Barry's Bike Blog

Boulder, Louisville, and press coverage of crashes

2009-09-25T13:19:00.000-07:00

Thanks very much to the readers from Boulder and San Francisco who commented on my most recent post. I haven't passed through Boulder in many years, so I can't comment from personal experience about bicycling conditions there. I find it easy to accept their assessment that Boulder has not reached perfection, either in its bicycling environment or in public attitudes toward bicycling. We all agree, too, that Boulder has a leg up on Louisville on both counts. This shouldn't surprise anyone, given that the League of American Bicyclists has awarded Boulder a rare Platinum Bicycle-Friendly Community award while honoring Louisville at the Bronze level.

Getting away from the inter-city comparison, I have a wish list for reporters who cover traffic crashes. I will focus on crashes involving bicyclists, but this list probably applies to other crashes as well.

First, get the details right and show as complete a picture as available information allows. For example, the August 5 Hardin County newspaper report of the horrifying car-bike crash in Radcliff, KY that killed one bicyclist and injured three others said that the bicyclists were "sharing" the left of two eastbound lanes with the car that hit them, and that at least one of the bicyclists was thrown onto a concrete median by the crash. A later report in the same paper, based on interviews with family members who came to the scene, said that the riders were "pedaling along the median..." Did the car climb a concrete curb to hit the bicyclists? The Google Street View of the scene (Lincoln Trail Boulevard between Lorraine Street and Congress Drive) shows a grassy median at street level, with no curb or elevation above the road. A motorist straying onto the grassy median to hit three bicycles in a row sounds to me like gross negligence, though not so egregious as if he had driven over a concrete curb to do it! If the bicyclists were on the pavement, at twilight, on the left edge of the left lane without lights or reflectors, the driver might have little fault in the crash. Someone on the scene shortly after the crash should have been able to determine whether the bikes were on the pavement or on the grass median when hit by the car.

The early article noted that the crash took place at about 9 PM, and speaks of the need for bicyclists to use lights and reflective gear when riding at night. On August 1, sunset was 8:51 PM. Kentucky law (KRS 189.030) requires bicycles and motor vehicles to use lights beginning 30 minutes after sunset. I find this law much too lenient and advise bicyclists to use headlights and taillights starting well before sunset. Nonetheless, the law stands. If the crash took place before 9:21 PM, the bicyclists were within their rights (though foolish) to ride without lights or reflective gear aside from the mandated white front reflector and red rear reflector.

Acknowledge that both parties may have contributed to the crash. The Hardin County reporter eventually did a good job of this, though over the course of the two articles six weeks apart. The first noted that the bicyclists had not made themselves visible with lights and reflectors and the second noted that police said that "driver inattention was likely the cause of the wreck." I realize that the reporter might not have had all of that information at the time of the first article.

Sometimes, though, important information about the causes of a crash never make it into the media. In the case of a Wisconsin state legislator running a red light and hitting a bicyclist in Madison, WI, a video recording made from a transit bus clearly shows the legislator's SUV running the red light and striking the bicyclist. (Don't watch this news clip if you don't want to watch this crash video repeatedly!) Madison TV news coverage shockingly ended with a statement that an eyewitness told police that the crash had been the bicyclist's fault. I was outraged, until I heard from a bicycle advocate in Madison who made that statement understandable. The bicyclist evidently had come down a hill toward the intersection and passed to the right of the transit bus using a right-turn-only lane. Legally, the motorist still bears fault for having run the red light. The cyclist, though, could have avoided the crash by slowing to stay behind the bus in the through lane once the light turned green. The eyewitness might not have understood liability law, but did notice something important. Unfortunately, news viewers never got that information.

Third, interview a bicycle safety expert familiar with the crash. This is the person who can interpret the evidence and help the public learn what to do to prevent crashes like the one that just made the news. Usually, both the motorist and the bicyclist(s) could have taken steps to make the crash much less likely. I'm an idealist, and I believe that the news should help us learn from other people's experience rather than merely satisfying a desire for gore and scandal. Giving a thoughtful, well-informed person a few seconds to comment on a crash can help the news serve an educational role.

