• Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)

• Governor Jack Markell (D-DE)
• Peter Rogoff, Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration
• Peter Birch and Shannon Guyman, Google

League of American Bicyclists Director Andy Clarke kicked off the proceedings bright and early at 8 AM, clearly freshly caffeinated and excited by having over 700 bicycle advocates and friends of the cycling movement in the house at the Ronald Reagan Building/ITC in Washington DC. He handed it over fairly quickly to Congressman Blumenauer. The Congressman stressed the great strides the bike/pedestrian movement has made in the last 10 years, but also stressed that the need for ongoing involvement and more involved people remains great.

A few highlights from the Congressman from Oregon:

• He presented the plans for bike lane striping on Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, linking the Capitol and White House.

• He touted the introduction of HR4722, the Active Community Transportation Act (or ACT Act!).
• Discussed HR4021, an extension of Safe Routes to Schools that expands funding to high schoolers.
• Discussed HR3271 Green Routes to Work, and stressed that part of building a bicycle- and transit-friendly America is providing citizens with choices as to how they travel to and from their everyday destinations.

A key message is that we aren’t anti-car, but that much of the funding and legislation has tilted the playing field in favor of the car – even though 30% of all car trips are less than 1 mile! Most people say they would bike or walk more if they felt it was safe or that facilities were available to make it possible (like sidewalks in subdivisions).

Governor Jack Markell of Delaware was next up. Among his campaign events was a bicycle ride across Delaware. He’s especially proud that DE went from 31st most friendly state for cyclists to 9th in only a year. One of the components of that was the passage of a Complete Streets bill to encourage developers, landowners, cities, counties and the state to work together to plan communities and roadways to accommodate all users.

He also discussed the teen labor that work in Delaware beach towns over the summer – many from Europe – and the unique safety issues they’ve presented, and how the state has addressed those issues with education.

He capped his part of the presentation with a top 10 list about riding in Delaware:

1. You can brag to friends about riding across the state in a morning.

2. Hills – they’re nice, but they block the view. No issues with that in Delaware!
3. It’s fun to drop the Governor on rides.
4. Scrapple.
5. Punkin Chunkin.
6. It’s easy to outpace chickens on the roadside.
7. All their transit buses have bicycle racks.
8. Politics end on bikes (although he says Republicans have nicer bikes).
9. You can ride through lots of spray irrigation systems on hot days.
10. On windy days, you can draft behind fancy Washington DC lawyers on Route 1.

Peter Rogoff, of the Federal Transit Administration, spoke next.

He talked about how policies and programs have to address the new reality. People want choices as to how they get around. Transit use boomed when gas went up to $4/gallon, and has stayed high even as prices have dropped. Many families have dealt with the recession by downsizing – getting rid of a car and going with only one, or no, car.

Cycling and transit, together, create a powerful combination for many families. They need to work together seamlessly and be a credible option.

Thanks to the Recovery Act, transit spending rose 84% in a single year. This has really helped given that many communities have had funding struggles for transit due to the recession’s impact on property tax revenues and other tax streams.

Administrator Rogoff stressed several things:

• The potential role of bicycles in the First Lady’s campaign against childhood obesity – if kids can ride, they won’t get fat.

• The need to continue investing even though revenues are tight – transit makes jobs reachable, transit creates jobs.
• Bicycles and multi-modal options need to be built-in.

The morning session ended with the Googlers presenting the new Google Maps for Bicycles options, covered separately.

As such, it’s always nice to see new rest stop opportunities open up along the route. Yesterday, near Raymond and Territorial, just north of University, a great new cookie shop opened up. The St. Paul Classic Cookie Company is just a half-block west of Raymond on Territorial, and serves up a variety of homemade cookies and muffins, and offers old-fashioned cups o’ joe too.

I sampled several flavors of oatmeal cookie there last week, and I will be plotting bicycle routes that go through this stop, particularly when riding with my son. Delicious!

• A curve and downhill leads up to the tunnel.
• Prior accidents have occurred in or near the tunnel, although they have not necessarily been well-tracked by Three Rivers Park District.
• Kids like to play in the tunnel.
• The lane has a dashed line, not a solid, which suggests to people that using either lane is ok.

