Steve Lopez finds a battle of wills on Santa Monica Beach bike path
6:53 AM | May 4, 2009
Editor's note: Did you know that you are three times more likely, per hour of exposure, to suffer a serious injury on a multi-use path (MUP) than on a local street? Steve Lopez explains.
5 comments:
I particularly liked the comments - fence it off. Kind of like a limited-access bicycle freeway.
I think that 3X danger number is a bit bogus. On the path in question, it's almost certainly much higher. If it was as bad as some of the stories in the article, it'd dominate overall Los Angeles pedalcycle accidents.
PS - link doesn't work. Go to LA Times Blog
I'm not sure what conclusion to take from this.
1) Mixing traffic of widely different speeds results in more accidents. Therefore, bike lanes are good.
2) Even though separate paths are provided for cyclists and pedestrians, the separation is not enforced and accidents result. Therefore, bike lanes are bad.
I think the lesson to be learned is that irresponsible behavior always results in conflicts: street, bike lane, path. Responsible vehicle operation (in any environment) results in vastly reduced conflicts.
But trails aren't nearly as safe as people think they are, which is important to understand. The former NCTCOG bike/ped program manager use to commute to Arlington on his bicycle without incident. While performing trail counts on the Katy Trail, he broke his collar bone because of the unexpected actions of a runner he was overtaking on his bicycle.
Commuting on the KT this morning, I encountered several runners using the left-hand lane of the concrete trail. What's up with that?
The challenge is creating a shared notion of what constitutes responsible behavior and a culture of compliance. Perhaps the facilities don't matter so much if they exist in an education and enforcement vaccuum...
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