This week’s Monday Roundup is sponsored by The Classic — Cycle Oregon’s iconic, week-long, fully-supported bicycle ride.
Here are the best stories we came across last week…
Torontonians have spoken: A very healthy majority of Toronto residents understand that lower speeds and better bike access are a good thing for their city.
Speeding is futile: Bike riders know this all too well. When people speed in urban areas, it only wastes gas and creates more danger for everyone.
Equitable bike share: Chicago Reader has a solid report on a new PSU study that examines bike share access to low-income and communities of color.
Bikes are a global cure: The reach of cycling as a solution to urban transport issues has no boundaries — as this editorial from a news outlet in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia attests.
From Ethiopia to L.A.: “Make bike lanes safer” made it on a list of “20 ways to fix Los Angeles” in LA Weekly, a popular local newspaper.
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Homeless on the bikeway: A video of people living on a popular bike route in San Francisco has spurred debate and calls for change. We’ve had similar situations here in Portland.
Build it and they come: Another example of the simplicity of solving urban transport through cycling: A network of inexpensive temporary bike lanes in Macon, Georgia led to an 800 percent increase in bicycle users.
Vision Zero policing concerns: The issue of unfair policing as a result of increased enforcement in the name of traffic safety has bubbled up in Los Angeles. This is a major reason why Portland’s Vision Zero Plan specifically ruled out more enforcement.
Carfree tourism: Take cars out of the equation and watch the money roll in: This is the thinking behind a tourism trend in Europe to prohibit auto use on iconic roads in order to encourage cycling.
Bragdon is back: Former Metro Council President David Bragdon is making headlines for his efforts to reform New York City’s embattled subway system.
Hi-viz tips: New research shows that if you want to increase your visibility among auto users, focus your hi-viz gear in places that are in motion — like on your legs or shoes.
Car control is the new gun control: Strong Towns compares gun control with the out-of-control state of our motorized traffic safety epidemic.
— Jonathan Maus: (503) 706-8804, @jonathan_maus on Twitter and jonathan@bikeportland.org
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Two things that are politically incorrect in different directions could help Vision Zero add an enforcement factor in LA and other cities. One–police should have a quota of wealthy white people to publicly harass and physically abuse. There should be news stories about the, say, Audi-driving West Linn techie who had to crawl into the ER after the beating by police that followed their stop for texting, the destruction of their cell phone, and the disabling of their car by the same cop.
Two–hard, absolute limits on rents and on the selling price of property so that nobody ever need fear a bike lane as the first domino that ends in their getting priced out of their neighborhood as the stack falls.
Yes let’s encourage violence against wealthy white people. This will solve everything.
Even though I’ve always cycled to get around, there was a time when I was a delivery driver.
My experience at that job is that speeding isn’t faster (under some circumstances, it can even be slower) even before you get to the very real safety and legality issues. That job made me a better and more law abiding driver — not because I had to, but because it worked better.
The best way to move efficiently is to set up your routing and timing so can maintain an even pace and are neither using your brakes nor accelerator. My car has 170K miles on it, and it still has the factory brake and clutch linings. When I took it in a few months ago, I was advised that “only” half of the brake life was left.
Likewise, moving faster on a bike is more about timing lights and encounters than anything else.
why time lights when most can be *safely* idaho stopped?
The traffic I encounter is way too heavy for running lights to be an option. Plus it helps generate cyclist hate which creates other safety problems.
Anything a cyclist can safely not stop for, a car also can safely not stop for. Bottom line, model the behavior you want to see in others. Anyone who can’t do that has no right to complain.
“Plus it helps generate cyclist hate”
Do people hate cyclists more in Idaho than Oregon? If not, why not?
“Anything a cyclist can safely not stop for, a car also can safely not stop for.”
I suspect that if you had fewer miles on your car odometer you might have a different point of view.
I doubt it. I have around 180K bike miles. I ride roads and conditions few people will touch.
Maybe you ride tons, maybe you don’t. The people I’ve known that spend a lot of time riding with cars overwhelmingly abide by the rules. Expecting others to follow the laws and ignoring them yourself is practically the definition of entitled behavior.
180K on your car odometer and 180K *driving* your bike.
Yes, if you’re questioning whether what my odometer shows just happens to roughly correspond how many miles I’ve ridden. I rode over 10K miles per year for over a decade just in commuting, but I’ve put in thousands of miles per year without exception for decades — it adds up. A couple weeks ago, I swapped out out yet another BB which was absolute toast after 25K miles.
