BTW Day, Again

So I went to the Columbia, MD, Bike-t0-Work day yesterday. As I've said before, my feelings at these affairs are mixed at best. This year was about the same as last year, although there were more practical bikes (if not cyclists!) in attendance. I found the speakers more fatuous and self-congratulatory than I remember: at least two county officials sent their aides in their stead, who dutifully reported that "[blank] couldn't be here today because of a scheduling conflict," to which I was thinking, "Yeah, at 7:30 am, it's a conflict with bed." Mostly, there was a air of patronization, of "we say we love you for what you do, but we wouldn't be caught dead doing it ourselves."

Hm. I'm betraying a seriously bad attitude here.

(Truthfully, I did seriously appreciate the Chief of Police who is a fit looking guy and a cyclist, who got up, gave an update on Maryland traffic laws -- hey, we have a Three-foot rule now! -- and admonished the crowd that you have to be respectful of traffic laws if you want respect from motorists. Hear, here.)

The county director of transportation got up and, after talking about mostly nothing for about a minute, and never mentioning any traffic improvements for cyclists, prompted me to shout, "more bike lanes!" which (to my satisfaction) nonplussed him and gained me the bemused looks of fellow cyclists. (I was hoping for a smattering of applause.)

The problem is (as it was last year) is that no one is serious about promoting biking to work. If they were serious, they'd be showing off bike lane planning for the region (assuming same existed,) they'd be touting LCI's teaching "Road 101" classes, there would be little workshops on "what you do (and don't) need to be carrying on a commuter bike." But there's none of that. There are a couple of booths for local bike shops showing off various relevant and non-relevant bikes, there are people talking all starry eyed about how they got county officials to listen to a presentation about sharrows (but no commitments of any kind), and there are county officials waxing ecstatic about how BTWD got them to practice riding so they could show up, and guess what? It was exhilarating! Plus lots of bumper stickers and tee shirts. (Where was the League of American Bicyclists?)

Look, being serious about wanting people to bike to work equals a commitment to painting bike lanes. It really is as simple as that. The few of us who are vehicular cyclists will bike to work anyway (and be perfectly safe,) but the others need bike lanes. New York City has proved this. Studies conducted over the last couple of months show a significant increase in cyclists in New York City following their painting over 200 miles of bike paths (although there is some controversy on the exact numbers). If the powers-that-be really want to encourage practical cycling for all the reasons they say, all they need to do is get out the white traffic paint.

I shouldn't be so negative about BTWD. I was in the middle of a conversation with a county official when a fellow cyclist (fully outfitted in cycling gear) came up and said, "Hey, you're the guy that I see biking to work every day, aren't you?" It made my day.

Two Interesting Articles in surprising places...

Article 1: Slate, which I haven't read since the end of the election season. (I don't miss my addiction to political online writing much!) Anyway, they published a quite good article by Christopher Beam about vehicularists vs. infrastructurists. Here's a quote:

Vehicularists see the potential transformation of America into a Euro-style bike paradise not just as a far-fetched utopia but as an insult. Dedicated bike paths are an admission that the cyclist deserves pity and should be walled off from the world. Bike paths are separate but unequal—a way for motorists to get bikers out of their way. John Forester, the author and engineer known as the intellectual forebear of vehicular cycling, traces the philosophy back to a set of laws introduced in 1944 that relegated bikes to the far right of the road, prohibited cycling outside of bike lanes, and banned them from the street if bike paths were available. (These laws were part of the Uniform Vehicle Code, a national model on which states base their own traffic laws.) Since the rise of the automobile, vehicularists have seen any attempt to treat bikes differently as a civil rights violation.

Go check it out.

On a related (sort of) topic, I've been thinking about the typical legalese in the Uniform Vehicle Code adopted by most states that talks about "[bicyclists] may ride two abreast if not impeding traffic." Certainly our intuition tells us that bicycles "impede" auto traffic, but I think the truth is a little less obvious. If we think about "impeding" traffic as being the same as "congestion" (reasonable enough, I submit), then at least in theory, widespread bicycle use should produce less congestion (by using up less roadway) and therefore bicycles, while microcosmically acting as an impediment, macrocosmically reduce congestion!

