Streets and Roads
There has been more media attention given to the topic of bicycle commuting, warranting a brief return to the subject. I'll call this post Streets and roads . Latter, perhaps, there will be More roads to follow; in honor of the two books I learned to read with, my mother was a school teacher we had these at home. I was going to call it Bike v Car II : a Mass less critical. The effect of higher cost for driving is changing habits. More people are pulling bicycles out of the basement or garage. People who once only rode for recreation or exercise on weekends are now tentatively putting two wheels down on the road on weekdays, during rush hours. One of these is even my friend Robert who last week was knocking about on Craig's list for a bike to get him from his house to the nearest metro station and back again at the end of the day. A daring move for someone who has commuted previously with a pick-up truck.
There was an extended MetaFilter commentary on some recent Critical Mass rides
Wheels on fire, rolling down the road... | MetaFilter. These are occaisional and re-occurring conglomerations of bicycle riders proceeding slowly through major commuting routes during rush hour bringing traffic to a halt. Critical Mass is more of an event than a group, but they have a mission statement of sorts. That roads and road engineering need to be balanced among differing vehicles and transportation modes. The question is whether Critical Mass's AgitProp methods deliver on this message. A lot of these rides proceed in an atmosphere of considerable hostility and tension. Self-indulgent arbitrary abrogation of rights, and right-of-way. This is often regarded (and reported as) a defeating self-righteousness. The MetaFilter thread was full of low and juvenile attitudes of environmental piousness damaging to any attempt to position the movement as principled. Most people would be content to see Critical Mass melt its way through the earth's crust to some place below
Seattlest: Seattle Critical Mass Needs to End.
I could say something of my own pedestrian ways, but I may have already tipped my hand here. I've been bicycling a long time: untold decades, eight bikes, zero cars. The MetaFilter thread contained a hotly engaged argument as to whether bicyclists should follow common rules of the road (as though the road were a commons) or rules of individual advantage. The logic, such as there was, revolved around the inability to conserve the energy represented in the momentum of a bike and its wheels at any given moment. Use it or lose it. Red lights and stop signs are only there for suckers and things with engines. This is absurdity, follow the rules of the road. Get inside the realm of expectation. Get over yourself. Be a rational object, or the results will trend toward tragic. A Reuters article came in on the wake of this taking the form of an overview
Cyclists and drivers struggle for harmony | U.S. | Reuters. Statistics and the big picture. How many bike commuters are there, what are the trends? They quote US census figures that less than half of one percent of US workers commute by bicycle, against 77 percent who drive. At first glance it might seem obvious where government should come in on this, but is policy always descriptive, or prescriptive? The article describes the effect of formal and institutional education initiatives and programs mostly related to Seattle's efforts.
They also dealt with road engineering. Some of the things they describe are familiar to me. The right hook, where cars turning right will cut a cyclist off if you come up on the right along the curb. You have to position yourself off their left headlight. This is easier to do on smaller more informal roads, much harder on bigger ones. The fix is to paint in a little area called a bike box just ahead of the intersection stop line. Harder to fix a phenomenon I call a T-block. Often on avenues with multiple lanes in each direction that have a T-intersection, cars in the far lane will continue to proceed through a red light because they consider cars coming through - those turning left will turn into closer lanes. Even with a light turning red it is impossible to tell whether a car will stop or accelerate. I can agree in principle the the notion of rolling stops at stop signs, but would point out there is a difference between rolling through a stop sign at 5 to 10 mph and 20 to 30 mph. I would have traffic engineers know that things like rumble strips accomplish nothing. Drivers simply swerve into the opposite lane to go around them. You don't want to be a cyclist around multiple cars when one of them starts to move in unpredictable ways.
The Reuters article closes with a quote from Scott Bricker executive director of Portland's Bicycle Transportation Alliance."The data shows that as more people ride, the streets get safer." I would add that governments at all levels need to be encouraged to see the streets and roads as not just transportation solutions for cars only.
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