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rbent Forum
https://rbentonline.org/YaBB.pl General Category >> rbent Lobby >> Making Garland safer to ride in https://rbentonline.org/YaBB.pl?num=1255993999 Message started by Opus the Poet on Oct 19th, 2009, 6:13pm |
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Title: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Opus the Poet on Oct 19th, 2009, 6:13pm OK, here's the deal. I was voluntold to come up with a bike plan for Garland. The constraints are there is no budget for major infrastructure projects, there must be no loss of car space, and bikes can't interfere with cars. [smiley=runover.gif] The existing infrastructure is superblocks without connecting secondary through streets, and 40-50 MPH speed limits on the arterials, which means actual speeds are 50-60 MPH if we're lucky, actual speeds are closer to 70 in some places. [smiley=puking.gif] The only thing I can come up with is lowering the speed limit to 30 MPH and writing tickets like it's 1990 and this is Lavon not Garland, and ticketing cyclists that ride at night without lights, ride the wrong way, or run red lights (after they fix the traffic signals to change for bikes). And run stop sign stings for everything that rolls, I haven't seen a car stop for a stop sign without another car in the intersection for years. [smiley=deadhorsebeat.gif] Given the restraints I have to work with, is there anything else you can think of that I forgot? |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 19th, 2009, 6:25pm Opus the Poet wrote:
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Patti on Oct 20th, 2009, 9:21am Perhaps, you could propose that they simply put up signs at the city limits announcing : Garland,Texas - We Don't Need No Stinking Bicycles Here At the very least it gives cyclists fair warning. ;) |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by aikigreg on Oct 20th, 2009, 10:05am Stand up and tell them that saying "bikes can't interfere with cars" is tantamount to making bicycles illegal. Also, please contact GDB and FWBA. They've got people who can help. And who knows, if Garland is truthfully considering implementing a plan then maybe they'll listen. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 20th, 2009, 10:48am And in violation of state and us constitutional law if they try to enforce it. I think I remember some requirement for certain cities to implement a bike plan in Tx though I can't remember the conditions (population maybe?) and I haven't found anything about it yet. Making some inquiries... but I suspect Garland might have bumped into this requirement somehow so are trying to meet that by saying "Here's our bike plan - bikes aren't needed" (or wanted). Maybe best to start by finding out what is driving this then take a look at who is generating the list of constraints. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 20th, 2009, 11:38am Most Texas cities have the same problems as Garland. Any housing additions built in the last 40 years have streets that don't connect to anything, leaving only the high speed streets that actually go anywhere. My own commute to work gets easier after I reach the really old part of Fort Worth, because most of the side streets there go through. Any solution that has bicycles sharing high speed lanes with autos isn't a good one. Perhaps, designating bike routes, and having the main streets on those routes have a 30 mph speed limit is the best cheap way to go. But, plenty of drivers don't hesitate to drive 30 or 40 mph over the speed limit, so speed limits alone won't get the job done, without adding truly stepped up enforcement along these routes, or speed bumps, traffic circles, or something else to slow traffic down. I've always thought that one of the easiest solutions would be to just construct short bike paths between disconnected neighborhood streets that would allow bicyles to go places without ever having to get on high speed through streets. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 20th, 2009, 2:22pm I think 30mph is too slow. It'll be mostly ignored, plus if I can break the speed limit, it's probably too slow. :^) I'd vote for 40-45. Shoot for that 80th percentile... Takes a while to train drivers but if you are persistent, they'll learn. The more bikes out there, the safer it will be. Just make sure TxDOT doesn't destroy the roads in the meantime, as they are doing all over the state. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by FlyingLaZBoy on Oct 20th, 2009, 3:54pm If nothing else, stress that HAVING DECENT and CONTINUOUS SIDEWALKS are at least the minimum acceptable situation... especially in those hilly areas of town that have NO sidewalk in sections, like the southernmost part of Rowlett Road and the easternmost part of Miller Road at Lake Ray Hubbard -- both sections that meet up with the City of Dallas line at the water's edge, with Rowlett just past it. Or even along the 190 service road... Having greenbelt paths like Richardson does is a start, but somehow encouraging bicycles in general to ride on streets at ~10 mph is not too practical, even when there are three lanes to use. It's a conundrum... |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 20th, 2009, 4:35pm I believe there are, at a basic level wrt this conversation, two classes of people riding bicycles, likely separated by speed and motivation: transportational cyclists and for want of a better word, 'hiking' cyclists. We went all through this in Helotes when the crooked developers took over. They stared out with a plan to build hike and bike trails along the creek and on both sides of Hwy 16 with the stated objective of 'getting the cyclists off of Hwy 16'. This attracted people who were not cyclists but said they wanted a place to ride bicycles with their families. At great length, unfortunately, I had to show the crooked developer city council members the reasons why transportational cyclists would not be using the 'hike and bike' trails and that it was illegal to try to force cyclists off of the roads. I basically did get the 'hike and bike' advocates to rename the trails to 'nature' trails and remove the ones that were to run parallel to the highway to help with the issue somewhat. For good or bad, the crooked developers have yet to do anything with the idea. Things were still great for cycling until they tore up old town and TxDOT destroyed Hwy 16. So yes, they did figure out a way to get almost all cyclists off of Hwy 16... All that are left are us commuters who have to share the lanes with 80+mph drivers around blind curves, etc. If you really want to try to improve things, maybe do a little research on traffic calming and car-lite communities. The more you try to separate motor vehicles, the worse things in general get. There are several books that document the research performed in this area. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Opus the Poet on Oct 20th, 2009, 5:31pm Yeah, I somewhat mis-stated the objectives. They want to get more bikes without reducing the number of cars, and they don't have any budget to do that. The goals are to increase bike use without reducing the growth of car use, but the growth of car use is budgeted [smiley=whistling.gif] First problem is the superblocks and the "40"MPH streets that are actually 50-60 because there aren't enough cops to write the number of tickets needed to make them actually do 40 MPH. As Paul pointed out most streets in Garland lack sidewalks, and many that do have sidewalks don't have curb cuts. This eliminates sidewalk riding which endangers pedestrians, but it also eliminates sidewalk riding period. I have seen a few people riding on the sidewalks but they are riding BSOs with dual suspension to hop the curbs. I don't know what they do when the sidewalks stop, but I assume that they're the same people I see riding the wrong way on the street. [smiley=shrug.gif] So, how do you do it? Like I posted earlier, the only way I can see to do it is reduce the speed limits to a level that bikes can live with cars, the cars will still be going by at one every 2 seconds regardless of the speed limit if they're using a legal amount of separation, and the occupants can actually see the stores on the sides of the streets way back behind those huge parking lots and maybe stop and shop in one of them. There has been lots of study done on the relationship between speed limits and retail, with retail going up as speeds come down. I have been looking at other methods of calming traffic, but the deal-breaker with all of them is they require modifications to the infrastructure, and we come right back to "no budget". And to be perfectly honest the preferred method of traffic calming in TX is installing 4-way stops at every corner in the area you want calmed. Stop signs are death to cycling on those routes. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by AustinSkater on Oct 20th, 2009, 5:36pm goatstick wrote:
That may be true here, but it not the truth in Europe. In Holland almost every major road has a bicycle path running next to it. It's a culture thing. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 20th, 2009, 6:19pm Even in the Netherlands there is a lot of controversy regarding the separation and thus a big push towards the use of traffic calming instead. Note that traffic calming was started there... Also take a look at the type and use of bicycles there. They are far more pedestrian in use. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 20th, 2009, 7:43pm Europe uses a lot of traffic circles to slow traffic. As I mentioned earlier, speed bumps work, too. Not the terrible, tall, curb-looking speed bumps, but wide, gentle speed bumps that are enough to discourage an auto from doing more than 30 mph, and don't bother a bike much at all. That is what is on the older streets I ride to work in Fort Worth. Unlike newer neighborhoods, those residential streets actually connect to other streets, so something had to be done to keep autos from driving 60 mph on them, and speed bumps is what the city did. They work very well. No one zooms past me too fast on those streets. A 40 mph speed limit is too much for me. If you want to ride your bicycle 40 mph, get on the high speed roads. Designated bike routes should have a slower speed limit. And the only two things keeping 30 mph electric commute vehicles from becoming popular is their high price, and the fact that people can't use them in high speed traffic. The price will come down as technology improves and demand increases, but just like bicycles, they need a low speed route to get somewhere, and will never become major players until low speed routes happen. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Kwijybow on Oct 20th, 2009, 7:55pm Oh yeah, traffic calming, make the f'in cars useless, I'm all for it. I have a lot of anger at cars at the moment. However, until the true costs of driving and fossil fuel usage are actually felt by the public I don't expect much to change. Take Care, Nelson. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 20th, 2009, 8:04pm Kwijybow wrote:
I expect you're right. I've always figured that $12.00 a gallon is the number we need to see to change everyone's lifestyle. And I would expect that the road system would eventually be computer controlled. The computers in autos would only allow the auto to do 30 mph unless it's on a computer designated high speed road. But that's a few years down the road, too. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 20th, 2009, 10:41pm Bud_Bent wrote:
Traffic calming goes way beyond circles and speed bumps, and neither of them work all that well imo anyway. I don't ride at 40mph. I have ridden almost daily in 45-55mph traffic for years. 45mph traffic requires that you learn a few things but isn't all that bad. *All* we have around here are high-speed roads. There is nothing else to ride on if you use a bike for transportation here. Sometimes there are usable shoulders and sometimes there are not. You will almost certainly have to train the drivers on those roads to regard and expect you though. At first it can be a little scarey but stick with it, fellow cyclists that follow you may someday come to understand how you helped them. Yes, I prefer roads with wide shoulders but that's not the reality of things. And why should there be designed bike routes? All public roads that aren't limited access roads are already bike routes! 'Bike routes' *never* go where I need to go. I've ridden them in Europe. 