we are talking about an activity that I think is still safer than motorcycles by far, which seems to go against the logic of vehicular cycling and it’s safety. but, well doubt is my most precious intellectual possession.

so, I’ll watch portland and jannette sadik khan in nyc and the mayor down in miami. see how it develops. and of course, commute orlando.

how about this:
more mixed use zoning
no free on street parking
cyclist ed to be a part of any drivers ed class
coast to coast non motorized greenway(one can dream)

btw. I will take the ferry from key west to fort myers, then I’ll cycle up tampa for the superbowl. can you cycle over the sunshine skyway?

We need to reinforce the public’s understanding that we all have moral and legal duty to pass slower vehicles with due care and in a safe manner. (Even if the other vehicle is not properly positioned in the travel lane!)

Eric is pretty much saying everything I would about bike lanes, bike lane culture and the dark sides of certain “bike meccas” that no one wants to admit. I’m just going to pop in a few random thoughts.

1) Another dark side “Bike Friendly” Portland is police harassment of cyclists. Much of this is due to the discriminatory laws. See…
Expert witness backfires: 4 DAs go after a cyclist for a alleged MBL violation—he was setting up for a left turn!
Heard on the scanner: Listening to a police scanner, blogger gets a picture of police attitude toward cyclists.
Cop buzzes cyclists then tickets them:Last fall, a cop ticketed cyclists for “impeding traffic” after nearly hitting them trying to squeeze by in a narrow lane next to parked cars.

2) That the average person feels safer in a bike lane is not a mystery. Our culture has indoctrinated us into a taboo of being “in the way” of motorists. That indoctrination includes reinforcement of “fear from the rear” which already has a strong biological/evolutionary underpinning. But, while the fear/comfort aspect is understandable, pandering to it does not move us forward to the paradigm of inclusion and respect that we need. Pandering to the fear ALSO panders to the discrimination and the belief that we do not belong on the road.

3) I do believe we need to fix parts of the built environment. I think we need to start with facilitating PEDESTRIANS. Cyclists can function in an environment built for cars, pedestrians can’t. For example, I’m visiting my Grandmother in Wilmington, DE today. I don’t have a car, so I walked 1/2 mile to Starbucks to use the internet. There was 50 feet of sidewalk on that journey. There was a wide shoulder for about 3/4 of it. When I got to the main intersection, there was sidewalk on one of 4 corners, there were no crosswalks, no pedestrian signals. I ended up crossing that intersection in 3 places because the internet connection didn’t work at Starbucks so I had to go looking for another. I had to walk through grass. I had to step off a high curb. I had to wait for turning traffic, leaving me barely enough time to get across—the light turned green as a I was 4 feet from the curb and the first car in line peeled out to try and scare me. It sucked. It would have been so much easier to ride a bike!

All that is to say, YES we do need to make changes in the public space. A car-centric culture which totally disses other modes is unhealthy. But the focus really needs to be on pedestrian infrastructure. There are infrastructure enhancements that would help cyclists, but I would give that a far lower priority than fixing the social structure issues that inhibit our use of roads which physically serve us just fine.

Think about it this way, you get a hell of a lot more miles for your money if you address the overall culture.

The people that should be complaining the most about “bad design” in Portland aren’t talking. They can’t because they are dead.

The way you say these things, I think you are a tinkerer. The idea is to keep tinkering with a “bad design” until you finally get it right. Sometimes it is best to just stop tinkering, admit the mistake, and start over with a different idea.

But many people can’t do that. They have their whole career hung on this one well-meaning idea, so they just keep insisting that “other people” just can’t design their bad idea correctly. And when they themselves “design ” their idea badly and someone dies, well, that’s just an unfortunate tragedy. Couldn’t be helped.

And the people that ought to be complaining the most, can’t.

“It is wrong to guide people into harm’s way. Full Stop.”
I couldn’t agree more. and I can recognize that many cycling specific facilities have design flaws. most riders fare best when they act as a car, most of the time. but to look at the the real success of the cities we’ve been talking about, and to compare them to Orlando, well with all they are doing wrong, they most be doing something right.
nyc had a 36% increase in cyclist this year. that was not thru VC education alone. I get the little things, all the john forester trains of logic. it the big picture: portland full of happy cyclist growing every year, drawing industries and rave reviews=bad for cycling. orlando, cycling is heroic and has a very high cyclist and pedestrian kill rate= good for cycling.
And you are so right. portland is clamoring for more bike education and becoming more and more critical of bike lanes.

Chip

“Public monies spent on infrastructure that will be used by all. That’s my vision.”

mine, too. including children and the elderly, people with epilepsy, alcoholics.

the fact is, driving is a priviledge, not a right, because of the possible harm a car might do to others. drivers have to get their photos taken and sign their name before they are allowed behind the wheel. cyclists have not. we are still covered be the rights of free travel. getting in a car you gave up that right long ago. make sure your permit, registration, insurance, emmisions, insurance are in order.
well, it does matter who they had in mind when they designed it. look at the interstates. and the problem with bike lanes we are talking about. and putting in a bike lane does not mean that cyclists have to use it. we are not in a country that employs shared space. there are sidewalks and interstates and train tracks.asking for our slice is just responding in the language thats being used. but maybe you are right and we should reframe the question.

You bring up a lot of issues, and I am having trouble following your logic. For example, you say; “and decide whether we want most of our public space used solely for conveyance in bigger and bigger cars to stores that are farther and farther away.”

