Eric Van Steenburg of Lakewood: Pedal power for Dallas bicyclists
03:20 PM CDT on Friday, May 29, 2009
The Dallas Morning News
Eric Van Steenburg of Lakewood is the executive director of the Friends of the Katy Trail. He is also a Community Voices volunteer columnist. His e-mail address is eric@katytraildallas.org.
Fort Worth has beaten Dallas to the punch again.
Fort Worth already has a successful arts district, a thriving downtown scene and a usable Trinity River park. Now it's starting on a six-year mission to become an official "Bicycle Friendly Community."
Last month, Fort Worth officials unveiled their ambitious plan to achieve this prestigious designation. Dallas, meanwhile, was named the worst place to ride a bike by Bicycling magazine.
It's time for Dallas to wake up and smell the carbon monoxide – as if we didn't do that every morning already. Dallas Mayor Tom Leppert needs to make a new and improved bicycle transportation plan a priority for the city.
The "Bike Fort Worth" plan would triple the amount of bicycle transportation, cut down on the number of bicycle-related accidents by a quarter, and earn the Bicycle Friendly Community designation from the League of American Bicyclists. And they want to do it all by 2015.
Meanwhile, back in Dallas, the city's approach to cycling is roughly 30 years old. That old-school way is to "empower" cyclists by having them share the streets with motor vehicles. The theory goes that this allows the bicycle riders to learn the rules of the road while also conditioning drivers to the presence of bikes.
The problem is that cyclists don't feel safe in that approach, and drivers never accept bikes on "their" roads.
That's why Leppert must appoint a committee to lead a renewed bicycle transportation planning effort to demonstrate to all Dallasites that bicycles will be an important part of the city's transportation future. And here are three people he should convince to lead that committee:
Craig Miller –The morning radio host is an avid cyclist and has used his position on the air to tell cyclists that they must pay attention to, and follow, the rules of the road, while also cautioning drivers to be more courteous. He also delivers the 25 to 55 male audience to the effort.
David Feherty –Another avid cyclist, the golf analyst was hit while riding around White Rock Lake in 2008, landing him in the hospital. Feherty is better known for his work on the PGA tour or as the author of a column in D Magazine that made national news for its politics. Either way, this outspoken Dallas resident would be a good person to have on the team.
George W. Bush –Speaking of Dallas residents, one of the city's newest is also an avid cyclist, though he prefers the off-road kind. Still, the former president brings an interest in cycling and, obviously, enough clout to help move the plan forward. Plus, the Katy Trail might connect to his library on the SMU campus some day.
The mayor could also ask City Council member Angela Hunt to join the committee. Not only is she a regular rider of the Katy Trail, but it could also be a great olive branch between the two politicians who have not seen eye to eye on many issues.
A better bicycle infrastructure will require sacrifices in some ways to make improvements in others. Parking may have to be eliminated. Roads may become one-way. But the result will be an improved city transportation system, rejuvenated economy, less gridlock and better air quality.
There will undoubtedly be detractors who claim that, among other reasons not to have a bicycle plan, the weather in Dallas is prohibitive to bicycles ever becoming more than a recreation device. Tulsa, Okla., Savannah, Ga., and Naperville, Ill., were among the 21 cities recently named Bicycle Friendly Communities. Each has a climate that can be more unforgiving than ours, for a variety of reasons.
Besides, if Fort Worth can do it, why can't Dallas?
Eric Van Steenburg of Lakewood is the executive director of the Friends of the Katy Trail. He is also a Community Voices volunteer columnist. His e-mail address is eric@katytraildallas.org.
I believe Mr. Van Steenburg means well. However, it's sad to read such misinformation presented as fact.
I love Fort Worth, it's a great city with many wonderful attributes, but the idea of Dallas trailing Panther City is misguided. Light rail? No. Trolley? No. World class symphony? No. World class symphony hall? No (sorry, the Bass Hall is a multi-purpose performance hall with nothing like the acoustics of the Meyerson). Urban-accessible airport? No. Bi-directional bike lanes on one side of the road that connect to sidewalks? Why yes, Fort Worth has one of those, but not Dallas (yet).
