Spring continues

Since most of my thoughts tend to be expressed in short bursts of words, I haven't done much blog posting over the last several months. My more recent posts seem disjointed, or hurried, or harried, or to be highlight reels of whatever had happened over the last few days prior to the post.

This will mostly be the latter type of post. It seems I use this as sort of an online diary much of the time. I suspect that doing so has bored most of the few folks who frequented this space. Oh, well. I'll try to make some more interesting posts for the blog at CommuteLouisville.com.

I've been at Bardstown Road Bicycle Company for about a month, now. It's good to be out of that orange box. I like the new commute better, for several reasons: I can go multi-modal and use TARC's Bikes on Board program easily if the weather is bad, I can ride through part of Cherokee Park on a regular basis, I DON'T have to be at the store at 6:00 AM or until 10:00 PM...I could go on.

Word is starting to get around that I'm back behind a bike repair stand. Hopefully some of my "customers of long standing" will come back to me. The store has mostly recovered from the shock of Steve's arrest.

And I get to fix bikes again. And get paid to do so.

Lane Diets proposed.

Hey! I have a great idea! Let's try to convince more people to use bicycles by showing them that the local government considers cycling to be so dangerous as to need its own skinny corridors to the side of regular travel lanes!

We can make it illegal to use regular lanes if said bike lanes are anywhere in the vicinity (unless one is willing to recognize that the fine print is implied in 601KAR 14:020 (9)), so that other road users and law enforcement officers will have more reason to harass any cyclist not using "the approved space" while we're at it.

Then make helmets mandatory, because we all know that helmets prevent crashes!!

Shaking my head.

Oh, to be fair, I am not against all features of the road diet concept. I heartily agree that reducing motorist crashes is a good thing. I recognize and appreciate the idea that pulling motorized traffic away from a sidewalk makes using that sidewalk much more appealing. A road diet as proposed along Grinstead Drive can create room for a sidewalk on the south side of the pavement, where there is currently an absence of sidewalks, and I like the idea of making our community more walkable.

However, there is exactly zero need for a bike lane on either side of Grinstead through there. None. Given that a cyclist faces harassment for NOT using a bike lane, installation of bike lanes on this piece of Grinstead would take away from my trip quality. Grinstead would become another unpleasant segment, like Westport Road from St Matthews to Lyndon, with its unneeded bike lanes (that don't convince many--I regularly see people pedaling on the sidewalks).

I'd be more accepting of the idea if the plan was to mark that extra pavement as shoulders rather than bike lanes, and install Shared Lane Markings in the travel lanes (along with MUTCD R4-11 signage). Cyclists are allowed to use the shoulders at their own discretion. Cyclists who practice control and release may use the shoulder as a short-term release mechanism if road users collect behind the cyclist and use of the left turn lane as a passing lane isn't practicable. Sadly, some of the harassment would remain--some motorists cannot or will not discern the difference between a marked shoulder and a bike lane. Why isn't a city that wants to call itself "Bike friendly" (as opposed to "bicyclist-friendly") working on the harassment issue?