12mph max and they only go where the locals go - at less than 12mph. No thanks. Oh! and I love the designated bike routes here in S.A. 2 ft wide with water diversion bumps and drainage grates regularly spaced so you have to dodge out into traffic. But they are trying to help by putting a sign by the bike killers letting you know that you have to dodge out into traffic so you get run over. As to ebikes in high speed traffic... I *design* custom ebikes... I *prefer* riding a decent ebike in high-speed traffic over no power-assist, especially in hilly terrain. A decent ebike can average a lot faster than my meat-powered bike can on flat ground and doesn't slow nearly as much on the hills. Remember that my daughter, as a novice cyclist, rode her ebike from Helotes to Florida and back ~3200 miles last year averaging almost 100 miles per day, much of that trip on high-speed roads. Big stretches of narrow two-lane 70mph highways with no shoulders and a lot of traffic. Try Hwy 190 either side of Baton Rouge for more than a hundred miles each way. Average speed about 17-18mph. And no we didn't cause a great ordeal for the motor vehicles on those roads. Only very occasionally was there any kind of issue. Best drivers? Transport truckers. They watched for us and often waved. Worst drivers? Construction vehicle drivers and people in white luxury vehicles. Now. The interesting thing might be that back in about 1997-1998 I think we worked very hard to pass fed legislation that required states that accepted federal funding to implement and maintain shoulders acceptable for cycling for highways. Texas responded by refusing fed funding. Until this year... They accepted fed stimulus funding. Might be worth asking why they aren't adding/maintaining shoulders to highways with that funding... |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 21st, 2009, 12:10am goatstick wrote:
Answer: - It is general practice to include bike/ped plans in required comprehensive plans these days. If a city desires to use state/federal dollars on a bike project, there are state and federal "suggestions (guidelines)" to do so. - Consultants usually include them and they tend to become general practice. Result is that a lot of plans are cut & paste projects, however, some cities recruit interested citizens and bike activisists to create their plan usually in response to citizen pressure. Austin used this process not so much because of citizen pressure, but because their last city manager thought that the presence of Lance Armstrong would generate enough private dollars that could be leveraged with local dollars into a project that then could attract political interest at higher than just a local level. She was right. With the funding crisis in transportation these days, state and federal agencies that select projects to be funded are favoring plans that leverage dollars from various sources and benefit a large portion of the population or targeted populations. Larger cities have enough transportation dollars thay they can afford to support bike/ped public participation in plan development. Smaller ones can't afford to support that kind of effort. In Central Texas, most of the cities are in this situation so the local MPO petitioned TxDOT to fund the creation of a regional bike/ped plan (7 counties). They agreed so they had it written and provided to each of the cities so that they can include their portion into their city plans. Lots of elected officials will say that COGs are just an unneeded additional level of government. However, it cost taxpayers a whole lot less to put a regional plan together than if the cities all did it separately. Plus a regional plan has connectivity that city plans can't have. Get younger citizens to front the cause. Elected officials respond to younger generation involvement because they believe it translates into votes. They are looking for ways to make themselves attractive to the younger/greener generation (especially the ones with money). |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 6:52am goatstick wrote:
Then, in my opinion, you're exactly wrong. I ride on roads with speed bumps every day and see that they work well. I guess we'll agree to disagree on that. goatstick wrote:
Rural areas are a whole different problem. Opus asked about Garland, an urban maze of streets much like a lot of the DFW metroplex. goatstick wrote:
If you think you can singlehandedly train all the auto drivers, then go for it. Personally, I don't think you're going to get it done. goatstick wrote:
If you insist on taking the shortest route, no matter how bike unfriendly it is, more power to you. But most cyclists, like me, would gladly ride a longer route if it was safer. I ride 12.5 miles to work when the shortest route is just over 11 miles. 12 mph? I did suggest 30 mph, didn't I? goatstick wrote:
I wrote bike routes, not bike lanes, didn't I? goatstick wrote:
I wasn't talking about ebikes. I was talking about ECV's, neighborhood cars, or whatever you want to call them, those tiny three or four wheel plug in to recharge vehicles that should be a large part of our urban traffic, but aren't, because there aren't safe commute streets for them. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 21st, 2009, 10:10am Bud_Bent wrote:
Then I expect you'll really like the real traffic calming concepts. They work much better and don't beat your bike up. Bud_Bent wrote:
I'm not talking rural. Think terrain. NW San Antonio. The routes that can go anywhere need bridges or cuts if you don't want to climb 10%-20% grades on a daily basis and/or have 45+mph roads occupying the available routes. Bud_Bent wrote:
Have you tried it? I have for years. It is far more effective than I would have ever dreamed. You show up there pretty much every day and they get used to you. Stick a camera on your bike pointing back at them and they get used to you *really* quickly. Especially when frames from your daily commute movie indicting specific vehicles get published... And on long stretches of that commute I only saw other cyclists 2 times in 5 years. So yes. It most certainly works. Bud_Bent wrote:
Only one mile? I would love that. On my old 32 mile daily commute through NW S.A. there were only two detours that could take me through about 1/2 mile of what you describe but they would respectively add about 3 and 5 miles to my route and were far more dangerous than travelling the 45-70 mph roads I was on - especially crossing all of the connector roads between neighborhoods (that I was travelling on). Bud_Bent wrote:
I wrote bike routes, not bike lanes, didn't I?[/quote] They are designated bike routes. On 45 mph roads. It is far safer to just ignore the bike lane when riding them. Bud_Bent wrote:
Ah. Safety isn't the reason for the restriction with NEVs. Check the history of the fed laws involving how/why the class was created. It was specifically to allow people who didn't have a driver license to travel using them, as with a farm vehicle, thus limited, local mobility. The original fed law only allowed insurance and license plates to be required. Tx and other states ignored the fed law and require a DL, voiding the entire legal purpose behind their existence. Get Tx to obey fed law and you'd see them used much more. Like the tiny electric scooters that S.A. banned a few years ago. They were fabulous, created far less inconvenience than a bicycle and were selling like mad. Of course the crooked auto dealer/developer 'owned' city council just had to ban them as a result. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by aikigreg on Oct 21st, 2009, 10:11am My hometown, which was so unfriendly to most everybody back when I was growing up, has made a pretty neat turnaround. They have a yellowbike program with bikes parked at random places all over downtown that you can ride for a very low fee for the year, and they also have a city ordinance that states that any new roads or improvements must include bike lanes. It's been an amazing change when I visit. Not that there aren't much better solutions, I think, but just having a visual recognition for cyclists is a place to start. Ideally there should be plenty of room for all. This is the US, not Japan. We have room. It chaps my hide that we don't plan "neighborhoods" when we build, so you're forced to get in the car for simple stuff like groceries. Opus, here's an idea: Get a group of 50 kids together and go in front of the city council. Have them cry a lot and go to them and ask the councilmen why they don't want the kids to be safe when they ride their bikes? Get a bunch of media coverage and there you have it. Funds galore! :) |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 10:59am goatstick wrote:
Yes, I've tried it for years, and no, it hasn't worked at all. Another area where I guess we'll agree to disagree. goatstick wrote:
And once again, I'll completely disagree. Low speed commute vehicles aren't popular because there aren't routes for them. Licensing issues would work out easily enough if there were practical routes for these kind of vehicles. Are you beginning to see why cities don't ask for a consensus from cyclists, Opus? They know they won't get one. Here, you have Kent, a fast vehicular cyclist, and me, a medium speed vehicular cyclist, and we disagree on pretty much everything. Wait until you add the slow riders and those who think bicycles should only be on bike paths to the mix, and the arguments really start. It's a shame that so many cyclists think their ideas are the only way, and will rant at the city if they do anything even slightly different. It makes it too easy for city planners to just ignore cyclists, and spend their time trying to please non-cyclist drivers, who are in a large majority, anyway. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 21st, 2009, 11:41am I think it's really more a difference in expectations. For years I've worked for the rights of cyclists. Almost no cyclists are willing to do that. I've seen the bloody internals of Tx politics while doing it and have very low expectations that decent, usable 'cycling facilities' will happen beyond wide shoulders (which usually work quite well and almost always better than anything else). As long as the auto industry and developers hold the keys to the city, it almost certainly won't happen, and as long as people value their convenience as paramount to all, noone is really safe in anything. Read the responses here: http://www.austin360.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/austin/fitcity/entries/2009/10/20/council_votes_thursday_on_safe.html World Peace? We go ballistic with people who are almost identical to us. I just ride where I need to go and enjoy it while I can. If more of us did that (like you commuting), it would be safer for us. There truly is more safety in numbers, and it starts by each of us being a '1' and not waiting to be '100' with full cycling facilities in group rides. Just do it. And yes, sometimes you won't want to ride, so don't. Sometimes the risk really is too great, so work to figure something else out. But don't let risk aversion control you. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 12:20pm goatstick wrote:
Yes, I do agree with that. Our biggest problem with riding the roads here in Texas is the fact that so few people do it. If we had 1000 times as many riders, autos would be much better at sharing the road with us, although any place where so many drivers come so close to living in their vehicles, the drivers are going to have far too great a sense of entitlement, with respect to bicycles or anything else on the road. Have you followed any of the cycling advocacy organizations? There is nowhere else where the differences in how to better accommodate cyclists is so stark. Every time an organization takes a stance on an issue, one third of the membership quits in protest. So we truly have no really large advocacy groups with lots of clout. I'm still with Nelson; nothing short of too expensive gasoline will make major changes. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 2:11pm evblazer wrote:
LOL... somehow I don't think you ride a lot slower than the 12.9 mph average I maintained yesterday on my commute. But even creeping along on the loaded down SXP, I still pass more bikes than pass me, so I'll call myself a medium speed rider. evblazer wrote:
Agreed. And that's why riding on the sidewalk is illegal in many cities. Every driveway is an intersection, and most bike/auto accidents happen at intersections. Sidewalks are the most dangerous place of all, for bicycles. Every safety study that's ever been done has confirmed that. evblazer wrote:
This is one area where I notice a great deal of disagreement among cyclists. DJ says that the shoulder of FM1187 is his favorite place to ride in our area; I avoid it like the plague. Whatever the situation, I like the chances of a vehicle that's overtaking me doing 35 mph making the right evasive move, rather than a vehicle doing 80 mph. And I've spent so many hours riding the shoulder of SH360, watching traffic zoom by, that I see how every third car veers off onto the shoulder at every curve, or every time they hit the 'Z' key while texting on the phone. I prefer mixing with slower traffic. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Kwijybow on Oct 21st, 2009, 3:27pm Does anybody believe anything like this would work here: http://blog.pps.org/shared-space/ http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThaQjDLLJWA&NR=1 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLfasxqhBNU http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0912/p07s03-woeu.html http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0127/p01s03-woeu.html By the number of people who park in the fire lane, and the number of people who seem all to willing to kill anybody in their way, I must say I have doubts. But it would be an interesting experiment. Take Care, Nelson. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 3:44pm Kwijybow wrote:
Interesting stuff, but I'm not sure how it would play here. It would be interesting to try in congested, slow speed areas. But residential streets, with kids playing everywhere, don't seem to be enough to slow anyone here down, even the soccer moms with kids in their own vehicle, who should know better, hence the advent of speed bumps in so many neighborhoods, or neighborhood streets that don't go anywhere, to try and keep traffic away. Narrow roads seem to be the only thing that slows down people here. When Johnson County roads get more narrow than my driveway, I notice that most vehicles seem to drive pretty slow on them. Make the road two feet wider, and paint a broken line down the middle, and you can post any speed limit you want, people will still drive 70 mph. Speed differential is the biggest villain, when it comes to mixing vehicles with pedestrians and bikes and such. One mistaken sideways move by the slow mover, and he's a stain on a bumper. It's the slow mover's fault when that happens, but without such a great speed differential, the results aren't as bad. And that's what seems to be the hardest thing to do here, is slow anyone down. Every irate driver I've ever tangled with was mad at me because he thought he should have the right to drive fast everywhere, and nothing should ever slow him down. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 21st, 2009, 5:01pm Bud_Bent wrote:
Yes, I've been doing it for over 20 years, on and off directly with cycling groups but found I could be more effective working with other groups - for cyclists. For about 6 years I spent about 4 hours per day doing it - usually in the middle of the night. There are many reasons why they break apart. What I've seen most often: 1) a developer 'ringer' poses as a cycling advocate. Often they actually cycle for at least long enough to get in a position of authority and control. Then they direct the organization's efforts towards construction projects that benefit their benefactor. This has been the biggest cause of cycling advocacy group breakup that I have seen. This typically results in a lot of money spent but things like the 2' bike lanes with roads hazards built into them. Since it is actually a job for them, they have far more time to spend on it than anyone else and a whole lot more money. 2) Most cyclists are recreational cyclists who drive their bike in a car someplace to ride. If the roads one place get trashed, they go elsewhere and don't want to get involved. When things get to the point where they actually need to make a commitment to do something, they just quit, regardless of what the issue was. 3) Burnout. This happens with pretty much every advocacy group, especially when it's just a few people doing all the work. That's what happened to me. I got tired of being pretty much the only one. Bud_Bent wrote:
Talk to bike shop owners who have been there a long time. When gas prices raise, people tend to drop everything else to be able to spend money on gas. Last summer has been the first time that has somewhat changed in the general population and it was primarily spent on used bikes and parts. Driving is the most heavily subsidized activity most of us will ever engage in. Just in terms of gas costs, drop all the primary and secondary subsidies (funded through tax dollars - tell the complaining drivers that one) and gas would be up close to $10 a gallon. And we'd probably have a civil war over it. Please pick up a copy of "Asphalt Nation" and read it. Great book. "How the Automobile took over America and how we can take it back". It's more than just cyclists who are horribly adversely affected by all of this. Maybe work to hook up with other groups than just cyclists and gain even more clout. That's what we did. Bud_Bent wrote:
This might be interesting... A few years back, one stretch of 2-lane with a shoulder I commute on I noticed as you did the high number of cars that veered past the lane markers. So I ran a survey of just the cars in front of me for a week, counting up to 100 cars each trip as I rode home. I didn't keep the results but over 80% of the cars travelling in my direction veered past the lane markers *after* they were about a hundred yards past me. I didn't count them until they had a chance to get a ways past me... About 30% of them travelling towards me did it. I thought that a bit strange so I sat near a curve that had the highest incidence of cars veering and counted 100 cars. Dropped to under 10% each way. Maybe file this in there somewhere with 'traffic calming'. :^) |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Kwijybow on Oct 21st, 2009, 6:07pm Quote:
Yes a good book, read it about 10 years ago when I was going "Car Light" I still do use a car occasionally, but not much. In those 10 years I still hate cars, and the fact that most of our architecture and economy have been built around enshrining them and consumption as the purpose of human lives, But at the same time I don't think cycling is anywhere as dangerous as it is perceived to be either. The whole business of fear mongering to help keep the status quo overlooks the fact that you are 3-5 times more likely to die in a car than on a bike for the same given period of time spent there. Also if you aren't a child, or have been riding your bike more than the last couple of weeks your odds are even better. Something like 45,000 people die in automobiles in this country every year, and many more are injured. I mean if an airliner a day crashed do you think anybody would fly? Yet people think I'm crazy after they inform me how dangerous my ride home from work is, and I tell them they are at much greater risk than myself. I personally think if you could slow all the cars down by an average of 25-30 mph everywhere you'd have something, but oh the howling that would entail. I personally say f--- em. I don't care anymore, I've been yelled at too many times and seen too much stupid and aggressive behaviour to care. However I think the days are coming, not soon enough mind you, when car driving will be a much less common activity. We'll move to electric, and natural gas powered vehicles in an effort to keep the Merry-Go-Round spinning, but eventually energy spent towards food will take precedence and the whole stupid game will wind down. Take Care, Nelson. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 6:12pm goatstick wrote:
Your experiences are somewhat different than mine. While doing most of my weekday rides down a stretch of shoulder on SH360 for the last few years, I noticed that it was every curve that sent people over the line, whether the curve was in front of me or behind me. For that reason, I got to where I watched especially closely whenever I had just passed a curve, lest a car just behind me would join me on the shoulder, a habit I still have today. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 21st, 2009, 7:57pm Kwijybow wrote:
The science of risk analysis was pushed into adulthood after TMI with the desire to try to understand the public reaction so I needed to obtain a working knowledge of it. People are absolutely horrible at it. We judge risk mostly on the basis of familiarity and then convenience. The more foreign or difficult something can be seen, the riskier it seems to us and vice versa. Airline travel would be seen as risky if it was simply presented as foreign and difficult in the news. It wouldn't take any more airline crashes to do it. People can be manipulated this way so easily it's scarey. Want to make cycling appear safer? Make it look familiar and comfortable. As bent-riders we at least have the second part down. :^) Kwijybow wrote:
Want to slow traffic in a particular area? Ask all of your car-driving friends to travel 10mph slower. The hard part is getting people to actually do that, but it's amazing to see how many cars around them will slow when they do, even in very light traffic. Most people don't pay that close attention to driving. They mainly just flow with the traffic. Problem is getting your friends to slow down. People talk a lot about doing things to help but few are actually willing to do anything *themselves*. They mainly want someone else to do it. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by aikigreg on Oct 21st, 2009, 8:09pm Man, Bud is sure right about the lack of thoroughfares. I just mapped a route from my house to his (or thereabouts) and look how far I ahve to go out of my way to avoid Bryant Irvin road even though there should be 3 perfectly good neighborhoods to bike through: http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/360602 |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 21st, 2009, 9:08pm aikigreg wrote:
Yeah, it's been completely ridiculous with both my new neighborhood and my old one. Google doesn't show most of the streets in my new neighborhood (they're too new), but you have to ride almost 2 miles to get 1/4 mile east of my house. My old neighborhood was just as bad if you wanted to ride north. You had to do a big circle around, south first, then east or west. Have you ridden Lakeside Drive and Dirks Road on your bikely route? They're awful. Two lane with lots of traffic, and it's a curving monstrous hill on Lakeside Drive with no shoulder and traffic trying to get around you. You can get to Bellaire Drive via Trinity Trail, can't you? I think that would be better. Hey, I forgot to tell you, I did a 100 mile loop Saturday that took me through Godley. The route I took was pretty good, if you ever want to drive to my house, then commute to work from here. The only iffy part was a low water crossing on Godley Ave that would NOT work on a day like today. You can see the route here (http://www.bikely.com/maps/bike-path/357396). |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by aikigreg on Oct 21st, 2009, 10:12pm That's a pretty good route, and it stays off of 1187, 2331, and 917 - all of which are horrible. I'd like to come try that sometime. I'll have to play with it and see how many miles it is to Godley, but I bet it's not more than 20. As for Lakeside and Dirks, no I've never even driven them, I just figured traffic that far south would have to be light. Bellaire to is fine, but I still end up at Bryant Irvin/Dirks. I'm sure there's another way to go though - I was just playing with it a bit tonight. Addendum: 21.7 miles, and I know those roads are pretty lightly traveled. Makes it conceivable to commute a day or two a week. You wouldn't mind me parking across from your house? |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 22nd, 2009, 7:06am aikigreg wrote:
Sure, you're welcome to park at my place. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Opus the Poet on Oct 22nd, 2009, 4:49pm I went to the BPAC public meeting yesterday, and what I found out was appalling. Garland is just leaving millions of dollars we could spend on bike-ped infrastructure sitting on the table for others to get. The 2 guys that are supposed to be talking to people about this have never showed up for a meeting. I sent them an e-mail about the subject and still haven't gotten a response. The supposition at this point is 1. they're lazy bums, or 2. they're car-heads stuck in the 1960s version of urban planning and don't know/care about other modes of transportation [smiley=twitchy.gif] |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by johnnybent on Oct 22nd, 2009, 8:34pm Can you give the titles, departments and names of the two responible. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by larry on Oct 22nd, 2009, 10:12pm I was in Vancouver several weeks ago and was struck by the generous bike lanes on major streets. Saw the same thing in Beijing when I worked in Asia around 2000. In the Chinese case it is a legacy of their earlier position as a developing country. They HAD to have bike lanes to accomodate the number of cyclists! VAncouver is different. They did it proactively to create a better place for non-motorized vehicles to be used. No matter what you think of Canadian politics, I appreciate their attention to this sort of thing. The idea of opening bike paths between neighborhoods to create low cost avenues for bikes on less-heavily-used streets is attractive. There is simply no safe way for a cyclist to take his/her legal space on a road with vehicles going 45-50 mph at rush hour. In those cases it won't matter who is right and legal. The cyclist will still be the one hospitalized or in the morgue. I have been opting for sidewalks and just remembering to give right of way to pedestrians when I encounter them. The distinction between biking for recreation and for transportation is an important one. It is the latter that requires the most dedicated adjustment of street infrastructure, and also will enable the greater reduction of air pollution. Guess we need to keep our little lights shining on this one.... [smiley=undecided.gif] |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by richardr on Oct 22nd, 2009, 10:34pm Opus, I lived in north Garland for a year and a half and comuted by bike almost every day. There are a couple of roads I rode daily that are about 1 1/2 lanes wide on each side and could be marked with bike lanes with little impact to the car traffic. Colins is a good east-west road from Shiloh into Richardson. In the north-south direction there is Galaxy. These aren't much, but they would be a start. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 23rd, 2009, 12:21am larry wrote:
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by evblazer on Oct 23rd, 2009, 7:50am goatstick wrote:
[/quote] Well my wife did tell me to be super safe when I left the house this morning so welcome to the club :D |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by FlyingLaZBoy on Oct 23rd, 2009, 8:10am Opus, just copy and print out this entire thread, and hand it to the people in Garland.... Then they'll get an inkling as to just how FREAKING COMPLICATED the whole issue is.... |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 23rd, 2009, 8:30am The easiest thing to do is to simply have wide, ride-able shoulders on roads with a shoulder stripe. This benefits pretty much everyone, not just motor vehicles and bicycles, is ****far**** easier to sell to an anti-bike crowd and is quite safe, compared to alternatives. If you mark them as bike lanes, they just get more dangerous. No special 'bike facilities'. No huge 'bike budget'. This handles anything from 30mph traffic to 70+mph traffic. Make sure the shoulders are unobstructed, don't have markers or curbs that bulb-out and right-turn lanes are wide enough for cars to pass you on the right if you want to stop on the far left side of the right-turn lane at intersections. This works in town, in traffic, rural roads and highways. You will have less trouble with traffic doing this that any other alternative. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by evblazer on Oct 23rd, 2009, 9:12am "The easiest thing to do is to simply have wide, ride-able shoulders on roads with a shoulder stripe. " ew.. I'd rather have a wide outer lanes minus the stripe. Put the shoulder stripe in there and all that happens is all the debris piles up in the shoulder/bike lane if it isn' there occasionaly a car/truck will go a little closer to the curb and clear it out. I think that should about round out all the different options.. bike lanes/improved shoulders, bike paths, sidewalks, wide outer lanes, vehicular cycling, interconnected subdivisions, just stay on the trainer/spin class... [smiley=runover.gif] Problem if the lanes aren't already wide enough there won't be any space for a shoulder of any kind unless you count some of those 18" ones I've seen some places. "get in the bike lane!" which is normally heard as "nnn ergh bain" [smiley=thumbsup.gif] |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by goatstick on Oct 23rd, 2009, 9:22am Widening the roadway is an issue, but as I mentioned, it benefits pretty much everyone. As to 'get in the bike lane', here's what my daughter learned on the trip: ---------------- Leaving the gas station, we had to negotiate traffic, which in this area at this time of day was over 70% SUVs, trucks, vans or minivans (Suburbia, go figure). Almost our entire route along the north side of Gainesville had marked, labeled bike lanes. Of course, this proved to be more dangerous and labor-intensive than riding a regular shoulder would have been. Drivers shut off part of their brain around bike lanes for some reason. It[ch8217]s as if they imagine a wall between their lane and the bike lane [ch8211] as long as they don[ch8217]t cross the line, they can get as close to that wall (and your bike) as they like, going as fast as they want. In their mind, they set you in the bike lane and never expect that you would have to leave that lane for any reason. It[ch8217]s the [ch8220]Bike Lane[ch8221]; why would your bike need to be anywhere else? They don[ch8217]t consider that you might need to cross their lane to make a left turn, or move into their lane to avoid the all-to-common debris that accumulates in bike lanes or even to dodge potholes or manhole covers. When a vehicle encounters a big tree branch or a giant pothole in their lane, it[ch8217]s common to change lanes to avoid the obstruction, but drivers find it unacceptable that bikes might need to do something similar. ----------------- What was the difference between Gainsville's bike lanes and a wide shoulder? Signs and markings stating it was a bike lane. Oh, and debris. Where there were no bike lane markings, the shoulder was free of debris and obstructions. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by larry on Oct 23rd, 2009, 10:14am "The easiest thing to do is to simply have wide, ride-able shoulders on roads with a shoulder stripe. This benefits pretty much everyone, not just motor vehicles and bicycles, is ****far**** easier to sell to an anti-bike crowd and is quite safe" I yield to the voices of experience! :) The roads I have to ride on have no shoulder whatsoever. Just the regular sized lanes with honking traffic wanting to go way faster than I can pedal! I think any scenario that gives us a paved space to ride on that outside edge would be great. May all you superhumans ride safely to and fro. [smiley=wink.gif] That still costs money which municipalities either don't have or are unwilling to spend on these sorts of projects. Incentives will need to come from state or national level to get this going, and as we have seen, even with incentives there often is not much motivation for change. [smiley=shrug.gif] As our spouses tell us, we just have to be careful! |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by evblazer on Oct 23rd, 2009, 10:42am goatstick wrote:
Is there something other then the sign that is different on the roads? Curb vs no curb or speed of travel. I'm just curiouse since I find the shoulders in my commute are littered with debris even more so than the bike paths. (The closest bike lane I know of is in fort worth connecting two bike paths which if I remember correctly was free of debris) I wonder if people trading commutes or rides for an extended period might change their opinion? I do understand the invisible wall thing but most often I hear it from the opposite angle. Cyclists think the white lane all of a sudden means they don't need to pay any attention to drivers and find themselves cut off at intersections by inattentive drivers turning into or out of the road way. A rider having to dodge debris or potholes could definately be an issue for drivers not paying any attention. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 23rd, 2009, 11:56am goatstick wrote:
If that's so, it's the only shoulder I know of that's free of debris. The stretch of the SH360 shoulder that I rode regularly in Arlington still stands as the place where I've gotten more flats than all of the other places I've ridden, combined. Glass was bad, but steel tire bits were the worst culprit, and you only get a lot of that in places with a lot of traffic from trucks that have enough wheels to keep on going after one tire is dead and shredding steel bits onto the road. That describes a typical highway shoulder. I do agree that a wide shoulder is better than a bike lane next to a curb. But either one needs to be swept every so often, to clear debris. evblazer wrote:
The bike lane on Calender Road in Arlington is just as full of debris as the SH360 shoulder, but it's missing the steel tire bits, so you don't flat on it as much. Bike lane, or shoulder, either one will fill with debris if it's not swept. Bike paths usually don't have the concentration of debris that shoulders or bike lanes do. It's the cars running over all the debris that eventually knocks all of it onto the shoulder or bike lane. The biggest problem that I have with just more lanes, as opposed to a shoulder, is that you always have high speed drivers in the middle lane, changing to the right lane blindly from behind another car, and if there's a slow bike in that right lane at that instant, he's a goner. Observing those kind of lane changes is what made me decide to only use Crowley Road on my commute for as far as it has shoulders, and turn onto something else where it just becomes all lanes with no shoulders. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by evblazer on Oct 23rd, 2009, 12:54pm Debris was always the reason i liked the Wide Outer Lane (WOL) concept that I see alot of info at http://www.bicyclinglife.com/EffectiveAdvocacy/blvswol.htm and most of the main roads in Connecticut that I traveled on had. "since there is no stripe to keep motorists away from curbside in the absence of bicyclists, the sweeping action of motor vehicles clears debris from WOLs continuously, pushing it closer to the edge and out of bicyclists' way" Bud_Bent wrote:
That I haven't seen that yet but on a road with drivers doing 50mph any cyclist is going to be in that slow category. I'm often on 4-6 lane roads at rush hour but so far everyone hasn't been coming into my lane an pretty neatly pass me with only the very rare person who ends up stuck behind me as everyone who already shifted passed by. One thing I have seen in some areas of FM407 where I ride the shoulder is drivers coming into the shoulder at a high speed to get out of the way of traffic just before they take their right turn. I'm glad FM407 doesn't have a curb and I most often avoid it if there is high traffic where people seem to do that manuever more often. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Bud_Bent on Oct 23rd, 2009, 1:03pm And shoulders become marked right turn lanes at intersections on some roads. The most hazardous spot on my commute route seems to be on Crowley Road and Risinger Road where the shoulder becomes a right turn lane. Through traffic is traveling at 50+ mph in the dark, so I don't like moving out of the shoulder/turn lane into the next lane, but there are always right turners, and a bothersome number of them try to pass me before getting in the turn lane, misjudge how fast I'm going, and end up beside me on my left at the intersection, trying to decide what to do. Looking at the route before I rode it, I would not have thought that to be the most hazardous spot on it. I had a couple of places just like that on the SH360 stretches I rode, but they were never as big a problem as this spot. [smiley=shrug.gif] |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by Opus the Poet on Oct 23rd, 2009, 1:40pm I'm still waiting to hear back from the people that were authorized to be on the BPAC. At this point I don't even know if they still work for COGarland. I have the feeling that if they were still working I wouldn't have been voluntold to make a bike plan with the restrictions I was given. I just can't believe that Garland made it all the way to the 21st Century without a Master Bike Plan. |
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Title: Re: Making Garland safer to ride in Post by evblazer on Oct 23rd, 2009, 2:32pm You gotta be thankful for whatcha got right? No plan is better then say Copper Canyon's which appears to be put the bike on the back of your car and drive it to white rock lake or something. Thankfully they have no police to enforce whatever silly laws their town council passes and the locals who stop you in the road just want to vent a bit about the really poorly mannered cyclists. |
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