You Can't Just Ban Walking

One of the strangest things about rural areas is the near-total absence of people walking and biking.  Today I am visiting family in the Pocono Mountains area of Eastern Pennsylvania. It is very rural but in each town there is a two-lane state highway with suburban-style retail and shopping establishments that generate lots of car traffic. The most bizarre thing though, is that signs are posted at numerous intersections  prohibiting pedestrians.

Am I supposed to see the sign and say, “oh, oops ... I guess I’ll call my friend to drive me across the street”?  What is the penalty for attempting to cross the street, and if it is ever enforced? Will I be labeled "at fault" in a crash if I cross safely?  Some places have both a crosswalk and a “no pedestrians” sign.  Make up your mind, PennDOT, but you can't just arbitrarily ban walking. Unlike an walking on an expressway, it is not inherently dangerous to cross a two-lane state highway at a signalized intersection.

All of the streets here are designed for cars only (and sometimes trucks). When I say that is the case in cities it's because other modes are an afterthought; here they just ignore the other modes altogether. Walking is not safe, so nobody walks, so there are not even basic pedestrian facilities like sidewalks and marked crosswalks for people to walk in, so it's unsafe to walk....

Since you generally can’t walk anywhere from your house, you always have your car with you, and therefore many people drive their cars as little as one block (i.e. across the street or to the other end of a strip mall parking lot). I think it’s a combination of habit, laziness and the complete lack of safe places to walk.  Of course, some people do walk, either for very short trips, to meet someone for a ride, to exercise, or to take the bus or shared-ride van.

It’s already challenging to walk in these places. Replacing arbitrary and discriminatory signs with simple pedestrian signals would make street and highway crossings much safer and promote walking as a legitimate use of the road.

Bike helmets have nothing to do with safety

Great post today on Boston Biker about scaring cyclists into wearing helmets, a strategy which is at best useless and most likely counterproductive if your goal is increasing safety for non-motorized road users. It is, however, quite useful as a scare tactic -- probably an unintentional scare tactic -- which discourages bicycling by making it seen incredibly dangerous. Never mind that the injuries shown in the photo would not be prevented by a typical bike helmet. Boston's Public Health Commission has been pushing helmets for quite some time. It's great that they are provide free helmets to anyone who asks for one -- just as it is great to give out food, condoms, legal advice or bus passes -- but by actively campaigning for helmet use they are neglecting the things that would actually make bicycling safer. Thus any time spent actively pushing people to wear helmets is time wasted.

I have no doubt that the people who push helmets are well intentioned. It's just that, as a commenter noted on the Boston Biker article, the increasingly graphic ads are just "another well meaning but misguided cycling project created by folks who haven’t ridden a bike since middle school. But it’s cheap, requires little effort, and it probably allows them to qualify for some federal dollars..." Since the sponsors most likely don't know anything about driving a bicycle, they don't have any desire to pursue more effective initiatives like street redesigns, public education or enforcement against dangerous motorist behavior. And thus they take the easy route by default.

And we know from experience that blaming the victim:

• makes bicycling seem very dangerous, which keeps new bicyclists off the streets,
• sends the message that dangerous driver behavior is not a problem,
• says that bicyclists are irresponsible and their concerns are unimportant, and
• discourages the police from taking conflicts seriously, adding insult to injury and making it difficult or impossible to seek justice when needed.

All of these are significant obstacles to growing the number of cyclists, which we know is the most effective way to increase safety.  Safety in numbers = more bicyclists on the street = more respect = safer streets for all users.

Reclaiming the Waterfront

Cities have historically regarded parcels of land along geographic and political boundaries as undesirable areas where dirty "essential industries" and transportation corridors could be setup. Nobody ever expected to access a river or lake for recreation or leisure. Separating the waterfront in this way is in many ways akin to building a giant border fence: the real and psychological barriers keep people away from the water.

It's still fairly easy to build something along a city line because far fewer people are affected and the political constituencies are divided -- nobody lives in the river, and none of your constituents live across the city line. That's way many cities still have railroads and highways along the waterfront: big cities like Boston, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago are basically ringed with highways.

Slowly but surely, starting over the past few decades, cities of all sizes are reclaiming their waterfront by building parks and paths.

This trend will accelerate because people are noticing and enjoying waterfront parks and paths.

Midtown Bike Ban and the Growth of Bike Advocacy in New York

This evening in New York City, I joined other bike advocates to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the defeat of a proposed ban on bicycling on three major Manhattan thoroughfares. It was interesting to reflect on how much progress we've made and how far we still have to go.  While we still have a lot of the same problems -- arrogant drivers, poor pavement condition, few bike facilities, total lack of concern by police for safety -- there are a lot more people biking now and it's much safer. The story is that after returning from a trip to Europe in 1980 Mayor Ed Koch installed separated bike lanes on four avenues. But without any maintenance, enforcement or time to be tried, the bike lanes were removed after only a month. Then in 1987 the city was prepared to implement a ban on all bicycling on three avenues. It was the bike messenger community that led the long and difficult fight against the ban.

A very interesting history that provided a spark to bike activism in the city and helped start the path we are continuing today. And if any mode is to be scapegoated, why do we keep ignoring the one that causes all the terror and carnage?

Bus Rapid Transit and Customer Service

Here is episode 5 of the podcast, starting with some thoughts on the value of customer service in transit and the difficulty of providing it. Improved bus service is coming to the 14/15 Jeffrey Corridor in Chicago and the S79 on Hylan Blvd in Staten Island (New York City). Both will reduce travel times but neither can really be considered Bus Rapid Transit. In this show I discuss what BRT really is and how our continued pro-car bias routinely prevents us from implementing high quality bus service.

It's a long show but I think you'll enjoy it.

Car Culture: Fetishizing the Automobile

I came upon this scene while driving my pedicab a few days ago. Some guy brought his bright yellow phallic status symbol (center) to Times Square, where a few dozen people spent many minutes observing and fondling it.

Our car culture is deeply embedded in our society in many subtle ways, from a very young age. Car companies market their products to kids the same way smoking, alcohol, fast food and soda companies do. Even in the densest urban areas where we suffer so greatly from all of the serious problems of a car-dominated society, we've been conditioned to see only the fantasy of smooth driving on roads without traffic or people.

And thus it is no wonder that the owner of this car drove into one of the busiest pedestrian spaces in the world and had dozens of pedestrians marveling at his fancy steel death machine.

Speaking of high-speed death machines, Pedestrian Observations challenges the idea that freeways improve safety by eliminating common conflicts such as left turns and intersections:

drivers compensate for the greater safety of freeways by driving more carelessly, on both the freeways and the connecting local roads. The freeways are still safer, but the presence of any safety-improving technology will translate entirely to higher speed and capacity ... and more careless driving.

That seems to be true in my experience. Drivers will generally go slower and be better prepared to stop or change course in a place where they know hazards exist.

Dangerous Crosswalks

Unsignalized crosswalks can be a wonderful thing by providing mobility where not otherwise available. Yet many are extremely dangerous due to poor design. A friend from Ann Arbor sent me this report on someone hit by fast moving traffic in this crosswalk.  Do you feel safe and confident as you prepare to cross this five-lane roadway with a speed limit of 45 miles per hour?

Unsignalized crosswalks attempt to provide pedestrians with a safe means of crossing the street by giving them priority and making them more visible to drivers. However, providing an actual safe crossing requires more than some white paint and a yellow sign.

Crossing locations should be carefully chosen to match observed pedestrian desire lines and maximize visibility -- avoid curves, hills and other things you can't move -- and then engineered to make them attractive and safe.

Unsignalized crosswalks are best suited for dense urban areas or town centers, where plenty of people are walking around and the speed limit is no more than 30 mph (preferably 20 mph).

Pedestrians should never be expected to cross more than two lanes of traffic at once, and only one lane if possible. Even with two lanes, there is a high risk that only one car stops and the pedestrian is killed in the adjacent lane. On wider roads, concrete median refuge islands (better or cheaper) should be installed between lanes, or a traffic signal installed to bring vehicle traffic to a complete stop (red signal). I don't recommend flashing yellow pedestrian-activated warning lights since they are usually ignored by drivers.

Minor engineering work is often needed to ensure that pedestrians can see and be seen. Many quick and inexpensive improvements can be made using paint, bollards, cones or other objects you have available, and upgraded later when you can get funding or tack it onto a major street reconstruction project at no extra cost. Parking should be prohibited within 50 feet on either side of the crosswalk. Installing a simple stop sign can be very effective if drivers are failing to stop without one.

Police enforcement of the stop/yield law using staged crossings may be needed. Remember that drivers are in a position of dominance and will often refuse to stop unless they know there may be a consequence for violating the law. The perceived risk of getting a ticket combines with the fine to discourage the selfish act of failing to yield.

And if your city or town completely flips you off, just get a few people to help you fix the problem yourself with some paint and signs.

Impatient Driver of the Day

Everyone in Brooklyn knows that Flatbush Avenue is one of the most dangerous streets in the city because its design encourages reckless driving and there is absolutely no enforcement of traffic laws.  Today I came upon this scene today in my neighborhood.

You can see clearly from the position of the two vehicles that this "accident" occurred because the driver of the van refused to wait for a sufficient gap in oncoming traffic in order to make a safe left turn. Fortunately in this case the van hit someone who was protected by a few tons of steel.  This is the same impatient attitude that recently killed a cyclist a few blocks away, though these incidents are not alone.

When you're driving a mutli-ton steel box capable of killing people, you need to operate it responsibly. But as long as the police continue to ignore criminal acts, they will continue to happen.

Widening the Brooklyn Bridge

Anyone who knows anything about New York knows that the Brooklyn bridge is as much an iconic structure and tourist attraction as a transportation link.  Yet in a way the bridge is also an example of our road user class system: cars have over 60 feet of width yet pedestrians and bicycles have to share a space as narrow as 8 feet. Some two-way segments are too narrow for two-way bike traffic, and most cyclists learn to avoid the bridge even if it means taking a long and inconvenient detour to the Manhattan Bridge. The pedestrian walkway is much too narrow for the level of traffic that it is asked to accommodate.

Earlier this month a few City Council members put forth a proposal that is essentially a request to study the feasibility of widening the path.  The city is in the middle of a long-term reconstruction project on the bridge which offers benefits only to car drivers, and the path has thus far been ignored, despite the critical conditions.  Since there has not yet been a study, nobody knows how much it will cost or if it's even possible to widen the bridge.

There is a short-term fix that, because our politics operates on the assumption that auto traffic capacity can never be questioned, nobody will talk about. Just drop some bollards or jersey barriers down as on nearby Flushing Street to convert one of the six existing ten-foot-wide one-way car lanes into one safe two-way bike path. Done. No engineering studies or long-term construction required.

Episode 4 - Bike Safety

Many people who want to bike are held back by reasonable safety concerns. This episode addresses the most common hazards and offers advice for cyclists to maximize their safety. Most importantly, always make sure to claim the space you need, and don't be intimidated by others who might want to steal your space. By staying in control, you can prevent others from endangering you and be able to react in emergency situations. Read all about how to be an "Unracer" in Grant Petersen's Just Ride; see the review in Bicycle Times Magazine (which you should definitely subscribe to). We heard closing music from The Bicycles: "B-B-B-Bicycles!"

Also, I said it's Episode 5 but it's actually Episode 4.  This show got pushed up a week. Send in your feedback, ideas and suggestions for topics and guests.