Which is a sort of round-about lead-in to article 2, in the Wall Street Journal, which makes the dubious claim that traffic jams, by providing disincentives for driving, are "good" for the environment. (It's of course a rather transparent plea to avoid congestion taxes, but hey..)

Rolling Stop

This morning (monday) on my way in to work, I didn't have a particularly good set of legs (it's amazing how, when you exercise every day, you find days where you are just "sub-par", and you learn to forgive yourself.) But, I had great timing. All the way into work, 9 miles, I didn't put a foot down. Part luck, part skill, part timing. Sort of like poker.

I go through seven stop lights on the way in to work, plus an all-yield traffic circle (more on that in a future post), plus two chicanes, plus 3 smaller traffic circles, plus two stop signs. Only two, and that surprised me when I counted them. Usually I take rolling stops through them. Speaking of rolling stops, it's a topic of debate that more states should adopt Idaho's "cyclists treat stops as yield" law. Here's an interesting YouTube on the topic:

I don't know about you, but this is one of the finest examples of educational 3D animation I've seen in quite a while. Kudos to Spencer Boomhower, the animator. Clearly a pro. It's a pleasure to see good work like this.

Hazards 2: Interchanges

I was having a Saturday-morning kaffeeklatsch conversation with some ex-pats from overseas (there are a bunch of them who live out in Maryland suburbia, who work with NASA, in the diplomatic corps, and for agencies, well, let's just say they don't talk about their work very much.) One of them recognized me as a regular cyclist, because he'd seen me often on our neighborhood streets (I was so pleased), and so I gently (honest!) steered the conversation towards cycle-commuting. One of the guys was from Holland, and of course he liked to cycle "back home", but he said the hills in Maryland were too much for him. Another of the guys (an antenna designer for NASA) said that at one time he lived just 9 miles from his work, and (so he said) he would have liked to bike but there was a big highway in the way and he couldn't figure out how to get across it.

I knew the highway he was referring to, and I cross it regularly. There is an overpass about every mile along its length, but the overpasses are secondary roads, legal to cycle on, but certainly intimidating for the inexperienced. The overpasses can be particularly intimidating, and I thought it might be interesting to throw out the method I use to cross them. (Here's a link to the excellent "Infrastructurist" blog that the image at right comes from.)

Let me say right up front that this is vehicular cycling, and I've come to the realization that it's just not for everyone. I think that VC requires a commitment (and, often as not, a little bit of militancy in that commitment) to the concept that bicycles-have-full-vehicular-rights. It also requires concentration, some athletic ability, and some developed cycling skills. With all these ingredients available, VC is not dangerous, but as I say, it's not for everyone. In the America of today, though, it is the way to become carless if you don't want to wait for the powers-that-be to develop infrastructure. (This is not to take anything away from the Urban Repair Squad.)

The skills required for this apparently obvious maneuver are three:

• The ability to ride up a gentle incline (as are most interchanges) and maintain a speed, say, in excess of 10 mph;
  
• The ability to "ride a line" in traffic, to ride right on a highway stripe and not swerve even when cars bypass at speed;
• The ability to look back in both directions without leaving your line of travel;

I say "apparently obvious" because in essence all the cyclist does when crossing an interchange is go in a straight line. I've seen experienced cyclists (although not experienced in the vehicular sense) mess this one up, always trying to be next to the curb or shoulder, and crossing too many vehicular lanes in the process. The State of Maryland "rules of the road" booklet is a little ambiguous on the practice of bicycles and turning lanes. It says:

A bicycle should be operated as close to the right side of the road as practical and safe. However, cyclists are expected to use turn lanes.

It doesn't say, however, in this context how bicyclists are supposed to use them. (I've contacted MD-DOT and will post their clarifications here when and if I receive same.)

So, anyway. Back to the topic at hand, which is the interchange. A most common interchange that one would encounter here in Maryland is the classic "cloverleaf" which I've illustrated in an adjacent image.

I've analyzed the crossing of this interchange and find that it contains seven (!) zones that have to be traversed, and each zone requires a separate response. Each zone is unique, but some are similar to others. Take a look at the illustration.

Our intrepid vehicular cyclist is crossing from bottom to top. The primary road (say an expressway) is the horizontal main road. The secondary road (typically a road with a speed limit of less than 50 mph) is the one our cyclist is on. We'll assume the secondary road has a decent rideable shoulder. (This is not necessary, but most secondary roads of this character do in fact have this, so it's a reasonable assumption.)

