I am Traffic, and a new organization

I am home from a weekend away. I attended the I am Traffic Colloquium in Orlando, along with forty-some of my best internet friends, sentient cyclists all.

I Am Traffic, which I will use as a working name for the group in the short term (the formal name has not been determined), is based on several principles, many of which are summed in discussion of the Six Es:

There are SIX Es, not the traditional five, and the most important of them is Equality. Indeed, I personally feel (and some seem to agree, although we haven't pushed for formal adoption of this belief) that Equality is the "Super-E" of the group. By this, I mean that equality in education and enforcement, and equity (not exactly equality, but related) in engineering and encouragement, along with equality and equity in evaluation, reach paramount importance. Nothing less is acceptable.

Some years ago, when the "Five-Es" list was promulgated by the League of American Bicyclists, there was a push for the sixth E to be Equality. The League has not done well at keeping to that concept, that since the laws in every state of the Union say that a bicycle operator is a driver of a vehicle (or device, in some states), such cyclist has the full right and responsibility of movement on the public roads. Of course, other laws go on to restrict cyclists' rights to use the roads as elements of traffic, and in all cases, such laws put cyclists at risk to enhance the perceived convenience of faster (and thus presumed more legitimate) traffic.

The traditional "Five Es," with some annotation:

Education: Teaching folks how to use the shared public space called our road system is all but nonexistent, at least in a formal sense. People learn bad habits from parents or friends or society at large, and those lessons lead to a LOT of prejudicial behaviors and myths. Educating cyclists is important, but we cannot forget that educating law enforcement officers, motorists, jurists, and policy-makers is also important.

Enforcement: I will not defend blatant lawbreaking by cyclists. At the same time, I read many accounts from riders who experience biases against cyclists behaving as defensive drivers of their vehicles when dealing with law enforcement officers who are, at best, badly trained in traffic law. That judges also fail to recognize that cyclists are operators of vehicles with stunning frequency is deplorable.

Engineering: We are happy to endorse well-designed bike-focused infrastructure. Sadly, there is little out there that meets this level of quality. Well-designed infrastructure does NOT violate safe movement principles. A through bike lane to the right of a lane from which a motorist may make a right turn is in direct violation of safe movement principles. Such a "bike lane" in proximity to a line of parallel-parked cars is doubly so. It really is that simple.

Encouragement: Too many folks think cycling is some combination of: hard, exhausting, ludicrously hazardous, rude to other road users, inconvenient...the list goes on and on. We aim to help folks see how easy it can be, how being part of traffic is NOT rude, but actually more polite than "hugging the curb," how safe it is when one controls one's own actions, and so on. It's amazing what can be done with a bicycle!

Evaluation: Too much of the evaluation we have so far is looking to the wrong data set. Simply counting bike users going through an intersection doesn't tell us much, and is too subject to error (inadvertent or otherwise). To evaluate either a policy or a facility, we need to know things like, "How was this intersection navigated before, by cyclists exhibiting edge, driver, or pedestrian behavior?" and "How are edge-, driver-, or pedestrian-behaving cyclists using it after it's built?"

We had presentations about Cycling Savvy and its origins and philosophy, law enforcement and bicycle use, a program that teaches engineers about how bicycles operate as part of traffic and how to design accordingly, and a program for kids called "Journeys from Home" that is absolutely top-notch in how it teaches movement as communication.

On the second day, we did some brainstorming on a vision statement and a mission statement. The original vision statement is quite good (Our Vision: That drivers of human-powered vehicles are Expected and Respected as a normal part of traffic.), but is it good enough?  What mission statement do we want? Many ideas were floated about, and the word-smithing is yet to be done. Creating a lasting organization with the goals we have in mind is not a simple task, and putting forward the right messages in our vision and mission statements helps others see what we are on about. We discussed high-altitude views on what sort of business model we wish to adopt and some of the nuances between a couple of choices open to us, what our goals as an organization are, what our name should be, how our governance will be structured, and how we will get the details sorted. A board was chosen to assemble Articles of Incorporation and a draft of the bylaws for membership approval. There has been some discussion over who is or is not a member at this point, with incomplete resolution (I am confident that some ideas on this will come out of the board's efforts).

We even get some local input via that formation board: Jenn is one of the five members!

visit counter

A while back, I made a couple of posts regarding the number of visits counted here. Some time today, the number should be 12345.

I probably won't see that number on the counter, as I have more important things to do than watch it.

Louisville's Bridge to (India)Noplace.

For over twenty years, Louisville has been working at improving its "front door" image along the riverfront. We have Waterfront Park, that has replaced numerous scrap yards, warehouses, gravel pits, and other eyesores.

The crown jewel of this park, to many people, opened to the public today: The Big Four Bridge, named after the railroad company that had it built over a hundred years ago, had gone out of favor some time in the late 1950s or early 1960s, and the approaches were removed. There were some ideas of using it for condos at one point, and it had held lights for various charity campaigns over the years, but it was otherwise just sitting there.

In the mean time, "powers that be" in and around Louisville were working on the Ohio River Bridges Project, to add two interstate-level bridges between Kentucky and Indiana (a 1950s solution to a 2013 problem, but that's another rant). Since this is an interstate-grade project, the federal government requires a percentage of the total cost to be dedicated to adjacent bike and pedestrian infrastructure. This would normally take shape as bike lanes built on to or under or otherwise in conjunction with a cross-river bridge, but it was decided that it would be quicker and cheaper to divert some money to rehabbing the Big Four.

$25 or $50 million or so later, we have a gorgeous spiral ramp that leads to the bridge. The bridge has a nice shiny new concrete deck and spiffy new railings, lights, benches, and signage.

