Showing posts with label parking in bike lane. Show all posts
Showing posts with label parking in bike lane. Show all posts

16 December 2022

Trash Bins Blocking Our Way

If it's happening in New York, it's happening (or has happened) in Portland.  At least, that's how it is in the world of cycling.

Even in that Bike-o-topia on the Pacific, some folks aren't above using bike lanes for parking, picking up or dropping off passengers or dumping debris.  Some folks who do such things are careless or thoughtless.  But in the Rosebud City, as in my hometown, some acts of bike lane blockage are pure malice.

I'm thinking now of something Jonathan Maus, the editor and publisher of Bike Portland, pointed out in the latest issue: trash cans blocking bike lanes.




I'm not talking about the stray bin a storm blows into our paths.  Rather, I'm referring to folks who lay multiple receptacles across or along the lane.  If you're riding in the dark or in the rain, it's easy to miss them. And if you're riding in a lane, but in the opposite direction from auto traffic (as I do when I pedal north on the Crescent Street lane that passes in front of my building)--and something is also blocking the sidewalk, as is often the case--you have to thread an extremely thin line between the lane and the traffic that's coming at you.

One of Maus's readers reported that workers who work for her building's management company were among the guilty. When she brought the issue to their attention, her concerns were "repeatedly dismissed." 

Then a car struck the bins.  She emailed the Oregon Department of Transportation, which manages the section of lane in question, and the Portland Bureau of Planning & Sustainability, who are in charge of waste and recycling.  "I shudder to think what would have happened had a cyclist approached this sudden wall of cans in the dark rainy weather and darted into traffic to avoid them," she wrote.

A day later, a PBS staffer responded.  The staffer said they contacted the building's management, who said the bins would be placed upright on the sidewalk, and out of the lane.  

As Maus points out, the city should handle such matters automatically "through a mix of marketing, educating, design and enforcement."  But, until that happens, the burden will be on us--whether we're in Portland, New York or anywhere else--to file complaints.

10 December 2018

Looking To Albuquerque

I know that what I'm about to say doesn't take a PhD to understand because, well, I don't have a PhD!

Here goes:


A parking lane is a place for vehicles to park.  It is not a place to drive.


A vehicle lane is a place to operate vehicles. It is not a place to park.


A bicycle is a vehicle. 


Therefore, a bicycle lane is not a place to park.


That, essentially, is the straightforward argument set out in an article D'val Westphal wrote for the Albuquerque Journal.





Members of the Albuquerque City Council understand that argument.  In fact, they have even made an ordinance, which will go into effect on the 19th of this month, based on it.  Better yet, for those of us who don't like to (or can't) read legalese, they've made a graphic of it, with captions in both English and Spanish.





Thank you, Albuquerque City Council and D'val Westphal.


Now we have to get folks in other cities to codify--and enforce--such rules.  If they need guidance, they can listen to this cheesy pop song from my pubescence: