Bicycle Slo(w)

Today the wind was evil, coming from the west, seemingly never trailing, always abeam or ahead, sapping strength even though the cadence stayed the same, the gearing lower, even dropped down on the handlebars.  Yesterday it was light rain, hiking but no bicycling.  And tonight the temperatures looks like it’ll drop into the upper 30s.

Winter, it seems, will never end.

Then I took a look at the calendar.  Holly Seasons!

Daylight savings time clocks in this weekend. (Honest.  You could look it up.)

The Spring Equinox is the next Sunday.

And the forecast for this Wednesday is for a high of 73 degrees and 10 mph.

Life is good.

Some high-stakes political games are being played out in Washington, D.C., these days. Billions are at stake.  Institutions are at stake.  Funding for all sorts of programs, including transportation programs are at stake.

It’s time for bicycling advocates currently convening in Washington to be very careful as they make the case for increasing or preserving support for the bike. Don’t overstate the case.  It’s not that strong.

Let’s consider the bike and Federal support.

There has been a push to use alternative means of transportation for decades in this country.  People from environmentalists, to economists, to health advocates, to just about every group of progressive thinkers have extolled the virtues of the use of mass transit and non-motorized vehicles.

Progress has been made, but slowly.

Frequently bicycle advocates in cities from Portland to New York have touted the increase in bicycle commuting as a rationale for directing more of our increasingly scarce public resources to improving the cycling infrastructure.  See below the postings about major breakthroughs in Los Angeles and San Diego.

Some of the numbers used by these advocates to show the increase in bicycling in their cities and nationally are rather impressive.  Places like Portland, San Francisco, even Oakland, New York City and many others have touted the increases that they have experienced in bicycle commuting.

Yet when you look at the big picture, the numbers are not nearly so enthralling.  In fact, if you look at the U.S. Census Bureau’s latest numbers they are positively depressing, and these are statistics touted by the League of American Bicyclists.  It turns out that nationally a very small percentage of commuters use anything but a single person occupied vehicle, and the numbers have not been increasing dramatically.

Nationally less than one percent of all commutes are by bike.  Even in the 70 largest cities it is only a hair over one percent.  Even though the absolute number of bike commuters increased by 44% from 2000 to 2009, it didn’t increase at all between 2008 and 2009.

Portland, Oregon, the city with the largest proportion of bicycling commuters only rang up 5.8%, increasing 77% from ‘00 to’09, but actually decreasing from ‘09 to ‘09.

Take San Luis Obispo County.  According to a fascinating graphical mapping of the Census Bureau’s data, 7.2% of all commuters us bicycle, walk or take public transit.  Bicycles make up only 1.8%.  No matter how fast bicycle commuting may be growing in relative terms, it is minuscule around here.

Even in San Francisco bicycles are only 2.6% of all commuters.

There is a Bicycle Summit opening in a day or so in Washington, D.C., and their main agenda seems to be to increase — or at least hold the line — on Federal support for bicycling infrastructure. 

A very worthy goal.  But keep in mind that the yahoos in Congress also have access to the same data we have.  When less than one in thirty people in a relatively major bicycling center use the bike to commute, it will not be regarded as a particularly large constituency.

The message here is: don’t oversell bicycling. The numbers can be used against us.

A light rain garaged the bikes, so we took a little walk up to Eagle Rock for a look-see.

Returned home to find Chris Fylling had sent this video of “the scariest foot path in the world.” 

From the website: “This walkway now serves as an approach to Makinodromo, the famous climbing sector of El Chorro in Spain’s Andalucia. And it is the hairiest path. The area of El Chorro situated in the south of Spain is renowned amongst travelers and mountain hikers for its stunning scenery and climbs, yet this is not the main attraction on offer, El Chorro is host to one of the most dangerous walkways in the world, built by workers to transport materials between the Chorro and Gaitanejo Falls.”

Humbling.  Terrifying.  Enjoy it from your easy chair. Click here.

Southern California saw a huge jump in significant local government commitment to bicycling.

The city of Los Angeles, with the enthusiastic support of the mayor, approved  a plan that envisions 1,680 miles of bike ways in the large, sprawling city.  This means that the city will be building 40 miles of bikeways each year, about four times the current rate.

“We have roughly $3.7 million a year to work with that’s committed to this,”  L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl told the local ABC News affiliate. “We got money out of Measure R and we have a commitment to spend it on doing this.”  There is a total of about $50 million set aside to implement the plan.

To see the LA plan in all it’s detail, click here.

Not to be outdone, it appears that governments in the San Diego area are going even further. The association of governments has approved a plan to allocate $2.58 billion over 30 years for bicycle and pedestrian improvements.

It’s not altogether clear whether the council of governments’ plan guarantees the spending, or whether it is simply a guideline for the constituent local governments to follow.

Nonetheless, the actions in both LA and SD have greatly encouraged local advocates of alternative transportation and appear to be a major step in the direction of giving real muscle to bicyclists and pedestrians in the motor vehicle clogged Southland.

The tension between riders and drivers continues to be a topic of conversation.

Earlier this week a video was posted about a driver who mowed down a bunch of Brazilian bicyclists on a “critical mass” ride in the south of the country.  At least 30 riders were injured, none fatally.

Now comes word that they’ve found and arrested the driver, found him after he had checked himself into a psychiatric hospital. The local police chief said that the driver claimed that while he waited for the bicyclists to pass they scratched his car.

