It's An Improvement, But...

I've come across an interesting The Atlantic blog article about bike lanes.

Its author, Steven Higashide, reports that when he first started working in New York City, in 2007, "bicycling seemed like an activity best left to the pros" like one of the city's "stock characters", a bike messenger with "a heavy chain lock around the waist" could be seen "whipping through traffic with supreme confidence."

Now, he says, he regularly uses Citi Bike for "short trips to and from the subway, after-work rides to friends' apartments and fun rides on sunny days."  He attributes his willingness to pedal to the 98 miles of protected bike lanes the city has constructed during the past decade.

He briefly describes the developments that made bike lane construction happen in New York, and other US cities.  Chief among them is something the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), a forum started in 1996 for big-city transportation planners to swap ideas, did around the time Mr. Higashide started cycling in the Big Apple.  Its members researched the standards set out in design guides traffic engineers and urban planners were consulting.  Not surprisingly, there was little mention of how to integrate bicycles into urban traffic and transportation systems, and what little was mentioned had mainly to do with painted on-street bike lanes and pleasant, if impractical, off-street paths along waterfronts and in parks. 

A "protected" bike lane in Washington, DC.

Then NACTO researched the protected bike lanes that had already been part of Northern European cities for three decades. NACTO adopted their designs--well, somewhat.  NACTO's recommendations fall into the "something is better than nothing" category:  The standards in the Netherlands, and other countries, were still more bike-friendly:  their lanes are wider (on narrower streets) and the Dutch lanes offer even more protection from traffic, especially at intersections, where for Americans it is still minimal to non-existent.  

But perhaps the worst aspects of NACTO's guidelines is that they still incorporate most of the principles (or mistakes, as I've come to think of them) espoused by American traffic engineers and planners over the past century:  the speed and flow of automobile traffic are valued over walkability (On roads with medians, traffic signals are timed so that pedestrians have only enough seconds to get to the median rather than to cross the entire road.), cyclability or livability.

And, worst of all, too many of those lanes--as I've pointed out in other posts--are poorly-designed, -constructed or -maintained.  Or they are simply impractical:  They start and end abruptly.  Even for a recreational cyclist, this is a disincentive to use them:  For transportation cyclists, it makes them simply useless.  Moreover, even the protected lanes are too often blocked by pedestrians, food vendors--and, at times, even the motor vehicles that supposedly aren't allowed on them.

What NACTO's guidelines do, mainly, is to provide legal and political cover.  When then-Mayor Ed Koch had bike lanes built along 5th, 6th and 7th Avenues, and Broadway in mid-town Manhattan, he was guided only by his memory of "a million cyclists in Beijing", not any guidelines or principles of transportation planning.  That is why taxi and trucking interests, among others, didn't need to do very much to pressure the Mayor to remove those lanes only a few months later.  A quarter-century later, when New York and other cities started to build bike lanes, they could at least say that they were following guidelines set forth by professionals in the field, however misguided they may be. NACTO guidelines were further legitimized in 2013, when the Federal Highway Administration endorsed them in a memo.  

To be fair, NACTO's guidelines were an improvement on previous standards for bicycle infrastructure in American cities, such as they existed.   And NACTO is furthering its research and issuing new, and in many cases improved, guidelines.  But the way planners see cyclists, pedestrians and vehicular traffic--and motorists' awareness of cyclists and pedestrians--still needs to evolve.  Otherwise, the construction of more bike lanes, however pretty or "protected", will not result in safer cycling or entice more people to get out of their cars and into the saddle.

How Are Bike Share Programs Used?

Bike-share programs, as we know them, have been around for a decade.  That seems to be enough time to notice some patterns in, and draw conclusions about, them.

A Rice University study has done just that, at least in regards to the share programs in four US cities.  It notes two very interesting trends.



From Wikipedia Commons


The first is that in Sun Belt cities, bike share programs are increasingly used for recreational cycling.  That makes sense, given the longer cycling seasons in such places.  Also, it makes sense when you realize that many retirees live in and around those cities, and that in some, "snowbirds" spend at least part of the year.  Moreover, some residents of colder climes take vacations in those places, and their cycling is, almost by definition, recreational.

The study notes another trend that I have witnessed here in New York:  More and more share bikes are used for transportation.  If someone is living, say, on the Upper West or East Sides and working in Midtown or the Financial District, riding a bike to work is almost as fast, even for a slow cyclist, as taking the subway.  Also, since many office buildings and some residential buildings have Citibike ports in front of, or within 50 meters, of them, it can be more convenient than having to walk several blocks to or from a subway station.

