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May 21, 2013
in response to Brilliant Reader Comment: The Double Standard on Bike/Car Behavior

Jack Jackson

Maybe if you broads would stop taking home ec and start taking some math, you could spend the next 20 years catching up

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Larry Littlefield

I hate to say it, but fiscal impact analysis isn’t about taxes per acre, it’s about taxes per school child. That what the exclusionary zoning states — the blue states, ironically — seek to avoid — less well off children who will get services in school in excess of taxes paid.

Hence the preference for age restricted housing as a way to get multifamily approved. Or laws such as Chapter 41B in Massachusetts, which bribe/push localities to accept multifamily development, because the business community is worried its labor force is being priced out of the state. In an effort to avoid working class people with children living in apartments, localities price out those who grew up there.

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

Joseph

Without question, they pay a larger share of their limited income on transportation than wealthier households do.

May 21, 2013
in response to Suburbanization of Poverty Isolates a Growing Number of Americans

Anonymous

I don’t know about that, there’s a lot of predatory loan practices that can lead to some extreme interest payments over time. I think the main point isn’t that poor people spend more than someone maintaining a bentley, so much as they spend more (much more) of their income even on the cheapest car possible.

May 21, 2013
in response to Suburbanization of Poverty Isolates a Growing Number of Americans

Antony Breeze

A debt-ridden father doused himself in petrol and turned himself into a
human fireball after being harassed for money by payday loan firms.
Antony Breeze, 36, died after setting himself alight, telling
passers-by who tried to extinguish the flames: ‘I’ve had enough.’

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324769/Antony-Breeze-set-hounded-payday-loan-firms.html

Tracy Young: Yes. They’re first-time customers in a lot of
the new areas that we’re going into. Like in Virginia, Texas
and Arizona, for example, we have a higher percentage of internet
customers because they don’t understand the model. So, this
actually pushes those types of customers to the store.

http://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1511967/000110465912062224/a12-20468_1ex99d1.htm

May 21, 2013
in response to Driven to the Poorhouse: How Car Title Lenders Prey on Americans

Ryan Brady

I don’t believe that lower income people pay more for cars. There are three basic car-use paradigms:

1. Buy a cheap used car and run it into the ground.
2. Buy a cheap used car and do repairs yourself.
3. Buy an expensive car and have the dealer maintain it.

Poor people do 1&2, and rich people do 3. Even if the loan rate is higher, poor people are buying less expensive cars. Their repairs are probably less expensive too, even if it hurts them more.

THAT SAID, not really the point of the article. Basically we have people driving in places that need walking (the rich in cities) and people taking transit where driving is expected. That’s not a great situation.

May 21, 2013
in response to Suburbanization of Poverty Isolates a Growing Number of Americans

khalil

I wrote the bike plan for my county and have seen it implemented. It pains me to have seen several cyclists hit and knocked down at “coffin corner” bike lanes that resulted, unintentionally, from a change in design caused by a cut in funding and a policy decision by the county to not add roadway width to do several intersections properly. So while my work was designed to increase cycling, it has also made it unintentionally more dangerous to new cyclists who are not saavy enough to see these problems.

There are several issues here one can worry about without being cast as a card carrying VC or a card carrying Paint and Path guy.

1. As Joe says, the best designs are often sacrificed to cost cutting. Is it better to take a substandard design over an approach that leaves cycling clearly integrated into traffic?
2. Do special facilities routinely increase the harassment cyclists get when they use the roads rather than the special facilities?
3. Should facilities, even cycletracks, be sold as “8 to 80″ facilities that negate the need for cyclists to be trained in how to ride in traffic? Even other bicycle traffic?
4. How dangerous is cycling, actually? If it is, on a per hour exposure basis, similar to driving, do we need to do anything at all?

5. Is it better to concentrate on protecting cyclists, or should we be attacking the bigger problem, which is the lax safety record and competency that is endemic in U.S. driving and which affects motorists, pedestrians, and ourselves?

6. Sure, the perfect is the enemy of the good, but should we restrict cycletracks and other facilities to less compromised locations rather than as Joe says, putting them where they increase risk for naive cyclists?