About the same time the video was posted, Santa Barbara TV station’s typically brief and uninformative piece about the tension between drivers and bike riders in the city. No new ground was covered, but when local TV does a story it tells you that they think it resonates with its views.  (Incidentally, if you view the TV report notice that most of the riders are not wearing helmets.)

Google has outfitted a trike with it’s Street View image equipment in order to photograph places not accessible to automobiles, and place the photos on Google Maps. The images are now from places like California hiking trails, Florida’s Sea World, the Chateaux de Chenonceaux in Civray-de-Touraine, France pictured here

and Balboa Park in San Diego

KCET’s Social Focus website extolls the bicycling virtues on San Luis Obispo, using as its hook the new Madonna Bicycle Path.

According to KCET, “The nearly 11 square mile city currently hosts 34 miles of on-street bike lanes, a bicycle boulevard, bicycle corrals and about six miles of dedicated bicycle path, with more coming down the pipeline.”  The piece quotes the Bicycle Coalition’s Dan Revoire and the city of SLO’s Peggy Mandeville about the fruitfulness of the public/private partnership that led to the creation of the Madonna trail.

Nice publicity for the city.

Others who have ridden the path between rain storms have nice things to say about the path, with a few caveats.  Like: there’s one hill that requires a very low gear; there’s an abrupt curb ending at the Inn end; and once you’ve reached Marsh St heading east it’s hard to get on the street.

Saturday, February 26, 2011:

Hopkins student struck by car while riding bicycle
Baltimore Sun

One Dead After Car-Bicycle Accident
Hartford Courant

Driver cited in bicycle accident
Greenville Daily Reflector

Green Bay police seek clues in fatal hit-and-run of a man using a bicycle
Appleton Post Crescent

Bicyclist dies after being struck by truck
Katy Times

The video below showing what’s being done around the country to encourage and accommodate bicyclists in urban areas should be a clarion call to all city officials to get with bicycling improvements.

Home town SLO, for instance.

On the plus side, It has a bicycle advisory committee, a single bicycle boulevard that is very lightly traveled, the railroad bicycle path, the path out to Cal Poly, the Madonna bike path, the bike path to nowhere that starts at Prado Road, the Bicycle Valet for the Farmers’ Market — and that’s about it.  Oh, and it has a single bicycle box at Madonna Rd and Higuera—put in by Cal Trans.

There are none of the dedicated and protected bicycle lanes as featured in the video.  No sharrows. [Oops. We are There are sharrows on upper Monterey St and on Industrial Way.] No separately colored lanes.  No roadway dividers between automobile and bicycle traffic.  Few places for city buses to pull over to pick up passengers without blocking bicycle lanes. And only about three or four miles of dedicated bike paths.

Among the roads I regularly ride, South Higuera’s north-bound bike lane is narrow with dangerously high ridges between the lane and pavement.  Crossing the four lane Broad St for those who live west of the highway to get to the north-bound bike lane can be harrowing.  The lane along Santa Barbara is narrow.  The cross from Santa Barbara to the Morro St. bicycle blvd is awkward.  And Tank Farm Rd is a terror for bikes.

There are plenty of bicycle racks downtown, but they are mostly unused, perhaps a testament to the fact that many of us who often walk from home to downtown find the bike ride there to be unpleasant and dangerous.

This is a city with tons of potential riders, a young student population and bunch of us old farts more than willing to ride when it’s pleasant and safe.  But in truth I’d much rather ride a bike in Portland or NYC than SLO.

There… that’s off my chest.

It seems that most bicycle travelers bite off bits and pieces of Europe or Asia, a couple weeks in France, next year a fortnight in England, then a visit to Croatia, maybe some day Vietnam.  Longer and more adventuresome is just a dream for a rainy day in February.

Like a bike trip the length of the former Iron Curtain.  Sounds like the stuff of dreams, doesn’t it?

Not so fast.  There is indeed an Iron Curtain Bicycle Trail, created by Michael Palmer, a member of the European Parliament representing the Green Party.  It runs from the upper reaches of Sandanavia to near Istanbul, Turkey, on the Black Sea, 4,225 miles, traveling through Finland, Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Germany, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Romania, the former Yugoslavia and Turkey.

It’s overwhelming, yet perhaps feasible.  Palmer has created a website with a detailed PDF description of each section of the trail, it’s history and tourist attractions to the nature of the trail itself.  Plus there apparently are more detailed guides for each section of the trail.

There doesn’t seem to be a lot of information about road conditions, weather or accommodations.  But it’s a start, an inspiration perhaps for some enterprising and resourceful person’s incredible tour.

If you’re riding a relatively new Felt bike you might want to check this out.  There’s been a recall of all 2011 Felt all 2011 Felt F3, F4, F5 and F75 models.  Seems like the carbon fiber forks, made in China, have a tendency to break.

San Francisco has become a very bicycle friendly city, the impression grows with every visit.

Talk about “sharrows.”  (See posting below.)  They’re everywhere, including in bus-only lanes, and widely used.

Bicycle riders were ubiquitous and often a bit intimidating, sad to say, zipping in and out of traffic and often in and among pedestrians crossing at busy downtown intersections.  This in spite of the fact that the temps were in the low ’50s, although under mostly clear skies.

On a trip across the Bay from the Ferry Building (which incidentally has become a major tourist area) to Sausalito, mid-day on a Wednesday, there were at least a dozen riders on each leg of the voyage on rental bikes from Blazing Saddles.