So, let's descibe the seven steps of getting across a highway interchange. They are:

1. In this zone the cyclist is riding the shoulder, looking over his left for oncoming traffic that may not see him;
2. In this zone, the cyclist is "riding the line", on high alert for motorists overtaking, not being aware of him, and crossing in front of him from left to right;
3. In this zone, the cyclist gets a brief mental rest (on the shoulder again) and looks to his right to assess oncoming traffic from the loop;
4. In this zone, the cyclist is again "riding the line", on high alert particularly for motorists coming off the primary road overtaking, not being aware of him, and crossing in front of him from right to left. Since there are also cars on the left, this is probably the most intimidating section;
5. Another brief rest. This is similar to zone 3, as the cyclist should be looking right and anticipating;
6. In zone 6, the cyclist will either "ride the line" if there is bypassing traffic on the right, or, if the road right-behind is plenty clear, make an efficient crossing to the shoulder. (I say efficient because for obvious reasons this lane is no place to dally);
7. The last zone, the cyclist has regained the shoulder and is on his way;

So. There you have it, a quite complicated way to get from point A to point B in a straight line. Most experienced vehicular cyclists might well regard this post as both obvious and trivial. But I put it up to make explicit what the requirements are for VC. Mind you, I think the rewards are commensurate, to be sure. Freedom is a wonderful thing.

Hardware, Software, Wetware

My twin brother Willie (who runs teams of engineers that design highly-sophisticated silicon chips) used to say that there were three kinds of computer "ware": hardware, software, and wetware. Hardware and software (and their distant cousin, firmware) you already know about, if you're using the Web to read this. Wetware is, of course, the user of the computer, and ultimately where the rubber meets the road, so to speak.

It seems to me that when one thinks about bicycle-commuting systems, the same three levels impose themselves. Let's consider them in reverse order:

There's the "wetware" crowd, the people who get out there and "just do it". Sometimes referred to as "vehicular cyclists", they insist that all that they need is the road and the rules for it, which exist everywhere. They tend to be skeptical of structured solutions. The most radical among them can be rather vocal in their beliefs that structure is bad, and will give the powers that be the ability to segregate cyclists to a second-class status. (I count myself in this crowd, although to be sure not one of the radical ones.)

Then there's the "software" crowd, the ones who think that to be safe, cyclists need the protection of bike lanes and striping -- clear demarcations that differentiate cyclist territory from motorist domain. Sometimes referred to as "infrastructuralists", they don't commute as much as vehicular cyclists, simply because bicycling infrastructure isn't so widespread as it could be. Those among this group who do commute regularly therefore are geographically distinct -- they tend to be located out West, in Oregon, Colorado, and parts of California and Washington. Sort of like rare birds with a distinct habitat.

Finally, there's the "hardware" group -- those who think that to be safe, bicyclists need their own separate and independent bikeways. These can be bike paths (typically engineered for about 8 mph, and leading to recreational destinations, not so great for commuting, really) or fully separate bike lanes (preferably with curbs to physically separate them from cars). The Achilles' heel of these approaches is usually the place where they have to come back to the "standard" roadway system. Rejoining the regular transportation system is the most critical aspect of any separated system, and often times it is under-engineered (the "engineering" consisting of a wheelchair ramp at the curb.)

I have a 3/8 mile stretch of bike path paralleling a busy road that I use on my daily commute, and I have learned that rejoining the traffic from that path is by far the most treacherous part of my daily ride.

Recently, a couple of designers have gone quite a bit further and proposed systems that totally separate bikes from the quotidian automobile infrastructure. (Maybe I should categorize these as "super-hardware" people.) Personally, I find them amusingly naïve and impractical. Naïve, because these people are convinced that public financing can be found for these schemes when it's hard enough to find money and will to do simple striping. Impractical, because I don't see where these structures provide the motiviation to ride. If one is motivated, he or she tends toward the "wetware", and all these other things just become (in their absence) excuses not to ride.

