Streetsblog Capitol Hill

Elly Blue’s latest publication, “Bikes in Space,” is a feminist sci-fi zine about her favorite mode of transportation. “I realized that because I work for myself, I can do anything I want,” she says by way of explanation. The amazing truth is that she makes a living writing whatever strikes her fancy about the intersection between bicycling and feminism.

Elly is such a fixture of the Portland biking (and blogging) scene that I always figured that she moved there specifically to be part of it. Actually, she moved there for college and didn’t really start riding much until her senior year (at the age of 27 — she started late). In 2004, when President George W. Bush got re-elected, her friends all started threatening to move to Canada and she said, “Not me! I’m going to stay right here and be a bike activist.” She hadn’t really meant to say that, but then she realized it made sense. That drunken pledge has become her life’s work.

Aside from her quarterly zines, Blue published her first book, “Everyday Bicycling,” in December, 2012 and is eagerly awaiting the release of her second book, “Bikenomics: How Bicycling Will Save the Economy.” We caught up at her Dinner & Bikes event in DC this week, part of a month-long, 27-city tour through the Northeast and Midwest.

Tanya Snyder: This is the third year you’re doing this tour. What’s the mission of the tour; what are you hoping to accomplish aside from having an awesome trip?

Elly Blue: Aside from having an awesome trip, the goal of the Dinner & Bikes tour is to feed people a really inspiring meal and bring together people in the community who are passionate about bicycling, often in very different ways from each other, often who don’t know each other. I want to create an atmosphere where people can learn and talk and meet each other and feel inspired and feel like they have the power to make big changes and pursue whatever their vision is for bikes.

TS: You said this is the first time tour has come to the east coast. Have you sampled our bike infrastructure and bike culture?

There’s suddenly this culture rising up around women and cycling that’s bringing something new and fresh and not even engaging in old, stale debates like whether we should have bike lanes or not.

EB: We don’t get to sample bike culture as much as we’d like to, in part we don’t have bikes and in part we’re on the move all day, every day. But I’m from the east coast. I’m from New Haven. We were just back there a few days ago; we did an event there.

I started riding a bike in New Haven when I was 20, and for a couple of years I rode pretty much everywhere I went, and I rode on the sidewalk. I remember having really funny encounters with police where I’d say, “Am I doing something wrong?” and they were like, “We don’t care.”

Then, once, I rode with Critical Mass. They happened to be riding on my commute path. There were nine of us, and it was a completely transformative experience. Being able to ride in the street and feel safe meant so much to me, because it hadn’t even occurred to me to do that. And then it didn’t really occur to me to do that again until I moved to Portland.

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His claim to fame is that he retired at age 30. He swears that you can achieve greater financial freedom too, if you follow his example by eliminating unnecessary expenses and investing wisely. He calls himself Mr. Money Mustache. And he says nothing is more essential to his philosophy and wealth-building strategy than riding a bike.

Mr. MM (his real name is Pete, but that’s no fun) has been dishing out lifestyle advice on his personal finance blog for two years to a faithful following that now numbers about 300,000 regular readers. In a recent interview with the Washington Post, he counseled prospective early retirees to live close to work and “of course, ride a bike.” In fact, MMM says, it’ll take you forever to retire if you keep wasting money on cars. He estimates it costs a person $125,000 and 1.3 working years’ worth of time to drive 19 miles each way to work.

Living so far from work that you “need” to drive is a result of bad planning, he says, and should be remedied — or, optimized — as quickly as possible. Riding a bike is the boiled-down essence of everything he preaches. He rejects the idea that his readers can “just follow the rest of his advice, while ignoring the bike parts.”

“It’s time for this silliness to come to an end,” he wrote earlier this month. “You must ride a bike. We all must.”

I’ll let you read on your own about how driving a car is like throwing away 24 blackened salmon salads, and the three questions you should always ask yourself before getting behind the wheel.

Streetsblog caught up with Mr. Money Moustache recently to talk more about how sensible transportation decisions fit into an economically sound lifestyle — and, of course, early retirement for us car-free Streetsblog editors.

