Way to go Paige Sultzbach and those who helped her get there
Sometimes when I look around at my country, I get pretty depressed. Hard-fought but long-ago supposedly won victories like, oh, you know, the right for women to have a say in what they do with their own bodies or for universities to be able to put a value on a diverse student population, suddenly look like they are being reversed. Candidates for the presidency fall over each other to say the worst things possible about public funding for education. So it’s nice to see stories like this one to remind me that the reason the rhetoric and vitriol is so high right now is because one side is losing. It may not always look like it, but the jingoist, fear-based, gay-bashing, ignorance-worshipping bigotry-backed dipshit agenda really is sliding away.
It’s sliding away and people like Paige Sultzbach are helping it do so — along with, just as importantly, all the people out there who are permitting her to do so. So cheers to them and you too, dear reader, for pressing on with them.
– Erik Ryberg
I Heart My Bikey Neighborhood
I heard a bit of a ruckus outside yesterday evening and wandered out to see what it was. Turns out the local neighborhood kids were teaching a young friend of theirs how to ride a bike. She had the biggest smile on her face as she rode up and down the street, veering calamitously back and forth on a brand-new pink bike with pretty handlebar fringe. Soon I noticed her parents were a ways up the street, showing pride and shouting encouragement. So naturally I joined in.
It made me think back to two years ago (almost exactly) when I bought this house. I don’t know why I even looked at it — it was not in an area I was really considering — but when I got here there were kids playing in the street and riding their bikes. It’s a predominantly Latino and African-American neighborhood and a lot goes on in the street around here — more so than I typically see in predominantly Anglo neighborhoods. I remember sitting out front just as I did last night, watching the local kids ride up and down the street cheering each other on, and thinking, well, I could really enjoy living here.
And I do.
Watching kids riding bicycles with joy and gusto is one of the few things that gives me hope any more.
– Erik Ryberg
GM hires hipster representative to reverse precipitous decline in car love among nation’s youth
From the Maybe There Is Hope After All department comes this from an article in today’s New York Times:
In 2008, 46.3 percent of potential drivers 19 years old and younger had drivers’ licenses, compared with 64.4 percent in 1998, according to the Federal Highway Administration, and drivers ages 21 to 30 drove 12 percent fewer miles in 2009 than they did in 1995.
Forty-six percent of drivers aged 18 to 24 said they would choose Internet access over owning a car, according to the research firm Gartner.
Of course, the article is really about some hipster MTV sellout cashing in his soul by teaching GM how to market cars to millennials, but the background data is still promising.
Here’s hoping the new marketing ploy proves a total disaster and the excessive throw-pillows and faux-graffiti strewn walls in the new showrooms will not fool young car-curious consumers into thinking driving is better than the Internet.
–EBR
A leader who was worth something
The most amazing (and foreign) thing to me about the above video is when the Netherlands’s Prime Minister goes on TV and tells the country that they are going to have to change the way they’ve been doing things and quit driving so much, but that it can be done without excessive pain. I wish our leaders had such frank courage and would tell us the truth in the face of our challenges. But their solutions always seem to avoid at a minimum denial, and more likely warmongering, xenophobia, and blame. (Cf. any of the GOP debates this year.)
–EBR
Malmö, Sweden just made my short list of future vacation spots
And it’s a pretty short list.
Malmö is a city of 300,000 just a short hop from Copenhagen but a city well worth visiting in its own right. Full of history, sports, museums, architecture and boasting its own token castle as well as a thriving theater scene, Malmö also hosts a booming bicycling culture that will give cities like Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Stockholm a fierce bike ride for their money.
Malmö already has 255 miles (410 kilometers) of bicycle paths, outpacing Copenhagen’s network by a few miles. Bicycling has accelerated the past several years to the point at which 40 percent of all work related activities and 30 percent of all transports occurs via bicycles. Sensor systems at key intersections flip traffic signals to green if automobile traffic is light and a bicyclist approaches.
Now Sweden’s transportation authority has approved a four line bicycle superhighway (or a bicycle-bahn?) between Malmö and Lund, a nearby university town. The 10.5 mile link would be for the most part adjacent to rail tracks, feature exits but no intersections and offer wind protection from hedges. Bicycle service stations would also be included on this link. The proposed highway would also have links to bicycle and pedestrian paths to other towns in this southern tip of Sweden.
Article here.
–EBR
Road rager tries to fight cyclist, points gun at him, and TPD declines to investigate
Here we go again. Over the past three or four years I have noticed an improvement in how the Tucson Police Department handles cycling incidents. It has been some years since I have filed a police complaint, which used to be a common need. There was a time when I was constantly confronting situations where cyclists were cited with some kind of made-up infraction after getting in a collision with a motorist, even when the motorist was demonstrably at fault.
But after Sgt. Tim Beam got moved out of traffic investigations, things improved a lot, and most of my clients have reported fair treatment from TPD officers. It’s also been a little while since I had a cyclist charged with, say, failure to yield after being hit by a driver who ran a stop sign. That sort of thing used to happen a lot.
