Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Beacon Street in Somerville, just outside Boston, is perhaps the most biked route in the state of Massachusetts. It also has a terrible safety record. There have been 154 collisions involving cyclists on the corridor between 2002 and 2010, according to the state Department of Transportation [PDF].

Vehicular cyclists are undermining a proposal for a protected bike lane on Beacon Street, just outside Boston, that has attracted opposition because parking spots will be eliminated. Image: Somerville Patch

“There are more bikes going down Beacon Street in a sort of subpar bike path than anywhere else in the city,” said Pete Stidman, executive director of the Boston Cyclists Union. Having a safe and protected space to bike “would increase cycling numbers exponentially.”

Working with officials from the city of Somerville, bike advocates have been promoting a safe solution. And it looks like it’s on the way: The city recently presented preliminary designs that include the addition of a protected bike lane.

The Somerville proposal is the latest sign that as protected bike lanes gain currency, this type of street design isn’t just for big city transportation departments. Evanston, Illinois, an inner-ring suburb of Chicago, recently built a protected bike lane linking residential areas to its downtown.

As with protected bike lanes in other cities, Boston-area advocates are running up against some opposition in their bid to make Beacon Street safer. The dynamic in this case is a little unusual: A handful of dyed-in-the-wool vehicular cyclists are giving a big assist to residents who value on-street parking in front of their doorstep more than street safety.

Somerville’s plan calls for eliminating about 100 on-street parking spots on Beacon for the mile-long stretch where the bike lane will be installed. Although a local parking study found that there was more than enough on-street parking capacity to accommodate the reduction, some local residents have been grumpy about the proposed change. At a recent preliminary design meeting with the community, one neighbor called the plan “discriminatory” (against drivers) and said it violates their “right to park” in front of their homes.

“I want my parking place; I think this is a dumb project,” said Somerville resident Marty Filosi.

Further complicating the matter is the fact that a handful of vehicular cyclists in the region have opposed the plan. One of them is John Allen, a prominent local follower of John Forester’s transportation theories, which — against the preponderance of evidence — argue that dedicated cycling infrastructure makes cyclists less safe.

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Today is Day Three of the Transportation Research Board’s annual conference. Interested in pavement composition and performance? There are 200 workshops with your name on them.

Bring transportation officials from your hometown to Copenhagen to gawk at all the "non-fat non-motorists." Photo: Crikey

Interested in bicycling? There’s quite a bit for you too. Yesterday, 13 scholars presented their research on cycling. Here are a few highlights:

Take Your City Engineer to Copenhagen. Cortney Mild of the University of Oregon studied the impact of study trips led by Bikes Belong and FHWA to cycling cities in Europe [PDF], showing policymakers and transportation professionals the potential of better infrastructure. They found that the tour participants were overwhelmed at the sheer number of cyclists and the “normalcy” of it in everyday life, with people of all ages, athletic abilities, genders, and economic statuses getting on bikes.

Dave Cieslewicz, former mayor of Madison, realized that the Netherlands achieved high rates of cycling not just “because the price of gas is so high and the land is flat,” but “by making conscious decisions about bicycle infrastructure and policies.” He said that what “hit [him] over the head” was that the U.S. “can make conscious policy decisions that dramatically change the mode share.”

The most common improvement these participants implemented in their home towns upon returning was colored pavement to call attention to complicated intersections. But they also returned excited about opportunities to build cycle tracks.

Connectivity Does In Fact Boost Mode Share. Jessica Schoner of the University of Minnesota found that bike route connectivity was a significant factor in increasing mode share in the the 74 U.S. cities she studied – but, surprisingly, “fragmentation” is not. I asked if fragmentation wasn’t just the lack of connectivity. She said fragments were “little islands of bike facility everywhere.” The size of the bicycle network was also not a significant factor in mode share, according to her research.

The Mineta Transportation Institute studied this issue recently, looking at high-stress and low-stress streets for biking in San Jose. They found that while 67 percent of the city’s streets were “low-stress,” that didn’t help if, to get between them, you have to risk your hide on wide, arterial streets with speeding traffic.

Schoner also found that households with seniors or children were far less likely to ride bikes. I suppose this isn’t shocking, but it is disheartening. She said parents often have “more complex trip-chaining needs” and she’d hoped greater connectivity would ameliorate that problem some, but it didn’t appear to.

Biking Uphill Is Satisfying. It’s an established fact that cyclists rate their commute as more “satisfying” than others.