We folks on these lists spend a lot of time fighting each other, but the fact is, we are pointing our guns inward rather than outward. For shame.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

LinuxGuy

Set speed limits to the 85th percentile free-flowing traffic speed, use longer yellows, decent length all-red intervals, and sensors to keep the all-red. Problems vanish. Also need to ticket well after red, not 0.00001 sec. Most tickets are for non-complete stop for right on red or stopping past the stop line
anyway. Don’t need cameras.

Same for speed cameras, increase speed limits and speed cushions.

I hope officials realizes that when people are involved in crashes due to poor engineering and predatory enforcement, they will not be pleased. Same for the money it costs people. What about violating peoples’ constitutional rights? Did
they run this stuff by the ACLU or the National Motorists
Association.

May 21, 2013
in response to There's No Doubt: Traffic Enforcement Cameras Save Lives

Michael Klatsky

Also consider that Federal Highway money is generally only used for new stuff – basically screwing older areas in favor of “new” ones.

Highway money cannot be used for street maintenance.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Anonymous

So true. People are realizing it is a ponzi-scheme of development. The only way to pay for those enormous infrastructure costs is to build another ‘hit’ of suburban development. The whole apparatus crashes when there is a slowdown in home sales, collapse of housing prices, or you run out of land.

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

Michael Klatsky

Actual costs aside, gas tax receipts for 2010 were $37.8bn – during that transportation bill (SAFETEA-LU), “$39.4 billion went to highways, most of which was used to expand
and upgrade the Interstate highway system; some $10 billion went
annually to mass transit.”

One could say that the $19.5bn General Fund Transfer in March 2010 covered 100% of Transit, and 25% of highway.

I would propose doing away with such a system and funding all federal transportation projects directly from the general fund.

That would keep the whole “drivers pay” excuse out of the cost-to-benefit analysis.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Marco Anderson

I agree with your outlook, but arguing against bad infrastructure comes off as “making the perfect the enemy of the good.” And infrastructurists have come to realize that 2 miles of infrastructure a year does not raise cycling rates. Two miles of perfect bike lanes represents tokenism. 30 miles of imperfect lanes are a network and represent a viable alternative to driving. And raising rates and therefore overall visibility is the key to winning the political and public relations battle that leads to a virtuous cycle.

Most VC don’t provide alternatives to the funding problem. They just argue about which study has more merits. For all the faults the infrastrucurists have shown more progress in the last 5 years than VC absolutists showed over the previous 30. I would like a VC absolutist like Ian Brett Cooper above to say with a straight face “By blocking unsafe bike lanes I’ve saved X number of lives over XX years.”

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Joe R.

Let’s put it this way-given an alternative a doing a single 20 foot climb, then riding 3 or 5 or 20 miles unfettered by stoplights or traffic, versus riding on crowded streets with all the aggravation/danger/dealy that entails, most will choose the former in a heartbeat. In general people prefer totally separate cycle paths over anything else. Unfortunately, some places simply don’t have the space at street level for them, so we need to go above grade, as we did with the elevated subways. An elevated bikeway would be far less intrusive. You could put opaque barriers in areas where privacy in nearby buildings might be a concern. Millions of dollars per mile? I doubt it. Using low-cost, pre-fab structures we could probably do it for a few hundred thousand per mile. Don’t forget on-street lanes start getting costly once you need to add bike traffic signals. Those can run tens of thousands per intersection. And those signals are rarely obeyed anyway if cyclists hit a red every two blocks.

As for crime, that’s easy. Any users of the elevated system pay an annual fee (which should partly offset the higher construction costs), and have to pass through a turnstile type gate to enter/exit the system. That should keep out the homeless or criminals. You can also have security cameras recording 24/7 so any perps are quickly identified and caught.

Remember besides freedom from congestion, an elevated bikeway can even do fancy things like channel prevailing winds into a tailwind. in a windy place like Chicago or NYC, that could increase travel speeds by 5 to 10 mph. Or put another way, your average cyclist might be able to go 20 mph the entire way, while as fast cyclist could go 25 to 30 mph. Because there is no stopping, average speeds end up pretty close to cruising speeds. If you average, say, 18 mph, you’re running as fast as a local subway train, but without the waiting time. Done right, grade-separated bikeways would revolutionize bike travel in crowded cities. And those crowded cities are exactly where they would make the most sense.

