An advocacy organization, especially one that doesn’t cater to the spandex-wearing, fast-riding crowd, could work wonders.

As far as the “feels safer” argument, the perception of safety is often more important that the actual safety.

Take SUVs for example, many people buy them because they are big and surrounded my metal, so they must be safer. In reality, passenger cars are much safer when you are in an accident.

That being said about perception versus reality, I’ve quoted a study Tom did about crashes on 3rd Street versus Broadway.

If you take yourself outside the university area in Tucson, you’ll find that options are limited to the main roads. Imagine you live on the east side near 5th Street and Craycroft. If you wanted to ride Crossroads Festival at Grant/Swan to catch a movie, get grocercies, have coffee, you could drive or you could ride there. If you wanted to ride you could take the main roads, riding up Craycroft or Rosemont and Grant to get there. You could also take the residential routes like Sahuara, Seneca or Arcadia but since these bike routes don’t have signals to help you cross the road it can be quite difficult to do so. Put these diffulties together and not very many people bike to Crossroads Festival or very much at all on that part of town. Folks need options over there and bike boulevards are part of the solution to auto-dependency for some trips. So are the urban greenways that Parks and Rec is planning along the secondary wash system.
Perhaps the leadership of Tucson is distracted by other issues. Part of the problem lies in how Tucsonans advocate or don’t advocate for change. Tucson is probably the only community rated Silver or higher by the League of American Bicyclists that does not have an active bike advocacy organization. How can Tucson become a more livable community where the bike is seen as a valid mobility tool instead of just as a recreational tool, if no one is working on building consensus on what that vision is? We have some super active indivuals in this community who serve on numerous boards and committees, and who volunteer their time encouraging folks to ride, or teach folks how to be more confident riders. But we don’t have a group who has the time to work the many hours needed to define or implement such a vision for better bicycling in Tucson. This is a real weak spot that the League of American Bicyclists have pointed out. Until a group mobilizes and defines their vision, the leadership of this community will continue to focus on other issues.

Portland’s bike boulevards are well used and offer a low-stress way to bike from virtually any neighborhood to schools, businesses, transit centers, the downtown, etc. They seem to be a core facility in getting Portland’s bike use up to 6% but all the other pieces are equally as important. I can’t imagine the bike boulevards working as well if their bridges linking the downtown didn’t have bike paths on them and vice versa.

Portland’s recipe for bike boulevards seems pretty simple. Take the most direct residential street (about every 1/4 mile to half mile apart), add wayfinding signs to tell you when to turn, add shared-lane pavement markings, add traffic calming if speeds are higher than 25mph, turn stop signs to the side streets and provide help at key crossings. Portland has a couple bike signals but for the most part bikes either take advantage of the pedestrian signal at what are called ‘half-signals’ or there is some sort of median device to calm traffic/give bikes a refuge to wait in. I can see why they haven’t invested in many bike signals so far. The main roads that the bike boulevards have to cross are much smaller than Tucson’s. Portland’s main roads are typically 2 or 3 lanes to cross, while Tucson typically has 5 or 6 lanes, or more in some circumstances. An engineer I met here called Tucson the home of the mega-arterial roads.

More impressive than any facility in Portland is their encouragement programs. From the City’s Smart Trips program to the 5 Ciclovia’s this summer held in different neighborhoods, to Pedalpoloza in June to all the random bike stuff that the community is doing. All these programs, events, fun bike things seem to have created a super bike awareness here even among the folks who never get out onto bikes.

I think the debate over bike boulevards is largely over. The BAC, numerous neighborhoods, private citizens, health/wellness groups, etc are in support of this sort of infrasture. If you take yourself outside of the immediate vicinity of the university you will your options for riding a bike to be severly limited to basically riding on major roads. find our residential bikeway network to be severly lacking

From talking to The thinI have about 500 photos of bike facilities in Vancouver BC and Portland OR to sort through.

because there is less traffic on them, it is much easier for a car to go around you (at the slower speed) and give you a wide berth because they don’t also have to contend with oncoming traffic.

The drivers are much better trained too.

I’ll post my observations, photos and video on Monday, but their bike boulevards worked really well. They get you places easily and they feel much safer. Many of the crossings at major intersections did not have signals, though.

The thing is, the drivers were pretty amazing. They were trained to look for bikes and would stop to let you cross the intersection. Even a bus driver stopped to let us pass.

I doubt that would happen here in Tucson.