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Detroit gets major style points for the Dequindre Cut, a sunken bike and walk trail that connects two of the city's most popular destinations. Photo: Detroit Riverfront Conservancy

In central Detroit, on the site of a former railroad, there’s a place just for bikes and pedestrians. In many ways, the Dequindre Cut is a cyclist’s (or a jogger’s) dream: a separated, below-grade bike path that at no point intersects with car traffic. It’s wide enough for a two-way cycle track plus a path for pedestrians off to the side, so bicyclists and joggers don’t have to compete for space. It goes right through the heart of the city, serving as a passage between two of Detroit’s biggest attractions — the Riverfront and the Eastern Market.

This could be one of the coolest active transportation projects in the country, and the fact that it’s happening in the Motor City makes it that much more awesome. The only downside is that right now the Dequindre Cut (pronounced “duh-QUIN-der”) is just less than a mile and a half long. But philanthropic groups are looking ahead to phase two: a half-mile extension that will take the path out past Gratiot Road to the Eastern Market. Eventually, the plan is to connect the cut with greenways running through Hamtramck all the way to inner-ring suburb Royal Oak, and destinations throughout the city.

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Once again, the National Association of City Transportation Officials has proven what an agile, modern coalition of transportation agencies is capable of. It was just a year and a half ago that NACTO released its first Urban Bikeway Design Guide and today, it’s released the first update to that guide.

A bicycle boulevard sign in Madison, Wisconsin. Image: NACTO

NACTO’s guide is far ahead of the industry standard, old-guard manuals: the Federal Highway Administration’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ design guidelines.

NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide was the first to provide engineering guidance for protected bike lanes. It also laid out four different kinds of bike signals, four types of striped bike lanes and a variety of intersection treatments and signage recommendations. The update, released today, also includes bike boulevards, which NACTO defines as “enhanced, low-stress, low-speed streets parallel to major roads.” (Check out this Streetfilm to see bike boulevards in action.) All of the treatments NACTO highlights are in use internationally and around the U.S.

Meanwhile, AASHTO just published its first update in 13 years and is still not ready to embrace protected bike lanes. (Boulevards do get a mention.)

The speed with which updates are made and disseminated could be the biggest difference between the two guides. With just 18 months’ turnaround, NACTO is updating its guide with the newest ideas. Meanwhile, AASHTO is hoping to get around to an update within five years, but given their history, it could be two or three times that long. It’s not online, and it’s not free — you have to order a paper copy (how quaint!) for $144.

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Last week, AASHTO, the national association of state DOTs, published the first update to its bicycle facility design guide in 13 years (available online for $144). Since many transportation engineers take their cues from AASHTO, there was an urgent need to update the 1999 guide, which failed to include many effective design treatments and promoted some standards that actually made streets more dangerous. The new guide includes some significant steps forward, but it still lacks the bikeway designs widely recognized as the best practice for making cycling a mainstream mode of transport.

AASHTO's new bikeway design guide includes some significant updates, but not the treatments for protected on-street bike lanes that American cities are increasingly using to make cycling more accessible.

AASHTO is saying all the right things as it publicizes the update. “Transportation engineers know that the entire system works more efficiently when we build streets, bridges, and highways that can accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians in the safest way possible,” AASHTO Director John Horsley said in a statement.

And the guide has ballooned from 70 to 200 pages, adding much more detailed information about buffered bike lanes, bike parking, bike boulevards, and travel lane narrowing. Still, it leaves out protected bike lanes, also known as cycle tracks, which the world’s best bicycling cities — and America’s most bike-friendly transportation departments — have employed to make biking safer and broadly accessible.

AASHTO says it has incorporated the strategy, popularized by the Portland Bureau of Transportation, to design streets for the 60 percent of people who are interested in biking but concerned about safety. “It’s sanctioned there as methodology,” said Bill Schultheiss of Toole Design Group, which took the lead on writing the new guide. “It’s a big deal.”

Schultheiss says that a cycle track is nothing but a bicycle-only trail, and bicycle-only trails are in there. But unlike cycle tracks, bike trails are not designed to run on streets that also include motor vehicle traffic. Advocates say there’s a big difference — a difference that matters to the “interested but concerned” population. Darren Flusche of the League of American Bicyclists says cities that have made cycling a priority will still go beyond the AASHTO guide and use the bikeway design guide developed by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, which includes on-street, protected bike lanes and other innovative designs. “NACTO has left AASHTO behind.”

NACTO itself identified the lack of protected bikeway designs as a critical oversight in the AASHTO guide. “NACTO’s Urban Bikeway Design Guide has been leading the way for cities to build streets that are safe for kids, adults, and older people alike who want to bicycle,” said NACTO Executive Director Ron Thaniel in an email. “In contrast, AASHTO’s latest edition of its bicycle design guide has virtually no guidance for on-street protected bicycle paths, despite the fact that they are a growing standard around the country.”