May 21, 2013
in response to Will Vehicular Cyclists and the "Right to Park" Trump Safer Streets in Boston?

gryphonisle

Moreover, despite what Americans insist: When they vacation—apart from the resorts, sports holidays, or family functions and business, they choose cities. Whether it’s NYC or Paris, or Tokyo, people gravitate to cities. Nobody plans and saves for a year or more to visit Walnut Creek or Levittown, unless they have business there, or in the case of the latter, are looking into the roots of the ‘burbs.

If cities were so awful, people wouldn’t vacation in them, that they don’t vacation in suburbia says a lot.

And I like the idea of taxing proportionally as other commenters have suggested: Make the burbs pay for the true cost of their wasteful existence.

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

John Schubert

You’re not doing right by the people who were killed by the facility design. That’s an overwhelming factor.

May 21, 2013
in response to Will Vehicular Cyclists and the "Right to Park" Trump Safer Streets in Boston?

John Schubert

I think that if you actually SAW a grade-separated bicycle facility, you wouldn’t like it. Think of the “elevated subways” in Chicago and Philadelphia. They are ugly. They violate the privacy of people who live in upstairs apartments in the buildings along the street, by putting thousands of eyes right outside those windows. You’ll also find that (a) people don’t like the 20-foot climb to get up to the elevated facility, and (b) people are afraid of crime in such facilities. And then…. there’s the money. Such a facility, at however many millions of dollars per mile, would take money away from other more cost-effective uses of the public’s resources.
There may be some places where a grade-separated facility makes sense, but I believe they are very rare.

May 21, 2013
in response to Will Vehicular Cyclists and the "Right to Park" Trump Safer Streets in Boston?

Daniel Winks

I would love to not have to subsidize motorists and suburbanites/exurbanites. Not only would I save a ton of money, but it would help make it apparently how utterly stupid their choice of living arrangements really is, as the entire cost burden of the sprawl would fall on those who create it.

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

Robert Bierma

Now if cities would transfer some of the benefit of increased efficiency to the residents. ie you pay taxes proportional to the amount it cost to provide services to you. That way residents in compact areas pay less taxes then residents in more spread out areas and the residents in compact areas aren’t subsidizing the residents in less compact areas.

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

Lee Haber

The first time I played Sim City as a kid, I built some houses and a long road that went to some commercial and industrial. It was very spread out. My road maintenance budget was huge and I went bankrupt soon.

I learned that day that compact development saves money. The fact that it has taken ‘experts’ decades to learn something an 8 year old learned the first time playing a computer game just makes we want to say “About f**king time!”

May 21, 2013
in response to Taxes Too High? Try Building Walkable, Mixed-Use Development

Joe R.

Admittedly, VC absolutists are a big problem, but most who come from the VC camp are not that extreme. They fight against bad cycling infrastructure, not against ALL cycling infrastructure. Case in point-protected cycle tracks. Those work great on roads with few or no intersections. They protect cyclists from fast-moving cars, and make them feel safer as well. However, if you stick them in places with a tight grid pattern, they may make things worse in that they give cyclists the illusion of safety, but in fact do nothing at junctions where most collisions occur.

The second problem is funding. Cycling advocates like to say they helped get x miles of bike infrastructure built. Of course, that means opting for whatever costs less, even if it’s less safe. Case in point is using protected cycle tracks on roads with many intersections when the only solution which is truly safe and efficient is total grade separation. Of course, that might mean only 2 miles of bike infrastructure instead of 30, so they opt for the cheaper solution. In the long term we might not even be having these debates if cycling infrastructure routinely received 1/10th of what we spent on motor vehicle infrastructure. We would just use whatever is appropriate for the situation, whether it’s grade separation, partial grade separation (i.e. at junctions only), protected cycle tracks, or even just painted lanes.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Marco Anderson

VC v Infrastructurists is my favorite planning soap opera. Probably because both sides have merit. I have a friend who calls VC absolutists the Tea Party of Bike Advocacy. They might be right in a narrow technical sense, but as an idealogy it is completely impractical. Bike Advocacy was dominated by VC absolutists for more than 30 years which resulted in 0% increase in bike usage. VC absolutists have never been able to demonstrate a political agenda other than to say no. I don’t know of any jurisdiction that has instituted wide spread cycling education. A VC absolutist will say that if infrastructure can be blames for a single death than it is a failure, while ignoring all the deaths that were caused by lack of infrastructure as examples of uneducated bicycle “drivers”. So it comes down to a question of the individual versus society.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Bob Bedrossian

ob Bedrossian Bob Bedrossian • 5 minutes ago

?There is no doubt that the Green Lane Project is and has been a guiding light for a better quality of life for thousands of citizens and a path we should all be thankful we are on. We must also design pathways and access to green E-bikes. After visiting Beijing and seeing the impact of e-bikes on that city, it will be a short time before that wave comes here. Below is a blog about e-bikes in NYC and the draconian measures NYS has taken. 20 MPH e-bikes will be a reality here. Plans to incorperate them into our culture is needed. Transportation officials need to plan for 2020 and not for 2012.