I'm not trying to be mean here, it's just my belief that since the advent of the first commercial "safety bicycle", the bike has evolved into a pretty efficient system which works pretty well quite on its own, thank you very much. When I see a new idea to improve the system, I'll be the first to doff my helmet. but it's not so easy to get excited about ideas that just tinker around the edges.

Anyway, let's take a look at a couple of these visionary pretexts for not riding.

Vel0-City is a system of elevated enclosed tubes proposed for Toronto. To its credit, it seems to have the macro-planning thought out in that it appears to be integrated into the mass transit system as a whole. To be fair to the envisioners of this project, I think that protection from the elements in the winter in Toronto is a winner of an idea, but I wonder if the good taxpayers of Toronto will support yet another mode of mass transit, in addition to its existing bus, tram, and metro lines. Like any of those other mass transitways, I suspect, graffiti would pose an ongoing problem.

Remarkably, Velo-City promises a perpetual tailwind, with one-way tubes somehow creating a "dynamic air circulation loop." I could use some of that, but I wonder about the physics!

The Shweeb (no, I don't know where the name comes from -- it seems vaguely German in its tendency to clear the throat) is a pedal powered monorail that exists as an amusement park ride in Roterua, New Zealand. Two pedal-powered capsules swing around a 200M monorail racetrack. Frankly, this looks like quite a bit of fun. The fun rumor is that someone in the London Development Agency has latched on to this idea as a means of mass transit in London. (Don't you just love the "science-fiction pulp magazine cover" look of the rendering at right?) I think this idea works much better as an amusement park race than as a mass-transit system. I'd hate to get stuck behind the little old lady who's doing some urban sight-seeing when I'm in a hurry to get to work. And as much maintenance as Velo-City would require in removing graffiti, Shweeb would require in spades. Believe me, you don't want the capsule that's just been given up by the vomiting drunk!

As a postscript, here's a different take on bikes-as-infrastructure: Hybrid-squared. This system proposes a public bike system (think Vélib) whose bikes have a combination of dynamos and regenerative braking to charge ultracapacitors that then dump their stored energy back into the grid when you return the bike to its station. It's a neat gedankenexperiment, and envisions a credit system where bike-commuting pays for mass transit use, which is a clever scheme. But I wonder if the net energy would amount to a hill of beans, enough to ever pay back the investment in infrastructure. (Is anybody running the numbers on these flights of fancy?)

Tripping the Lights Fantastic

Trip it as you go On the light fantastic toe -- Milton, L'Allegro

If you do much urban riding, you've probably encountered one of the practical cyclist's banes: embedded loop sensor activated traffic signals. Which is to say, loop sensors that ignore (or rather, fail to detect) bicycles.

There's one on my daily commute home. If I'm a little late on the way home and motor-vehicle traffic is diminished, I can wait through a couple of cycles. Nothing is more frustrating.

Apparently, this is a widespread problem for cyclists. There have been some gadgeteer approaches to this problem involving gluing very strong magnets or large metal plates to the bottom of your cycling shoes. Hm. I carry a laptop in my left pannier, and I'm reluctant to expose it to strong magnets.

So what to do? I've done some research, and have some information to share. I've come to the conclusion that this is a three-stage process; Keep advancing until you find a satisfactory solution for you.

1. Optimize your placement. First and foremost, know where to put your bike on the loop. (This is where I was going wrong.) The green zones in the diagram at right are optimal. (I was using a "Dipole" position on a "Quadrupole" loop. If you are seeing a "Diagonal Quadrupole" loop, you probably live in Davis CA, Boulder CO, or Portland OR.)

2. Know when you can "Cheat". If you use optimal position as noted above, yet you pass through an entire cycle and the traffic signal fails to let you through, then the signal can be considered "defective". Most jurisdictions allow running the light in such a situation. If you do this, be doubly careful! Watch most carefully for traffic that doesn't see you!

3. Contact your local Traffic Engineers. The good news about inductive traffic loops is, they're easy to adjust. The bad news is, you may get ignored by your local traffic engineers. When I emailed my county engineers about the light I'd been having trouble with, their advice was to dismount, walk as a pedestrian across 3 traffic lanes, and actuate a pedestrian call button. I hope you have better luck when and if you have to call them.

