It’s Ours, Too

 Once, a driver’s tirade against me included the rant, “I pay road taxes!”

As calmly as I could, I responded, “Well, I do too.” I then pointed out that the only tax he pays, and I don’t, is on gasoline.

Had I been a different sort of person, this might’ve been my response:

Will The Idaho Stop Become The Utah Yield?

Now you can call it "The Utah Yield."

At least, that's what Carol Spackman Moss is calling it.

She's a member of the Beehive State's House of Representatives.  More to the point, she is part of that body's Transportation Committee, which passed House Bill 58 yesterday.

That bill, if it becomes law, would allow cyclists to forego the 90-second wait at "Stop" signs mandated in current statutes.  In other words, "Stop" would mean "Yield".

In 1982, Idaho--Utah's northern neighbor--passed such a law.  Since then, other jurisdictions, including several Colorado towns as well as the city of Paris, have passed similar legislation which allow cyclists to proceed through stop signs or red lights under certain conditions.  Still, treating "Stop" signs as "Yield" signs is often referred to, colloquially, as the "Idaho stop".

But Bill 58 goes a step further than Idaho's law.  If passed, it would allow cyclists to treat red traffic signals as if they were "Stop" signs, meaning that we could proceed through them after 90 seconds if there is the intersection is clear.

These provisions, together, create what Ms. Moss calls the "Utah Yield".

I applaud her work and that of her colleagues, especially since they took the time to read studies about other jurisdictions with "stop-as-yield" policies.  In none of them was any increase in the risk of car-bicycle crashes found.  Moreover, one Idaho study found a 14 percent decrease in collisions between cars and bikes.

I can't help but to wonder whether she or her any of her colleagues are cyclists:  In addition to their research, they based their work on some commonsense observations.  The bill ought to become law, Ms. Moss says, because traffic signals throughout the state are "designed for cars and not for bicycles."  As an example, she says that, all too often, when cyclists stop for a red light, they have to "wait and wait because they are not heavy enough to trigger the road sensors."

Bill 58 will now go to the House floor consideration.                                                                         

How Many Bikes Do You Have?

How do you explain this?

Is it the team van for a very low-budget operation?

Or is the driver (or a passenger) shopping for a bike and can't decide on one?

Or could there be another explanation?

Whatever it is, I hope the driver (and/or passnger(s)) are not part of a bike-theft ring!

The Limit: Whether Or Not You're Detected

In your travels, you have no doubt seen something like this:

Such speed limit detectors usually show your speed in amber lights, unless it is over the limit, in which case the number flashes in red.

Have you ever noticed that these devices sometimes register your speed when you are riding a bicycle--but sometimes they don't?

Those of you who are engineers (or simply more tech-savvy than I am) may be able to provide an explanation of why.  I have always surmised that it had something to do with the position of the speed detector:  The ones placed above the traffic lanes don't register bikes riding on the shoulder or even the far right side of the traffic lane.   Then again, I've seen detectors on the side of the street or road--and, in a couple of cases, right in the middle of a bike lane!--that did not track me.

An article in the IEEE Spectrum--the journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers--may shed some light on why this is so.  

In it, Spectrum contributing editor Peter Fairley describes the advances made in detection systems used in robotic (self-driving) cars.  The best such systems could spot only 70 percent of cars just a few years ago.  Now that figure is nearly 90 percent.  Similar improvements in noticing pedestrians, and even birds and squirrels, have come.

In contrast, those same systems can detect a bicycle from 59 to 74 percent of the time.  While that is an improvement from a few years ago, the advancement doesn't come close to what has been accomplished in tracking other beings and objects.  

According to University of California-Berkeley research engineer Steven Shladover, "Bicycles are probably the most difficult detection problems autonomous vehicle systems face".  Down the coast, in UC's San Diego campus, visual computing expert Nuno Vasconcelos offers a possible explanation as to why:  "A car is basically a big block of stuff.  A bicycle has much less mass" and, he says, "there can be much more variation in appearance--there are more shapes and colors and people hang stuff on them."