Why punish all or NYS because NYC and the elite bike lobby has a hair up its nose? The green advantage for low income people to have reliable low cost transportation to get to work, school, doctors, etc., should out weigh elite-us Manhattan bike riders who feel that they own all the streets of New York State. Their need to own the bike lanes after leaving their elite-us jobs and bike to their favorite watering hole claiming they are helping society is ridiculous. “Let them eat cake.” Pass laws for Manhattan that make sense and not hold the entire New York State as hostage. By investing in green energy e-bikes we take hundreds of cars off the road and allow handicap people a way of getting around. Cheap local transportation will be helpful to millions of our citizens. Lets move forward with a plan for all citizens in New York State and not the few who can only think of themselves.

May 21, 2013
in response to Bikes Belong to Help Six Cities Build Protected Bikeways

Joe R.

Nobody is saying it won’t work here, only that we’re unwilling to spend the money to design a really comprehensive system. Instead, we’ll slap a poorly designed cycle track along a road for 1 mile, then suddenly dump cyclists back into the motor traffic stream because we either have no money to continue the path, or NIMBYs in that area didn’t want it.

I personally don’t consider driveways a major issue because they seldom create cross traffic. It’s intersections which are the problem. I’ve yet to see any protected cycle path in the Netherlands which is interrupted by intersections as frequently as the ones on the Manhattan avenues are. In a similar situation, I would guess the Dutch would spend the money and go for complete grade separation as nothing else is really efficient or safe.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

cmu

True dat! I usually come to an almost stop & continue slowly.

May 21, 2013
in response to Refereeing the Raging Debate Over the "Specialness" of Cyclists

Marco Anderson

“We can indeed design roads for slower, more comfortable, and even more efficient travel without the conflicts of movement.” Yeah, really? Absent a bike lane have you tried standing up in front of a crowd of angry residents and saying, “Hi everyone we are going to design slower more comfortable and even more efficient travel for you”

That is hard enough when you have the excuse of a bike lane, try it without and there will be 100 angry calls to your local council member before the meeting is over.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Marco Anderson

Vehicular Cycling can mean two things 1: a set of operating procedures that individual cyclists employ to ride safely in mixed traffic 2: a public policy that states that education about those procedures should take precedence over dedicated cycling infrastructure.

#1 is a sensible set of prescriptions that everyone should learn and practice. #2 is an abject failure. It was the cycling paradigm for over 30 years and resulted in 0% increase in bicycling as a mode of non-recreational travel.

You can claim ( kind of hyperbolicly) I might add in your John Forrester “Damn them all” way that this is sacrificing lives on the alter of segregated facilities. But the facts are out there. When facilities are implemented cycling rates go up. VC has never, ever had that effect.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

KillMoto

Like… building more and wider roads, even though motorist fees (gas tax, registration, tolls) day for only half of construction? And even though for the last 8 years, all segments of society have been driving less?

Because that’s something stupid, it wastes money, and the government takes more of my income, sales and property taxes to make up the difference (therefore subsidizing driving, which is stupid)

May 21, 2013
in response to If You Pay Sales Tax at Amazon.com, Your Transit System Could Improve

Dennis Hindman

The Dutch CROW transportation standards only recommend mixing bicycles with motor vehicles on local roads with speed limits of 60 km/h (19 mph) or lower. They list bike lanes or cycle tracks for road speeds above that.

I’ve read all sorts of excuses why Dutch bicycle infrastructure will not work in the U.S., including intersections, distances, traffic speeds, turning lanes and driveways. The Netherlands seems to have come up with solutions for most of these problems

Here’s a video on how a Dutch city dealt with having a cycle track along a residential street that has many drive ways:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6imqI8VfwNo

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Joe R.

