What Did Dee-Lilah See When She Woke?

 Yesterday I roused Dee-Lilah, my custom Mercian Vincitore Special, from her long winter’s nap. 

For a few weeks, the season hasn’t been able to make up its mind: The weather has gone from February to May and back, and from clear skies to downpours faster than you can say “spin.”  As a result, streets and roads have been sprinkled or coated with the remnants of change-of-season storms:  sand, road salt, fallen branches and other kinds of debris. That’s why I let my “queen” extend her rest.

She experienced some of the changes I’ve described during our ride to Point Lookout.  When we began, the sky was as blue as, well, the sea, depending on where you are.  And the air was warm enough that a few minutes into our ride, I thought I might’ve over-dressed.

About half an hour later, though, I felt the temperature about 10 degrees (Celsius) as I pedaled into a seaborne wind on the Cross-Bay Bridge.  That is typical at this time of year because, even if the air is 10 or 20 degrees Celsius (50 or 68 F), the ocean is still only about 5C (40F).

Those differences, playing off or fighting (depending on your point of view) each other made for this view from the bridge.

The water in the foreground is Jamaica Bay.  The gray haze behind the buildings on Rockaway Beach could have been fog—or the ocean.  Just as the day could have been late winter or early spring.

Riding From The Tooth Fairy To Ukrainian Children

 What did I do with my money from the tooth fairy?

I still have my wisdom teeth, but they don’t seem to help with memory.  For all I know, I never got money from the tooth fairy.

But Carina and Ariana Dinu did.  And they’re donating it to a charity bike ride—to benefit Ukrainian children.

Their ride was dedicated Iryna Filkina, a Ukrainian mother who was shot to death while she rode her bike home from work.  Carina and Ariana collectively rode 53 miles:  a mile for each year Iryna had lived before she was murdered.

Yes, you read that right.  Ten-year-old Ariana and seven-year-old Carina (Can you come up with better names?) gave their tooth fairy money to Ukrainian children.  That was “seed money,” if you will:  It was the first donation to the Go Fund Me page they started.

Actually, their ride wasn’t organized for the purpose:  They rode as part of the Ignite Women’s Bike Event.  And their fund-raising didn’t start with Ignite: a week earlier, they’d pedaled 45 miles in El Tour de Mesa.  By then, they’d collected about $1000, mostly from friends and family. El Tour has not only grown the amount of money they raised but expanded their donor bases.

What was I doing at seven or ten years old? I can remember some of it, but not what I did with my tooth fairy money, if I got any.  But said fairy, I am sure, would be proud of Ariana and Carina Dinu.

Going Nowhere, Unsafely

What's the easiest way to anger urban drivers?  Take a lane out of "their" street or roadway and turn it into a bike lane.

Here's something that will leave them more enraged (I can't blame them):  When we, cyclists, don't use the lane designated for us.

We eschew those pieces of "bicycle infrastructure" our cities and counties "provide" for us, not because we're ingrates.  Rather, we avoid them because they're unsafe or impractical.  As I've said in other posts, paint does not infrastructure make:  Simply painting lines on asphalt does nothing to improve the safety of motorists driving at 30MPH (a typical urban speed limit)  or cyclists pedaling at half that velocity.  And too many bike lanes simply go from nowhere to nowhere.

Both of those flaws, it seems, came together this winter, Chicago's Department of Transportation constructed a "protected" bike lane on the city's West Side, along Jackson Boulevard between Central Avenue and Austin Boulevard.  The lane is only ten blocks long (which, if those blocks are anything like those here in New York, means that the lane is only half a mile long).  The worst thing about it, for both motorists and cyclists, is that it took a lane in each direction from a busy if narrow thoroughfare that connects the northern part of Columbus Park with Oak Park, an adjacent suburb.

The Jackson Boulevard Bike Lane. Photo by Colin Boyle, Block Club Chicago

In doing so, the Chicago DOT made an often-congested route even more crowded.  One problem is that drivers often use Jackson to reach the Central Avenue onramp for the Eisenhower Expressway.  Drivers making a right turn on Central get backed up behind drivers going east on Jackson because they can't make the turn on a red light.

Things are even worse during rush hour, school dismissals and when the 126 bus makes one of its four stops along the route.  The result is "total chaos and confusion," according to Salone.  It might be a reason why "I have yet to see one bike there."  City and school buses may be picking up and discharging passengers in the lane, and having to cross an entrance to a freeway is, for me, a reason to avoid a lane or street. (That is one reason why, when cycling back from Point Lookout or the Rockaways, I detour off Cross Bay Boulevard a block or two after crossing the North Channel (a.k.a. Joseph Addabo Memorial) Bridge:  I want to avoid the Belt Parkway entrance and exit ramps.)

The result, according to resident Mildred Salone, is "total chaos and confusion."  That might be a reason why she has "yet to see one bike there."  An equally important reason was voiced by someone else, who called Jackson Boulevard a "bike lane to nowhere."  

That title was bestowed upon it by Oboi Reed, who founded Equicity, a mobility justice organization that seeks, among other things, to start a bicycling culture in the area.  "When the bike lanes drop out of nowhere, people are turned off," he explained.  "People have to feel ownership and excitement."  

He says that in addition to the lane's faulty planning and design, people were alienated because they see the bike lanes as vectors of gentrification.  The Jackson Boulevard neighborhood is full of longtime residents, some of whom live in multi-generational homes, and most of whom are black and working-class.  They cyclists they see are mainly younger and whiter than they are, and don't share their roots in the neighborhood.

So, it seems to me, Chicago's Jackson Boulevard bike lane encapsulates all of the faults of "bicycle infrastructure" in the U.S.:  It was poorly planned and designed, with little or no regard for whom it would serve or the neighborhood through which it was built.  The result is something that makes motorists and cyclists equally unhappy.  Unfortunately, unless planners and policy-makers pay more attention to cyclists as well as other people who might be affected, we will see more unsafe bike lanes to nowhere.