A clear and present preference.

From Wayne Pein.

Knowledge is best protection for bicyclist

A Jan. 5 article (in the St. Louis Beacon) by Ryan Schuessler, “Great Rivers Greenway works to make the area bicycle friendly” described efforts by both Great Rivers Greenway and Trailnet to expand existing bike lane striping or similar road markings in the St. Louis area. The only criticism mentioned was that the pace of such efforts was too slow.

As a transportational cyclist for more than 40 years, the last 14 as a certified bicycling instructor, I have a very different view. Years ago, I concluded that what cyclists lack most are not bike lanes but knowing how to safely use the existing road system.

Read more...

St. Louis Beacon - Knowledge is best protection for bicyclist

"Bike Friendly": Cowering or Empowering?

The Desegregated Cyclist: Invictus!:   As we look at the map of the US as it stands at the beginning of 2012, we can see that, over the last century, cyclists...

Portland State Study Shows Cyclists’ Bad Behavior - BikeRadar

"The findings showed that those on bikes ignored stop signs far more than those in cars, with 56 percent of cyclists ignoring stop signals or traffic lights compared with just seven percent of motorists."

Portland State Study Shows Cyclists’ Bad Behavior - BikeRadar

The basic problem illustrated... without tragedy (this time).

Every intersection, every driveway, every curb-cut poses this too high of a probability event as a designed-in risk. Ask your elected official how this design flaw can be prevented.

When someone dies, expect your favorite elected official to say something like, "Nobody on City staff told me this could happen!"

There are times when riding on the shoulder can indeed be a life-saver.

Not always to the swift from John Allen on Vimeo.

Build it and they will come.

Accepted truism: Building bicycle infrastructure creates bicycle riders. It's a complicated issue that isn't easily dis-proven... but neither has it been easily proven.

In most cases, the bicyclists came first, with the infrastructure following as a traffic control device to keep cyclists out of the way of 'real' traffic. Whether one chases the other, or they chase each other circularly, hasn't been clearly shown. Infrastructure investment hasn't been shown to increase the bike mode-share in Austin, or in Corvallis, Oregon. It's debatable if infrastructure development has done it in Portland, too. All three cities (all three heavily university-influenced towns with centralized bicycle activity around the campus sites) experienced a surge in bicycle activity prior to major infrastructure construction, with a mode-share gain considerably lower than predicted after the investment.

What has been clearly shown is a channelization effect, where cyclists who otherwise used streets of their own choosing (or sidewalks) use the facilities because they feel they A) feel safer using them, B) think they should use them, C) get harassed by motorists for not using them. Before and after bike-counts of streets that get bike lanes show a significant increase, but screening bike-counts that take in parallel streets don't show an overall increase.

But, for fun, let's apply the accepted logic that "build it and they will come" to other facility types. Say for example, prisons. The more we build, the more they fill up with criminals. So if we didn't build prisons, we would obviously have fewer criminals, and therefore less crime.

Does that make sense to you?

This is a mobility lesson.

Traffic in Frenetic HCMC, Vietnam from Rob Whitworth on Vimeo.


Gee. What if we'd won?