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.

Tufte would be Proud

Ed Tufte is one of the original thinkers of the Information Age. See his website here. I will presume that most readers have at least a passing acquaintance with his books, perhaps fewer with his sculpture. I was struck by a surpassingly nice graphic in last weekend's New York Times that was pure Tufte. A reduced image is at right; click here to go to the original article. Rarely have I seen a more concise graphing of two important (and related) quantities: The price of gasoline vs. the number of miles driven per year (on average) by Americans. Nice to see them researched and correlated. (I also like the way the curve is smoothed out -- it has a nice organic look to it.)

It's pretty shocking to see that between 1968 and 2004, the miles driven by Americans doubled. It's also nice to see things moving back to the left. Do Americans realize that, no matter how nicely appointed their autos, the quality of life while driving is a miserable fraction of that spent out in "the real world"?

All other things being equal, economic theory predicts that instead of such a loopy curve, we'd see a straight slope up from left to right. Of course, this isn't the whole story. To see the entire economic picture, we'd also have to see a supply curve of gasoline produced in the US market for the same period of time. Perhaps also an efficiency curve of average MPG for autos in the US market. Perhaps looking at such a 3- or 4-dimensional graphic would give me a headache!

Jan Gehl, Planner Extraordinaire

A name that I became familiar with only after reading David Byrne's Bicycle Diaries over the Thanksgiving holiday (a complete review is on its way) was that of Jan Gehl, a Danish urban planner who is largely responsible (as far as I can fathom) for making Copenhagen the world bicycling paragon that it is. I have spoken before about Copenhagen and its self-propagated images and perceptions, and frankly, I've been less than complimentary, because I think that the most vocal Danish bicycle proponents confuse cause and effect and fail to give credit where it's due (Mikael Colville-Andersen, in his talk in Washington DC, did not mention Gehl).

But if he is not personally so, Gehl appears to be close to the source itself. He's an architect and planner, and principal in Gehl Architects (who have one of the coolest Flash web front-ends I've ever seen.)

New York has a significant connection to Gehl as well. The New York City Department of Transportation hired Gehl as a consultant to survey its streets in 2007 and, by no coincidence bicycling is up in that city as well. Perhaps related to this connection, the New York Times has seen fit to recognize Gehl in its ninth annual Year in Ideas issue of the Sunday magazine.

Byrne talks about Gehl in several places in his book. He introduces him talking about Melbourne and the success they've had in making their city much more liveable. Byrne describes Gehl as

a visionary yet practical urban planner who has successfully tranformed Copenhagen into a pedestrian- and bike-friendly city.. We here in New York think that's .. all well and good for the Danes, but New Yorkers are .. independent minded, so that can't happen here. But Gehl reveals that his proposals initially met with exactly that kind of opposition over there: the locals said, "We Danes will never agree to this—Danish people won't ride bikes." [emphasis mine]

There are many reasons to be hopeful and engaged after reading Byrne's book, but I must say that I found the above paragraphs to be the most inspirational I'd read in quite a while.

Extreme Cyclist Holiday

I didn't really start out intending to have an Extreme Cyclist Holiday in Houston. I just meant to take my folder along and get some riding in, instead of spending all my time in a car, worrying about gas, parking, etc. Then things just sort of got out of hand.

Let's back up a little. At the last minute, I decided to go to the Rice University homecoming to hopefully see some old friends and hang out some with my older daughter Claire, who helps run a bookstore there. I booked a flight, and found my usual close-to-Rice hotel had some good rates, so I got a room. Then I thought, "Hey, I wonder if I can get from the airport to reasonably close to my hotel using mass transit?" Hopping on the Houston Metro website and entering a couple of addresses, I found that I could catch a bus right at the airport that took me to within a quarter-mile of my hotel with no transfers. Wow. Sixteen miles in Houston for a buck and a quarter. Double wow. (The image at right is from the Houston METRO trip planner, very convenient.)

So, that axed the rental car, which saved me about a hundred bucks, probably a hundred thirty with gas. Ka-ching. But it also meant that my in-town trips would be either by bus, by taxi, or by bike. (Now there's an easy decision.) Houston is flat, and the November weather in Houston is really perfect for riding (high 60's to mid 70's, and not terribly humid). And good weather (no rain) in the forecast.