If a commuter is fortunate enough to have a Citibike port near his or her residence or workplace, there is another convenience:  The bike can simply be taken from, or wheeled into, the port.  The cyclist does not have to look for a free parking meter, telephone pole or other spot where he or she can lock up a bike in relative safety.

The study also makes another interesting observation about transportation uses of bike share programs:  Workers use them to run lunchtime errands or simply to get lunch if they don't want to use their cars or mass transit but the distance is too great to walk.  This could be a very important fact to consider when starting new bike-share programs or expanding those that already exist in lower-density cities like Houston and Denver, which are more highway-oriented and car-centric than cities like New York, Boston and San Francisco.

Even though a city might be lower in population density, it can still experience problems with traffic congestion--and, in the case of Denver or Los Angeles, air pollution.  The Rice study seems to show that expanding bike share programs in those cities, and starting new ones in other cities like them, can help to unsnarl traffic tie-ups and improve air quality--which, of course, can only improve overall public health and safety.

Monet, On The Other Side

No, I'm not taking a cycling trip in France with a stop in Giverny. (I did that once, though!)  This is a good bit closer to home and family.  And I am in a place whose name begins with an "F." 

And, much to my delight, I've found one of the best walking/cycling trails I've seen in a while.  Perhaps even more gratifyingly, it was built within the past two years, in a place with a terribly depressed economy.

Think of the places in the US that have been left on the verge of asphyxiation since the housing bubble burst.  I'm in one of them right now:  a county with an official unemployment rate of 18 percent.  That's where I'm going to be this week. 

Yes, I am in Florida.  The weather was warm today, and I overdressed a bit when I rode.  I guess I was expecting a repeat of yesterday's weather, which was cooler.  Before I came here, Mom and Dad relayed some details of the coldest December this area has experienced in the time they've been living here, and for many years before that.  As an example, my mother said, oranges fell off the tree in their yard because they'd frozen.

Well, whatever it's been here, it's still not Bedford Falls.  Last night, I watched It's A Wonderful Life with Mom and Dad.  It's the first time in many years that I've seen the movie.  It's actually a rather good movie; it is cloying and sentimental, which, I suppose, a holiday movie should be, at least if its makers want to have a large audience.  And it does make a timely and timeless point about the human condition.  However, even though it was worth seeing again, I can't honestly say that I saw anyone or anything in it differently than I did when I last saw it.  Then again, maybe I'm not supposed to.  After all, we're not talking about Othello, from which I learned a few new things when I taught it this semester.

About the bike riding here:  There are actually a pretty fair number of dedicated cycling/pedestrian paths that are set off from the main roads. In fact, one starts just down the road from my parents' house.  The problem with them, as in so many other places, is that they begin and end abruptly, and pick up in other places.  Such has been the case since I first came here seventeen years ago. 

It is perhaps the most frustrating in my favorite place to ride around here.  Route A-1A skirts the ocean from Marineland to Daytona Beach. (It may go further in either direction; I know only about the stretch I've mentioned--and cycled.)  It's as beautiful a ride as one can find anywhere, but it's narrow and full of turns.  And some drivers see cyclists as obstacles--to what, I don't know--even when we're nowhere near them.  Of course, that's no different from the situation in so many other places.  But it's frustrating, and even dangerous, to be cycling along a dedicated path that ends abruptly and to have to pedal out onto a roadway where drivers aren't anticipating you.

I guess the situation I've described is a result of two things.  One is that most of the drivers don't use that road on a daily basis, so they have no way of knowing what to expect.  The other has to do with the fact that almost no one here cycles for transportation.  I've seen a pretty fair number of cyclists in the times I've visited, but they were all riding for recreation.  Of course, I'm not knocking that:  After all, that's what I was doing, too. But, having spent most of my life in urban areas, and much of that time in communities where significant numbers of people pedal to work, shop, go to school, visit museums and to other daily activites, I am convinced that unless there is a critical mass, if you will, of cyclo-commuters, non-cyclists will treat cyclists out of ignorance or with disrespect, or even hostility. Lycra-clad racers and wannabes, of which I was both for long periods of my life, do nothing to change motorists' attitudes about cycling and cyclists.

Now I realize I've stumbled over one of the great paradoxes of cycling in America.  The places where people would most want to ride are the ones with the least (or non-existent) cycling culture.  On the other hand, the places where there are the largest numbers of people who use their bikes for transportation are the most congested and polluted, not to mention the sorts of places where people wouldn't choose to take a cycling trip.

Then again, Monet and other artists often had to get away from the art world in order to create their best work.  Would he have come here?  With his bike or on it?