If you’re wondering why both numbers seem high, I like cycling but I get out in the outdoors a lot. Yah, I know, I’m single-handedly destroying the environment…
One thing I’d observe is that the cyclists I’ve personally known ride much easily qualify as cycling fanatics, but they don’t seem to have the issues with cars that people do here. There are a lot of reasons for that, but part of it is that they’ve figured out that you don’t have to be anti car to be pro bike nor do they expect special treatment just because of how they like to get around.
“Anything a cyclist can safely not stop for, a car also can safely not stop for.”
I can’t agree with your assessment. I find approaching an intersection on a bike I am capable of fully assessing the situation to safely not-stop if conditions permit. Doing the same in my car, physical realities and visibility make it impossible for me to do the same.
Could you elaborate on these visibility and physical reality issues?
Looking left, right, and straight ahead is not an issue in a properly equipped vehicle. Good thing too because in rural areas with no lights, you must often cross or turn onto roads where cars are going much faster than they should. Cars can stop in less space from speed than bikes and can accelerate much faster to get out of the way or up to traffic speed.
This might be splitting hairs; I happen to agree with both of you. There was a study that I read a while back that observed how people stop at stop signs on bike versus in car. What researchers noticed was that cars tend to stop slightly beyond stop lines, which they attributed to both mass/momentum and the setback of a driver’s vision from the front bumper. On the other hand, bicycles were being stopped at a setback behind stop lines, which they believe is so that bicyclists can maintain some balance and momentum and timing, and roll through the intersection more efficiently when it’s their turn instead of starting from a dead (often unclipped) stop.
I find that I ride this way, and I even had someone yell at me for not stopping at a stop sign, despite having come to a complete standstill, track-standing to wait for the driver whose turn it was, backpedaling for balance, and then jack-rabbiting through to get out of the guy’s way whose turn was after me (who was the one yelling, of course).
He probably didn’t stop behind you when it was his turn to stop, either. I frequently get followed by drivers who stop when I do at a stop sign, but then then roll through behind me without stopping when they get to the line. If they actually stopped, I wouldn’t be holding them up as we travel towards the next stop sign.
I do find situations where I have to assert that it’s my turn at 4-way stops, mostly during rush hours. I’m 6’4″ and an assertive rider who has literally put myself in front or cars when they start to go even though I’m next. It’s a shame that it comes down to that, and hypocritical in light of so much vitriol about us ‘running’ stop signs. If I actually have to come to a dead stop and unclip, it’s like a fight to get through the intersection because of the ‘screw you’ attitude with many Cali drivers here.
“…My experience at that job is that speeding isn’t faster (under some circumstances, it can even be slower) even before you get to the very real safety and legality issues. …” bannerjee
This point is particularly relevant in urban and suburban road systems having a lot of traffic control measures such as intersection signal lights and signs. Higher than posted speeds still involve a lot of starting and stopping at traffic control devices, unless persons using the road and speeding don’t comply with them either. A lot of traffic controls over large areas make for a sort of grid in which extreme variances in speed aren’t going to be of much help to shorten trip time.
In large rural areas of the state and the nation, away from the freeways, the situation can be completely different, which I’d account for why more than an average number people living out there might tend to be partial to traveling at speeds much higher than posted. With stop signs and lights far and few between, high speed can definitely shorten trip time. Even so, the risks of mishap rise with the higher speeds traveled, and so does the question of whether it’s worth it.
“Higher than posted speeds still involve a lot of starting and stopping at traffic control devices…”
Nowhere is this more true (in my observation) than here in the CA ‘burbs where I live now (though Portland area drivers seem to be taking on the same traits these days, probably not coincidentally). There’s a left turn onto an expressway that I take, where I’ve never ever seen the next intersection green (daily since 2009, either by car or bike). The speed limit was 45 and is now 35 due to construction (you’d never know it), but people hammer the gas and end up braking hard when I catch up to them around the corner at the red (I’m often passed aggressively for being a ‘slowpoke’ because I don’t accelerate hard; i.e. my MPG gauge not dropping close to zero).
Now the ironic thing is when my neighboring Californians complain about how shitty the pavement conditions are (potholed and buckled up at lights), and how the local governments are not doing enough to fix them… but Gov. Brown how dare you propose that $0.12/gal gas tax increase?!?
Humans is funny critters…
the traffic lights on my commute are timed to slow down traffic as much as possible. Of course, this is generally counter-productive, because it incites some people to go fast enough to make the next light. That means going 60 on a road that has a 35 or 40 mph speed limit. Going that fast is really irresponsible, there are deaths and hospitalizations due to these drivers. And I still catch those people fairly often. One of my dreams is that they will eventually cut this road down to single lanes in each direction and put an end to the craziness.
Where is this?
Car control article –
“And if we don’t think mass death, failing economies and the erosion of community is worth it, we need to choose something better.”
Almost sounds like a frequent commenter here on bikeportland 🙂
We need more speed bumps in neighborhood streets. Take 28th from Ankeny to Sandy, that is a 20Mph road for example, cars kept going 30-45mph, that is until they recently added speed bumps (how come there hasn’t been any coverage of this?!). Now motorist only want/can to go up to 20mph they can no longer pass me ( I usually go about 22mph on 28th). Before, I kept feeling angry, stressed and even some anxiety from these motorists. Now, I feel so much at ease riding down 28th, I have to use 28th to make it to work everyday. This has been such a great improvement for my commute. We need more of this on our bike routes!
I read that speed bumps are responsible for more deaths than lives saved. Found some info here: http://www.bromleytransport.org.uk/Ambulance_delays.htm. Wait. Can I post links in bikeportland comments?
The analysis is far too simplistic, but even so, speed bumps may be a proximate cause, but the ultimate cause is the drivers who drive so fast through residential areas that speed bumps are required. We’d all be better off without the bumps, but irresponsible drivers make them necessary.
There are different kinds of speed bumps and they have their purposes, but they’re not a panacea. If everyone had their way, they’d have speed bumps in front of their residences and there’d be no such thing as a through street. It’s one of those things that’s great on the micro scale but not so good macro.
There is of course a way cheaper alternative to speed bumps that slow cars way down. Just don’t maintain the roads so much. When they’re rough and full of holes, people won’t go nearly as fast as they would even over speed bumps.
Ooooo, you could neglect the roads and call it a safety feature. Some city somewhere is about to save so much money.
“It’s one of those things that’s great on the micro scale but not so good macro. ”
That is how cars are different from some of the alternatives.
Scale matters. I’ll take 1 bike or 10,000 bikes on my street. But cars, no thank you.
You are aware that a huge percentage of the population is physically not capable of riding a bike? And that many have no choice in this matter?
Also, the emergency need is real. I watched at least 3 different instances of emergency vehicles speeding (yes, well in excess of the speed limit) down a street I was on tonight.
Speeding is dangerous even for emergency vehicles but they are trained and have procedures. They need to be able to get through. A couple years ago, a guy had his head blown off 75 yards from where I was sleeping. I have called in cops multiple times to respond to gunfire. I once called for assistance when someone was breaking into my home while I was in bed. And there are medical emergencies as well.
Physically making all the roads slow is not only inconvenient but it introduces its own dangers which need to be considered. There are plenty of legitimate uses of motorized transit. Aside from things that lives depend on, there are other things that are relevant.
For example, I had to transport two foster dogs this evening. What’s your solution for that? You can’t take them on buses or on bikes (BTW, I do medical rehab and puppies too, so making them walk for miles is out). And the shelter is on a shoulderless stretch of Columbia few people here would ever be willing to ride under any circumstances — but I ride to do help exercise and train animals. Or perhaps the service is just feeding car culture and volunteers shouldn’t be working on things like this? The idea that all motorized use of the road is trivial is total ВS.
“a huge percentage of the population is physically not capable of riding a bike”
right.
“The idea that all motorized use of the road is trivial is total ВS.”
I’m not sure anyone here said that, but since you did, I’ll respond by saying that I think the idea that any limits on unfettered automobility is a threat to life and safety is BS.
There are a lot of limits on automobility even if more are in order, so I’m not sure where you’re getting this unfettered idea.
You said you don’t mind thousands of bikes on your street but you don’t want cars. Most people would interpret this as meaning you have a thing against cars which is a little weird given that you rely on fast motorized transit to get to work. You want automobiles gone, but you don’t appear to recognize legitimate roles they play nor care what it would do to people who depend on them.
“I’m not sure where you’re getting this unfettered idea.”
You’re the one here who likes to deal in absolutes, in B&W. I’m a pretty consistent defender of gray.
“You said you don’t mind thousands of bikes on your street but you don’t want cars.”
What I said was that scaling up the number of bikes would not bother me; but the same cannot be said for cars. Just look at SE Woodward. PBOT’s cutoff is 1,000 cars/day – everyone pretty much recognizes when you double the number of cars on a residential street everyone who lives there loses. But I can’t think of very many thoughtful people who think that doubling the number of bikes on a residential street is comparably terrible. Do you?