So, to make a long story short, I spent an entire weekend (three days, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday) in Houston, Car City USA, and not once did I even get into an automobile. It didn't seem strange until early Sunday when I realized that I hadn't been in one. Of course all my old classmates thought it weird, but I caught some whiffs of envy among the incredulity, when they asked, "You're kidding! You BIKED to the party?"

Good things: Saving money, great exercise, the flatness of Houston (my little Dahon folder is great for packing, but really not much for hills), Rice University bike parking facilities (basically, good secure bike racks everywhere), not having to worry about parking a car, Daniel Boone's Cycle Shop, and great weather.

Some people complain about Houston drivers. I was told by the bus driver (friendly guy) coming into town that Houston drivers don't respect cyclists, but I had zero bad experiences over about 60 miles in 3 days. Of course I was in a university part of town, where there are quite a few cyclists, but overall, no complaints from me about Houston motorists.

Not so good things: Houston has the world's narrowest bike lanes (where they have them), and the paving in Houston is the pits. Literally. Basically, Houston is built on the flat gulf-coast plains that have a lot of clay in the soil. This "gumbo" as it is called is just hell on pavement. I found myself weaving a lot more than I wanted to be to avoid really nasty potholes and large cracks.

I even had an accident because of the bad roads! It was late at night and I was riding back to the hotel from my daughter's apartment. I hit a bad pothole (hard to see) and went right over the bars (not hard to do on a short-wheelbase, small-wheeled folding bike.) Luckily, no injuries beyond some bruised kneecaps, as I wasn't going all that fast. Not even any torn clothes.

The funny thing is, I picked myself up and dusted myself off, determined the bike was rideable (it needed the derailleur hanger bent back into proper position) and proceeded home. The next morning, I got up early and looked at bike and saw what I missed the night before: my cyclo-computer was missing. Muttering under my breath at my obliviousness the night before, I hopped on the bike and went back to the accident site (I figured if I waited, there was more chance of it getting smashed by a car) and there it was, flung up in a driveway, fully operational. I clipped it back on and went back to the hotel for breakfast.

But it's been almost 30 years since I had an over-the-bars experience! I'll probably be sore for several more days, but the only cure for that is more riding. I really wouldn't mind not ever going over the bars again, ever. Good thing I was wearing gloves. But the accident seemed to underscore the "extreme" quality of the weekend.

I have to say though, I wouldn't hesitate in the least to do a pure "bike holiday" again (except for the accident part). A little planning can yield a lot of riding, and a lot of fun.

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..)

Impeach Rick Perry

Rick Perry, the governor of the State of Texas, is a lying tyrant and should be impeached.

There might be people who think that statement is just a wee bit strong. But you know, I just don't know how to put it more plainly and simply than that. I'm sure that most readers of this blog know the basics of the story by now, but just in case, let's review them:

The Legislature of the State of Texas soundly passed a bill, SB 488, "Relating to the operation of a motor vehicle in the vicinity of a vulnerable road user; providing penalties," intending to protect (among others) bicyclists in the state of Texas. It was passed out of committee by a vote of 7-2. The bill was passed by a vote of 142-0 (with 2 abstentions) in the Texas House of Representatives last June 2, and on June 3 by 26-5 in the Texas Senate (so I trust there will be no challenge to the word "soundly".) The bill was certified by the conference committee to have no negative fiscal impact on either the State of Texas nor the communities of Texas.

A web page for the bill, from which the text can be downloaded, is here.

The bill would have required motorists to give cyclists and others categorized as "vulnerable road users" at least 3 feet of clearance when passing on most highways. The "vulnerable road users" category would have included pedestrians, highway construction and maintenance workers, tow truck operators, stranded motorists or passengers, people on horseback, bicyclists, motorcyclists, moped riders, and other similar road users.

Texas Governor Rick Perry, in an action surprising to some observers, vetoed the bill last June 19th. (The Texas state Constitution gives the Governor ten days after receiving a bill to either sign it or veto it, I don't understand why this bill could have been vetoed after 16 days. But that's for more expert Texas legal minds to ponder.)

