Ride Boldly! || Bicycle Safety, Advocacy & Events in Minnesota

September 24, 2007
by julie
2 Comments

Toys, Letters & the “Bullying Response”

Following a Nick Coleman column in the Strib about a guy who got taken out by an inattentive SUV driver on Summit Avenue, the haters came out to play in the Strib letters.

Once again, the following attitudes were espoused:

People who wear bicycle-specific gear are Lance Armstrong wannabes.
If there’s a bike path, cyclists should be on it because the drivers’ good tax money paid for it.
All cyclists are bad drivers who blow stop signs, block traffic, and impede traffic.

I’ve always felt that at their core, people espousing these beliefs feel that cars = transportation, and bikes = toys. I can’t agree, even if circumstances prevent me from bike commuting at the present time. To go through their points:

Bicycle-specific gear is worn by bike commuters too. The mere wearing of spandex does not equal a wish to be a racer. High-tech clothing is comfortable, allows a range of motion, wicks sweat, keeps the butt from chafing, and comes in obnoxiously visible colors.
Demanding use of a bike path is very much in keeping with the bike-as-toy issue. If a bike is on a road, even single-up, it is automatically blocking traffic.

One of the key places you’ll hear drivers getting cranky is on both East and West River Parkways, which are narrow parkways with 25mph speed limits, and nearby sidepaths. The sidepaths are shared with dogs, joggers, children, squirrels, rollerbladers, and potholes, and have 10mph speed limits. To a regular bike commuter or road cyclist, 10mph is poky puppy time. Of course, many drivers on the River Roads aren’t going 25, especially as people use them to ‘avoid’ traffic congestion due to our fair cities’ interesting combination of unweave projects and bridgelessness.

There is also an assumption that bicyclists aren’t taxpayers, and they aren’t buying gas. Taxes on gas comprise a very small percentage of road funding, and many cyclists are riding pretty expensive bikes, or are commuting to their income sources, which are subsequently taxed. Cyclists pay taxes. Many/most also own cars, for that matter. Studies also show that on a percentage basis, regular cyclists tend to be better educated than the norm. Given how education tracks to income, it may even be arguable that we cyclists pay MORE in taxes than the people yelling at us!
Bad behavior from cyclists is not called for. However, assuming that every cyclist is a jerk is not called for. Poor road-sharing behavior from motorists is not called for. The poor behavior of others does not justify poor conduct by oneself. The bikers who don’t recognize that River Road is definitely a single-up situation aggravate me, as a cyclist, as do the jerks who blow lights. But then, the jerks who honk a lot at cyclists (and slow old people), yell out windows accusing people in spandex of deviant (and normal) sexual behavior, and who attempt to drive bikers off the road (assault with a deadly weapon, please?) also aggravate me.

There’s a popular world religion that had a prophet/messiah (depending on your belief structure) who suggested turning the other cheek, doing unto others, etc. It’s a good place to start for many things, sharing the road among them.

Some of my colleagues refer to motorist anger, and this underlying sense of bicycle as toy, as a bullying response. Agitation and belligerence come into play when someone on a bicycle
appears to be slowing their progress. Should cyclists stay out of the way because some motorists are jerks? Should motorists be jerks because some cyclists are irresponsible users of the road? Are motorists who are jerks to cyclists also likely to be jerks to pedestrians, slow-moving vehicles, ducks?

It would be nice to believe that the presence of more lawful, educated cyclists would have a traffic-calming effect. However, I’m not sure I can believe that in the face of the motorist entitlement attitude that decries perceived cyclist intrusion and entitlement. However, as a cyclist, I recognize that I cannot control the behavior or reactions of others. All I can do is ‘drive’ my bicycle predictably, following the same rules as other road users, as a full, legal user of the roadway, and I can encourage and empower others to do the same.

September 24, 2007
by julie
Comments Off on Plans for the Lafayette Bridge

Plans for the Lafayette Bridge

The Pioneer Press continues to report a 2011 start date for a rebuild of the US52 Bridge into St. Paul, also known as the Lafayette Bridge.

Neighbors of the bridge are looking for the new span, which will allegedly be 6 lanes (rather than the present 4) and have shoulders (unlike the present span), to include transit and bicycle options.

A ped/bike crossing on any bridge would be nice. One thing that freaks people out on the current bridge, and that I think would apply even moreso to pedestrians and cyclists, is how high the Lafayette Bridge is. Allegedly, it’s 60 feet above the Mississippi River — I494 between Eagan and Bloomington over the Minnesota River is supposedly 55 feet — but it seems higher when you’re on it. If a new design doesn’t cure the swaying effect, it will be quease-inducing for all but thrill-seekers.

To make a bicycle crossing on this bridge effective — heck, to make the bridge effective — they’ll have to deal with the I94 interchange, which is utterly dreadful, and the connection to E. 7th Street. A bicycle bridge, if built within an improved interchange system, could easily connect to the Bruce Vento corridor, Summit Avenue, and Shepard Road.

Ought to be interesting to see the ongoing debate on this bridge. Of all the Twin Cities bridges, the Lafayette Bridge and the Stillwater Lift Bridge seem to be the two bridges with the most attention and focus, and both have proposed futures involving bicycles.

September 24, 2007
by julie
Comments Off on Bike Lane Design

Bike Lane Design

A lot of people are enamoured of bicycle lanes as a means of encouraging cycling on roads. I am not the militant against bike lanes that some of my LCI colleagues are, but I am lukewarm about the wonder and glory of bike lanes because so many are so poorly designed.

The bulk of bike lanes in the Twin Cities are on streets with curbside parking. One of the inevitable side effects of such placement is the insertion of the bicyclist into the door zone — that area into which a car’s door will open when someone has parked and thus will want to leave their car. Getting doored is a crummy experience. The presence of the bike lane does not necessarily mean the parked driver will look in his/her mirror before getting out of their vehicle.

