(Photo: WeAreBikeFriendly.com)
Here’s the news that caught our eyes this past week…
– MAP-21, the Transportation Bill being moved through the Senate by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), is coming under fire from bike advocates around the country for its mandatory sidepath provision. A petition by the League of American Bicyclists to strip the proposed law has nearly 7,000 signatures.
– Senior citizens in spandex: Read all about the the Vancouver (WA) Bicycle Club is making a huge difference in the lives of our esteemed older citizens.
– A 52 car pile-up on the Autobahn killed three people and serves as a dramatic illustration of the dangers of driving too fast for conditions. To calm your nerves after seeing those images, check out this slideshow from National Geographic of twelve car-free city zones.
– Wisconsin’s laws got a “tune-up” this week from a bill signed into law by Governor Scott Walker. The Bicycle Tune-Up Bill clarifies legal issues surrounding bicycling in Wisconsin including the correct use of rear reflectors and lights, different methods of signaling right tuns, the use of studded tires, and other vehicles’ right to pass bicycles.
– The largest bike parking lot in the United States has opened in the new Santa Monica Bike Center. The facility is over five-thousand square feet and includes 360 secure bike parking spaces along with locker rooms, vending machines, and other amenities.
– The cycling coach at Lindsey Wilson College in Columbia, Kentucky has launched a bicycle friendly sticker campaign for homes and businesses who want to support the college’s racing team. But as the coach will tell you, the idea wasn’t his and it didn’t come from the team – it came from the people who live on the rural roads where the team rides.
– Portland isn’t the only place benefiting from the economic engine of the bicycle industry; bicycle-related businesses are fueling the economy in Indonesia too.
– Thanksgiving is just a few days away and riding a bicycle is a perfect way to burn off those extra holiday calories. In other T-day news… Apparel company Rapha is inviting folks to participate in a virtual “Turkey Take-off” event.
– If you can’t get outside during the holidays you can always hook up your bike to the television. The 123GoTV connects a bicycle to any TV and was designed to encourage kids to exercise while watching television.
(Screenshot from Youtube)
– A few gas stations in Copenhagen are trying to attract more customers by installing bike care stations complete with repair stand, compressed air, and repair tools.
– Critical Mass is less prominent in some U.S. cities these days but it’s going strong in Guadalajara. In a video from StreetFilms, students, families, and others at the Critical Mass ride celebrating the Day of the Dead discuss why riding a bike is an important part of their lives.
– School children in India bought their friend a bicycle after he was denied a state-sponsored bicycle because of his family’s caste.
– One German bike manufacturer is releasing a bicycle with a USB port hooked to the dynamo, allowing the bicycle to charge anything that would normally plug into your computer.
– Fixed-gear bicycles are becoming so popular, even robots are riding them! This year’s International Robot Exhibition in Tokyo featured a foot-tall robot riding and steering a fixed-gear bicycle. The robot is able to stay upright and stop on command despite riding a bicycle with no brakes and no helmet.
– Think there’s not enough room for cycle tracks on North American roads? Think again. As this video clearly shows, the common configuration of intersections in the U.S. could be adjusted slightly to make sharing the road easier and safer for people on bikes and in cars.
Did you find something interesting that should be in next week’s Monday Roundup? Drop us a line.
Thanks for reading.
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I’d be a lot more concerned with right-hooks and additional riding time, and cyclists from the cross roads pulling too far forward, in a bicycle roundabout that motorists get to go through the center island on. Seems like it would work better the other way around.
I like the Dutch video. I would like it more to see videos of real intersections that don’t have perfect ninety-degree crossings and so forth.
The alignments could easily be perceived as putting bicycles into a crosswalk, rather than a parallel through traffic lane. That would take some education in a RTOR thinking country such as ours.
One feature that I like is that while the curb radius remains the same, cars no longer have the option of cutting the corner by turning through the bike lane – something that I expect would slow turning cars a bit.
The extra distance of the bike lane (and/or parking lane) does allow trucks to turn at would otherwise be a tight corner. Adding these islands will prevent that, and require to be built with a wider corner radius. I doubt a solution like this would ever be considered on any of the ‘truck’ streets in Portland. (which, unfortunately, are the streets that most need bicycle separation and protection.)
Why do you dismiss the safety record this design has had in the Netherlands? Why do so many Dutch cycle and why is the Netherlands consistently the safest place to cycle?
The autobahn story cites fog, rather than speed, as the cause of the accident.
It’s a matter of perspective. I can drive safely in fog, if I reduce my speed. Basic Rule. This wasn’t an “accident”. It was a series of collisions. The fact that is stopped at fifty-two cars is because vehicles fifty-three and upward were able to stop before plowing into the pile.
Unless you have more details than what was posted in the link, you have no idea if it was an accident or not.
Having done incident investigations with the military, I only ever came across 1 accident, a tree limb falling on a vehicle that was parked under the tree from camouflage. All other incidents were easily attributed to driver error and were 100% preventable.
First – thank you for your service.
I’m guessing that in the military you were not seeing too many traffic accidents; even less if you were in a Canadian branch (based on size of services). So assuming you did 100 incident reports, that’s 1%; 1000 would be 1/10%. If 1/10% of all traffic incidents were true accidents, that would still be a lot, no?
People black out, have seizures, heart attacks, tires blow out, vehicles malfunction, acts of nature etc, etc.
