At The Right Angle

In a few posts, I've complained about poorly-conceived, -designed and -constructed bike lanes and paths.  They lead to nowhere and expose the cyclists to all sorts of hazards.

Sometimes those hazards are embedded in the lane or trail itself.  Among the worst are railroad tracks, especially if they run parallel (or nearly so) in proximity to the cycling route.  Ideally, tracks and lanes (or paths) should cross at right (90 degree) angles or as close to it as possible. 

If the tracks cross at a more oblique angle, the  tires can graze against the rails, or get lodged against them, and send the cyclist tumbling to the ground.  That's happened to at least half a dozen riders on the Centennial Trail where it crosses the Burlington Northern-Santa Fe tracks in Arlington, Washington, 64 km north of Seattle. At that point, the trail crosses the tracks at an angle of less than 45 degrees--or near the one o'clock position.  (A 90 degree angle crosses at the 3 o'clock position.)

Recognizing the problem, the Arlington City Council has just awarded a contract to realign the trail so that the trail, which heads north, would turn east about 15 meters (50 feet) from the tracks so that it can cross at a 90 degree angle.

City engineer Ryan Morrison says the project will take about two to three weeks, and that it will timed to coincide, as best as possible, with improvements Burlington Northern-Santa Fe has planned for that same area.  That means the work will start around late May or early June.

 

This Isn't What We Mean By Track Riding

I admit that I grumble when a railroad crossing gate drops in front of me.  I guess I should be happy that such guards exist, though:



Surprisingly, that near-fatal encounter took place in Geleen---in the Netherlands, where we might expect such a crossing to be guarded, and a cyclist to know better.

Now I'm going to lecture you, dear reader:  Be careful at railroad crossings.  I admit, I'm saying so for selfish reasons:  I want you to come back and read this blog again.  Really, though, I don't like to see cyclists turned to road kill (track kill)?

Which Way Was He Supposed To Go?

Few things vex me more than a designated bike lane that's poorly designed, constructed or maintained--or that ends abruptly or simply doesn't go anywhere.

Such lanes are not merely annoying or inconvenient:  Riding them is, as often as not, more dangerous than sharing the roadway with motorized traffic.

That is especially true if the direction of the bike lane is not clearly indicated--or, as in one case in northern California, a new lane is under construction or has been constructed to replace an existing one, but there is no indication of which one the cyclist should use.

For Matthew James Newman, such confusion proved fatal.  According to his widow a lawyer representing the family, Newman was riding along Highway 29 when he came to a railroad crossing.  

The safest--really, the only safe-- way to cross railroad tracks is at a 90 degree angle. According to reports, there was no way to do that where Newman met his fate:  the road crossed at a "severe" angle.  When he approached, his wheel got caught in a flangeway and he was thrown off his bike, which injured his head.  He died the next day from his injuries.

Now, some might argue that he was at fault for not wearing a helmet. But the suit his family has filed alleges that Caltrans was at fault for not clearly marking the hazard. 

Actually, that intersection had been marked with a sign warning riders to get off their bikes and walk across.  At least it was until some time before Newman made his fateful crossing.  When that sign was taken down is not the main issue, however.  Rather, it is another sign that was or wasn't nearby:  one indicating whether a new route was open to cyclists.

According to the family's attorney, Bill Johnson of Bennett & Johnson LLP in Oakland, the new path still appeared to be under construction--at least to Newman. "It was ambiguous and confusing which route he was supposed to take," according to Johnson. "If you didn't make the right decision, you were in peril."

Had there been a clear indication that Newman should have taken the new path, he would have, according to his family and Johnson.  He had traveled the route he took once, years before, so he probably thought he was making the "safer" choice.  Apparently, though, during that time he'd forgotten about the way it crossed the tracks.  

In addition to Caltrans, the suit includes the Ghilotti Brothers Construction company of San Rafael.  Johnson believes they were doing work on the bike path at the time of the incident, and therefore shared the responsibility for warning of dangerous conditions.