Not everybody who plays football in a rec league is a football expert, and not every avid bicyclist is a bicycle safety expert. Most cities and every state have some legitimate authorities on bicycle safety. To find them, one can search for League Cycling Instructors or the leaders of bicycle advocacy organizations that belong to the Alliance for Biking and Walking. Unfortunately, any media market in the US will have many injury bike crashes and occasional bike fatalities, so the bike crash story of the moment will certainly not be the last. Establish a credible source for bicycle safety information and give them a chance to share their knowledge with your readers or viewers or listeners when crashes happen.

Finally, routinely address common misconceptions. A reader commenting on the online edition of the first Radcliff story noted his shock that the police officer said that bicyclists are not allowed on sidewalks and are allowed on roads. This comment is utterly predictable, and the reporter should have a quotation or source available to address why this law is appropriate. Articles on bike crashes should routinely deal with the frequency of fatal or injury bike crashes, to blunt the common argument that bicycling is soooo dangerous (which it is not). They should address the limits on police power to charge a person in a crash not witnessed by the officer, and the legal rights of bicyclists relevant to the given case. A single sentence can usually take care of each of these concerns. Lacking those sentences, articles about bike crashes tend to stir up lots of ill-founded anti-bike and anti-law sentiment that does nothing to improve conditions on the street.

How we deal with crashes

2009-09-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

A newspaper story of a tragic, fatal bike-car crash in Boulder, CO raised some painful contrasts between Boulder and Louisville (Kentucky, not the Louisville in Colorado). The bicyclist, Casey Najera, was riding southbound through an intersection, with the right of way, when a motorist traveling northbound turned left across Najera's path. Najera hit the car and was killed. The motorist said that she did not see the bicyclist and "was terribly upset about the accident," according to her mother.

One could remove all town names and geographic references from the article and know that the crash had not happened in greater Louisville, KY. First of all, the driver was cited with careless driving resulting in death. Colorado Revised Statutes 42-4-1402 defines this as a class 1 misdemeanor. This carries a penalty of 6-18 months in prison, a fine of $500 - $5000, or both. Kentucky law, as best I can tell, has no similar charge. Besides, Kentucky law requires the police to witness the crash before issuing a citation or making an arrest for anything short of a felony. Any media report of a bike-car fatality in greater Louisville hedges about whether charges will be filed, because the only hope for filing charges rests on results of toxicology tests. The Colorado newspaper story gave a different picture: "[The motorist] was cited by police for careless driving resulting in death." The driver did something unacceptable and stands to get punished for it.

I found even more startling the reader responses to the online story. All of them spoke of the tragedy of the bicyclist's death. None ranted against the driver or "the system." None attempted to blame the bicyclist or suggested that bicyclists should stay off the roads for our own good. These reader comments contrast shockingly with those that swarm like flies at the end of any Louisville KY online news story of a bike-car crash.

The news story ended with mention of a recent bike-car crash resulting in a bicyclist's injury, and two fatal car-bike crashes earlier in the year. Yet neither the reporter nor any of the comment writers felt a need to declare an epidemic of bicyclist injuries and deaths or make any sweeping statements about the dangers of bicycling. I guess that the newspaper readers of Boulder, Colorado see bicycling as a good and ordinary activity that sometimes results in crashes, injuries, and deaths. Folks here in Louisville, KY seem to feel that way about driving cars, but not about riding bicycles.

Health and crash data paint a clear picture: the benefits of bicycling vastly outweigh the risks. Here in greater Louisville, we continue to read and hear opinions that bicyclists should, "for their own good," stop riding on streets and rural roads. I hope to live to see the day when anyone stating that opinion will be viewed as a crackpot. In other words, I want the public at large to view bicycling on streets as normal and appropriate. Then, we might have a bicycle-friendly community.

Indy and Louisville: interesting contrasts

2009-09-14T10:46:00.000-07:00

I spent the weekend in downtown Indianapolis attending a conference. Indy seemed halfway between Louisville and Chicago in architecture, sports, and urban liveliness, but not in transportation. Here are some of the differences between Louisville and Indianapolis that made an impression on me and my wife. We didn't ride bicycles in Indianapolis, but walked quite a bit.

