Not good. I happened upon this accident scene a few days ago. Apparently, a right turning truck hit a young bicyclist, killing him instantly. He had been in Seattle for only a few weeks and was the same age as my daughter, who rides a bike on a distant college campus. The sight truly unsettled me and made my bike trip through the heart of downtown more nerve racking than usual.
I want to use this tragedy to send a message to our amiable yet bumbling local politicians who have pledged to do their share to fight global warming. Your diversion of tax dollars into biodiesel has been a complete waste of funds and your bike plan is woefully inadequate to protect the burgeoning numbers of Seattle cyclists. Seattle's Burke-Gilman trail began life as a recreational park. It has become a dangerous, heavily traveled bike commute arterial. Just the other day a pedestrian leaped out from behind a bush a few feet in front of me. I missed him, but it is only a matter of time. As the number of bikers climb, so will deaths, unless steps are taken that will prevent them. Plastering signs all over the place may be inexpensive, but it is also largely ineffective.
Bicycles, and the rapidly rising numbers of electric assisted bikes, hold far more promise for reduced emissions than any other idea on the table, bar none. The loudmouths trapped in their steel 200 horsepower wheelchairs screaming that funds should be diverted from bike to car infrastructure need to be ignored. If you were smart you would turn Seattle into a model, world-class example of how to accommodate bikes, instead forcing your well-meaning citizens to play a bicycle version of Russian roulette every day.
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Laurence Aurbach Posted 1:33 am
30 Sep 2007
Ped Shed Blog
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:02 am
30 Sep 2007
Which might mean removing curbside parking from half the roadway.
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:28 am
30 Sep 2007
Recently, at an open house at Kent Station for the Kent Master Plan I made a suggestion that bicycles should use the center lane -- especially if its an extra turning lane -- not the right lane for travel.
Simple reason -- in America the driver is on the left side, and it's very, very difficult to account for a fast moving, 3 foot wide vehicle on the right side.
As a member of the Kent Bicycle Advisory Board (KBAB) appointed by Mayor Cooke, I am making this suggestion in as many places as possible.
It's time for bicycles to take the center!
John Bailo
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GreyFlcn Posted 2:39 am
30 Sep 2007
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Delay And Deny Posted 2:47 am
30 Sep 2007
>>So how does a centerlane work at an intersection?
I would propose that there would be "shared" areas of limited functionality. At an intersection, cars have to make left turns and they would be allowed to merge into the center lane there (because the driver is on the left, he has a much better view of bicyclists.
Also drivers who formerly used the center lane to turn into left-side strip malls would be able to use the left turn "cut" for U-turns to make their way back.
John Bailo
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JMG Posted 5:20 am
30 Sep 2007
J. Edgar Hoover was a strange, strange (and fascist) man, but he had one thing right: he refused to allow any of his drivers to make left turns across traffic. When he was on a two-way street and needed to go left, his driver had to make a bunch of rights to get onto the cross street and cross traffic with the light.
No way would I think that putting myself in the very center of traffic was making me safer.
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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caniscandida Posted 7:04 am
30 Sep 2007
It has been many years since I rode a bike in competition with fast-moving motorized vehicles. That was rarely pleasant. Bike-riders are going to remain in danger unless and until bike-rider-loving reforms raise them from the deadly limbo that they now occupy, between motorized vehicles and pedestrians. Meanwhile, they must keep repeating as their mantra that famous precept from classic American cinema: "Use the force, Luke!"
Chickens are our cousins! So are fish! So are other sentient animals! Let us learn to be kind.
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anzie Posted 8:50 am
30 Sep 2007
another option is putting the bike lane between the sidewalk and the parking lane. i don't know of anywhere in the u.s. that has tried this, but copenhagen is the often cited example. instead of having two levels - one for cars and one for peds, copenhagen has three, each separated by a curb. cyclists still have to face getting doored but now from the lesser used passenger side.
several cities have started painting the bikes lanes green or blue, especially in intersections, to draw more attention to drivers. again copenhagen uses this at dangerous intersections. chicago has colored a few bike lanes where cars will move over to a right turn lane, crossing the bike lane. neither city has decided whether this reduces accidents.
i honestly don't think drivers are able to 'share' the road. they never look for or respect anything that isn't motorized. creating three levels of travel sounds ideal to me... now we just have to deal with that pesky space problem.
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GonzoDon Posted 9:05 am
30 Sep 2007
They do this in Parma, Italy. I was stunned, then amused, then delighted. It kept the cars in their second-class place. And the automobile drivers couldn't simply "ignore" the bicycles on the street -- they recognized bicycles as those rolling things that got to go through the intersections before they did. Hard to ignore.
This is by no means a magic solution, of course. But it's one more tool in the toolbox ...
(Of course the bikes get their own lanes in Parma, too ...)
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eriqa Posted 12:03 am
01 Oct 2007
http://tinyurl.com/yprkl3
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Delay And Deny Posted 3:28 am
01 Oct 2007
Thanks for the tip about Minneapolis. It looks like a stellar confirmation of this idea:
Check the image, see how visible the bicyclist is:
http://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/minneapolis/hennepin.htm
John Bailo
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Liz Borkowski Posted 4:41 am
01 Oct 2007
One of my good friends rides to work every day, and twice over the past few weeks he's been screamed at by drivers who didn't think he had the right to be riding in the road - and in one of those cases, the driver had just hit him (while parking, so she was moving slowly and my friend assures me there was no damage).
The LAist blog has written about two incidents in which drivers - a bus driver, in one case - hit bicyclists and then verbally abused them for being on the road in the first place. The cyclists stood their ground and waited for the cops two arrive and explain the law to the drivers - but then in both cases the cops blamed the cyclists. So, at least in LA, the cops seem to need some education, too.
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rosalux Posted 2:06 am
03 Oct 2007
To be fair, the only center lane I ride on is on a very busy street and it's between the car and bus lanes. But it's very narrow and very hard to get out of - you have to turn across the car or bus traffic in both directions. The only thing that is easier is making left turns on a green light, and that's only easier because usually it's such a PITA on busy streets.
One thing I would like to see is to just not allow right turns on red. Especially on streets where there is a angled cut (I don't know what this is called; the street looks like this at intersections ||| * / where the * is a little island for the stoplight and the / is an extra lane with just a yield sign) they are just about impossible to cross safely, whether you're walking or on a bike, because you can't trust the cars to yield. But even at regular 4 way intersections with lights, cars often turn without seeing pedestrians walking across the street.
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rosalux Posted 2:23 am
03 Oct 2007
The city may not plow the mixed-use trails (I don't know if they do, they're out of my way) but they do plow the commuter trails, including the new-since-2002 Greenway and the ped/bike trail along the light rail route. They are actually better plowed than many residential streets.
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support08 Posted 4:15 pm
10 Feb 2008
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