The presence of parking does not preclude a bike lane, for those who really want to build a bike lane. But it is rare that these bike lanes are inserted even up to the ‘best practice’ standards put forth by the Minnesota Department of Transportation guidelines! In their Bikeway Facility Design Manual, the state recommends 5-foot lanes for bicycle lanes, and recommend adding an extra foot to the lane when on-street parking is present.

I can’t think of a single major bicycle lane in the urban core that meets this standard, in part because the lanes are being inserted onto existing arterial streets with limited space. The options are to either do a narrow (4-foot) lane, or eliminate parking. City residents get very surly when parking is eliminated, so the 4-foot lanes are what gets put in. Note that a 4-foot lane is a full TWO FEET narrower than the recommendation! Those two feet are recommended for many reasons, including allowing space to dodge doors, pass slower cyclists, and perhaps even a pragmatic realization that more novice cyclists will tend to the inner section (away from moving traffic).

A 4-foot, or sub-4-foot, bike lane is not going to provide dodge room for even a boring sedan (I measured the door on my 2004 Mazda Protege, and it would take up most of a bike lane in most parking situations), let alone the door on a super-jumbo thingyboo, like a Yukon or a Denali.

I’m not convinced that much of the Summit Avenue lane is even to 4 feet, and that’s a busy parking zone. I didn’t bring a tape measure yesterday, but I might next time. One thing I’m noticing is that they seem to be doing street repainting, but skipping painting the bike lane. The end result is that they’re throwing a white paint stripe down to define the parking lane, but leaving the main ‘lane’ as a wide lane that is somewhat suitable for side-by-side bicycles and autos — without the perceived restrictiveness of a bike lane. This almost has to be deliberate — to make the parking stripe would require a temporary parking ban, and they’re already running the white reflective paint unit. The tools are there to paint it all, and they’re only painting the one line on much of the roadway.

Another issue with the placement of bike lanes, in my mind, is that they create certain perceptions among cyclists and drivers, including:

Bikes only belong in bike lanes. When the bike lane ends, the bike should get on the sidewalk. (False under MN law and the laws of many other states.)
Bikes need to follow the bike lane absolutely. (Again, false. The bicycle needs to take the safest line and is generally supported in law to do so. I have seen at least 3 accidents in 2 years where a rider going straight followed the ‘bike lane’ to the curb and ended up getting slammed by a right turner when the light went green.)
Bike lanes are safer than streets without bike lanes. (Bike lane placement often is dictated by vehicle volume and recommended speed, but a street with a lane may not have any special advantage over a street with a wide traffic lane that accomodates both bicycles and cars.)

These kinds of perceptions are why a lot of people say that bicycling would be safer if there were more bike paths and bike lanes. Frankly, good roadway design is more the issue, not the paint on the road. Unfortunately, convincing many people of this is difficult at best, and certainly isn’t supported by the League of American Bicyclists, given how they upgrade cities looking for Bicycle-Friendly Community status for the number of bike lanes and trails they offer — not well-designed shared roadways, which are entirely different things, definitionally.

September 22, 2007
by julie
Comments Off on Educational Issues & the Bike League

Educational Issues & the Bike League

One of the big issues with the League of American Bicyclists is that as an organization, it has a number of consistency issues.

One of the biggest contradictions are their BikeEd programs (which are taught by League Certified Instructors, such as myself) and their Bicycle-Friendly Communities program. Materials endorsed by the League as part of instructor training, and even some of what is in the course curriculae for BikeEd courses, directly contradict some of the values of the Bicycle-Friendly Communities program.

For instance, the BFC program rates places higher for having bike lanes, sidepaths, and bicycle trails, without an assessment of the engineering quality of the facilities. Meanwhile, via BikeEd, one teaches/learns that a lot of bike lanes are well-intentioned but poorly designed, and sometimes are problematic from a public relations point of view. Many trails and sidepaths, due again to their engineering, actually put bicyclists in the path of hazard compared to behaving vehicularly, and riding on a roadway.

Of course, many cyclists and would-be riders would rather see lanes and sidepaths and trails, via a mistaken belief in their greater safety. Meanwhile, BikeEd exposes instructors to contrary statistics that, when taught, get scoffed at. People do not want to believe that segregated facilities are often of greater hazard than sharing the road.

This is probably why the LAB keeps giving BFC awards to states with bike laws on the books which are contrary to good practice — things like mandatory sidepath rules.

It’s depressing, really.

September 21, 2007
by julie
Comments Off on Correction to Previous: Front-Rear Reflectivity

Correction to Previous: Front-Rear Reflectivity

Alert reader Scott observes that in my piece on winter cycling preparedness, I suggest that side-on reflectivity helps comply with Minnesota statute (which I cover in my manifesto on State Statute 169.222, aka bicycle laws of Minnesota).

I get it right in the latter: the rule is front and back reflectivity, not side-on.

However, given that a lot of pedals just don’t have a design to comply with the way the law suggests reflectors should attach, I have encountered several instances where side-on reflectors have helped riders argue compliance. Attaching front-back facing pedal reflectors on a LOOK pedal? Ha ha, good luck with that one. This is probably where my mental toot came from in this article.

Should you rely on side-on visibility to argue statute compliance? Probably not. I’m not a lawyer. However, is side-on visibility awesome? Yes. Side-on visibility can help in a lot of situations. The law puts forth minimums.

Similarly, this is why I say to get the requisite red rear reflector, and then supplement with an amber reflector. The amber reflectors typically have far greater visibility, yet the law still dictates the red, and you can actually have issues if you don’t have the red… even if you have something better.