Tanya Snyder: Last month was Anti-Automobile April. What did that consist of? How did it go?

Mr. Money Moustache: Anti-Automobile April was a little experiment where I tried to make the readers of my blog track their own driving for the month. My hope was that they would become more aware of it and hopefully consider canceling some of their trips, combining some of the smaller trips into fewer ones, and most importantly, replacing some of the local ones with bike trips.

MMM: Yeah, I am certainly not an anti-car zealot. I secretly love those machines. I love driving them, sitting in them, and reading about them. And for some reason, I have the technical stats for almost every model available in the U.S. memorized.

But you just have to realize what they’re good for.

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A study published in this month’s American Journal of Public Health finds that highly influential transportation engineers relied on shoddy research to defend policies that discourage the development of protected bike lanes in the U.S. In their paper, the researchers point out that male-dominated engineering panels have repeatedly torpedoed street designs that have greater appeal to female cyclists.

The research team, led by Harvard public health researcher Anne Lusk, examines four engineering guides published by the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials between 1974 and 1999. All of these guides, treated like gospel by engineers across the country, either discourage or offer no advice about protected bike lanes, despite the fact that research has shown that women, in particular, are much more likely to bike given facilities that provide some separation from vehicle traffic.

Lusk found that many of AASHTO’s official claims regarding the purported safety problems of protected bike lanes were offered without supporting evidence. AASHTO refused to consider data demonstrating the proven safety record of protected bike lanes outside of the United States. And since there have been almost no protected bike lanes in the U.S. until quite recently, AASHTO based its position against protected bikeways on domestic street designs like sidewalk bikeways, not real bike lanes designed specifically to integrate physically protected bicycling into the roadway.

The researchers came to this rather damning conclusion: “State-adopted recommendations against cycle tracks, primarily the recommendations of AASHTO, are not explicitly based on rigorous and up-to-date research.”

Lusk and her team carried out a safety study of their own, examining crash reports on protected bike lanes in 19 U.S. cities. They found that protected bike lanes had a collision rate of about 2.3 per million kilometers biked — lower than the crash rates other researchers have observed on streets without any bike lanes. (Those rates vary from 3.75 to 54 crashes per million kilometers.)

Lusk’s research also suggests the lack of gender balance in the engineering profession may have contributed to the resistance to protected bike infrastructure. Researchers found that in 1991 and 1999, AASHTO’s Bikeway Planning Criteria and Guidelines were written by a committee made up of 91 and 97 percent men, respectively.

“The AASHTO recommendations may have been influenced by the predominantly male composition (more than 90%) of the report’s authors,” Lusk writes.

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We’ve been writing a lot this week about the national shift away from car travel and toward transit, biking, and walking. Yesterday, Washington area officials released new data that indicates the DC region is at the forefront of that trend.

The region added half a million new workers between 2000 and 2011, according to a report by the National Capital Region Transportation Planning Board [PDF]. During that period, transit was the fastest-growing mode of travel for commuters, soaring from an 11.8 percent mode share to 15.4 percent, nearly a one-third increase. That’s an additional 162,000 regular transit commuters across the greater DC area.

More than half of that increase has occurred since 2007, probably spurred in part by the recession, though undoubtedly helped along by many other factors.

Puzzlingly, the major exception to that rule was among federal government workers: All of their increased transit ridership happened between 2000 and 2007, when mode share jumped from 19 percent to 28 percent, where it remained in 2011. That means transit ridership among federal employees wasn’t affected by the transition from a Republican to a Democratic administration or by the recession.

Region-wide, 65.8 percent of commuters drive alone, a slight drop from 67.2 percent in 2000. Driving alone decreased or stayed the same in every jurisdiction but Prince William County, where admittedly unreliable data shows it rose from 74 percent to 77 percent.

The changes in the region are happening even more intensely in the city of Washington alone. In DC, 40.2 percent of workers commute via transit, compared to 32.3 percent in 2000. Meanwhile, the share of DC workers driving alone shrank from 39 percent to 33.6 percent.

