A Path To My Recent Past

For about three years, a bike lane has lined Crescent Street, about 10 meters from my apartment.  In previous posts, I have expressed mixed-to-negative feelings about the lane: It’s not well thought-out or constructed and is now overrun with motor scooters.  

Crescent Street

And, lately, there’s been building destruction and construction along Crescent. The lane is therefore blocked or is crossed by workers bearing girders. That means  cyclist pedaling north on the lane has to detour onto the sidewalk—unless, of course, that’s also blocked—or squeeze between the contractors’ trucks and the southbound traffic. (Crescent is a one-way street.)

23rd Street 

So, lately, I’ve been doing what I did before the lane was constructed:  To reach the RFK Bridge or any other point north of my apartment, I’ve been riding 23rd Street, a one-way northbound thoroughfares that parallels Crescent.

No Room To Maneuver

 In several of this blog’s posts, I have shown how poorly-designed, -built and -maintained bike lanes subject cyclists to more danger than they’d face on a street without a bike lane.

Yesterday, Joe Linton wrote about such a lane on Streetsblog LA.  Actually, he focused his attention on one segment of it: a stretch of DeSoto Avenue near Pierce College.

There, DeSoto is 80 feet (24.4 meters) wide, with seven lanes devoted to motor traffic.  It’s rimmed by a bike lane that, for most of its length is four or five feet (1.2 to 1.5 meters) wide, in keeping with current standards.  But at the intersection with El Rancho Road, in the community of Woodland Hills, it tapers to three feet (less than a meter), including the gutter.

In other bike lanes—including the four- and five foot sections of DeSoto—the gutter is included in the path’s width, not because cyclists are expected to ride in it, but to allow room for passing or other maneuvers, particularly when the lane runs next to a line of parked cars.  A three-foot width effectively eliminates any room to steer out of danger or to pass.

But, as Linton recounts, even the wider parts of the path aren’t adequate or safe for cyclists on DeSoto, which seems to fit the definition of a “stroad” and practically guarantees that motorists will exceed the speed limit—and, I imagine, use the bike lane for passing.

A Symbol Of....?

I don't often talk about my attempts to draw or paint, and I won't now. But I think that some of them, at least, were better than this:

I mean, I could draw a better bicycle--if that's what it's supposed to be--about the time I could pick up a pencil.  I could just see some archaeologist a thousand years from now (if indeed there are still archaeologists and stuff like this for them to find) chancing upon this and wondering whether it was a symbol for a fertility goddess--or a sketch for some sort of device or weapon. Or, perhaps, this future Indiana Jones muses, it might have been an emblem for some secret society.

Now, since it's next to an anthropomorphic shadow-figure, and I'm writing about it in this blog, you know it's supposed to denote the cycling side of a bike-pedestrian lane.  Perhaps not surprisingly, the lane, which winds its way through Maidenhead, a market town about 50 kilometers west of Charing Cross, London, is as bad as the drawing itself.  I'll admit that my perceptions were influenced by that photo:  It looks like cyclists and pedestrians are sharing two meters of space, if that, at that bend.  But some comments confirm my impressions about the lane.

Heck, I probably could do a better job of designing a bike lane--and painting or drawing its markers!

 

Out Of Line In The Lane

After taking a late-day bike ride, eating a dinner and reading, I dozed off, with Marlee curled up on me.  A couple of hours later, she woke me for some food and water. Then I  stepped out of my apartment for a few-minute ride on the deserted streets and bike lanes.

Well, they weren’t totally  deserted:

The cops were looking at their smart phones.  I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that the NYPD is using those devices to communicate with their officers.

I will write about that bike lane soon.

 

A Baltimore Bike Lane That "Caused Problems"

A researcher cuts off a gazelle's leg.  The gazelle can't run.  The researcher then summarizes his findings: "Gazelles can't run."

I don't remember where I read or heard that story. Whether or not it's true, it's a pretty good metaphor for the way policy-makers make decisions about bicycle infrastructure.

To such policy-makers, bicycle infrastructure can be defined in two words:  bike lanes.  And, to them, a bike line is anything so marked in paint on the side of a road.

As often as not, one of the following happens:

• A cyclist is hit by a motor vehicle that pulls in or out of the bike lane.  The policy-makers conclude, correctly, that the bike lane isn't safe, but makes the faulty inference that all bike lanes are unsafe.
• Altercations between motorists and cyclists ensue.  This leads policy-makers to conclude that bike lanes are inherently a bad idea.
• Cyclists don't use the lane because it's inherently unsafe or poorly maintained.

Any of these scenarios can, and often does, lead to the decision to get rid of the bike lane--and, sometimes, for policy-makers to decide that bike lanes are generally a lousy idea.

One problem is, of course, that a couple of lines of paint does not a bike lane make.  

Another, more important, problem is that bicycle infrastructure is more than just bike lanes.  

That is evident at the Roland Avenue bike lane in Baltimore, which is about to be removed for "causing problems."  Of course, the real problems aren't being addressed, one being that the lane is delineated by nothing more than paint stripes.  