“Most people would interpret this as meaning you have a thing against cars”
I don’t know where you get this most people thing. Seems like maybe you suffer from a persecution complex.
“which is a little weird given that you rely on fast motorized transit to get to work.”
I do? That is news to me. Please elaborate.
“You want automobiles gone, but you don’t appear to recognize legitimate roles they play nor care what it would do to people who depend on them.”
?? I pretty consistently say two things here: (1) cars are going away whether I or you or anyone ‘wants’ them to stay, and (2) fewer cars are across the board a good thing for everyone, whether the person is stuck on I5 in rush hour, or lives on a side street or bikes, or ….. Do you disagree with either of those?
As for the rest of your statement I’m not sure what you are driving at. I have never failed to recognize the central role cheap automobility plays in our society. It is a central and undeniable fact. But recognizing it and agreeing with Dr. Pangloss that this is the best of all possible worlds are two very different things. I am quite keen for us all to find ways to move beyond automobility, beyond reflexive reliance on the mode that has saddled us all with a mile-long list of externalities.
Too many points in your post to address.
But I’ll speak to one that’s relevant, namely the one of scale. No, cars don’t scale so well going through a neighborhood. Just so happens, I used to live on 32nd off Woodward and know it well. I go back there often for multiple reasons.
That is a logical outcome of trying to shunt or block traffic. Everyone there was screaming bloody murder about the diverters that pushed more traffic up these streets. What exactly did people expect? People will adjust.
BTW, Woodward isn’t that bad. It was impacted negatively, but there are a lot of streets that do worse. For example, the traffic on my street has an average flow of just under 7,500 cars per day and we’re residential.
It’s not as bad as it sounds, though I’d be happy to have it sleepier. The reality is that most streets don’t have that much traffic on them at any time and even the busy streets are only busy during peak hours.
Car use may eventually decline. But don’t count on that happening soon. There’s simply no practical alternative for most people and it will take a very long time to change that.
“Car use may eventually decline. But don’t count on that happening soon. There’s simply no practical alternative for most people and it will take a very long time to change that.”
The ready availability of practical alternatives to a car is only a relevant criterion if the deciding factor is our preferences—what we want, will settle for. But looking ahead, we’re entering a period when we* are no longer in charge, no longer call the shots, can’t guarantee that we’ll get our first choice in everything. Constraints are already looming large.
“cars don’t scale so well going through a neighborhood[…]People will adjust.”
Not sure why you find that so reassuring. I don’t see cars as something we have to adjust to; I see them as something to manage, problematize, contain.
*US Americans who habitually and reflexively drive
Constraints are looming large and changes are inevitable. Even if we could magically replace the world’s infrastructure and rid ourselves of all cars, we would still consume natural resources at a far greater rate than the earth can replenish them.
But changes happen slowly and trying to bring the issue to a head simply leads to marginalization. Better infrastructure will not erase distances or change weather that keeps people off their bikes (or more likely some other form of getting around) unless absolutely forced to.
That’s just how things are. Portland may do well compared to many cities, but it still has all but totally destroyed the environment. That’s happens when you move a couple million people into an area that was previously nature. These people depend on a huge network to get stuff quickly to them on forms of transport that rapidly go by other peoples’ homes — this many people simply can’t produce and transport what they need within human powered range.
“changes happen slowly”
Hm. Care to elaborate on why you think that is an iron law?
Sometimes change happens very quickly.
Especially when we have lost control of the situation.
“this many people simply can’t produce and transport what they need within human powered range”
One of these days it is not going to matter what our needs are…. On May 21, 2011, the citizens of Joplin, Missouri would by and large have probably agreed with you that living without their schools and hospitals was inconceivable, but the next day it all blew away. Sometimes these things are simply out of our control, and everything we’ve been doing is hastening this reckoning.
Because it takes resources and time to do things. For example, if you want rail to be more efficient, all we need is to widen the gauge. All that requires is tearing up all the tracks, putting down new ones, and changing all the trains.
What you want requires far, far more extensive resources and changes.
The Joplin example is weird. Saying people adjusted misses the whole point as the tornado destroyed many lives and brought on a lot of suffering. Just so happens my hometown is in the Guinness Book of World Records for most people who died in a single tornado. That was many years ago and the town never fully recovered.
People adjust to what they must the best they can. Forcing sudden radical adjustments introduces severe side effects and is not a good thing.
“What you want requires far, far more extensive resources and changes.”
This has never been about what ‘I want.’
“The Joplin example is weird….the town never fully recovered.
…People adjust to what they must the best they can.”
That is my point. The whole thing about constraints is that you don’t get to choose when and how or even whether.
“Forcing sudden radical adjustments introduces severe side effects and is not a good thing.”
You have it backwards. The longer we refuse to face this music, the more painful the ‘correction’ is going to be.
You seem to view the whole system as going to collapse at once — sort of like the financial tricks that have and will continue to wreak havoc. This is different for the simple reason that what makes the system what it is is the very physical system and processes that make it work — unless we manage to get ourselves into a massive war in which case all bets are off.
As fossil fuels and other natural resources are depleted, they simply become too rare and expensive to use the way they have been used — much as what has already happened with many resources already and practically all the wildlife. People move towards alternatives that are clearly far better, but also because the old ways are simply impossible.
And there is also the dynamic that people can be counted on to do all things late. That’s why people buy things that don’t increase their productive capacity on credit which drives their real costs way up. People are programmed to be lazy, and you can’t change human nature. Social experiments to the contrary have been spectacularly unsuccessful.
“You seem to view the whole system as going to collapse at once”
What I am saying is that when the ready availability of cheap fossil fuels winds down we won’t be able to do any of the things we have grown accustomed to; our advanced technological societies will grind to a halt. Pretending this does not concern us, that we’ll just find some way to continue doing what we’ve been doing is worse than foolish.
“As fossil fuels and other natural resources are depleted, they simply become too rare and expensive to use the way they have been used — much as what has already happened with many resources already and practically all the wildlife. People move towards alternatives that are clearly far better, but also because the old ways are simply impossible.”
A familiar but completely wishful and implausible fantasy. Fossil fuels are far more integral to our economies than other materials we’ve run out of, and the idea that substitutes are lying about ready for us to discover or develop is fanciful and dangerous.The concept of energy density should disabuse anyone of this notion.
Better alternatives to wildlife? Do tell.
It is certain that as cheap fossil fuels become unavailable, we won’t be able to do what we’re accustomed to. I doubt this will make everything grind to a halt because there are alternatives now and there will be others. What those alternatives actually allow people to do is another question, but it won’t be nothing.
Fossil fuels and especially oil is integral to the world economy now, but that won’t last forever. There will be a large scale change no matter what people want, the only question is how long it will take and where it will lead. But it won’t be the end of the world.
Exploiting wildlife has largely been replaced by agribusiness. Not a good trade, but if the habitat is taken away and practically everything killed where there is habitat, there is much less biodiversity and life in general. One reason I like to go to places that are so difficult to access is that the amount of life there is so much greater. If too many people did the same thing and that disrupted the balance too much, I would be the first to support restrictions on allowing people to go to these places.
“I doubt this will make everything grind to a halt because there are alternatives now and there will be others”
Not really. It is of course true that we have solar power and electric cars, but that tells us nothing about the scalability of, for instance, powering our transportation system without fossil fuels. Both solar panels and electric cars are manufactured using fossil fuels directly and indirectly all the way up the product life cycle. To extricate ourselves from this is tempting but not readily possible. Smart folks have tried to model what it would take, and there are hard limits both materially and temporally that cannot be overcome, primarily due to the overall decline in energy density in our economic systems. A few of us can have PV panels and a few can drive EVs but to think that we can maintain our current high throughput lifestyles for 7 billion people without fossil fuels is as I said above a dangerous fantasy.
A “huge” percentage? You know that isn’t true, don’t you? You can’t just make things up and hope people will believe you in order to make a point.
rough, pot holey roads on a bike is worse than in a car, no thanks
Justin,
your most recent ‘citation’ is from 2004.
Have you really researched the topic?
You link looks like a pro-motorist site disguised as pro-life-safety.
Speed bumps slow down heavy vehicles up to 11 seconds each, but cushions only slow them about 2 seconds for each location. The response to an event is the most critical, and least affected by traffic calming. Portland studies of ambulances and speed bumps found a 1-5 second delay – delay depends on your target speed, a function of posted.
don’t believe everything you read…
we have fewer EMS and fire stations due to the now faster vehicles reaching farther… if the roads are now the problem then that can be solved by more frequent life-services stations…
kind of like the problem with parents driving kids to school because we closed all the nearby schools… we need more schools…
Ironically, I read that PBOT is considering a classification change that would remove the speed bumps from SE 20th & 21st between Hawthorne and Powell. How lame is that?