The ramp to ground at the Indiana side isn't ready, yet, and there is probably a Hoosier joke in there some place, relating to Kentucky's reputation for being twenty years behind the times.

As excited as I am about this bridge and what it means for transportation by bicycle or by walking, I have some reservations about the overall execution.

Instead of being a transportation bridge, it's become a linear park. I guess that's to be expected, given that it's part of the Waterfront Park complex, but to call it mainly a transportation piece is a bit deceiving.

As this image shows, the surface is marked with two faux rails. These are to evoke memories (as if anyone under forty would remember) of the bridge as a rail bridge, but they also serve in the current incarnation of the "bridge rules" as lane markings: walkers on either side of the rails, cyclists in the middle.

There isn't enough room between those lines for a fast oncoming pass for to cyclists.

I suppose I may be worrying about something that won't be a big deal--there is little enough bicycle traffic going across the river now that when cyclists do meet, there will likely be plenty of room for them to get outside the rails long enough to pass safely. Still, if this is successful in increasing cross-river bicycle traffic, it will become self-limiting. There is little room for growth in use beyond a handful of cyclists per five-minute period.

On the plus side, the concrete is nicely done, the railings are attractive, the light fixtures, well, I'll have to wait for an evening to ride down and have a look. The fixtures themselves are innocuous enough.

The folks in Indiana haven't quite caught up with us with regard to bridge access. They are working on it, and promise opening their ramp in a few months. They certainly have made progress:

I need to go back and get some pictures of the entryway. There are concerns with how that was done that I want to discuss at some point, and it will be easier with pictures.

Twitterpated motorists

A reader asked if a certain Twitter post referred to me the other day. The person who made the tweet (as I think such things are called) encountered me as I rode to Whole Foods near Mall (Maul) St. Matthews, along Shelbyville Road. As I was getting ready to turn left, I was--wait for it!!--in the left lane.

Before I type any more, I want to put this out: There is no reason to find that tweet and give the person a hard time. The tweet-poster and I have had private exchanges, and I have received and accepted what seems to be an apology. My primary goal in that exchange is that we both gain better understanding of how traffic works and should work, and I'm quite capable of stating my own case in that discussion (citing references as I see fit, of course).

In essence, the driver in question was also in the left lane, and felt it necessary to slow sharply and wait for a hole in traffic in the next lane to avoid hitting me from behind. I remember seeing a few cars lined up at the light where I joined Shelbyville Road (incidentally, the same stretch covered in one of my test videos from a few weeks back and shown on this blog). I remember getting under the Watterson overpasses before any cars that had not been in the queue with me coming out of New LaGrange Road became an issue (or I for them). I haven't paced it, but it's at least a tenth of a mile (520.8 feet, or 176 yards, or...) from the light to that overpass, and I was essentially the only thing moving on that piece of road for several seconds.

Again, I don't feel a need to hammer on this particular driver. I admit that when I first read the tweet in question, I let my dander rise a bit. Well over 99% of the motorists I encounter figure it out well enough, even if less than two thirds of them change lanes two hundred yards or more before overtaking me on multi-lane roads. When I was riding to Crestwood all the time, I would encounter thousands of motorists a week. To have one per week act an ass would come out to far less than a tenth of a percent of that group of motorists, even though one jerk a week seemed like a really high jerk quotient.

However, I think it points to a couple of things that many of us take for granted. Many drivers fail to recognize that streets like Shelbyville Road are NOT limited-access throughways, and as such have "interrupted flow." It is perfectly reasonable--indeed, self-preservation requires--that we expect traffic in front of us to perhaps be going slower than we would otherwise go, and sometimes MUCH slower.

This is one of the lessons I've learned from being a transportation cyclist that has made me a much better driver. It is such lessons that have led me to posit that part of maintaining a driver's license should include some number of documented bicycle miles per year as "continuing education" for drivers. I recognize that implementation and monitoring would seem cost-prohibitive and politically all but impossible, but I firmly believe that having folks ride more (with reasonable exceptions for those with physical impairments) would help folks recognize their limitations as drivers of cars.

I happen to hold as an adjunct to this that people should spend time in a simulator so that they could understand truck drivers' challenges, but that's another rant.

CYCLOCROSS

What a crazy couple of weeks!!

Two weeks ago, I figured out that I couldn't not help assemble the UCI World Championship Cyclocross courses. Since then, I've spent thirty or forty or fifty hours (I didn't fill out a time card) helping with course construction, and another twenty or thirty in race-days helping out here and there. The Tuesday of Masters' Worlds, I found myself assigned to pressure-washing detail, and was there for the remainder of the event.

A few hours into my first day doing that, a SRAM Neutral Tech Support guy offered a lesson in how to make bikes cleaner during a race. I took his advice to heart, and concentrated on getting the bike rideable before making it look pretty, especially when there was a race on. My proof that I learned something came in the form of what was probably my favorite moment of Friday: I encountered two people who appeared to be a couple walking in the vendor area, and the man nudged the woman, pointed at me, and said, "That's the guy who washed your bikes six times during your race yesterday."

Jenn and I volunteered for the Elite races, as well. Due to the rising river level, the four races were held on one day instead of being spread over two days. Our assignment had us controlling access to a photographers' pit at the end of the start-finish straightaway, and while people were nice and brought us food, we felt "locked down" because no relief came until the last race, and by then most of the reasons for going to the expo area at the other end of the facility had gone (I mean, of course, the time-honored tradition of gathering free stuff from vendors advertising their products).

I came to realize, however, that my assigned position had some really great perks. The view of the start/finish line, for one:

Jenn's post wasn't much worse. I was with her at the start of the Elite Men's race, and got this shot of the racers going around the first turn:

Now for some rest and relaxation! Since the Stupor Bowl is later today, I'll take the opportunity to go get some groceries.