Perry, a mountain-biker who recently broke his collarbone in an accident, said that many road users in this category already have operation regulations and restrictions in state law. He stated,

“While I am in favor of measures that make our roads safer for everyone, this bill contradicts much of the current statute and places the liability and responsibility on the operator of a motor vehicle when encountering one of these vulnerable road users.”

Perry is plainly lying when he says that he is "in favor of measures that make [Texas'] roads safer for everyone." This statement can be explained no other way. (It's not merely a lie, it's a bald-faced lie, one that is so obvious and blatant that it dares to you call it such, and I choose to do so.) So now let's address the "Tyrant" part of my earlier epithet.

Perry as governor of Texas doesn't have a lot of power, really. The real power is in the Legislature (the "Lege" as it was referred to by the late great muckraker and humorist Molly Ivins.) The only real power the Governor has is the veto. Perry has misused this power: In the four legislative sessions completed while he was governor, Perry has vetoed 203 bills – more than any other governor of Texas. He is also the longest-serving governor in Texas history. (What are you Texans out there thinking, anyway? If you elected a fire-hydrant to the office of Governor, at least it would do less harm than Perry!) This petulant and corrupt over-use of the veto authority is taking power out of the hands of the legislature and the people they represent, hence my use of the "Tyrant" epithet.

The state of Texas has a provision for the legislature overriding governor vetoes, but according to this article, there are procedural issues that make overrides difficult. So the Texas Legislature has written a bill providing for a Constitutional amendment to allow the Legislature to call a special session to deal specifically with veto overrides. However, according to Texas Senator Jeff Wentworth (R), Perry and Lieutenant Governor David Dewhurst are conspiring to prevent the constitutional amendment from making the floor of the Senate.

All of this would be moot if the state of Texas enforced the laws on its books (you know, those laws that Perry says suffice.) But they don't. If you're a cyclist in Texas, you have very little protection. Consider the tragic case of Gregory and Alexandra Bruehler. The San Antonio couple were riding a tandem on the shoulder of Highway 16 north of Helotes, TX when a truck struck them from behind. They were both killed and leave behind a 7-year-old daughter. (Heart-rending images of the daughter abound in the blogosphere, and I won't reproduce them here.) Local news reports that “investigators say there are no charges on the driver. They believe this was an 'accident' and that somehow the driver lost control of his truck.” Even though the driver was reportedly exceeding the speed limit. That, dear friends, is the state of law enforcement in Texas (and, to be fair, in other states.)

You might think that, given this (admitted) diatribe, I don't care for Texas. But that's not true. I lived for almost 30 years in Texas, and I love that state, and I love Austin, where I married and had kids. I love Texas, but I've had enough of lame-brained Texas politics. Just like another stupid mountain-biking governor of Texas, this one should be impeached.

Memo to Texas Legislature: Grow a pair.

Memo to State's Attorneys across the State of Texas: start doing the job you were elected to and enforce the laws that are on the books.

Across the chasm

The renowned cult author, Robert Pirsig, wrote an article for Esquire magazine in 1977 about cruise sailing wherein he observed that people who had spent years and lots of money preparing for once-in-a-lifetime cruise sailing voyages often cut them short, disappointed and disillusioned, eager to get "back to reality" from their dream cruises that had turned into nightmares.

Here are a couple of excerpts that apply, directly or indirectly, to bicycle commuting, I think:

The house-car-job complex with its nine-to-five office routine is common only to a very small percentage of the earth's population and has only been common to this percentage for the last hundred years or so. If this is reality, have the millions of years that preceded our current century all been unreal?

An alternative - and better - definition of reality can be found by naming some of its components ...air...sunlight...wind...water...the motion of waves...the patterns of clouds before a coming storm. These elements, unlike twentieth-century office routines, have been here since before life appeared on this planet and they will continue long after office routines are gone. They are understood by everyone, not just a small segment of a highly advanced society. When considered on purely logical grounds, they are more real than the extremely transitory life-styles of the modern civilization the depressed ones want to return to.
...
Now, however, with a boat of my own and some time at sea, I begin to see the learning of virtue another way. It has something to do with the way the sea and sun and wind and sky go on and on day after day, week after week, and the boat and you have to go on with it. You must take the helm and change the sails and take sights of the stars and work out their reductions and sleep and cook and eat and repair things as they break and do most of these things in stormy weather as well as fair, depressed as well as elated, because there's no choice. You get used to it; it becomes habit-forming and produces a certain change in values.