From what I’ve seen, the Dutch will mix bikes and cars on roads with 30 kph speed limits, but tend to separate them on roads with higher speed limits. This would work in the USA as well, provided the separated cycle tracks either didn’t encounter junctions with motor traffic, or were given priority over motor traffic at such junctions.

Also note the average European driver is MUCH better trained than the average American driver. That’s part of why their system works.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Dennis Hindman

Although the video is sped up, not until last last part is any of the motor vehicle traffic even remotely moving as slow as 18 miles an hour next to these cycle tracks in Utrecht:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYEiUhOtQOE

Here’s another video of a bicycle ride in Utrecht that has written descriptions so that it easier for you to understand what is happening:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4HwW9qzC7I

Here are 8 more videos of different bicycle routes into the center of Utrecht. Most of which have high speed traffic on the streets next to the cycle tracks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8AdAyOZ6wc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i9JkkPwxvRo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JaVy8GwzJlQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ofF-CyoyBSA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJbQNz-3A4w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgo1lP1sQPw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X26__lyAGSc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DMXcUsP35AM

Why anyone would want to be riding on the street with the greater mass and speed of motor vehicles when there are protected bike ways as there are in Utrecht is beyond me.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Joe R.

If what I read on David Hembrow’s excellent site is any indication, you probably rarely hit red lights to begin with. He mentions doing 20+ mile trips and encountering one red light. Most people will stop for red lights if they’re very infrequent. If you hit one every two blocks, all bets are off.

May 21, 2013
in response to Refereeing the Raging Debate Over the "Specialness" of Cyclists

Joe R.

And in NYC if you obey every red light you’ll be on Social Security by the time you get where you’re going. Hopefully by the time a lot of “normal” folks are riding we’ll have something resembling sanity with regards to infrastructure (i.e. either bike highways or bike routes on streets which have few or no traffic signals/stop signs).

May 21, 2013
in response to Refereeing the Raging Debate Over the "Specialness" of Cyclists

Joe R.

A lot of men your age can’t even ride 15 miles round trip on hills, so you have my admiration. I hope I’m still able to do that in 10 years time when I’ll be 60. Remember in my post I was generalizing. In general you’ll find more men willing to bike longer distances than women, even in countries with great cycling infrastructure where safety is a nonissue. And of course there will be exceptions to that, like yourself. My apologies if my post was misinterpreted.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Casey Liston

As a 60-year-old woman and bicycle commuter (15 miles round trip on hills), I protest. All my female coworker friends say they will not bike to our office building because “it’s not safe.” And they are correct. But my children are grown and taking care of themselves now, so I can risk my life in order to enjoy bicycling.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

cmu

And, perhaps, seeing so many ‘normally dressed’ folk sans helmets, cycling with kids, baggage and at a relaxed pace. I long for the day that happens in NY where I live, and all those spandexed sppeders are the minority. I’d obey every red light and one-way street then.

May 21, 2013
in response to Refereeing the Raging Debate Over the "Specialness" of Cyclists

Dennis Hindman

You claimed the UBC study used only one cycle track in their research when they actually used 10.

Their methods used compared the infrastructure of injury and control sites within each injured bicyclist’s route. Non-intersection injury sites were compared to randomly selected non-intersection control sites.

The same methods were used with intersection injury sites.

http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/content/early/2013/02/13/injuryprev-2012-040561.full

You also claimed that Denmark was phasing out bicycling facilities.

Here’s a new cycle track installation on Gothersgade in Copenhagen:

http://www.copenhagenize.com/2013/04/using-street-space-for-bike-parking.html

Protected bike lanes on 8th Ave in NYC decreased injuries to all users by 35% and 58% on 9th Ave:

http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/2012-10-measuring-the-street.pdf

Here are two videos that go over details of why cycle paths at the intersections in the Netherlands are safer than having no infrastructure:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rBwMRGxtZ9k

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HDN9fUlqU8

You also must believe that it was safer and more comfortable to ride a bicycle in Amsterdam in the 1970′s along major streets before extensive cycle tracks were installed in this city:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AB3hCbH0s4

Or that was somehow safer and more pleasant than riding on cycle tracks there now:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0SG7_Ps6tGc

The speed reduction to 18 mph in the Netherlands is on residential streets. Motor vehicle speeds on arterial streets are much higher than that.