Change, not remove.
I didn’t see anything on the TSP that says the speed cushions have to work as well. If they did, why not use them everywhere and make all our streets “fire friendly”? Why does the TSP even call out what would be a like for like trade?
Oh, and on 20th, they don’t have to be replaced at all if the Fire Marshall objects. He has sole discretion.
“…Take 28th from Ankeny to Sandy, that is a 20Mph road for example, cars kept going 30-45mph, that is until they recently added speed bumps (how come there hasn’t been any coverage of this?!). Now motorist only want/can to go up to 20mph they can no longer pass me …” kittens
Do you have some idea of what the daily vehicle count for this section of 28th is? And something about the configuration; how many lanes, how wide the street is? Speed bumps won’t likely work or be practical for certain streets that have a problem with people speeding. They’re a hassle to build right, a hassle to maintain when paving time comes around, and even the best designed…the bi-sected type…might slow emergency response at times to a degree that might be critical.
Narrowing streets effectively to a single bi-directional lane can work, but probably has very limited use. It can work well though. I’ve see it work in a neighborhood near to where I live.
it’s a long section. Historically posted for 25 and 30 mph, not 20 mph.
A collector, and emergency response (crosses I-84), the volumes are about 8,000 vehicles per day.
Did you see the video of homeless folks set up at the SE 28 Av. Entrance to the Springwater Trail? The video posted to KGW’s Facebook page included shots of two large RVs that were driven directly onto the SWT. Ch. 8 said the RVs were owned by members of the homeless camp next to the SWT in that area. That, of course, is a blatant violation of the no motor vehicles rule. No apparent sign of police enforcement in the area. Took place last week.
We seem to have accepted the fact that vagrants will pull all the rest of us down with them.
I especially like the article about promoting tourism by prohibiting auto use on iconic roads. Just imagine no cars ( rv, campers, trucks etc) on hwy 101 from the the Northern to Southern Borders of Oregon for the entire month of August. People would come from all over the world, it would be the greatest tourism event ever.
This is absolutely brilliant.
And all those towns that are only accessible from 101 would benefit the most. No more noise, and insanity! I’m sure it would be no big deal at all for them to bike in all the food and supplies they needed, and who needs much in terms of services anyway? What could possibly go wrong with this plan?
I don’t care for tourism much, but your pinched view of the world without automobiles I care for even less. Why not approach this with a clear-eyed view of the costs of automobility to everyone, explore ways to shift the balance away from the arrangements that kill people, and have no future, and toward those that do neither?
I’m sure all the people who live along 101 would totally agree with your vision. I’m sure they’d agree they don’t need to live or vacation there, even if it’s the only place they’ve ever lived.
The only question is why even maintain highway 101? It gets washed out and hit by landslides constantly. Roads are one of the biggest sources of erosion, so why wreck so much nature for the amusement of a handful of cyclists, hardly any of whom live there.
FWIW, it would be awesome for me personally. I’ve found that nothing gets rid of the riffraff like making them carry everything they need to live for many miles over difficult terrain or seas.
We’ve been hearing that cars have no future for a long time. They are not going away.
How about you offer up an argument for why you think cars are here to stay rather than just asserting it?
Other people DO care for tourism, though.
Do you not travel anywhere?
“all those towns that are only accessible from 101”
I did a quick look and couldn’t find any… they either have ocean access, a river to the ocean, or another road…
do you think any of these cities you’re thinking of existing before the motor vehicle came to town? how’d they transport goods before that? is that method no longer available?
your sarcasm wasn’t well thought out…
So your solution to all the coastal towns is to bring in all their needs via boat (that could make visiting the doc pretty tricky)? Are you aware of what the ocean and rivers are like in some of these places? BTW, there are a lot of places that connect inland from 101 that are not accessible from the east. Don’t forget that a lot of the people don’t actually live in the towns.
It’s dеlusiоnal to even suggest these places could survive without access to roads. Of course some places existed before roads. Among other things, there was a railroad and ships were used. BTW, there are reasons why even those places still need roads.
“…Just imagine no cars ( rv, campers, trucks etc) on hwy 101 from the the Northern to Southern Borders of Oregon for the entire month of August. …” bikeninja
Nice thought from a recreational point of view…but from an economic point of view, this sounds like disaster for coastal towns. For an entire month? I’d say it’s a good guess that the state has some figures about how much income, locally and beyond, 101 represents. How about something more realistic: a modest length section of 101, something vehicle traffic might be able to divert around, and open only to non-motorized travel, with the exception of e-bikes, wheelchairs, etc, for a day, maybe two?