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There’s a tussle going on right now about how cyclists should ride on city streets. Yesterday’s Streetsblog Network post took a snapshot of this debate, excerpting the WashCycle’s response to a Sarah Goodyear piece in Atlantic Cities.

Sarah wrote that cycling is no longer a mode for daredevils and mavericks weaving through traffic. Some cities now have street infrastructure that accommodates cyclists and guards their safety. Bicycling is increasingly incorporated into the transportation system in these cities, and as such, cyclists need to follow the rules.

Few people would contest the idea that for the transportation system to function well and safely, drivers need to abide by the rules of the road. It’s obvious that when drivers break the rules, the consequences are dire, since they’re operating a heavy vehicle capable of high speeds.

But safety isn’t the only issue. The orderly functioning of our streets is also a priority of planners, and should be a priority for all of us. When the signal says walk, we ought to know that we can walk without being hit by a motorist — or a cyclist — who’s decided that the rules don’t apply to him.

“I am truly sick, at this late date, of people wanting to have it both ways: calling for protected bike lanes and a bike-share system, demanding that cops step up enforcement when it comes to cars, and then blithely salmoning up a major thoroughfare and expecting everyone look the other way,” Sarah writes. “It makes all of us look terrible and it’s a real hazard.”

She also claims that cyclists aren’t special and don’t deserve their own rules. I part ways with her there. Riding a bike doesn’t make you special because it’s badass or good for the environment. It’s special because roads designed exclusively for automobiles don’t work well for cycling. And we should advocate for rules and infrastructure that safely accommodate sustainable and efficient modes of transportation at least as much as destructive and polluting ones.

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Happy Bike to Work Week, everybody! It’s a great time to give a gentle nudge to someone who you think would benefit from biking. In that vein, personal trainer and fitness coach Stephanie Averkamp of San Diego posted this infographic to her personal health website. She says she especially hopes to convince overweight and obese people to bike more.

“Biking’s a great exercise because it supports 50 to 70 percent of their body weight,” Averkamp told me. “It’s not like running. It’s something they can do without the extra weight and impact on their joints.” She said biking is a great way to get exercise outside of a gym, which can be intimidating and unpleasant.

She encourages people to start by biking halfway to work. “That counts!” she says.

Infographic after the jump.
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Congratulations are due to Washington, Colorado, Oregon and Minnesota; those four states took home top rankings this year in the League of American Bicyclists’ annual Bicycle Friendly States appraisal. The winners were announced this morning.

Washington has held the top position for six years running. But there were a few shake-ups further down the list.

Delaware was one of the main up-and-comers, jumping from number ten to number 5. The Bike League’s blog praised Governor Jack Markell, along with the state legislature and advocacy organizations.

“The benefits of biking are countless, and that’s why I’m proud to support dedicated federal funding for biking and walking infrastructure,” U.S. Senator Tom Carper (D-DE) told the Bike League.

Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, meanwhile, said his state is not satisfied with second place.

“An important part of making Colorado the healthiest state is encouraging people to be more active in their everyday routines,” Hickenlooper said. “We’re proud that our bicycle-friendly policies have skyrocketed Colorado’s rank up 20 places in just five years, and we are committed to being No. 1 in the near future.”

Among the other most-improved states were Illinois and Arizona.

Michael Sanders, the Arizona Department of Transportation bicycle and pedestrian coordinator, said his state has been studying bike collisions and developing ways to reduce them.

These testimonies from high-ranking political officials prove how effective the Bicycle Friendly State program is at incentivizing a little good-natured competition to make cycling easier, safer, and more convenient for everyone. 

Here’s a preview of the top 15:

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The House is a dangerous place these days. You want to have a fruitful conversation about how to solve the transportation funding crisis and you end up ruminating about whether to tax bikes.

That’s what happened to Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-OR). He requested that the Budget Committee hold a hearing on the impending insolvency of the Highway Trust Fund, but guess who controls the agenda? Not Earl Blumenauer! Committee Chair Paul Ryan controls the agenda. And he invited Robert Poole of the Reason Foundation and Richard Geddes of Cornell University and the American Enterprise Institute as the Republican witnesses.