The issues with the sight lines leading to the tunnel is almost undoubtedly an engineering issue. But issues like kids playing in the tunnel on a bike path, and the discussion of making the lane line solid not dashed so people know to stay in the lane? Those aren’t engineering issues. I would argue those to be inherent issues of bicycle paths. People should KNOW to stay in their lane and use caution if needing to go around someone in their lane – this is just common sense. And of course kids like to play in tunnels. Tunnels are FUN. I suspect all the signage in the world isn’t going to change that tendency – or cause parents to police their kids much better.

I’ve said it 3.2 billion times: People want to act as those bicycle trails conform to different traffic rules than roads – and they do, in the sense that there are likely to be MORE hazards, rather than fewer. Lane placement and visibility remain key, as does bicycle control.

Knowing what I do of legal issues, I smell an upcoming lawsuit for facility deficiency leading to wrongful death, due to the engineering issues. But the bulk of issues identified in the Star-Tribune article aren’t engineering issues – they’re just reality.

Right now, the littlest cyclist rides in a trailer. He gets a bit bigger, we may use a child seat for a while before graduating to tag-a-longs and eventually a tandem. With any of these options, I think routing is a key to making the experience good for parent and child. here are key elements I’d want in any route used for family cycling:

• Reasonable distance: Distance is both a factor of parental fitness (especially with a trailer!) and child willingness. Know your kid, and plan accordingly. Toddlers require input and diversion. This can either be built in as stops to allow for longer mileage, or shorter mileage can be planned to accommodate the kiddo.
• Destination/Rest stop: As above, where will you be stopping? With a toddler, a chance to play and run about a little is nearly essential. Ice cream or a tasty snack – either carried along or purchased on route – is also a big plus. My kid loves the ice cream stops – a genetic predisposition, to be sure.
• Terrain: With any sort of extended trailer, trail-a-bike, etc., be sure to avoid anything especially technical. The idea of taking the downhill next to Fort Snelling, which is steep and has a sharp left turn at the bottom? Just say no. If the kid is an active participant, ease into hills.
• Timing: We like to time rides such that they coincide with Natty’s nap. The gentle rhythm of the trailer puts him straight into zonk-zone.

This last weekend we rode 18 miles, mostly via trail or trail-option routing. We stopped at DQ. It was flat and shady, and Natty got Blizzard and hot fudge. Happiness.

Ice Cream Sundae – 18 miles (jpg)

In the buggy., originally uploaded by Between Stations.

This picture was taken before we strapped on his helmet, but this is my 13-month-old before a 35-mile ride on a day that never made it above 50 degrees.

I’m trying to teach him to say ‘venga!’ so he can chant it at his papa from the buggy.

I really don’t have anything in for Edina. The articles covering their attempts to try to be bicycle-friendly just make it so easy.

Apparently, a bike lane is more detrimental to property values than a lot of on-street parking in front of a home:

“I just don’t know how anyone can justify having a bike trail in my front yard as an asset to my home,” she said.

Of course, as we might expect, there’s so much more to quibble about:

The street is so busy that residents sometimes have trouble backing out of their driveways.

In that case, on-street parking is likely to block the view when backing out more than a bike lane. Also, if the lane is supposed to be great encouragement to cyclists, the traffic flow of the street is likely to discourage that right back down.

The goal of most of the proposed improvements to W. 70th is to calm traffic and have it move at a more appropriate pace. Surely that helps beautify a street and improve living conditions?

As I’ve said in the past, I think the idea that bike lanes automagically create bicycle-friendliness is wrong. All you have to do is read some of the quotes of the Edina people in the articles to prove my point.

They found that as children under 15 years of age were required to wear helmets, the youth mortality rate from bicycle accidents decreased significantly.

I would throw in as an important adjunct that parents who strap the helmet on their kid and then don’t wear one themselves provide poor role model behavior to their kids. Adults are prone to all sorts of accidents that may have little to do with skill and more about happenstance (or even just ‘riding with kids, who are less predictable’). Concussions are no fun, and even non-serious head knocks can be awfully bloody. Watching the adult role model bleed profusely from a head wound is unlikely to be a great formative experience for a child. Or so I’d guess. I’d suggest avoiding field study of this, anyway, per my mother’s classic rule: Blood belongs inside the body.

This chart proves a few things I’ve been saying all along, one of which is that it’s fair to assume many cyclists are regular contributors into the general tax base of our state and nation. I wonder sometimes if the perception that we all aren’t is because everyone thinks bicycles are $80 at Target.