Your ignoring the patent dangers of riding a slow vehicle that lacks a protective cage in mixed traffic.

The imperative for separating cyclists from fast and heavy motor traffic seems obvious in light of their vulnerability and their large speed and mass differential from motor traffic. Unlike motor vehicles, bicycles do not benefit from cage construction, crumple zones, or airbags. Separating people from danger is a fundamental principle of industrial safety.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Ian Brett Cooper

Not sure what my beard has to do with anything. And you’ve never met me, or you might reconsider the strong and confident bit.

As for my daughter, she cycles with me, because unlike Utrecht, no US roads have 18mph limits, and if children in Utrecht had to cycle on 45mph speed limit roads on a daily basis (as we do), I suspect their parents would join them too.

Still, if my daughter did have to travel to school alone, she would be far safer using the general traffic lane than she would on any US bike facility. US bike facilities are all based on designs that are being discontinued in Europe because of their inherent safety flaws.

Dutch cycling safety has more to do with low road speeds than with any bicycle specific infrastructure.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Joe R.

If you watch the entire video, he mentions a birdirectional cycle track on the side of the road near the park would have been a better solution. John Allen doesn’t appear to be against cycle tracks perse, only against ones where there are lots of intersections or driveways. Remember most conflicts/collisions occur at intersections. All cycle tracks accomplish at intersections is to make bicycles less visible to turning motor traffic.

In my opinion, if we really need separate bicycle facilities to encourage riding, then we need to think in terms of a completely separate bike network. Cycle tracks are attractive because they’re cheap. However, like other low-cost solutions, they only partly solve the problem while making things demonstrably worse in other ways.

That rotary is scary? I’ve been through stuff way worse in NYC.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Khal Spencer

Motorist deaths are also higher in the US than in many European nations. We simply don’t take traffic safety as seriously as in many European nations. Case in point. When discredited Tour de France winner Jan Ullrich left a bar and backed his Porsche into a bike rack in Germany, he was fined heavily and had his license revoked.. When Miranda Pacheco lost control of her car while allegedly speeding and weaving through traffic in Albuqerque, lost control and left the road, travelled overland at speed, and hit and killed a cyclist on a nearby bike path, a jury would not even convict her of anything more serious than careless driving. She was just arrested again, this week, for DWI, reckless driving, and no insurance.

Sure we have elevated deaths here. Its not just cyclists dying, either. I’d rather fight for safer streets than abandon them and ride behind jersey barriers. That’s my political point of view. Others disagree.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Khal Spencer

All caps don’t make you sound any more authoritative, Erik.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Erik Griswold

Just a reminder for those who have not seen it, here is how one of the commenters on this post views a recently installed cycletrack in the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, which he reaches (at the beginning) by traversing one of the scariest-even-in-a-car road facilities in the USA, the Fresh Pond Rotary:

http://vimeo.com/55394832

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Erik Griswold

Maybe those dainty women you see in Amsterdam and Copenhagen are thus…

BECAUSE THEY CAN EASILY BICYCLE TO AND FROM WORK/STUDY EVERY DAY AND HAVE BEEN DOING SO SINCE THEY WERE EIGHT THANKS TO FACILITIES PROVIDED BY THEIR ROAD ENGINEERING PROFESSIONALS!

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Erik Griswold

Ah yes,

-the Søren Jensen studies, which he has specifically asked the Vehicular Cyclists to stop citing,

-the illegally-souped-up Mopeds on cycletracks in rural Western Denmark study by Agerholm, et al

-the (Still-then under Allied Occupation, i.e. not sovereign and having to seek approval from the French-British-USA Kommandantura on all laws and leaders) West Berlin study done two years after the sidewalk-located cycle-paths were installed in any significant amount. Yet re-unified Berlin has continued to install them.

-And something from D.C. where, due to the restraints placed on them by AASHTO, etc. all they can use is paint.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Erik Griswold

Said the strong and confident white man with beard…

Remind us, does this daughter of yours who cycles to school do so all by herself, like 80-odd percent of the school age kids in Utrecht?

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Ian Brett Cooper

Governments do what is popular.

As for what the Netherlands did to reduce cycling casualties, that is very clear – they reduced speed limits on 1/3rd of their roads to 30kph (18mph). If we did that here, our cyclist and pedestrian casualties would be greatly reduced too. In ascribing the increase in safety to cycling infrastructure, you are confusing correlation with causation.

