Solo Near Winter’s End (I Think)

The roads are free of snow and ice, finally, but full of sand and salt. The skies were overcast,  but the temperature reached 50F (10C). I took my longest ride in weeks, to Fort Totten and back:  about 45 miles (70km).  

In spite of the mild Saturday, I saw very few people out: not many people drove, even fewer walked, cycled or scootered (Is that a real verb?) and I had Fort Totten to myself, save for a young man who climbed the fence between the main path and the water.

Although what I saw along the way—all familiar—and the weather were nothing like what I experienced in Japan, I was somehow reminded of my trip there.  Perhaps seeing this on the water’s edge had something to do with it:

Why They Don’t Ride To Work

 

In earlier posts, I have written “lines of paint does not a bike lane make,” or words to that effect.  Ron Johnson’s article in Momentum magazine concurs with that—with caveats.

Johnson reports that, according to a study published in The Journal of Cycling and Micromobility Research, some 61 percent of paint-only bike lanes—that is, those that are not delineated by a physical barrier, or separated altogether, from the roadway—are on “high stress” roads which, Johnson explains, are “fast multi-lane corridors where traffic speed and volume make riding uncomfortable for most people.” That, in itself, is problematic, but what makes the situation particularly vexing is that about 77 percent of all US bike lanes.According to my trusty iPad calculator (You don’t want to rely on my math skills!), 46.97 percent—nearly half—of all American bike lanes are paint-only and on “high stress” roads.”

With all due to respect to John Forrester and his crusading for “vehicular cycling,” people who haven’t ridden since they were kids, or recreational riders who want to commute or otherwise use their bicycles as vehicles, aren’t going to cycle in or near traffic if they don’t feel safe. And those are the very people—in addition to brand- new cyclists—we need if cycling and other forms of “micromobility” are to be seen as viable alternatives to automobiles.

Of course, some of the offending “lanes,” particularly those in large cities with extensive networks of streets, are the result of planners who aren’t cyclists. In such environments, there may be alternatives, such as quieter side-streets, to a poorly-conceived of -constructed bike lanes, But in many rural areas, particularly in the South and non-coastal West, the “high-stress” road is the only one connecting one village or county to another. There is also little or no mass transportation, which all but forces people to rely on that “high-stress” road, whether they’re on two, three, four—or no (i.e., pedestrians) wheels.

People in such environments will eschew cycling or other non-motorized transportation as long as there’s nothing but a line of white paint between them and SUVs and semis doing 70 MPH, whatever Mr. Forrester might’ve said.

Was He A Provocateur?

 This is why you should get your news from more than one source.

No, I am not going to talk about the attack on Iran, although that is definitely an example of why.

Rather, I will mention something that happened in Brooklyn last night. It doesn’t have the same ramifications as the war Fake Tan Fũhrer started, but it does have implications for relationships between drivers and cyclists, based on common assumptions about the latter.

According to a Yahoo News story, a sixteen-year-old boy allegedly held onto a  B6 bus as it moved along Bay Parkway near East Second Street. ABC-7 News says he appeared to be holding on, which is somewhat different (in legal terms as well as semantics) but conveys more or less the same impression to most people. The New York Daily News headline, on the other hand, claimed that the boy “interfered with the driver’s route.”

(All italics are mine.)

Whatever happened, the driver—42-year-old Michael Brown—and the boy got into an altercation.  Now Brown is under arrest for punching him in the face, leaving him with a broken nose.

If we can accuse the boy of anything, it’s recklessness and maybe stupidity.  But neither makes him any worse than any other kid. (Confession: I did similar things at his age, and even later.) And it certainly doesn’t warrant what Brown did.

I hope the boy is OK.  I worry, though, that whatever he did could reinforce stereotypes too many people—including, possibly, Brown—hold about cyclists.

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