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For the next two years, the Green Lane Project will lend expertise and support to Austin, Chicago, Memphis, Portland, San Francisco and Washington, D.C. as those cities implement the type of infrastructure that has proven successful at leading people to take up biking for transportation. The project bills itself as a “storytelling campaign” for the cities to share their experiences.

NACTO and the Green Lane Project are trying to make protected bike facilities a standard engineering treatment. Photo: Utility Cycling

“We want to build that library of great examples from the United States… rather than having to point people to Europe,” said Green Lane Project director Martha Roskowski.

The Green Lane Project — which officially kicks off Thursday with an event in Chicago — will also make an impact beyond those six cities. By broadly disseminating the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, a pioneering document released last year by the National Association of City Transportation Officials, the project will reach a critical audience in places that may not have the level of political support for bike infrastructure found in the six cities receiving direct assistance.

Last March the Boulder-based organization Bikes Belong, which oversees the Green Lane Project, co-sponsored the publication of the NACTO guide, the country’s first attempt at a uniform set of traffic-engineering standards for effective bike infrastructure such as protected bike lanes, bike boxes, bike signals and a host of treatments that are just now gaining currency in American cities.

A guiding force behind these efforts is the vision for more protected bike lanes in the U.S.

“If you look at the good Dutch or Danish systems, on the bigger streets, you provide protection and separation,” said Randy Neufeld, director of the SRAM Cycling Fund. (SRAM, the other sponsor of the NACTO guide, is the major funding source for the Green Lane Project.)

The challenge now is to foster the adoption of NACTO’s designs, so the guide can hold its own next to old-guard engineering standards like the FHWA’s Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices and the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials’ design guidelines.

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Radio personality Kevin "Gravy" Canup delivers a bike, donated by Grand Rapids Bicycle Company, to Kenowa Hills High School in Walker, MI. Photo: Chris Clark for MLive.com

Tuesday morning, a group of intrepid high schoolers in the western Michigan city of Walker got onto their bikes and into a heap of trouble.

The Kenowa Hills High School students, eschewing a tradition of senior pranks that often destroy school property (spray-painting lockers and super-gluing doors, for example), opted to ride their bikes to the last day of classes in an impromptu parade.

They called the police department, which routinely accompanies similar events. They called the mayor of Walker, Rob VerHeulen, who rode along with the cops and even brought donuts. It was a “beautiful morning,” VerHeulen told WMXI, nearby Grand Rapids’ Fox affiliate.

But they neglected to call the school (it was a senior prank, after all). So when the convoy arrived — on time — they were greeted by Principal Katie Pennington, who promptly sent some 64 participating students home and informed them that not only would they be suspended for the last day of school, but they would also be prohibited from walking in the school’s graduation ceremonies. Cue the parental outrage.

One media mini-firestorm later, enough dust had settled for the school administration to rescind their suspensions and reschedule exams and commencement. A local radio host even convinced the Grand Rapids Cycle Company to donate a bike to the school, delivering it in person at a district board meeting to resounding applause.

“Did I overreact? In retrospect, of course I did,” Pennington said in a statement posted to the high school’s website yesterday. “My first response to learning of our high school seniors riding bikes to school on busy roads was to fear for their safety, and I responded in kind.”

And with that, whether or not it was their intention, the Walker 64 have helped draw attention to the sad state of bicycle infrastructure in many areas with considerable pent-up demand for cycling.

“The idea that a group of kids riding bikes to school constitutes a ‘prank,’ and a life-threatening one at that, raised eyebrows among more than a few cyclists, including myself,” said Ken Paulman, writing for Midwest Energy News. “But thanks to the magic of Google Maps, we can see that Pennington has a point.”

This bridge is the only way over a freeway on the way to Kenowa Hills High School. Image: Midwest Energy News/Google Street View

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Sidewalks, bike lanes, traffic calming projects — they save lives. Not just by protecting cyclists and pedestrians (not to mention motorists), but by encouraging physical activity that leads to a healthy life.

How much will that new traffic calming project benefit society? A new tool from the World Health Organization puts a figure on it. Photo: Tom Fudge/KPBS

Of course, it can be hard to convince politicians to see things in those terms when it’s time to pony up for walking and biking infrastructure. That is the brilliance of this new tool from the World Health Organization.

The WHO, which is on a mission to rein in the worldwide epidemic of traffic deaths and injuries, has developed a tool that measures the health impacts of bike and pedestrian infrastructure projects, calculating cost-benefit analyses as well as the economic value of reduced mortality.