Crossing The Tracks

One of the invaluable life skills I learned in my youth is that of crossing railroad tracks on a bicycle.

If you've done it before, you know that you should approach them with your tire at a 90 degree angle--a.k.a. perpendicular (I remember that much from my geometry class!)--to the rails.  This is especially true if you are riding skinny road tires.

However, at many railroad intersections, this is not possible.  I have seen junctures where the road or path is nearly parallel to the rails when they meet.  Such intersections are all the more hazardous when, as often as not, the road or path has a sharp turn or curve just before it meets the tracks.  You then are faced with the same hazard presented by many urban bike lanes:  You are riding into the path of turning cars--at the same time you're negotiating the tracks.

So, perhaps, it's not surprising that in at least one locale, the most dangerous spot for cyclists is a railroad crossing.  

Knoxville, Tennessee is one such location.  Chris Cherry knows the spot all too well:  He watched his wife "really mangle her knee" after taking a spill at the Neyland Drive crossing.

Turns out, her mishap was one of 53 crashes recorded over a two-month period (2 August-3 October 2014) by a camera at the site.  As hazardous as railroad crossings are in general, this, city authorities acknowledged, is an unusually high number.

Cherry, an associate professor of engineering, at the University of Tennessee, decided to investigate.

 

  The problem was that the Drive crossed the tracks at a 45 degree angle--and, not surprisingly, the stretch of the drive leading to the tracks had a sharp curve.  

As a cyclist and engineer, Cherry knew that he best solution would have been to reconfigure the street so that it would cross the tracks at a right angle.  The city wasn't going to do that, however because the involvement of the groups it would have required--and the crossing's proximity to the Tennessee River--would have pushed the cost to $200,000.  Instead, the city used the "jughandle" approach (If you've cycled or driven on New Jersey State routes, you have seen it) to create a 60-degree angle.

Cherry, who was consulted on the project, knows it's not an ideal solution.  But, he hopes, it will reduce the number of crashes at the site.  So far, he thinks it's been effective.

Still, I think the intersection is one I'd approach with heightened caution:  I've pedaled through many others like it.

Don't Cross Here

We've had the strangest weather over the past couple of days.  Last night, a storm blew into this area.  It was supposed to bury everything between Pittsburgh and Montreal in snow; however, we experienced a deluge in New York, along with gale-force winds.  Through it all, the temperature actually rose overnight, from the mid-30s to around 60F (2 to 15 C).  Then, this afternoon, the temperature dropped again.

Somewhere in all of that I sneaked in a few of miles on Tosca. After descending the ramp from the Queens spur of the RFK Bridge, I wended my way along the path that rims the East River until I reached the Bronx Kill.  No, it's not a dance or crime; it's a strait that separates the borough for which it's named from the Island.  ("Kill" comes from "kille", a Dutch word for "creek".)  Underneath the ramp to the Bronx spur of the RFK, I espied this:

How I missed it in all of the years I've been riding there is beyond me.  As we say in the old country, "What's wrong with this picture?"

Perhaps I need to get out more, but I don't recall seeing, anywhere else, a railroad crossing sign on the bank of a creek, river or stream.  Who are they trying to keep off the tracks?  The Randall's Island Salamander?

To be fair, when the tide recedes (The East River is actually an estuary of the ocean.), the water level in Bronx Kill drops so much that you can walk across the abandoned car and body parts on the bottom.  Still, I don't know why anyone would try to cross the tracks--or jump on a train--from there.

 

A Crossing

After work today I flew to  San Francisco and have been taking in the Bay Area hills and wind from my bike.  And, yes, I rode by Stanford:

All right.  So I wasn't in the Bay Area.  I was really in Hollywood.  Well, kinda sorta.  I was actually in a neighborhood called Holliswood, which isn't far from where I work.  But I had never been in it before.    At the intersection of Palo Alto and Palo Alto, a car pulled up to me.  A woman whom I would have guessed to be a few years older than me leaned out of her window and asked whether I knew where the Holliswood Hospital is.  


"Sorry, I don't.  Have a good day."


Well, I took a right at that intersection, and two blocks later, there was the hospital!  I felt bad for that woman:  For all I knew, she drove miles in the opposite direction.


Anyway, as it was an utterly gorgeous, if somewhat windy, afternoon, I just rode wherever Arielle took me.  Much of the time, I didn't know where I was.   I didn't mind, really:  Along the way, I stopped at a drive-in convenience store for a drink and snack.  Two men worked there:  I got the impression they were the proprietor and his son, and they had lived in the town--Lynbrook--all of their lives.  And they seemed especially eager to help me--even more so than the other customers, for some reason.


Then I took my Diet Coke with lime and Edy's dixie cup to a schoolyard/playground a block away. I went there because I saw benches in the shade:  I'd been in the sun for a couple of hours and wanted to get out of it for a few minutes, even though the weather wasn't hot at all. There, another black woman a few years older than me started a conversation with me upon seeing Arielle.  She started riding again "a few years ago," after having both of her hips replaced and back surgery.  She says that even though her rides aren't as long as those of some of the cyclists she sees, it's "what I enjoy most in my life, apart from my grandchildren."  I'll think about her the next time I'm whining (even if only to myself) about feeling subpar.


 When I got on my bike again, I finally  knew where I was when I had to stop at a grade crossing for a passing Long Island Rail Road (Yes, they still spell "Rail Road" as two words.)  commuter train.  


I had stopped at that same crossing, which was on Franklin Road, the last time I cycled there.  That was eight years ago, at this time of year.  Then, as now, I didn't get there intentionally, but I didn't mind being there.


I took that ride eight years ago at about this time in September, if I recall correctly.  I probably do, because I also recall it as being around the time I started teaching at La Guardia Community College, which begins its Fall semester around this time of the month.  And it was also about three weeks after I moved out of the apartment Tammy and I shared, and into a neighborhood where I knew no one.


Even though it was less than an hours' ride from where Tammy and I had been living (in Park Slope, Brooklyn), the block to which I moved--which is only seven blocks from where I now live--seemed even more foreign to me than Paris did when I first saw it.  So, for that matter, did most of the rest of Queens, not to mention the Nassau County towns through which I pedaled then and today.


I think that day at the railroad crossing, I knew--or, perhaps, simply accepted the fact--that I was entering a new and very uncertain stage of my life.  I knew what I wanted and needed to do:  In fact, a year earlier I had the experience that taught me I really had no choice but to do it.  And I also realized something I didn't quite understand at the time:  that I wasn't going to be riding "as" Nick for much longer, and that also meant that I probably wouldn't be riding with the racers and wannabes.  


Why didn't I know what all of that meant?  Well, I did know one thing:  that the difference between cycling as Nick and cycling as Justine would not be just a matter of wearing different clothes, having longer hair and possibly riding a different bike.  But how else, I wondered, would they differ? I even asked myself whether I would continue cycling.  After all, I didn't know any other cyclists who were transitioning, and I didn't know (or didn't know that I knew) any who were post-op. Would I even be able to continue?


Well, of course, I found some of the answers through my own research (This is one time I was thankful for the Internet.) and from women cyclists I know.  And, since my operation, Velouria and others have given me some very helpful advice. 


One thing hasn't changed:  I often end up by the ocean even when it isn't my intent.  

I was happy to go to there, though:  Only a few people strolled the boardwalks, and even fewer were on the beaches. I didn't see anyone swimming.


And then there were the couples that remained after the summer romances ended:

Actually, I know nothing about them.  I took the photo because I liked her skirt.


And, once again, I ended up in Coney Island, where I rode down the pier to take a couple of photos.

The young man who was just hanging out was the only other person there.  He asked me what I was doing tonight.  Now that's something I wouldn't have anticipated at that crossing eight years ago!