Taking responsiblity for my own transportation is such a liberating thing, and I think it's exactly what Pirsig is talking about. What the weather's going to do, how I have to dress for that, how long it's going to take to get to the office, how my legs feel and how steep the rises are, all these things are part of my "daily chores". Every hill is an opportunity to find the perfect gear to carry me. Headwinds are an opportunity to orient my direction to the cardinal points and get a better sense of my space on the map as I go home. That squeak in the chain means that I'm going to have drop it and lube it soon. My right knee is twinging a bit, better gear down. The way those clouds are moving means that the rain will be over in no more than 5 minutes.

Those cars going by me are big and hot. And heavy, really massive. They are big metal-and-glass parlors on wheels carrying large amounts of flammable liquid. Sometimes the drivers are aware of me, sometimes not. Most of the drivers don't seem too happy; a lot of them are distracted, talking on their cellphones.

As I sit here typing this post, two (count 'em) car ads have come on late night TV touting new cars with "driver-assist" technology. You know, computer-aided steering that moves you back into the land if you wanter, or senses when you're nodding off and alerts you. All this stuff is going to put just more stuff between the drivers who buy these (very expensive) cars and reality.

Pirsig is right. Dealing with reality, if made into a habit (and taken in manageable doses) is value-forming and -enhancing. Motorists have their "reality". In their world, what I do is crazy, dangerous, and even childish. (They wonder when I'll "grow up and get a car"!) In my world, what I do is entirely safe, fun, life-enhancing and (especially) real.

I do drive sometimes, when the situation demands it. (I will have to tomorrow.) So it's easier for me to understand the perspective of a motorist. But 99% of all motorists will not have my cycling experience. It's like we are on the opposite rims of a canyon.

Juking the Cars

I was going to call this post "Vehicular Jiu-Jitsu", but technically Jiu-Jitsu implies using the weight (and momentum) of your opponent against him, and in terms of weight and momentum, the cars have all the advantage. So I realized I was really thinking about another "J" word, from American sports (it's used both in American football and basketball): Juking.

The online slang dictionary defines the word thus:

juke |joōk| informal

verb [ intrans. ]
1 to cheat.
2 to not meet someone as planned; to "stand up."
3 to fake out or to feign [sports].
4 to dance provocatively.

The applicable definition here is #3. In basketball, to "juke the defender" means to fake a shot (to get the defender to leave his feet) and, while the defender is in the air, drive by him. In football, the "juke" is a weaving or swerving pattern used by receivers to lose their defenders. In both cases, the offensive person make a move to get the defender to hesitate, and then takes advantage.

It happened in traffic the other evening, coming home. I was trying to move into the left lane in traffic to get into a left-turn-only lane. I had my arm out, and two cars had passed me by (the second one made me a little angry -- he had plenty of time to see me and give me room.) The guy in the third car was going to try and sneak by (I was "just a cyclist", after all) but I crowded him, swerved ever so slightly into his lane and he backed off. He didn't want to -- he gave me quite the dirty look as he passed me by on the right. When I saw what he was driving, (a Mercedes S-class) I gave myself a couple of bonus points, as I suspect he wasn't used to getting backed down by drivers in lesser cars, much less a cyclist.

Welcome to the juke, fella. Don't be angry with me just because I maneuvered you into doing the right thing.

This ability to make a split-second judgement about what a driver is doing (or likely to do) is one of, if not the most challenging aspect of vehicular cycling.

Particularly in this situation -- drivers wouldn't dream of overtaking a car slowing down with its left turn-signal on, but many, many drivers think they can sneak by a cyclist doing exactly the same thing. Although it helps to be taking the lane pretty aggressively, I've still had drivers zoom by me when I'm full in the lane with my arm out. I can't explain this level of motorist negligence.

I don't know how this is taught in the LAB classes (as I've not been able to attend one yet, but that's another story). I think it is one of the most "athletic" aspects of VC, so the athletic analogy is well-suited here.

