Quote from goatstick on Oct 20^th, 2009, 10:48am:

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).

Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

Then I expect you'll really like the real traffic calming concepts. They work much better and don't beat your bike up.
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

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.  
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

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.
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

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).
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

They are designated bike routes. On 45 mph roads. It is far safer to just ignore the bike lane when riding them.
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 6:52am:

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.

Quote from goatstick on Oct 21^st, 2009, 10:10am:

 
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.
 
 
Quote from goatstick on Oct 21^st, 2009, 10:10am:

 
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.

Quote from goatstick on Oct 21^st, 2009, 11:41am:

 
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.

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.

Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 12:20pm:

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.
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 12:20pm:

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.
 
Quote from Bud_Bent on Oct 21^st, 2009, 2:11pm:

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'. :^)

Quote from goatstick on Oct 21^st, 2009, 5:01pm:

 
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.