Here are some more avenues for research, if you want to dig deeply into the physics of embedded loops:

Goodridge article, "Detection of Bicycles by Quadrupole Loops at Demand-Actuated Traffic Signals"

Tracy-Williams article, "Traffic Signals"

John Allen article, "Traffic Signal Actuators: Am I paranoid?"

Times Square

I asked my younger daughter (who lives in New York City) what she thought about the new Times Square makeover (where Broadway has been blocked from automobile traffic in a couple of places) and she seemed dismissive. (She might have called it a "gimmick".) I think that she, as an adoptive New Yorker, wants to keep away from touristy areas, and Times Square certainly qualifies.

It's weird to think about cheap folding lawn chairs in the left-over spaces where Broadway used to cross 7th Avenue (which remains open, by the way.) Supposedly, the city takes up the chairs every night and redistributes them every morning. Is this any way to run a national urban landmark?

But there's something important about the New Times Square makeover by the Planning Department of New York City. If nothing else, it's the first U.S. project (ad hoc though it be) in my memory whose momentum is decidedly anti-car. Nicholai Ouroussoff reviews the "design" in this article. Nick O (as I will dare to call him) is right on the money about the unplanned nature of the action (as he says, "this is not the Piazza San Marco in Venice or even Trafalgar Square", but I think it is so important to expose people (even if they are unwitting tourists!) to the idea that the U.S. can have a "public realm" that isn't driven (sorry!) by traffic engineering.

Over at the very interesting blog, World Streets (newly on my blogroll), there is a very interesting article (which promises to be a series) by Paul Barter, a professor in public policy at the National University of Singapore, about "The Battle for Street Space" that is really worth a read (as is much of the other stuff over there.) I see many people from all over the world on that blog talking about 30 kph (yes, kph) speed limits everywhere except on highways. My first reaction is to lecture these people about how this will never fly in the U.S.; the auto is forever king here. But maybe not -- Times Square is a very interesting precedent. It will be fascinating to see where it goes.

Freak Incident for London Mayor

The mayor of London, Boris Johnson, was nearly caught in a totally freaky accident while testing out likely bike routes for infrastructural upgrading. Johnson and an entourage of about 10 cyclists were properly riding on the left edge of the pavement along a street where parked cars were on the right, and an overtaking truck had a rear hatch swing open, catch a parked car, and fling it (!!!) across the road, nearly taking out (in a major way) several of the cyclists. Luckily, no one was injured, but boy howdy, this could have been messy.

The Wharf account of the incident can be read here; The New York Times also has an account here which includes a video taken from a security camera. One of the riders in the group, also has a couple of Flickr photos here.

This incident is such a freaky one that it's difficult to draw "lessons" from it, but here at least are a few observations (feel free to chime in if you have others):

• The danger here is by no means confined to cyclists; pedestrians or motorists would have been equally at risk;
• The truck driver was clearly negligent (in not buttoning-up his truck at the very least) and deserves a healthy fine;
• The system of sidewalk/curb/bike lane/parking lane/driving lane would have greatly ameliorated (if not eliminated) the risk here;
• Boris Johnson is one lucky guy, as are his fellow riders;

Freaky Friday, indeed.

Chevrons for All

In doing a little more research on sharrows, I came across a brand-new (only two weeks old!) study on sharrows done by the city of Bellevue, Washington. It's worth a download and read. Much of the methodology is very similar to the earlier City of San Francisco (CSF) study.

Continuing in the spirit of my last two posts, I've decided to do a little "free art" for the public. I've made a couple of full-size graphics of chevron-style sharrow images, done to two different municipal standards. They are ready to be printed on a large-format printer and cut into a large sheet of (something). Then, well, do with it as you will. Hang it on the wall, or use it, uh, as a focus for night-time activity.

Images: The images are full-size PDF graphics. They are fairly compact (in terms of file size). The image based on the CSF "chevron" style (download here) is smaller and will fit into a 4' x 8' sheet of stencil material. The Bellevue image (download here) is rather larger and would require a 4' x 11' or 4' x 12' sheet of material. I've slightly modified the CSF image by adding "webbing" for easy positioning of the cutouts. This will be a single-piece stencil. The Bellevue image isn't modified from their spec, which is much more detailed, and is a multi-piece stencil.

Positioning on roadway: The CSF guidelines were for the center of the image to be 11'-0" from the curb in areas of parallel parking. The Bellevue guidelines call for the center of the image to be "about 11 feet from the curb where parking exists" and, with no parking, "about 3 feet out from the curb."