NB: The image above is from a very cool web page illustrating "Self-Defence with a Walking-Stick," originally from a 1901 edition of Pearson's magazine.

Fashionista

Mikael Colville-Andersen (that's him at right) is a film-maker and the blog author over at Copenhagenize and Copenhagen Cycle Chic. I heard him speak at the Washington DC Planning Commission last Wednesday night. Mikael is a good public speaker and a charming and funny guy, and he is promoting a provocative idea about urban cycling and cycling policy:

We could have all the benefits of Copenhagen cycling if we just, you know, dressed a little nicer on our bikes, if we just marketed bicycling as an activity by, um, looking more like a fashion plate.

Mikael cites a lot of statistics (if, for example, you go over to Copenhagenize, you can see a running total of bicycle miles ridden in Copenhagen up to the moment) and makes a number of frankly good points about the Copenhagen environment. He talks about all the bike infrastructure that's being implemented in Denmark, and he spends no small amount of time addressing the fact that cycling is so much a part of the Danish lifestyle that people who do urban cycling in Copenhagen don't think of themselves as "cyclists". To what does Mikael attribute this great example for the rest of the world? To the fact that the Danish cyclists dress well, with a sense of style, (and that the men wear suits). Mikael asserts that bicycling's lack of status (outside of Copenhagen and -maybe- Amsterdam) is due to the fact that we just don't dress well enough.

Mikael, excuse me for saying so, but I think you have your cause and effect either reversed or at best very muddled. Your fashion premise is a fiction. An amusing fiction, and one that we might all like to imagine ourselves in the midst of, but a fiction nonetheless.

I've been pretty tough on Mikael so far this post, (and I beat up on him a little in a previous post) but I will certainly concede that in his talk he does make some interesting and (mostly) valid points about the "values inversion" of the way that cars and automobiles are marketed:

• Which is truly more "liberating", an auto or a bicycle?
• Which is truly more dangerous, an auto or a bicycle?
• Which is truly sexier, driving a car or riding a bike?
• Should automobiles have warning labels like cigarettes?
  

and he does a nice historical exposition of bicycle posters, to show how bicycles and bicycling (as a tourist activity) have been marketed over the 20th century. These are valid, and I appreciate all this. And Mikael's "cycle chic" (thinly disguised girl-watching, but hey, I like this as much as the next guy) is supported in this article in Sci-Am about the incidence of female cyclists.

But the promulgation of "cycle chic" is just wrong as primary policy. Why do I say this? Two reasons. One, it's an effect, not a cause. And Two, because there are bicycling advocacy groups who will buy into it because it's easy. "All we have to do is increase our marketing budget and find some good-looking models, and our urban cycling problems will diminish!" Excuse me, but this is reductionist malarkey.

Over the past couple of years, I've spent enough time in Europe, in Belgium, France, Germany, Switzerland, and Sweden, to see the truth about why urban cycling in these places is different from the US. The truth of it is, what make cycling work in Copenhagen (and Amsterdam, Basel, Berlin, Brussels, Stockholm and elsewhere) is the combination of two components:

1. Motorists' near-universal respect for bicyclists*; and
2. Bicyclists' near-universal respect for traffic laws.

These two complementary components, while not impossible to enable in the US, are, nonetheless, longer-term and messier than a simple marketing campaign. Making these two things happen in the US will involve "the three E's":

• bicycle safety education (best if done in public schools from an early age);
• enactment of laws that protect bicyclists in a reasonable way; and
• consistent and fair enforcement of those laws.

Denmark has all these things, and that is why Copenhagen residents use bikes casually and don't need to think of themselves as cyclists. (Some of the readers of this blog have already commented on the Danes' observance of traffic laws.) And this has created the secure environment that allows them to 'dress up' when it suits them. Not the other way around.

Postscript: Am I guilty of taking Mikael too seriously when he is intending to be 100% ironic? Hm. It is a possibility. But if Mikael really wants to get the substantive good news out about Danish cycling, there is certainly a lot of it that he's bypassing. Consider this excellent report (PDF) from the English reports pages of the Danish Road Directorate. (It's from the year 2000, but is the most recent paper on this topic.) In a (partial) defense of Mikael's "marketing" position, there is this quote:

It is important to link soft policies (campaigns, instruction etc) with hard policies (infrastructure, taxation etc). The combination of hard and soft policies is necessary in order to achieve a big change in travel behaviour, both regarding transport mode choice and road safety.