Given that a few posh enclaves aside, the economy along the coast is generally depressed, closing off a section would finish off a lot of people and businesses unless done carefully.
I find that he would support such a measure ironic because his views on tourism are generally consistent. But something like this would have the purpose of attracting more tourists. Cyclotourists need more rather than less support which increases rather than decreases auto dependence.
There are a number of roads near the coast that are very rideable and low traffic. I personally think 101 is one of the most overrated roads for cycling. Aside from the traffic issues, the scenery isn’t that great except along a few short points. Parts are hilly, it’s frequently windy, and there’s a lot of rain as well. Even without the cars, it’s not a good road for casual cyclists.
I suspect the businesses along that stretch would MUCH prefer the kind of money people in big cushy SUV’s, etc like to spend on vacation compared to the money cyclists typically spend. Those businesses get a short window in the summer to make enough money to scrape by the rest of the year.
It shows the degree to which Karz have taken over the brains of most of us in western civilization that the mere suggestion of freeing a tiny, very special, swath of the Earth from the autocratic grip of the automobile for one twelve of the year is met with disbelief and derision. Is there much hope for us if we can’t do the right thing for future of the planet and the sake of our children because there will be a few bucks less in the till of a quickee mart or fry shack during one month of the summer. Is being able to haul that Jumbo Pack of toilet paper back to the beach house really worth burning the last drops of ancient sunlight. Happy motoring will come to and end in the very near future and we better be experimenting with other ways to live now, or be left without options when mother nature sends our check back marked “insufficient funds”.
oo. looks like I can! good to know. I might just start including links to my wedding photos every now and then. they’re adorable.
this was meant as a followup to my above comment/question 🙂
Conspicuously absent from the “Build it and they come” article is any indication of what the raw numbers are.
Makes me suspect the total numbers are still very low — particularly since our own bike traffic is very modest on much better infrastructure than they have. I’ll go out on a limb and guess that increase came with no detectable corresponding decrease in car traffic.
Some areas are bike hostile to the point of being inaccessible to all but a handful of dedicated wасkоs. It truly wouldn’t take much to make a place like that jump up with such an astounding percent.
This is a city with more land than Portland and ~1/5th as many people? 8 miles of lanes in a network — it had to be an “all abike who’s goin’ abike” effect, with some who try just for the novelty, like a Better Block event. It might be like if we chalked the outer lanes on Barbur, Powell, etc?
Regarding traffic law enforcement fears: One of the concerns mentioned by the one person voicing them in the article was an impact on immigrants. I lived in the Sacramento Valley before and after Reagan’s amnesty program for undocumented immigrants. Prior to the amnesty, when a motorist passed you safely and was generally behaving in an exemplary fashion, the vehicle was invariably driven by an Hispanic male. Years after the amnesty, when a motorist passed a cyclist in a particularly dangerous fashion, it was much more likely to have an Hispanic male driver than not. From this, I think a wee bit of fear of an encounter with a cop can be a good thing.
Of course, we shouldn’t deprive ourselves of nice things simply because we are too lazy to weed out bad cops, implement widespread automated enforcement (without the 10 mph allowance) and base fines on income (day fines). It’s silly to continue to not use the best tool in our box to save lives and encourage active transportation, imo. If the tool needs some refinement, let’s get on with it instead of maintaining our deadly status quo.
Automated enforcement would really help sort out the whole racism issue.
Humans still view the pictures to decide who to cite, but it could be double checked.
Thank you for the article on temporary bike lanes in Macon Georgia. Here in the Deep South, the struggle to get a well-connected bike network never ends, and it’s nice to see such a backwater conservative city like Macon “get it”. Now we can cite it with our own city officials here in Greensboro NC – if they can do it in Macon, we can do it here!
A few nit picks on the “Car control is the new gun control…” article:
These notes are based on data shown on page 87 of this CDC report:
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/data/nvsr/nvsr65/nvsr65_04.pdf
1) Out of the 300,000,000+ firearms in the USA, in 2014 there were 461 accidental firearm deaths in the US; in other words, accidents with firearms are a non-issue for all practical purposes, although obviously each accidental death is a tragedy for those involved. Most people know guns are dangerous, so they try to be careful with them; thus there are few fatal accidents.