Another is that there are bus stops in the bike lane. Too often, bus drivers simply don't see cyclists and veer into them.  Also, like too many other curbside bike lanes, the one on Roland Avenue ends at the corner and resumes across the intersection.  What that means is that cyclists crossing the intersection enter it from a "blind" spot, especially if they are following the traffic signals and regulations.  I recall at least a couple of occasions when I could have easily been struck by a right-turning driver while entering an intersection from a bike lane.

City officials say that the bike lanes caused "problems," which they mis-identify.  Sadly, other municipalities act in much the same way.  So, the Roland Avenue bike lane in Baltimore is not the first, nor will it be the last, such lane to be borne of misguided notions about bicycle safety and infrastructure, and to be scrapped because it "causes problems" or cyclists don't use it.

I Ride My Bike To Release Stress. Really!

Tomorrow I will be thankful for at least one thing:  I didn't have to travel, at least not long-distance, today.  I still commuted, but at least I didn't have to navigate crowded airports or rail terminals.

For the most part, my commute is pretty stress-free, as much of it takes me through Randalls Island.  There are a couple of traffic "hot zones" near the entrance to the RFK-Triborough Bridge and where I cross Bruckner Boulevard, underneath the elevated "express"way.  (I use the quotation marks because I will not call a roadway "express" if the traffic is as likely as not to be at a standstill!)  Those places were more chaotic than usual and, aside from Randalls Island, I saw more traffic--and more Stupid Driver and Stupid Pedestrian Tricks just about everywhere.

So, I could say that my commute today was more stressful than it usually is.  Still, I suppose it's less stressful than being stuck in traffic, and I know it's less stressful than being on a packed subway train.  Even so, I'd say that this morning's commute was one of the more stressful ones I've experienced.  I probably will say the same about my commute home.

Jon Orcutt, a longtime advocate for cycling and urban mobility in general, tweeted about a stressful ride he took.  It didn't take him by the Port Authority Bus Terminal or Penn Station. (When I was a wee thing, I thought the Lord's Prayer pleaded, "And lead us not into Penn Station..") Instead, it led him across Manhattan:

My first run on the West 13th St protected #BikeNYC lane. All in all a pretty classic NYC bike lane experience pic.twitter.com/aXvpRxAfgm

— Jon Orcutt (@jonorcutt) November 20, 2018

Yes, he was on a brand-new "protected" bike lane on the side of 13th Street.  I have experienced things in "protected" bike lanes:  In fact, I had to dodge two trucks pulling in and out of factories, parents dropping off their kids in a pre-school and some impatient driver who thought the Willow Avenue bike path was a passing lane--never mind that it's lined with stanchions:

and that's just in five blocks, from 133rd to 138th Street.  Then, at 138th, I had to turn and make that crossing of Bruckner.

Oh well.  I guess I still got to work less stressed-out than most other commuters--and certainly less stressed-out than anyone who's flying, taking long-distance trains or buses, or driving so they can sit tomorrow with their families and stuff themselves with stuffed turkey and a whole bunch of other stuff.  Then they'll stress themselves over the weight they've gained--and, possibly, about whether they'll get any great bargains on "Black Friday".

The Bike Lane Follies Never End

Sometimes I feel as if I could devote an entire blog to bike lanes that are poorly conceived, constructed, simply useless or bad in any number of other ways.

I've seen some doozies here in New York.  But the worst I've seen in The Big Apple is, apparently, sane compared to some that have been constructed in other parts of the US and world.

Some of the lanes I hear about are almost comically bad because it's simply impossible to understand how they can be imagined even by someone who has never seen a bike in his or her life.  When I'm in a charitable mood, I tell myself that the designers of such lanes assume that bicycles and cyclists possess extraordinary powers that mortal drivers and cars can't even dream of.

I mean, some are built as if we can pedal through steel columns or even stronger stuff.  As an example, check out this gem posted on the blog of Bike Shop Hub in Tucson, Arizona:

 

 Unfortunately, there's more where that came from--or, at least, where I found that gem.  Scroll down the page I've linked and check out, in particular, the ones posted by Marlo Stimpson and David Common.

A "Bike Lane" Under The Tracks

In some of my earlier posts, I expressed ambivalence and even disdain for bike lanes.

While it can be very nice to be able to pedal on ribbons of concrete or asphalt where motor vehicles aren't allowed, too many bike lanes are as dangerous as, or even more dangerous than, the roadways and motorists from which the lanes separate us.

Such lanes end abruptly or make turns though intersections that put cyclists directly in the path of turning trucks and buses.  Others are not clearly marked--for pedestrians, motorists  or cyclists--which results in pedestrians walking into our paths as they're chatting on their cell phones, or drivers using the bike lanes to pass other motorists.

Still others go nowhere or are so poorly constructed that they're all but unusable.  But I've never seen one quite like this:

Above 10th Avenue in the very northern end of Manhattan, the #1 train of the NYC transit system rumbles and clatters. The tracks are supported by the steel columns posted every few feet in the bike lane.

I mean, if you can ride a bike, you can do anything, right?  Well, almost...I haven't quite mastered riding through immobile objects.

The sign in the photo is not an aberration:  One is posted on every other (more or less) steel column.