Not only does Dallas have an excellent existing bike plan with over 650 lane-miles of cyclist-selected on-street bike routes on low traffic-volume streets that could almost be considered "bicycle boulevards" in Seattle or Berkeley (plus an additional 100 lane-miles on collectors), crisscrossing the entire city so that there is an easily ridden route roughly a half-mile or less from wherever you are, but the existing Dallas Bike Plan and Dallas Trail Master Plan also includes over 200 miles of multi-purpose trails. The Katy Trail, a trail that perhaps would not even exist had it not been for the Dallas Bike Plan, is part of those plans.
The Dallas Bike Plan is not without its faults, but the primary problem has been Dallas' decision to cease funding the plan over twelve years ago due to budgetary constraints. A bike plan with little support and no funding can hardly be expected to thrive. Vehicular cycling techniques have not been tried and found difficult in Dallas. They have been presumed difficult and not tried. The cancellation of a $750,000 ($1 million with local match) adult-child bicycle safety education grant for fear of being unable to meet the grant's longevity requirements wasn't helpful, either.
The current Dallas Bike Plan (adopted in 1985, last updated in 2002, and due for a major freshening), covers the entire city, not just the affluent and trendy parts, something that is impossible with a plan like the one Mr. Van Steenburg envisions. Bike lanes require up to $24,000 a mile annually to maintain, in addition to normal street maintenance. Re-striping roads to accommodate bike lanes not only removes needed travel lanes, it costs up to $100,000 a mile to paint.
Mr. Van Steenburg makes claims about safety and usage that are simply untrue, basing his assumptions on mythology from well-paid consultants, but unsupported by any scientific research. Some of the designs they suggest have resulted in a 180% increase in bicycle/pedestrian/automobile collisions at driveways and intersections in northern Europe, as well as a rash of cyclists crushed beneath the wheels of trucks in cities like Portland Oregon, Santa Cruz California, Austin Texas, Washington D.C. and just last month, Minneapolis Minnesota, and in other cities that attempt these "segregated" facilities. Additionally, motorist hostility actually increases towards cyclists when cities begin segregating bicycles from "real" vehicles, as motorists begin to increasingly begrudge the "special" privileges afforded to what they view as scofflaw cyclists. Car-bike road rage is an increasing problem in Portland and Austin.
Mr. Van Steenburg suggests that millions of dollars be spent because, "cyclists don't feel safe in that approach (riding on public roads as a legal vehicle), and drivers never accept bikes on 'their' roads." First, rewarding ignorance and unfounded fear is never a good idea, as it merely reinforces ignorance and fear (but then, that's the whole argument behind segregation: ignorance and fear). Second, as we have demonstrated here, and here, motorists actually do accept bicycles that behave properly on the roads (obeying the law, riding predictably, and controlling their lane). The extremely rare cases of unprovoked motorist antagonism toward cyclists is about equal to the unprovoked antagonism towards other motorists. It happens. Welcome to life. It happens on the Katy Trail, too, with trail-rage resulting in a box-cutter wielding cyclist slashing another cyclist.
The idea that by eliminating necessary commercial and residential on-street parking, eliminating thoroughfare travel lanes, and making more urban streets one-way, we will reduce traffic congestion in low population density Dallas is laughable. These are the projections of urban planners and landscape architects, not transportation engineers and transportation planners, and are proposals that would result in severe EPA penalties due to increased emissions from stacked up traffic in the city core. They back up their projections by comparing Dallas to a northwestern city's urban core with several times the population density, edged in by a waterfront and near-mountainous hills, two major urban universities, and a "no-growth" boundary that severely limits suburban development. Do you expect to see that in Dallas County, or Collin County? Shut down the cities of Frisco and Southlake? Hardly. This isn't comparing apples and oranges... it's comparing apples and radishes. Ummmm! Hot radish pie à la mode!
The wisdom of recommending a man who recently disparaged fallen American troops in Iraq (Mr. Feherty, a man who oddly seems to get hit by cars in every city he travels to) to a City Committee brings into question just how well thought out this proposal might be. While such sentiments might be acceptable in Berkeley, San Francisco (my former home), or Portland, they hardly reflect the proper attitude for success in Dallas.
Oddly, or perhaps not so oddly, Mr. Van Steenburg doesn't mention (or glosses over):
- The $6 million (so far) Katy Trail only has six users a day who are identifiable as commuting to work/school by bicycle... the same number that were counted over 5 years ago before the trail connected to Victory, even though recreational usage has almost tripled (by some estimates, commute trips on the Katy Trail amount to approximately .005% of the trail's daily trips, well below Dallas' on-street mode share for bicycles).