But in the last few weeks I’ve gotten several reports that have me worried. I’ve been hearing about cyclists being charged with failure to control speed after getting right hooked or hit in intersections where they had the right-of-way. And now this: a cyclist who took the lane in a construction zone was yelled at, honked at, and then challenged to a fight by a motorist who sped ahead of him and pulled over. The motorist also pointed a semi-automatic weapon at him.
The cyclist got the license plate and a good look at his assailant, but the police refused even to visit the address to which the vehicle is registered. The advice given by TPD was simply that the cyclist should find another route to commute to work.
What am I missing? They have the license plate, they have a victim who can identify his assailant — why not pay the registered owner of the vehicle a visit? Is it because the victim is a cyclist, and TPD is resurrecting its former institutional disdain for people who commute by bike?
–Erik Ryberg
Cargo bikes like you have never seen before
It’s worth checking out Alain Delormes’s photos of Chinese cargo bikes and the people riding them.
A reader just pointed out that the original site (Huffington Post) updated their site to clarify the photos are digitally altered. It did look a little over the top . . . .
–EBR
Yeah pretty much: The Economist on the source of cycling dangers in the U.S.
This article from The Economist, just sent to me by A.C., pretty much just nails it about the dangers of cycling in America.
Calm down
With a very few exceptions, America is no place for cyclistsSep 3rd 2011 | SEATTLE | from the print edition
DYING while cycling is three to five times more likely in America than in Denmark, Germany or the Netherlands. To understand why, consider the death of Michael Wang. He was pedalling home from work in Seattle on a sunny weekday afternoon in late July when, witnesses say, a brown SUV made a left turn, crunched into Wang and sped away.
The road where the 44-year-old father of two was hit is the busiest cycling corridor in Seattle, and it has clearly marked bicycle lanes. But the lanes are protected from motor vehicles by a line of white paint—a largely metaphorical barrier that many drivers ignore and police do not vigorously enforce. A few feet from the cycling lane traffic moves at speeds of between 30 miles per hour, the speed limit for arterials in Seattle, and 40 miles per hour, the speed at which many cars actually travel. This kind of speed kills. A pedestrian hit by a car moving at 30mph has a 45% chance of dying; at 40mph, the chance of death is 85%, according to Britain’s Department of Transport.
Had Mr Wang been commuting on a busy bike route in Amsterdam, Copenhagen or Berlin, his unprotected exposure to instruments of death—namely, any vehicle moving at 20mph or more—would be nearly nil. These cities have knitted together networks for everyday travel by bike. To start with, motor vehicles allowed near cyclists are subject to “traffic calming”. They must slow down to about 19mph, a speed that, in case of collision, kills less than 5%. Police strictly enforce these speed limits with hefty fines. Repeat offenders lose their licences.
Calmer traffic is just the beginning. In much of northern Europe, cyclists commute on lanes that are protected from cars by concrete buffers, rows of trees or parked cars. At busy crossroads, bicycle-activated traffic lights let cyclists cross first. Traffic laws discriminate in favour of people on bikes. A few American cities have taken European-style steps to make streets safer for cycling, most notably Portland, Oregon, which has used most of the above ideas. The result: more bikes and fewer deaths. Nearly 6% of commuters bike to work in Portland, the highest proportion in America. But in five out of the past ten years there have been no cycling deaths there. In the nearby Seattle area, where cycling is popular but traffic calming is not, three cyclists, have been killed in the past few weeks.
–EBR
Turns out it’s completely legal to right-hook a bicyclist in Flagstaff
Flagstaff cyclists ought to work on fixing this. Turns out in Flagstaff, bicyclists must yield right-of-way to right-turning motorists, even when in a bike lane/route.
Here’s the code:
“Section 9-05-001-0015 Right of Way At Intersection: Upon approaching an intersection, any person riding or operating bicycles in a bicycle lane shall yield the right of way to all vehicles within or approaching such intersection; except, that all vehicles which must stop or yield before entering an intersection because of a stop or yield sign and all vehicles making a left-hand turn at an intersection shall not proceed into such intersection nor make such a turn without first yielding the right of way to all bicycles within or approaching such intersection, and shall proceed only when it is safe to do so.”
Translation: if you are in a car you don’t need to be concerned about any cyclists to the right of you when making a turn — it’s their job to avoid you. And if you are on your bicycle and run down by a car in this fashion, don’t expect to collect from the driver’s insurance company, because you were “per se” negligent under the law.
My favorite part about this is that bicyclists even have to yield to cars that are behind them, approaching the intersection but overtaking them.
It’s pretty much not possible for a cyclist to cross an intersection in Flagstaff without putting herself at risk, because she would need to know the intentions of the drivers that may overtake her (and run her over) on the way through the intersection.
–Erik Ryberg
I just love this photo
It’s from a NY Times article on Honduras that has nothing to do with bicycles. But what a mysterious, powerful photo. And a girl on a bike in a Central American country, that’s forward progress at least.
EBR