You’re wrong about the Denmark studies – the authors do indicate that their results reflect the change in ridership. You’re also wrong about the DC study:

2012 Kittleson & Associates Report (Washington DC)

http://ddot.dc.gov/DC/DDOT/Publication%20Files/On%20Your%20Street/Bicycles%20and%20Pedestrians/Bicycles/Bike%20Lanes/DDOT_BicycleFacilityEvaluation_ExecSummary.pdf

Report found:

Bike boxes, bicycle signals and sharrows were installed at the 6 leg intersection of New Hampshire Ave/16th St/U St NW.:

after the installation, crashes increased from 4 in 4 years to 5 crashes in 13 months. Per month, that is the equivalent of more than 4 times the number of crashes. The report notes no increase in bicycle volumes.

Pennsylvania center cycletrack:
after the installation, crashes increased from 9 in 4 years to 16 crashes in 14 months – 6 times more crashes per month. Taking into account the fact that bicycle volume tripled, crashes still increased by a factor of 2.

15th St NW left side cycletrack:
after installation, crashes increased from 20 in 4 years to 13 crashes in 14 months – over twice as many crashes per month. Taking into account the fact that cyclist volumes doubled, this represents an increase in
crashes of 10%.

But you have your ideology and it’s clear you’re sticking to it. We can spin our wheels all week and you won’t see the truth. I just hope your unwillingness to see the risks of your bike facilities doesn’t get you injured or killed.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Voony

When the message is not pleasant, discredit the messenger is often the solution of some desperate enough:

(1) Disregarding your opinion on bikes lane or cycle track, refuting scientific work on the basis of the gender of their author is petty at best.

(2) Disregarding your opinion on bikes lane or cycle track, you have to accept that some work suffer of significant methodology shortcoming or selection biais:
I am afraid this paper is prone to that:

A more detailed critics here:
http://voony.wordpress.com/2013/05/21/mighty-segregated-bike-lanes/

(Also , an explanation why the Teschke study mentioned by some poster, doesn’t allow to draw any conclusion on the cycle track safety).

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

gneiss

Citation please – in reading the study, on page 2339 it appears that there are 10 sites identified that were defined as routes with cycle tracks which they used in their study to evaluate cycling risk. Are you saying that all 10 sites they reviewed are 2,000 foot long barriers separated bikeways?

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Dennis Hindman

The Netherlands went through both a steep drop in bicycling and a sharp rise in cycling fatalities as car use increased dramatically after WWII. This country went through ten years of protests against the transportation policies that were favoring the automobile at the expense of safety for bicycling.

One of these prominent campaigns was called stop the child murders. People were protesting the sharp rise in children being hit by motor vehicles while they rode on a bicycle.

The Netherlands did some experiments and then started putting separated cycling infrastructure throughout their cities starting in the early 1980′s.

The dramatic increase in safety for bicycling in the Netherlands after this occured can be seen on this chart on page 19:

http://ladotbikeblog.files.wordpress.com/2011/09/thinkbike-la-presentation-16-9.pdf

How did the U.S. do in comparison for cycling fatalities starting from 1970 with its car focused transportation policies?

The chart on page 28 of this John Pucher presentation shows much less of a decrease in bicycling fatalities in the U.S. compared to the Netherlands or Denmark from 1970 to 2008:

http://policy.rutgers.edu/faculty/pucher/UCLATalk.pdf

This occurred even though the rate of cycling in the U.S. was falling while it was rising in Denmark and the Netherlands from the installation of cycle tracks. The bicycling fatalities in the U.K. also fell sharply in this time period, along with its cycling rate.

Chicago will have more cycle tracks installed than any U.S. city within the next two years. The state of Illinois DOT has requested data on the cycle track installations before giving their permission to proceed with cycle track installations on state owned streets. I have no doubt that the data will show a decrease in the risk of bicycling on these cycle tracks.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

Mati Senerchia

Women as a group are better at discerning risk, more likely to be risk-averse, and less likely to participate when they do not feel safe. There’s nothing weak or timid about refusing to accept unnecessary and unrewarding risk delivered by poorly designed facilities.

May 21, 2013
in response to Does the Gender Disparity in Engineering Harm Cycling in the U.S.?

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