Vasconcelos' explanation makes sense, as far as it goes.  In the article, however, Fairley posits that part of the problem is how those systems are "trained".  Actually, they "train themselves", if you will, by studying thousands of images in which known objects are labeled.  Most of the training, Fairley says, has concentrated on cars, with very little on bicycles.  

I will not address the question of whether robotic technology can or will replace human drivers:  Folks like the ones Fairley cites (or, for that matter, Fairley himself) can say far more about it than I can.  From what I've read, however, I believe I can surmise that self-driving technologies have a better chance of working on Interstates, Autobahns, Autoroutes or other high-speed, multi-lane highways where bicycles are seldom seen, or are banned outright. 

Likewise, detection technologies have a better chance of detecting speeders on such highways than they have of catching me riding my bike over the speed limit on city streets!

Today: Shared Streets And Summer Streets

Today is Shared Streets Day.

No, it's not another one of those holidays created by FTD or the publishers of calendars and greeting cards.

Instead, it creates an almost traffic-free environment on what are--on weekdays, anyway--some of the busiest streets in the world.  Cars will have access to them only through checkpoints, and will be asked to drive at no more than five miles per hour (8kph).  Cyclists and pedestrians, on the other hand, will be able to enter and leave them freely.

From DIY Biking

The restricted streets will comprise a 60 square-block area south of New York's City Hall.  Most of them are in Manhattan's Financial District, which normally doesn't see a lot of traffic on weekends, especially in the summer.  In fact, I've taken dates and out-of-town visitors on rides in that area when the Stock Exchange and financial institutions are closed, and everyone marveled on how oddly bucolic it seemed.  It was as if the glass and steel towers were holding the noise and haste at bay.

Shared Streets area.

I'd bet that even most native New Yorkers have never enjoyed that part of town on a summer weekend.  For that reason alone, I think that area is a good place for Shared Streets Day.  Plus, it includes some of Manhattan's most historic sites, including the Customs House (ironically, now the home of the Museum of the American Indian),  Coenties Slip and the Woolworth Building.  It also includes such notable monuments as the Louise Nevelson Park and 9/11 Memorial and, well, tourist traps like the South Street Seaport.  

This event is being held today in addition to the Summer Streets Program, which took place last Saturday and will return next Saturday.  Nearly seven miles of major Manhattan Streets, running from Central Park at East 72nd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge, will be closed to traffic.  There will be rest stops as well as performances and other cultural events, as well as bike repair stands, along the way.

A Summer Streets stop, 2015.

While today is the first Shared Streets Day, the Summer Streets program has been held every August since 2008.  Not surprisingly, some drivers have complained about Summer Streets, although not as many as one might expect:  although not as quiet as the Shared Streets are on weekends and during the summer, traffic is generally lighter on the Summer Streets routes during those times.

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of Shared Streets, though, is that it encompasses the oldest parts of Manhattan (or, at least, the first parts to be settled and built upon by European colonizers).  Thus, for most of its history, it was traversed mainly by pedestrians; only horses and, later, bicycles would break the monopoly walkers would enjoy over the area.  Now that area of the city is being returned, mostly, if only for a day, to human-powered transportation.

Metamorphosis: NYC Streets

Anybody who's been cycling in New York for a decade or more knows that riding this city's streets is much different now from how it was then. 

The most obvious changes are the bike lanes--which were all but nonexistent in the early 2000s--and, of course, Citibike.  Also, there are purely and simply more people riding--and, as I've recounted in other posts, I encounter other cyclists while riding along streets and in neighborhoods where, not so long ago, I would be the only person on a bike.

