Yet, that is exactly how many pages the City of Minneapolis used when they published “Bike Lane Basics” complete with diagrams just in case the text doesn’t do it for you. Here are all the different types of bike lanes a driver is likely to encounter in Minneapolis.

Nine different types of lanes. Nine different rules. Tons of ways to get a ticket.

It gets better. At intersections, they have something called “shared space” where the cars are supposed to yield to a cylist on his right when making a turn. Yet, the cyclist is instructed to, “use caution and assume turning or merging motorists
do not see you.”

Gee, I wonder why they wouldn’t see you. After all, you are in the bike lane which is supposed to make you safe from those evil cars that are trying to kill you.

I can assure you that motorists have absolutely no trouble seeing me when I am in the middle of the lane and crossing the intersection with the cars rather than staying way over to the right.

There is more to this publication, but you really have to read it to believe how complicated trying to comply with the law gets and how hard it will be to educate drivers and cyclists on how to use these things. We can’t even get cars to use all-way stop signs properly, but drivers are supposed to learn that,

Before turning across a cycle track, look over your right shoulder
and check for bicyclists approaching the intersection. If a bicyclist
is approaching the intersection, you must yield and let them pass
before turning. Bicyclists may be more difficult to see because they
could be coming from behind parked cars.

Emphasis mine.

What might happen if we introduced a variety of low-speed, electric vehicles into cities? Might it reduce noise pollution? Air pollution? Speeding? Crashes? Injuries to pedestrians and bicyclists? Might it expose the absurdity of Balkanizing the streets?

Those are possibilities I ponder when I see increasing numbers of LSVs around my neighborhood (Audubon Park and Baldwin Park). I like them. Not just because they’re slow and quiet, but because their drivers are not enclosed and isolated. We greet each other like neighbors when we pass.

Time Magazine’s Bill Saporito drove a Garia LSV (a street-legal golf car) in Manhattan. You can get his perspective right from the first paragraph of the article, Slow Riders:

Central park South in Manhattan is everything that is awful about driving in New York City. Tour buses, horse-drawn carriages, trucks, cyclists, taxis and passenger cars converge from Fifth Avenue in a tortured tango of man and metal trying, without apparent success, to get somewhere in a New York minute. And now I am adding another machine to the transportation mix: a battery-powered Garia LSV, which is short for low-speed vehicle.

Of course, if it was nothing but cars they’d all be moving smoothly, like they do on urban freeways every afternoon.

But it’s not just convenience Mr. Saporito worries about. It’s safety:

Do we really want LSVs, which have little in the way of passenger protection, out there with the heavy metal? When the IIHS crash-tested one popular LSV model, the GEM e2, the results weren’t pretty. In one test, the institute took the smallest car on the market, the Smart, and rammed it into a GEM at 31 m.p.h. Sensors showed that the crash-test dummy in the Smart was protected from serious harm by the car’s air bags and roll cage. The GEM dummy was toast. David Zuby, chief research officer of IIHS, called LSVs the undoing of 40 years of auto-safety improvements. To be street legal, LSVs need headlights and taillights, rear and side mirrors and seat belts, but they don’t have to pass the crash tests required of all passenger cars and trucks, nor do they have side-door air bags. Heck, they don’t even have side doors.

Gasp! No air bags or safety cage! Kinda like a motorcycle, scooter, horse carriage, pedicab, bicycle, pedestrian…

“They have their place.” Says  Saporito, “But not in the big city.”

Goodness no! We certainly don’t want slow vehicles and exposed humans in a big city. That would be a threat to the Motor Age. What would our streets be like if people didn’t feel their lives depended on being encased in heavy metal?

The LSV/NEV industry still needs to embrace and promote total equity for its users rather than the current strategy of making Faustian bargains with the Culture of Speed.

County Judge Kelly McKibben acquitted a Brevard County sheriff’s deputy whose patrol car struck and killed a pedestrian last September.

In her seven-page judgment for acquittal, McKibben wrote the state could not prove Vincent Marino-Vitani was indeed the person driving the patrol car when it struck and killed 65-year-old Henrietta Strong on State Road 520 near Wilcox Avenue in Cocoa.

-MORE-

What this means is that a LEO refused to step up and take his or her medicine. It was a patrol car, so an LEO must have or should have been driving it.

Terrific video by ronconcocacola. Sent by John Ciccarelli.