- The high number of collisions (bike-ped and bike-bike) and the violent assaults along the Katy Trail (while saying people want safety). According to trail studies conducted by the University of California at Davis, trail users are three times more likely to suffer a serious injury than cyclists who use local streets, per hour of use.
- The estimated $30+ million completed cost of the Katy Trail, for the 6 mile length from Stemmons Park to Mockingbird Lane (built with public transportation funds).
- The plan the Friends of the Katy Trail has endorsed to remove roughly 200 commercial on-street parking spaces along key roads in the Uptown area to accommodate a proposed six mile, $65+ million extension of the Katy Trail through the Arts District. This would be a "sacrifice" that many small businesses simply could not survive.
As for touting Bicycling Magazine's claim that Dallas is bicycle unfriendly, and the League of American Bicyclist's Bicycle Friendly Communities program (which is believed to have prompted the Bicycling Magazine piece), all is not as it seems. May I refer you to these two commentaries.
Bike Friendly Dallas
Bicycle Friendly Communities
18 comments:
... violent assaults along the Katy TrailCan you back that up? I haven't heard of any violent crime on the trail recently.
I witnessed the lady that was assaulted by a cyclist two summers ago, and was also somewhat responsible for making sure he got caught when he went in to Bikemart to get his rig fixed.
There were more recent assaults on women running in mid-day, and yes, I have found a corpse, on July 5th, '05, on one of the two Lemmon bridges. He died of natural causes, but yeah, it's an urban park. Stuff like this happens. The cops are usually present in the daytime on weekends, but are really not that present midweek or at night.
The problem is that cyclists don't feel safe in that approach, and drivers never accept bikes on "their" roads.
The problem is really that... this statement is accurate. Maybe if every cyclist was a confident vehicular cyclist, the Dallas plan would work. The fact of the matter is that just like anti-helmet folks claim that many people won't ride if they have to wear a helmet and therefore requiring helmet use is bad because it reduces ridership, so also is promoting vehicular cycling as a primary cycling policy bad because it likewise reduces ridership.
I won't argue that confident, assertive, educated vehicular cyclists are the best cyclists when it comes to using a bicycle for transportation. But lots and lots of people never even get on the bike in the first place in cities where there is minimal cycling infrastructure.
Bi-directional bike lanes on one side of the road that connect to sidewalks? Why yes, Fort Worth has those, but not Dallas (yet).
Where in Fort Worth are you referring to?
Recent events in North Texas have prompted me to enter the fray of voices. My first contribution is also a criticism of this essay by Van Steenburg in the DMN. I have also left a comment in the original thread; I would encourage everyone else to do so as well. Few will be inclined to seek out the truth on their own.
As the Vulnerable Users Bill heads to the governor's desk, the following part caught my attention: "(b) An operator of a motor vehicle passing a vulnerable road user operating on a highway or street shall:
(1) vacate the lane in which the vulnerable road user is located if the highway has two or more marked lanes running in the same direction; or
(2) pass the vulnerable road user at a safe distance."
It is not an unreasonable interpretation that bike lanes will be a "marked lane running in the same direction", absolving operators of automobiles from giving any more clearance than the edge of their lane.
It seems to me that the Dallas method will fit better with this law than the Portland model, don't you?
I don't cruise around Fort Worth looking for bike lanes. I DO ride many miles on Fort Worth streets and have never seen a bike lane (Magnolia had sharrows last time I rode it). When it comes to MUPs, the Trinity Trails in Fort Worth are handier, for me, for purposes of getting from point "A" to point "B" than their Dallas cousins - it's a geography thing.
Doohickie might want to rethink his helmet/VC analogy. In the first case, we're talking about using the coercive power of the State to restrict cyling behavior. In the second case, we're talking about promoting best practices. The analogy WOULD be valid if the LAW were to change to REQUIRE VC, an unlikely event for the forseeable future.
http://cycledallas.blogspot.com/2008/10/cowtown-goes-to-dogs.html
Upon reflection, despite my previous comments on the post PM cites, I'm sure this is merely Eastern Establishment Propaganda; better known as "Fort Worth envy." You'll note the post does not provide any real geographically identifiable clues, nor names. For all I know, the shot could have been taken in Portland or Austin...