As I've also discussed in other posts, I don't think the changes have necessarily made this a better city for cyclists.  Some of the lanes are poorly designed (a few lead to nowhere) and built.  Perhaps even worse is that the building of bike lanes and installation of Citibike ports doesn't seem to have accompanied a reduction in motorized traffic.  Streets can't be made any wider, so the bike lanes that run along major streets and avenues were created by blocking off one of the traffic lanes.  That has led to more traffic congestion and greater tension between motorists and cyclists--and between cyclists themselves. 

Some riders, most of  whom wouldn't have been riding had the bike lanes not been built, are as rude and aggressive as some of the worst drivers I've seen.  Years ago, I knew--at least by sight--most of the cyclists I'd see on a given day.  Even if we didn't know each other by name, we looked out for each other:  We signaled turns.  We didn't cut each other off. We alerted each other to broken glass and other hazards. Today, it seems, a lot of the newbies are riding as if they have blinders on.  And the ones who ride motorized and electric bikes are even worse!

So, even though I enjoyed the film I am including in this post, I do not share the view of filmmaker Clarence Eckerson Jr. that this city is more bike-friendly as a result of the changes it shows.  Still, the film is interesting to watch because it visually chronicles some of the changes in the appearance as well as the rhythms of the Big Apple:

 

Saturday Sillies: What If Charlton Heston Had Ridden A Bicycle In "The Ten Commandments"?

I have always known that we, as cyclists, can change the world around us. 

We all know about the ecological effects:  If we get to work or school, or take joyrides, on our bikes, we don’t use the gasoline and other resources used by, or cause the pollution made by, automobiles.  We also know about the health benefits:  The exercise of pedaling makes our bodies stronger and the emotional release of being on a bike makes us saner. (Notice that I used the comparative rather than the absolute form of the word “sane”.) 

I believe many of you also know that we can also be agents of peace.  Although we can be competitive with each other and get angry with motorists who cut us off or pedestrians who step into our paths while they’re texting someone, for the most part, we’re calmer than most other people.  That, I believe, has to influence the people around us in one way or another.

That got me to thinking about how my riding, or cycling generally, might have influenced the drivers of these vehicles I encountered on my ride today:

Did I have the kind of influence Charlton Hestonhad in The Ten Commandments?  Am I such a powerful cyclist that I can cause two cars to part and let me pass?

Or, could it be that the police officer and taxi driver were so in awe of a woman in late middle age riding her bike—and passing a guy half her age—that they stopped dead?

Perhaps my riding so roiled their competitive juices or stimulated their production of testosterone (Wouldn’t that be ironic?) that they stopped each other in each other’s tracks?  On the other hand, something about me might have caused each of them to recognize something about each other and meet each other in the wilderness of Randall’s Island? 

Hmm…Maybe they, in the tedium and stress of their jobs, they were simply seeing so struck by seeing someone happy—positively giddy, like a lovestruck teenaged girl—that they simply had to stop?

And, dear reader, I’m still feeling giddy.  I’m not sure of why:  The ride, while pleasant and invigorating, was not exceptional.  I did nothing exceptional before or after the ride and I ate foods that, while both healthy and tasty, had no mind-altering chemicals of which I’m aware.

If you’re giddy, how can you not change the world around you—or, at least, some part or some people in it?

Giddyup!  I’m going to keep on riding.  Maybe I’ll stop some more traffic.

(As I type this, the Beatles’ Hey Jude is playing on the radio. Somehow that seems exactly right.)

Would You Park Here?

The bicycle has often been called the father of the automobile.  Now, I guess, we'd say it's the parent or the progenitor, so as not to be sexist.

However you say it, it makes sense:  Some of the pioneers of the automotive world--including none other than Henry Ford himself--started off as bicycle mechanics or builders.  And, of course, the very thing that made cars faster and more versatile than carriages--the pneumatic tire--was invented for bicycles.

But, like any other parent-child relationship, the one between cars and bikes is often uneasy.  That's the reason why I'm not so sure of how I feel about this bike parking rack:



From London Cycling Campaign