I am wondering why I should have any say at all on what my neighbor chooses to use as transportation and where he ought to be able go with it. Perhaps then he could restrict my liberty to cycle too.

Then there is this: “I do presume that our current infrastructure was designed for cars. bikes were never even thought of. yes, we have all the rights and responsibilities of vehicles…”

The thing is, it doesn’t matter if cyclists needs were in the mind of the road engineers or not, the very things that make a road safe for cars in almost all cases make it good for cyclists as well. Sight lines, standardized rules and traffic laws, learned expectations of drivers of how traffic behaves, smooth surfaces, proper drainage and the like are as beneficial to cyclists as motorists. If cyclists proceed following the rules as a vehicle, the public space is just as available to them as motorists.

But bike lanes don’t offer more of the public space to cyclists, it reduces it! It says, cyclists can’t choose how best to use the public space for themselves as they need, it says get in your place! And we all remember how separated facilities worked out for the minority group, don’t we? Colored drinking fountains were just as good as the whites only ones were, right?

Bike lane implementation will inevitably lead to a loss of liberty for cyclists. Bike lanes are contrary to the ancient principals of “public roads”.

“all road users must try and envision a transportation network for the next century”

Again, cycling would benefit by the advocacy of narrow right lanes. Public monies spent on infrastructure that will be used by all. That’s my vision.

It is wrong to guide people into harm’s way. Full Stop.

I tried lanes, too. They made me feel safer, but then I noticed that cars would squeeze in closer than they would if they had to shift lanes to get around me.

I thought I was smart. I could look out for doors — I was confident that I could see if there was someone in the car by peering in the back window, someone that might try to open a door — until I almost clobbered a door while I was being squeezed in by a passing car. No where to go — not to the left, not to the right.

And that’s when the penny dropped. Damned things next to cars are an attractive nuisance.

The Copenhagen study is here:
Road safety and perceived risk of cycle facilities in Copenhagen,
S.U. Jensen, C. Rosenkilde, N Jensen, Road & Park,
City of Copenhagen, Presentation to European Cycling Federation AGM 2006

http://www.ecf.com/files/2/12/16/070503_Cycle_Tracks_Copenhagen.pdf

Chip,
what I mean by public space is just that, space that is not private property. the civic realm. a place where the laws that govern it are hopefully decided by some semblance of democracy. not your house or my house, but the street in between, where I used to play when I was a kid. But now at the beginning of a new century, we have look around at our built world and decide whether we want most of our public space used solely for conveyance in bigger and bigger cars to stores that are farther and farther away.( I know, you probably just rolled your eyes and muttered “hippie) and yes I do presume that our current infrastructure was designed for cars. bikes were never even thought of. yes, we have all the rights and responsibilities of vehicles, but stop lights weren’t there to stop bikes from smashing into each other.

And cars were a minority interest group when many of the designs were implemented, and they still are in many places where the car gets larger space ratio person to person, say in manhattan.

I am a cyclist and have been for many years and in many different places. I like this blog because it focuses a lot on education of cyclists, which I think is the best way to improve your safety and enjoyment of cycling.

I also know the built environment will change again in the next fifty years and I like to throw my 2 cents in on that. If that makes me pine for bike lanes and sound like I’m tinkering with 70′s Ideas, so be it. I’d rather have a bike lane on my street than a freeway thru my backyard.

Andrew I don’t understand the “conflicts or safety issues tied to high[er] speed vehicles? I ride on country road with low traffic volume compared to A1A but motor vehicles pass me regularly at 50-60 miles per hours and there is no safety issue.

I ride on the roadway, they see me and motorist pass at a safe distance. There are some blind curves, hills and dips which limit sightlines. Under those circumstances I control the travel lanes as long as need to assure safe conditions. Safety is a matter of being seen and predictable. Bike lanes do not help at intersections where most accidents or conflicts happen.

What do you mean by “public space”?

You presume that roads have been designed for the exclusive use of motor vehicles, but that is a common error. The vast majority of folks who use the public streets do so in a motor vehicle, but that is incidental to a design for multiple modes of travel. This is not an engineering problem, but a public education problem.

I am against segregating the public roadway for special interests. Whether it is a bike lane or on-street parking. Both are abusing minority interests at the expense of the majority.

Cyclists ought to join with motorists and demand multi-laned streets and roads. Roads with narrow right lanes are ideal for cycling. Because they are too narrow to share with a motor vehicle, it automatically becomes an 8′ to 10′ bike lane that kept clean by motorist use!

My extensive experience of cycling on both wide outside lane streets (SoCal for 10 years and many thousands of miles) and narrow outside lanes (Greater Dallas area for two years and 10,000+ miles) has produced this opinion. I regularly -that is, every ride- travel on arterials and country roads with 55 MPH speed limits and narrow lanes. I am demonstrably safer than on wide outside lanes. For example, I have experienced very few close passes in Texas, and zero right hooks, both of which were frequent in California.

I think that the “attitudinal change” needs to be done by bike advocacy groups that “expect more public space”. Not more space, less space! Narrow lanes, not shared lanes! Not segregated lanes but the center of narrow lanes! It is time to be treated as the law says we ought to be treated- as slow moving vehicles.

There is no “bicycle facility” or engineering that would make me safer or improve my ability to get around on these roads, and there is no mode of travel that is excluded from the public way. Pining for bike lanes is the wrong way to go if you really want to advocate for cycling.