Khan emphasized that it wouldn’t have been possible to accomplish so much in such a short time frame if it weren’t for the original stroke of genius: the decision to test things out to see what succeeds.
“The temporary materials are important because we were able to show how it worked,” she says…
…
https://dc.streetsblog.org/2013/10/17/janette-sadik-khans-ted-talk-you-can-remake-your-streets/
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[B’ Spokes: I’ll stress with a little paint (a temporary material) we can and should try some innovative designs over a trial period. If they don’t perform well then take them away, at least we can learn what does and does not work here. We need more experiments and a lot less of what I perceive as "Because of some mysterious calculations all done in my head we can’t accommodate bicyclists here." ]

-> According to a Sept. 11th Alliance for Biking and Walking article, "Last week, the US Department of Transportation released their draft strategic plan, a document that will determine how the DOT will manage the United States’ transportation over the next five years. But there was a slight problem: the plan lacked vision for bicycling and walking…So state and local biking and walking advocacy organizations in the United States kicked into high gear. With help and policy recommendations from our friends at the League of American Bicyclists and the Safe Routes to School National Partnership, state and local advocates joined onto a letter asking the US DOT to incorporate real strategic reforms for better biking and walking in the U.S. (https://bit.ly/18XWiHV). In a resounding show of support, over 80 organizations signed on…
"Here’s what we told the US DOT:
* Don’t just pay lip service to safety. We urged the Department to set a hard goal to reduce bicyclist and pedestrian roadway fatalities by 50 percent by 2020.
* Build livable communities by building spaces where people have the option to walk and bike. We encouraged the Department to set a goal to increase bicycle mode share nationally to 5% by 2025 and pedestrian mode share nationally to 25% by 2025.
* Help create new projects that incorporate the needs of all people, not only people in cars. We urged regulators to implement a Complete Streets approach when designing safety measures…"
Source: https://bit.ly/1fB0N2d
from CenterLines, the e-newsletter of the National Center for Bicycling & Walking.