Regardless of any of that, how is this cycling related?
Actually the majority of investigations were traffic incidents.
The military in most countries spend a lot of time on the public roads. The one thing in the military is that every incident is investigated, at least in Canada, and drivers are regularly stripped of their license and sent on remedial training.
@Mike – I agree that I’m making an assumption that this is not an accident. The caption editor is making a greater assumption (to the 52nd power!) that it is. In either case, collision is an appropriate word. The problem I have is that “accident” contains a built in excuse to absolve inattentive motorists.
Consider this – how often do you read of pile-up “accidents” of this sort in conditions of clear visibility?
I’m surprised that only three people died with 53 cars involved.
That being said, I drove on the Autobahn back in ’03 (with Kraftwerk’s “Autobahn” playing on the stereo, thankyouverymuch) and reached a top speed of 120 in the Volvo I was driving. At that speed there is no margin for error. The 18-wheeler you see WAY ahead? You’re on it’s tail QUICKLY.
Their freeways are rather well engineered though, I’ll give you that.
That should be a top speed of 120 MPH, or 200 KPH.
More than anything, I am wondering how this is bike related? Are bikes allowed to ride on the Autobahn?
Pile ups happen everyday and everywhere for many different reasons (205N and 84E on Friday evening); some are even truly accidents.
Do they need to go on BP?
The autobahn pileup could be seen as a lesson example for people that ride bikes together in large numbers and in close proximity to each other. Big pileups certainly do happen in pro bike racing, and they can be nasty. Because the numbers see be on those particular routes already, it’s definitely something for the Hawthorne Bridge and Williams Ave bike commuter crowd to be thinking about.
Oh – I like that. Don’t ride too fast for the conditions is the message to take away from this.
Very timely as we enter into the foggy/rainy and black ice season.
I was pleased to see an Ellsworth bike (likely made in Vancouver WA) in the BBC photo from Indonesia.
The US bike care stations at gas stations…~$1 to self pump up your tires and free radiator water to wash your bike…just do not get in the way of a motorist who needs to do either task.
Robots on bicycles! Wow.
…So if a robot rides a bicycle on a city street in Seattle/ Vancouver etc…would it need a helmet and if so would the helmet be on its ‘head’ or CPU?
Silly rabbit, helmets are for persons, not robots
Not sure, but if it hit 88 miles per hour that would be interesting.
I loved that video of a separated cycle track superimposed over a US junction/ intersection…though in the Netherlands (CROW) such an enhancement would generally be triggered ~ if there were ~10,000 vehicles per day or more. [My memory of the rule.]
the dutch video oversells several points.
the only reason a motorist would have to look over her shoulder to see a cyclist in the sidepath would be that she didn’t notice that she had just overtaken that very same cyclist.
at the intersection itself, the cyclist has to go out of direction twice, which let’s say is not such a big deal, though i notice pedestrians are also being asked to take a few extra steps, while motorists simply get to do what they were doing.
on the plus side, the stop line is set back, which should make it less comfortable for a motorist to make a right turn on red without thinking it through a little.
but the video assumes everyone is arriving during the red signal phase, which is of course not (or even all that often) the case. so it is not true that by the time the right turning motorist arrives at the point of crossing the cyclist will inevitably be “gone.” very often, there will still be a conflict, which would not exist if the cyclist simply asserted the travel lane.
in fairness, i note that a text box says each mode has a different green signal phase. if what they are saying is that the entire cycle takes twice as long as the conventional arrangement, i think they ought to put this info in the voice over, front and center.
and asserting the travel lane also “solves the problem of the left turn.”
I like how the bicycle parking lot is filed under “Odd News” in that article.
I really like the idea of the Bike Friendly sticker. We should have one here. Just the opposite of the problems on Skyline. Maybe the BTA should look at it.
I also like the Dutch intersection video. But would bike turning left go all of the way around?
The bill language for improvements to Wisconsin’s motor vehicle law looks quite good. One of the improvements provides for faster moving vehicles to cross over the solid yellow center road dividing lines to pass significantly slower moving vehicles. A link directly to the bill (pages 3 and 4 have content relating to the passing issue.)
http://legis.wisconsin.gov/2011/data/AB-265.pdf
Maybe Wisconsin should have considered having Scott Wheeler( the alleged Rock Creek Road truck driving demon) take a look at the text, just to make sure there isn’t anything in it that would prevent an aspiring legal eagle guy like him from crossing over the solid yellow center lines to pass someone on a bike riding to the right side of, but not completely off the road
Maine of all places has a 3 foot rule. You must provide the cyclist 3 feet of space to pass. Of course you get those who get their kicks out of running people off the road, but at least the intention of the law is there. And for the most part people do give you that room.
“The alternate method circled in red is now a legal right turn signal.”
Ha. That is funny.
That so called ‘alternate method’ is and has always been used pretty much everywhere else in the world. The stick-your-left-hand-upward-to-signal-a-right turn on a bike is just weird (and derivative of the physical constraints of the cab in an early automobile).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hand_signals
“Right turn
UK, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Croatia, Russia, Australia, US and Canada (see below)
Extend right arm straight out in the direction of the turn, parallel to the road.
US and Canada, (optional)
Extend your left upper-arm out to the left, parallel to the road and angle your forearm vertically upward. This follows automotive practice.”