Methodology: Well, the standard approach is to print the PDF full size at a printing shop that handles large-format printing, then to transfer it to stencil material such as corrugated single-face plastic sheet and cut it out (be careful, be careful, BE CAREFUL!)

It is, however, difficult to get an image out of my head, and that is Joshua Kinberg's utterly brilliant "Bikes Against Bush" rig (website here, video here) done for the New York City Republican Convention. The resolution of these images are of course a lot higher than the rather crude (brilliant! but low-rez) letters of Joshua's first experiment. But it doesn't take a genius to visualize a higher-rez "bike dot matrix" system that could handle one-color graphic images as well as just text. This really sounds like a job for JK or the Graffiti Research Lab of NYC. This would be a technological tour-de-force for the "Urban Repair Squad", wouldn't it?

Sharrows

Let's continue on the topic of street marking.

Wanting to know more about sharrows, I went to Wikipedia and read about shared lane marking. (I had to read about a district in Sheffield, England first.) I was a little unclear on the topic, I suppose, as I had thought that sharrows were rather vague in their application. Nothing could be further from the truth, as there appears to be a small if well defined body of traffic standards that apply to shared lane markings.

If you've (like me) not been paying close attention to the sharrows issue, here's a brief definition: Sharrows are "bicycle use" road markings that are installed where complete bike lanes cannot be installed for various reasons including:

• Not enough cyclists to justify bike lanes;
• Too expensive to install bike lanes;
• Use of bike lanes would require loss of parking; and/or
• Use of bike lanes would require road widening;

The city of San Francisco did a study on sharrows in 2004 that they have published in PDF form. The study's stated goals for sharrows is the following:

• Improve positioning of both cyclists and motorists on streets without bike lanes;
• Reduce aggressive motorist behavior;
• Prevent wrong-way bicycling;
• Prevent bicycling on sidewalks;

San Francisco additionally studied two different forms of sharrow marking, the "bike in house" design and the "chevron" design. Their study logged 140 hours of videotaping of before-and-after activity on six different streets in SF, three of which were two-lane and three of which were four-lane. Even though this study is not exactly "new news", I must say that I'm impressed with the size, thoroughness and rigor of this study. San Francisco has got a bunch of wonks that know what they're doing, statistically.

So, what happened? Well, the city of San Francisco (CSF) videotaped and analyzed a lot of traffic behavior. In 6 street locations, and before painting the streets, they taped cyclists' positions on the street, motorists' locations, and clearances afforded cyclists by motorists. (They did this for 1100 cyclists.) Then they painted the sharrows with the center of the figure 11'-0" out from the curb. And they ran the video study again. The results of the study are as summarized in the graphic at right.

I don't know about you, but I think these are pretty significant results. Cyclists are clearly less crowded towards parked cars, and motorists are clearly making better affordances for them.

One of the interesting things that the CSF found was that while the "chevron" design eliminated wrong-way cycling where it was used, the "bike-in-house" design appeared to have no effect in this area. For this reason (and the slightly better affordances noted above), the CSF approved the "chevron" design for use on CSF streets.

Because the markings were applied to the streets with no preceding public education program (the CSF evidently felt this might have skewed the results,) cyclists and motorists were then surveyed as to their perception and understanding of the markings. I won't go into the results of this survey in detail, (you can peruse the PDF if you like, as it's all there,) but will hit on some highlights:

• Most cyclists felt that the markings indicated a bike route;
• 60% of the cyclists felt an increased sense of safety;
• 33% of the cyclists felt that the markings caused them to "take the lane" more;
• 35% of the cyclists felt that the markings improved motorists' behavior;

After reading and reflecting on this excellent study, I feel that I have a much more positive feeling about sharrows than I had before. First and foremost, they are effective; they work to improve cyclist/ motorist interactions. Secondly, they have a "skills improvement" component, that of helping the cyclist attain proper position on the road. Finally, their ambiguity (which had put me off a little before I read the study) may prove to be one of their strong points: while a cyclist may feel he is "unprotected" if he ventures outside a fully-marked bike lane, no such boundary exists or is even implied with a sharrow, and this is probably a good thing.