Of course you need to do a little advance preparation before using the tool. You’ll need to have a fair amount of information about local travel habits at your disposal. (For example, you’ll be prompted to estimate the percentage of people who currently take walking trips and the average length of the trip.) But it’s the type of info your local metro planning agency should have publicly available. Worst case scenario, you have to perform a survey.

The tool is recommended for planners and engineers as well as advocacy groups.

As more people bike in Minneapolis, the rate of cyclist-involved crashes has decreased. Image: Dept. of Public Works

Good news out of the Sierra Club Green Transportation Campaign, whose national conservation organizer Rachel Butler brings our attention to Minneapolis’s first ever Bicycle Account [PDF]. The compilation of cycling-related data shows a marked increase in the number of cyclists and a steadily decreasing injury rate to go along with substantial investments in bicycle infrastructure on city streets.

According to the report, some 7,000 Minneapolis residents used a bicycle as their primary mode of transportation to and from work in 2010. That’s nearly twice as many as in 1990 or 2000, when the number of cyclists stayed relatively flat. And, as a share of all commuters, it’s good enough to rank Minneapolis the number two city for bike commuting in the U.S.

Mayor R. T. Rybak hopes Minneapolis will become "a truly welcoming and world-class bicycling city." Photo: Dept. of Public Works

The news is yet more evidence that cold weather cities can make cycling an attractive option. In fact, according to the rankings compiled by Copenhagenize, many of the cities with the highest cycling rates are in Northern Europe and Japan. While bicyclists in Minneapolis account for four percent of commute trips, compared to 55 percent in Copenhagen, the number is growing.

“I anticipate that we will see this report as a regular register of our collective bicycle accomplishments throughout the city,” Mayor R. T. Rybak writes in the report. “Minneapolis is going to keep at it, and we can all look forward to the benefits as we become a truly welcoming and world-class bicycle city.”

The mayor is serious about cycling in Minneapolis, and he has plenty to brag about already, including the launch of the Nice Ride Minnesota bike-share system and the growth of the city’s bike network to 167 miles of on-street bikeways, a 75 percent increase from 2010 to 2011 alone.

The report comes on the heels of Minneapolis’s first ever Bicycle Master Plan, adopted in July, which set ambitious goals for the growth of the city’s bicycle network over the next 30 years. Additionally, in December, the city hired its first full-time bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, Shaun Murphy.

The report also highlighted the city’s steadily improving record of bicyclist safety:

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Streetsblog had a chance today to ask the former Democratic chief of the House Transportation Committee, Rep. James Oberstar of Minnesota, about life since the 2010 election, when he lost by a hair to Republican Chip Cravaack. He said he’s spending his post-Congress time traveling to France, getting paid to say things he used to say for free, and telling his four kids and seven grandkids the story of his wife, who succombed to breast cancer 20 years ago.

We also asked him for his thoughts about some major themes in transportation today. 

Chairman Jim Oberstar calls transportation enhancements "the point of transformation" for transportation. Photo courtesy of Oberstar's office.

On the “dissipation” of high-speed rail funds:

We reshaped Amtrak in the 2008 authorization, designating 11 corridors and creating a mechanism by which there could be competition from private sources and from state consortia, with Amtrak, to provide the passenger rail service in a particular corridor.

At first, I didn’t like that idea, but I spent a lot of time talking to Mr. Mica about it and as we talked, I said, “You know, that’s beginning to make more sense. We ought to challenge Amtrak. That’s a good idea; let’s put this into the bill.” And then we got consensus that high-speed should be defined as 110 mph, and that was in the bill. And we got a bill that George Bush signed!

So there was a structure against which to pit [the $8.5 billion in stimulus dollars for high-speed rail]. I thought that was going to happen. Instead, it was all put up for competition for various states to come forward and put a proposal on the table.

Wisconsin, for example: to Madison, Milwaukee, Chicago. That should have been done as part of the Midwest High-Speed Rail Initiative, with Chicago as the hub, south to St. Louis, east through Detroit to Cleveland and eventually to Cincinnati, and west to Minneapolis-St. Paul. That would have been one very defensible, manageable anchor.

The Northeast Corridor could have been another important anchor. The west coast, which is already underway: a third anchor to this system. And then some other amounts in the other corridors, depending on proposals that they would have and should have submitted to DOT.

Allowing pieces to be bid or requested by states dissipated the critical mass of investment. And I’m not saying that in hindsight – that was my concern at the time.

On the attack on Transportation Enhancements in Congress:

Transportation Enhancements was the pivotal point of transformation at the end of the interstate era — an era in which travelers went where the road took them — to the era in which users of our system had a say in their quality of transportation and where that road should go in the future and how their transportation experience should be managed.

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