Notice that the quote does mention "campaigns" but in the same breath talks about education as well as "hard policies". In fact, the report is such a good report and so well researched and balanced, and give such a good picture of the real policies that need implementing that it somewhat reinforces my picture of Mikael as being reductionist. And mind you, the source of this document is the Danish highway department. Consider how different the US would be if we had our highway departments actively researching and promoting cycling! As just one example, consider the chart below and the story it tells:
But hey, all of this doesn't mean I'm not a curmudgeon :)

*There are exceptions to this, especially in the UK which for some reason tracks the US more closely.

Proof of God's Love and Sense of Humor

"Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
—Benjamin Franklin

"Bacon is proof that God loves us... well, a whole lot more than He loves pigs."
—Robert Anderson

This past Tuesday morning I also got proof that God has a great sense of ironic humor. I was approaching what is consistently the most dangerous intersection on my morning commute, and it was approached by the most dangerous kind of driver, in the most dangerous kind of vehicle, doing the most dangerous activity, and...

The distracted housewife in the SUV with a cellphone clamped to the side of her head at the four-yield traffic circle stopped, made eye contact, and (just for good measure) waved me through.

It took me a half a block to grasp the kind of joke God was playing on me, upending all my stereotypes in one fell swoop. I appreciated it so that I laughed out loud. As a religious person, I would generally consider myself more of a Diest than a Theist, even though I am pretty faithful Lutheran (but that's mainly because I love to sing in the choir). The rest of religion—all the stories, all the doctrine—are just stuff that people have made up in a vain attempt to explain the unexplainable. (Not that there aren't some good stories.) And there are some things (like the "resurrection of the body" that wraps up the Christian Credo) that, I'm sorry, just haven't been thought through. (I mean, will I have to have dental floss and toilet paper in Heaven? Gimme a break.)

Cosmological physicists tell us that we can perceive only about four percent of the universe. Everything we can perceive of the universe, all the Earth, the Solar System, the galaxies, everything.. is just four percent of all that is. We as humans just don't have the senses to perceive the rest. Scientists have made up something called "dark matter" (I like to think of it as "the fudge factor of the universe") so that their equations will match what is observed. How is it, then, that some scientists have such faith in their miserable perceptions to loudly disavow the existence of God?

Another scientist (well, mathematician) of (ahem) note, Blaise Pascal, put it this way, (about "betting" on whether God exists) in his work Penseés:

But you must wager. It is not optional. You are embarked. Which will you choose then? Let us see. Since you must choose, let us see which interests you least. You have two things to lose, the true and the good; and two things to stake, your reason and your will, your knowledge and your happiness; and your nature has two things to shun, error and misery. Your reason is no more shocked in choosing one rather than the other, since you must of necessity choose. This is one point settled. But your happiness? Let us weigh the gain and the loss in wagering that God is. Let us estimate these two chances. If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation that He is.

Difficult to put it better than that.

Later on in that morning ride, just for good measure, I got to bike on the rarest thing: a freshly-swept road. I mean so fresh that the little water dribble-marks from the street-sweeper were still visible on the asphalt. It was awesome. So clean and smooth.

Every once in a while, Theism tempts me away from my cooler Deistic beliefs.

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.

Apocalyptic, but (hopefully) Funny

No, I'm not talking about the latest Tarantino movie, but about T-shirt designs.

For the longest time, I've been unable to get the irony of the old Sinclair gasoline station signs out of my head. The double-entendre of the "dinosaur" is just too delicious, particularly when applied to (take your choice): petroleum / global warming / large automobiles / SUVs / heedless drivers.

Combining my love of ironic humor with my love of word play, I've mashed-up the old Sinclair sign a bit, finding a new anagrammatic interpretation of the letters, giving ol' Apato a little bit of personality and throwing in a fiery asteroid for good measure (this last element, I must admit, was inspired by Olivia Judson's blog on the New York Times website.)