I’ve been following the bike-v-car wars surrounding the rapid implementation of segregated bike lanes (or cycletracks, or whatever they’re calling them) in NYC. I haven’t commented on it much. While I don’t think bicycle rat runs are the solution to the larger traffic culture problems, I find the bike lane opponents’ arguments to be rather lame and selfish (IOW, car-centric). What’s been interesting, and completely predictable, is the anti-scofflaw backlash and the attendant overreaction by NYPD.

It comes back to the pyramid. If you have no foundation of respect and no education of bicyclists to be drivers when they leave the facilities (which don’t serve every destination and are slow and cumbersome to use), you can expect chaos, leading to frustration, leading to backlash.

This is not quality. It is a shortcut to quantity — increased bicycle counts.

The problem is, bicyclist behavior (throughout the U.S.) is a dysfunctional composition of inferiority/priority maneuvers that arise from bizarre, adaptive logic and follow neither vehicle nor pedestrian rules. Increasing the number of bicyclists without fixing the underlying problems, simply amplifies the dysfunction to the point where it becomes disruptive enough to generate a public outcry.

Shouldn’t bicyclists be more than objects to be counted, anyway? If, instead of fixating on the superficial goal of getting more butts on bikes, we took a deliberate approach to building a strong foundation for bicycling, we would see an emergent change in the traffic culture itself.

As our own Philip B. Crosby used to say: “Do things right the first time.”

The article, Little. Yellow. Dangerous. “Children at Play” signs imperil our kids discusses the reasons such warning signs are ineffective. Unfortunately, Children at Play signs are subject to the usual shallow politics that governs decisions about neighborhood signage. Just like with over-used stop signs, it’s easier to capitulate and put up a sign than educate people why it’s a bad idea.

I recommend the whole article, but these are my favorite two paragraphs:

It is, of course, no secret that children are risky pedestrians. “Children are particularly vulnerable to pedestrian death because they are exposed to traffic threats that exceed their cognitive, developmental, behavioral, physical and sensory abilities,” reads a typical child safety document. “Children are impulsive and have difficulty judging speed, spatial relations, and distance.”

This is all true, and well and good, but it overlooks one thing: The same could be said about many adult drivers, the ones putting those children at risk. As is often the case in driving, when we meet the enemy, it is us. You want difficulty in judging spatial relations? Consider the research, by Dennis Shaffer, that showed people reporting 10-foot-long highway stripes to be two feet long. You want difficulty estimating speed? Consider this study, which found drivers underestimating their speed in the presence of children by upwards of 50 percent. You want exceeded sensory abilities? Consider the widespread phenomenon of “overdriving” one’s headlights. You want trouble estimating distance? Ask any driver how many feet they’ll need to stop, driving at 65 mph. You want impulsive? Who’s reaching across the seat for that buzzing BlackBerry? Driving, developmentally, turns us into children.

“We are traffic! Let’s eat!” said Brad.

It was raining steadily, but all the ride leaders showed up for the First Friday ride. Of course, only the ride leaders were there. We decided food and beer sounded better than leading ourselves on a 10 mile ride, so we headed directly down Mills to Bananas. Just as we were queuing up to leave, one participant pulled into Loch Haven. She was happy to join us for the short roll to dinner. Welcome Sasha!

A steady stream of motor traffic passed us in the left lane for the entire trip, yet not a horn was heard. Yay Orlando!

The valet at Bananas welcomed us to the parking space right by the door. In one space, we parked vehicles for half as many customers as the rest of their lot holds. Yay bikes!

We’ll be planning some more social rides for Florida Bike Month (March). Stay tuned to the calendar.

From the Wall Street Journal:

You don’t need a car to get road rage.

For many people, few things are more infuriating than slow walkers—those seemingly inconsiderate people who clog up sidewalks, grocery aisles and airport hallways while others fume behind them.

Researchers say the concept of “sidewalk rage” is real. One scientist has even developed a Pedestrian Aggressiveness Syndrome Scale to map out how people express their fury. At its most extreme, sidewalk rage can signal a psychiatric condition known as “intermittent explosive disorder,” researchers say. On Facebook, there’s a group called “I Secretly Want to Punch Slow Walking People in the Back of the Head” that boasts nearly 15,000 members.

. . .

Signs of a sidewalk rager include muttering or bumping into others; uncaringly hogging a walking lane; and acting in a hostile manner by staring, giving a “mean face” or approaching others too closely, says Leon James, a psychology professor at the University of Hawaii who studies pedestrian and driver aggression.