Ryan didn’t stick around past his opening statement – he had other business to attend to – but guess who he passed the gavel to? Rep. Scott Garrett of New Jersey – the guy who keeps sponsoring a bill to diminish the federal role in transportation funding and pass it along to the states. This hearing was clearly going to be a doozy.

Highways only and forever

The hearing started off crazy and just got crazier. Poole got right to the point: Let’s stop funding anything but highways out of the Highway Trust Fund. There’s plenty of money in it if we only spend it on highways – and not just any old highways either, only the ones with a role in interstate commerce. You know, the ones that are “truly federal.”

Not only that, let’s move the Federal Transit Administration out of U.S. DOT and into the Department of Housing and Urban Development – “That would be consistent with the increasing emphasis at FTA on smart growth, community economic development and so forth.” Essentially, let those woolly urban liberals go crazy over at HUD — we weren’t using that agency anyway. Let’s keep DOT clean of all that livability junk.

Oh, and let that new HUD FTA fight for general funds every year, instead of having guaranteed income from a trust fund.

Some more tolling could be helpful, too, Poole said; some public-private partnerships, some private activity bonds, TIFIA, and let’s talk about switching to a mileage-based user fee, or VMT tax – but really, the red meat here is highways and only highways.

Thanks, Robert Poole. Next up, Richard Geddes wanted to talk about the insustainability of any funding mechanism that depends on the burning of fossil fuels and the benefits of a VMT fee — a decent start. But the part of his talk that Rep. Garrett homed in on was the mention of a “permanent” public trust fund (basically a Highway Trust Fund, but invested in the stock market). Garrett speculated that Washington would get its mitts on that “permanent” fund and “use it for different things – highway beautification, bike paths – ooh, great things” but not what highway money should be used for.

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First there was “Click It or Ticket.” Then there was Mothers Against Drunk Driving. Now, U.S. DOT is campaigning to end another life-threatening behavior: disrespecting cyclists.

“We need to develop zero tolerance for people who don’t respect cyclists,” Secretary Ray LaHood said yesterday at the first of two national bike safety summits hosted by U.S. DOT this month. “That’s the campaign we’re kicking off today.”

At yesterday’s summit in Tampa, Florida, LaHood announced a new, long-term, national-level campaign to improve bicycle and pedestrian safety through aggressive education, enforcement and engineering.

“It’s simple,” LaHood said yesterday. “When you build a road, build a bike lane. When you’re fixing up your street, build in a bike lane. Do that, and we’ll be supportive of that at the national level.”

“Another simple thing,” LaHood went on. “We need to make sure people driving here have respect for bicyclists. Bicyclists have as much right to the road as they do.”

“If someone is not respectful of cyclists, there’s a penalty,” he said. “That’s it in a nutshell.”

The secretary conceded that improving conditions for bicyclists will not happen overnight, but he made a promise to the more than 200 planners, advocates and bicycle professionals in the audience that U.S. DOT “will not stop until the number of bicyclists killed on our roads is zero.”

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Welcome to the first of five shorts we’re calling Streetfacts. With Streetfacts, we’ll be highlighting developing trends affecting transportation and planning policy, as well as addressing the cost of “bad practices” that prevent us from shifting to a more balanced transportation network that supports more livable places.

As Streetfilms viewers know, many of the big cities in the U.S. are in the midst of expanding their bicycle networks by installing protected bike lanes. We’ve shown these projects in New York City, Chicago, and Washington, D.C., but some of the newest cities installing them are smaller cities you might not be aware of. Places like Missoula, Flagstaff, Indianapolis, Austin, and Memphis have either installed protected lanes or are breaking ground shortly.

Over the next five weeks, we’ll be publishing the rest of the Streetfacts series, which we hope will come in handy in your advocacy. And if they’re a big hit, we’ll take nominations for other topics and make another batch of Streetfacts later in the year.