New Dallas Bike Plan to be unveiled, more or less.

January 2011.

The three inch solution?

Wayne Pein discusses the dangerously flawed process here.

Bicycle Facilities Design: "When science and engineering fail, just make up stuff you like." It's only bicycles.

The Politburo of Bicycles: Part 2

For most of its history, The League of American Bicyclists (a.k.a. LAB, and formerly known as the League of American Wheelmen) has been an organization controlled by, and representing, its members. That is no longer the case.

LAB has become a bicycle industry lobby, masquerading as a member-representative organization. This is what's know as an "astroturf" organization... fake grassroots politics.

If you don't understand the difference between an organization being member-controlled, as opposed to being Politburo-controlled, then so be it.

Another attempted candidate speaks.

As I said before, we secured endorsements from more members than have probably voted in any League election in many years. Moreover, these endorsements, on the whole, came from the League's most active and valuable members. Many of those who signed our petition were League Cycling Instructors. Some are from lifetime members, former directors, and even former League presidents and current director nominees.

Read his full report here.

On the adaptive reuse of bike lanes

Houston, Texas installed a bicycle lane network in the mid-1990s (although some say that rather than being planned, it was drawn and quartered by TxDOT, Wilbur Smith Engineering, BikeFed Consulting, and the City of Houston). As Dallas embarks on an equally politicized plan (replacing our 900 lane-mile on-street network), we have much to learn from our Big Brother to the south.

Vastly underutilized, like all ill-conceived bike lane systems, some of Houston's lanes have since been removed, some have been converted to wide outside lanes (by removing the bike lane stripe, but leaving the "real vehicle" travel lanes unchanged). But in the traditionally low-income Third Ward neighborhood, Houston has tried ways to reuse bike lanes by adapting them to local needs and concerns.

The most common adaptive reuse for bike lanes is as on-street parking (seen below). This type of adaptation clearly meets a real community need, and is universally applied.

But the more innovative use Houston appears to employ (bicycle facilities must always be about innovation) is to provide under-privileged urban cyclists (the ones who can't afford Volvo wagons and Jeep Wranglers to take their mountain bikes to exurban off-road trails) with urban single-track cycling facilities (as seen below).

This Third Ward "Mountain Bike Lane" truly brings the joys of single track riding into the inner city, complete with water crossings and the need for demanding technical bike-handling skills.

All in all, the Houston Bike Lane System is a model for all large cities looking to provide the best of bicycle facilities in impoverished communities, and has much Dallas can learn from. I'm sure the bike lanes in the Boulevard Oaks neighborhood are equally as creative, showing the same high degree of maintenance and thought, for the city's upper-middle class residents.

Or perhaps it shows something else...

...that the bike lanes in hell may indeed be paved with good intentions.