2) There were 21,386 suicides with firearms in the USA. There were 42,826 total suicides, so firearms were involved in 50% of known suicides. The USA, with FAR more guns per capita than any other nation is number 48 in number of suicides per 100,000 people. ALL nations having higher rates of suicides have FAR lower rates of gun ownership:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_suicide_rate
3) There were 11,008 homicides with firearms out of 15,872 total homicides. No doubt, most of those 11K were gang-related; we hear about them constantly.
4) Then, there was this statement in the article: “There are far fewer heated debates over whether or not a hunter should wear an orange safety vest than over whether or not she should have access to an assault rifle designed for wartime.” Fact is, very few American own “assault rifles designed for wartime”. “Assault rifles” used in wartime have the option of being fully automatic. You cannot buy such a rifle without a special license and the guns cost A PILE of money and come with many restrictions. Here’s a Q & A on what it takes to buy an automatic firearm.
http://www.defensivecarry.com/forum/ffl-dealer-discussion/131808-class-3-license.html
5) The CDC lists 177 suicides out of 33,736 motor vehicle deaths. I’d suspect the actual number of suicides by motor vehicle was considerably greater than 177. It’s interesting that there were 11,407 suicides by suffocation – a greater number than by firearm. I’d assume those included hanging, carbon monoxide, and other gases such as nitrogen, helium, etc.
Bottom line: if it weren’t for intentional misuse of firearms, there would be little concern about them.
you make a great case for regulating cars like guns…
I can’t imagine only 461 accidental motor vehicle deaths per year…
Interesting NRA talking points. You must’ve missed the well-hidden secret (/s) in the article that it had nothing to do with advocating gun control. Hence, setting up this account to refute the article may have been a waste of your employer’s time.
Another article describing the strict requirements to own a military assault rifle, mentioned in the article on “Car control is the new gun control”. She said it like it was easy to buy one. One of the more onerous things about owning a full-auto gun is that the BATF can show up, unannounced, and make you show that you are in control of the firearm – if you can’t, then you’re in trouble. Last sentence in item 9 of link below.
It’s not an easy process:
https://www.quora.com/Is-it-legal-for-a-normal-citizen-to-buy-a-military-grade-fully-automatic-assault-rifle-in-the-US
Semi-auto is good enough for killing dozens of children: see Newtown, CT. Full-auto weapons represent a tiny fraction of gun deaths, so your entire comment is irrelevant.
Actually your statement is false. “Dozens” means at least 2 dozen, or 24. 20 children were reportedly killed in that incident – less than “dozens”. What if some of the adults in the school had been carrying a firearm? Could they have prevented some of the deaths? It’s possible. If they had merely fired their firearms down at the floor in the hallway outside the classroom with the perp, he may have directed attention to that instead of to the people in the room with him. Worth a try I think in such a desperate situation.
My comment is factual and is a response to the article mentioned in the BP article where the author insinuates that it’s easy to obtain an “assault rifle designed for wartime”, thus, it is relevant. When false claims are made, it is relevant to refute those claims.
I am always leery whenever I see a car described as a weapon. It isn’t. Anything can be used AS weapon, even if it was not designed as such.
You’re welcome to be leery all you want. But statistics can still be brought to bear on this matter –
“Anything can be used AS weapon”
Curious to me how few people we hear about who were dispatched with broccoli, swizzle sticks, shoes, or potatoes.
9,
Your wish is my command. Here are the FBI stats for 2014. Nearly 3 times as many homicides using personal devices (660) (hands, fists, feet) as there were using rifles (248):
https://www.quandl.com/data/FBI/WEAPONS11-US-Murders-by-Weapon-Type
🙂
I see 8,124 murders/yr by firearms in 2015 in your linked histogram, and 0 by broccoli.
Broccoli probably kills a few via choking, but that would not be homicide. 🙂
The “weapon” phraseology is hyperbolic and unproductive unless the objective is to encourage people to be afraid of cars and discourage current and would-be cyclists.
But 9W may be onto something — relabeling food as a weaponand focusing on the death wrought upon the population by eating too much is a certain cure for the obesity epidemic which dwarfs the death toll brought about by autos and guns combined …. 😉
So in your world it’s fine to let people get away with killing others with a thing, as long as that thing wasn’t designed to be a weapon.
OK.
People who try to kill other people with whatever means should be convicted of attempting murder.
you just slipped in intent that was not there before.
the writer obviously meant assault weapon and not assault rifle… common media mistake that people love to argue over…
due to all the press that mass shootings have got the two terms have become interchangeable in casual conversation…
Define “assault weapon” so we will know what she was talking about.