. . .

How one interprets the situation is key, researchers say. Ragers tend to have a strong sense of how other people should behave. Their code: Slower people keep to the right. Step aside to take a picture. And the left side of an escalator should be, of course, kept free for anyone wanting to walk up.

“A lot of us have ‘shoulds’ in our head,” says Dr. Deffenbacher. Ragers tend to think people should do things their way, and get angry because the slow walkers are breaking the rules of civility. It’s unclear exactly why some people harbor such beliefs, Dr. Deffenbacher says. Such ways of thinking are generally learned from family, friends or the media, he adds.

Ragers’ thoughts tend to be overly negative, over-generalized and blown out of proportion, leaving them fuming about how they can’t stand the situation, how late they are going to be, and how this always comes up, Dr. Deffenbacher says. In contrast, someone blissfully free of sidewalk rage may still be frustrated, but thinks more accepting thoughts such as, “this is the way life is sometimes” or, “I wish that slow person wasn’t in front of me,” he says.

More here.

This is the Disney vision of future transportation in 1958:

It’s a utopia of luxury and ease created by technology. It’s also a fascinating exaltation of speed, individualism and exurban isolation. Disney’s future people have been spared having to walk more than 5 steps, and yet they are all so skinny. And everyone drives, but there are no traffic jams. Yet as wild a fantasy as it is, you may notice a few things that have come true. Some which are not so fantastic.

Now take a look at the AASHTO vision of 21st century transportation in 2007. There is narrative about a new vision, transit and livable communities, but still an emphasis on relieving congestion and increasing capacity of roads. Good points are made about the need for public investment in transportation infrastructure. The actual trajectory of that 1950s motoring vision—the basis of which was individual convenience—has been influenced by a hyper-individualistic populace that has not wanted to invest in the common infrastructure required for it. Hmm.

Sadly, the fantasy of individual convenience through motoring has, in may respects, played out as a decrease in quality of life—degrading communities and robbing us of personal time, financial resources and health—yet we’re still pursuing it.

Bicycle fantasies need a reality check too.

We hear a lot about the biketopian vision — a separate system of bicycle highways on greenways with tunnels and bridges. These dreams are modeled on the Netherlands where rural bike paths were developed before automobiles as a way to create smoother pavement for bicycles. There are some in the US that work — the Boulder Creek Path, parts of the Pinellas Trail and Cady Way are examples. I’ve seen a few fantasy versions over the years, as well.

But too many of our bikeways are like the trail in this sun-sentinel article. Mired in reality, this is the junction of an American bike path and the 21st century version of the 1950s highway vision.

Here are the highlights:

• The New River Greenway was relocated to the north side of the canal that runs along I-595 to accommodate the westbound lanes of I-595 and S.R. 84, which are moving next to the canal bank as the expressway is widened to increase capacity.
• There are no crosswalks where the trail intersects six- to eight-lane, divided north-south streets so trail users have to travel on sidewalks over the North New River Canal to the crosswalks and traffic signals at State Road 84.
• DOT doesn’t want pedestrian signals allowing cyclists to cross directly because it’s too close to the existing traffic signals at S.R. 84 — it would disrupt car traffic.
• Officials considered overpasses to carry the trail over cross streets, but decided against them because of the cost and challenges in making them accessible for people with disabilities.

People sometimes misinterpret my emphasis on road-riding and taking back our place in the traffic mix to mean I oppose bike paths. I don’t. I’m a realist. The safest and easiest travel is usually found on roads (in a regular travel lane). It’s easier to cross a busy road on another busy road than on a bike path which receives no priority.

I am a fan of paths on their own right-of-way if they are designed properly. I use them when they suit my direction of travel. While I don’t think they will ever comprise a separate bicycle transportation network in the US, they can be a nice enhancement to access and quality cycling (for recreation and transportation). But they can’t even be that when they’re hamstrung by priority given to traffic flow on the roads they have to cross. It is a waste of money and impervious surface to pave a canal bank with the mentality that you can’t inconvenience motor traffic at crossings and can’t afford to make it efficient to use.

As long as we’re collectively locked into the highway-centric mindset, all other modes will be an afterthought—subordinated to the fantasy of motoring convenience.

The good news is anyone can learn to drive a bike on the roads with ease and safety. Right now.

This is a sobering video.