@Steve A
"I DO ride many miles on Fort Worth streets and have never seen a bike lane (Magnolia had sharrows last time I rode it)."
You may want to pay another visit to Magnolia, Steve. The Fort Worth Weekly article describing the Bike Fort Worth Plan is accompanied by a photo of the bike lane on Magnolia. It is also identified as such in the caption
The facility exemplified is most definitely a bike lane, not simply a sharrow in an regular travel lane.
I am curious if anyone can describe that large, wide longitudinal stripe in the center of the lane at right in the image. Is that a stop bar to guide motorists where best to strike a passing cyclist when exiting a driveway? ;-)
Steve A said...
"Upon reflection, despite my previous comments on the post PM cites, I'm sure this is merely Eastern Establishment Propaganda; better known as "Fort Worth envy." You'll note the post does not provide any real geographically identifiable clues, nor names. For all I know, the shot could have been taken in Portland or Austin...".
The existence of these (and others) in Fort Worth were documented by Rat Trap Press. I confirmed their existence using Google Earth. The top example is at least of the proper width, and on both sides of the street. The bottom example just shows the terminus of another one, a particularly egregious one that qualifies for Crap Circle Lane status, as it is A) narrow, B) on one side of the street only, and C) bi-directional, despite being too narrow for even one-way bicycle traffic. At first, I thought it might be mile long on-street sidewalk, but signage indicates it to be a bike lane.
Remember that river in Egypt? Perhaps it runs through Fort Worth as well.
"The bottom example just shows the terminus of another one, a particularly egregious one that qualifies for Crap Cycle Lane status,"
Sorry about that, Crap Circle is a cul de sac in Plano, I believe.
http://cycledallas.blogspot.com/2008/10/cowtown-goes-to-dogs.html
That's a pretty poor example of "Bi-directional bike lanes on one side of the road that connect to sidewalks"
I think that's on Trail Lake? If so, that's not a bi-directional bike lane.
"I think that's on Trail Lake? If so, that's not a bi-directional bike lane."
Because it terminates at a sidewalk, which is bi-directional, and because there is no companion facility on the opposite side, it's a bi-directional bike lane. You can call it an on-street sidewalk, an on-street trail, a one-way bike lane, or the Queen of Egypt, but that doesn't change what it is functionally and legally: a bi-directional bike lane. And it's typical of the "Bikes Belong Out Of The Way/In Loco Parentis" mindset of too many Park & Transportation Department bicycle planners and advocates.
So what do you call it?
Hmmmm... "Park & Transportation Department". I kinda like that phrase.
Bellaire Dr. has something like a bike lane. It is marked with a diamond and I think it is intended for pedestrians as much as bikes since there is no sidewalk.
"I think that's on Trail Lake? If so, that's not a bi-directional bike lane."
BTW: Those are two separate streets. The top one has a standard bike lane. The bottom one (on a different street) is your bi-directional CCL.
"Bellaire Dr. has something like a bike lane. It is marked with a diamond and I think it is intended for pedestrians as much as bikes since there is no sidewalk.".
Please notice that the Bellaire bike lane is delineated by (small) traffic buttons, in violation of the AASHTO Guide. Even small buttons can deflect a bicycle wheel, resulting in a spill, and are considered a safety hazard.
Please notice that the Bellaire bike lane is delineated by (small) traffic buttons, in violation of the AASHTO Guide. Even small buttons can deflect a bicycle wheel, resulting in a spill, and are considered a safety hazard.
..
One of our local governments insists on putting raised reflectors on bike lane lines. There have been numerous bike crashes due to those.
There's a coffin corner in downtown Orlando where they put raised reflectors on a solid line as you approach an intersection with probably the highest volume of right-turning traffic. The line is bad enough, but the reflectors are even more reinforcement to keep thru cyclists in and right-turning motorists out.
And let this be a lesson. Our MPO bike coordinator is a vehicular cyclist and works hard to guide proper design and installation. But the idiots still do stuff wrong and then they won't fix it. Once you start down the bike lane road, no amount of supervision will prevent garbage from being installed.
Doohickie, talk sum sens inta dem paneter guys befor dey mosey out my way!
Seriously, I got concerned when y'all started talking about Bellaire until I realized you weren't talking about Bellaire in Hurst, which I ride frequently. Nothing on MY Bellaire that anybody would confuse for a bike lane.
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