There are two hi-rez PDF versions, one with a background field, one without (the low-ink version, for those of you printing your own T-shirts on the inkjet printer.) Enjoy, and if you make up some shirts, send me some photos of yourselves!

Poetry Break

There was recently, in the New York Times, a paean to the tailfin as promulgated by Detroit in the 1950's. In it, there was a brief excerpt from a Robert Lowell poem. Lowell (for those of you who are, like me, generally ignorant of higher culture (especially poetry), Lowell was appointed the sixth Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (aka "Poet Laureate" of the United States) in 1946. His family included the other poets Amy Lowell and James Russell Lowell.

Here's the poem. "For the Union Dead" was commissioned for and first read at the Boston Arts Festival in 1960. It was the title work of his next book of poetry, published in 1964. See if you can find the quatrain that caught my eye (and was quoted in the Times). (The link to the Times article is below the poem.)

WARNING: this poem uses the "N" word, although (to my mind) in an historic and not a racist way.

For the Union Dead

Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.

The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.

My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized

fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.

Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,

shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens' shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage's earthquake.

Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.

Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city's throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.

He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound's gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.

He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man's lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.

On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic

The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…

Shaw's father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son's body was thrown
and lost with his "niggers."

The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling

over a Mosler Safe, the "Rock of Ages"
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.

Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.

The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.

—Robert Lowell, 1960

(Link to the New York Times article is here.)

Use Case for a Practical Cyclist

There are many particular "use cases" for practical cycling, but few come to mind that are any more compelling than Taking The Car To The Shop. In non-practical-cycling terms, this is one of life's little pains, right? You have to have your spouse/SO/family member take you or pick you up (and burn double the fossil fuel in doing so), or else you have to cool your heels at the auto shop for a shuttle (that's assuming they even have a shuttle), OR you have to get a taxi. Inconvenient, frustrating, and/or wasteful all the way around.

On the other hand, if you:

• have figured out a good route to/from the shop to your home;
• have a way to carry a bike on or in the car being serviced; and
• want an excuse to ride your bike,

..then Taking The Car To The Shop is just a fun couple of hours (except for the repair bill, which is yet another reminder (as if I needed one) that cars are expensive and troublesome!)

Finding excuses to ride your bike (as opposed to finding excuses to avoid riding your bike) is what the Practical Cyclist's life is all about.

This doesn't bode well...

...for justice in Asheville. An (unnamed) judge reduced Charles Diez' bail from $500,000 to $200,000 so he could get out of jail. Still no word on if he's still being paid. I have some problems with a culture that looks the other way and allows people to render mayhem with guns on the public at large just because they are "public servants". As alleged, this is a serious crime, and (according to news accounts at least) the facts of the matter do not seem to be much at issue.

Throw the book at this guy. He's proved that he's a menace.

Creepy

Is it just me who finds the new Toyota Prius ads creepy? Apparently.

Yes, I know that the Prius is the most fuel-efficient car out there. Yes, I know the Munchkin-like seething mass of humanity is mostly computer-augmented, just like the Coliseum crowd effects that won the Oscar for the movie Gladiator. But it still creeps me out.

Part of what I know about the Prius is this: It's a car. (well, duh.) And that means it's big and heavy (relative to my scrawny transporation system, that is.) Think about it this way: A Prius hauling a single person (most of them do) is getting (let's say) 50 person-miles per gallon of gas, (which contains 31,548 kcal), or 31,548 / 50 = 630 kcal per mile. On a bike, I can cover roughly 15 miles per hour burning 700 kcal, which works out to 700 / 15 = 46.7 kcal per mile. So my system (for a single passenger) is 13.5 times as efficient as a Prius. So if a Prius gets 50 mpg, I get "675 mpg". (I know that's a bit of a red herring.)

In honor of this ratio, I'vc created a graphic. You can download the high-rez version here, if you want to put it on a t-shirt or something.

But the latest data point about hybrids is a truly unexpected one: according to insurance statistics, hybrid drivers drive more, get more tickets, and have more accidents than non-hybrid drivers. (Perhaps they are distracted by their hypermiling techniques?) According to the study cited here, the decreased guilt associated with improved fuel-efficiency increases the number of discretionary trips by up to 25%, largely offsetting any petroleum savings.

It is, after all, just a car.

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.