Urban bicyclists in Indy ride almost exclusively on the sidewalks, even in traffic and road conditions that would allow a reasonably skilled rider to ride easily on the streets. "Vehicular cycling" seemed a virtually unknown concept.
Only about 10% of the bicyclists that we saw wore helmets. We saw more helmet-wearing bicyclists within 5 minutes of returning to Louisville than we saw in 2 days in Indy.
What little bicycle parking that we saw was sub-standard, not capable of holding a bicycle upright while allowing a U-lock to secure both the frame and front wheel. Most blocks had no bicycle parking at all, though one commercial parking garage had signs noting the availability of bike parking inside.
Motorists actually obey crosswalks in Indianapolis. In three days, I don't remember one motor vehicle cutting off or threatening pedestrians or bicyclists in a crosswalk. This morning, on my bike ride to work in Louisville, I saw a construction truck with trailer roll through a red light rather than waiting for two pedestrians waiting to cross legally in a crosswalk. We never saw anything remotely like that in Indianapolis.
Pedestrians in Indy respect the crossing signals, for the most part. Even when crossing against a "don't walk" signal, they waited until no moving traffic was within a block.
Though we noticed some urban chic single-speed/fixed gear bikes, we saw no devil-may-care high-speed lawless bicyclists. Even the pair of young men riding single-speeds delivering sandwiches for a local shop rode in a pretty mellow way, slowing respectfully for pedestrians.
We saw zero bike lanes, bike route signs, or multi-use paths. The Monon Trail ends several blocks from downtown, and there was no visible indication that anyone was working to make bicycling safer or easier than ordinary downtown streets would allow.

I didn't go to Indianapolis expecting or looking for contrasts with Louisville in terms of bicycling and walking. All of this surprised me. To summarize, Louisville seems to have better bicycling infrastructure and Indianapolis seems to have better pedestrian and motorist behavior. A large fraction of bicyclists in both cities appears to feel safer riding on sidewalks than on streets, though the proportions of vehicular cyclists and avid-but-lawless bicyclists seem much higher in Louisville.

"You play by the rules!"

2009-08-10T13:03:00.000-07:00

On my regular commuting ride this morning, I turned right from the western end of Lexington Road onto Baxter Avenue which, after a block, merges into E. Jefferson Street. Approaching this intersection from the southeast, I merged into the left lane to turn south. As I signaled a left turn and coasted slowly waiting for a green light, a motorist in the lane to my right turned to me and said, "You play by the rules! You're using your turn signal - that's great!" We shared friendly greetings and went on our respective ways when the light turned green.

Many (most?) motorists notice bicyclists and our behavior. They appreciate when we do the right thing. Motorists give me more friendly waves and "thank you" comments than horn blasts and angry gestures. I might arrive at work a minute later some mornings because I came to a complete stop rather than rolling a stop sign, or because I yielded to another driver or two rather than squeezing into the smallest possible opening when making a left turn or a right turn on red. Experiencing appreciation instead of hostility from fellow road users more than repays that minimal delay. If enough of us ride this way, we'll start to turn around the scofflaw image that besets bicyclists. A better image with motorists will remove big barriers in our work toward making our region a great place for bicycling.

New thoughts about "Chips" Cronen's death

2009-08-03T10:10:00.000-07:00

Experienced commuting cyclist George "Chips" Cronen died just over 2 years ago, struck from behind in broad daylight by a spaced-out motorist on the Clark Memorial (2nd Street) Bridge. Two recent events made me aware of something that might at least partly account for the deadly motorist's failure to see and yield to Chips on the bridge.

Riding back to Louisville from a meeting in Jeffersonville, I rode across the Clark Memorial Bridge a couple of weeks ago. I crossed the bridge on a Friday at about 6:15 PM, when the bridge carried very little traffic. As usual, I rode in the middle of the right lane in order to make myself obvious to overtaking drivers. With a passing lane in each direction, drivers can generally pass a bicyclist riding in the right lane without experiencing any delay.

Looking into my helmet mirror, I saw a driver closing on me at what seemed significantly above the 35 mph speed limit. ("Everybody speeds on that bridge," a non-cyclist friend recently observed.) Anyway, the car was approaching faster than most cars did. I watched the car get closer and closer, without changing lanes, until I feared for my life. I waved my left hand over my head to get the driver's attention, and yelled "Hey!" at the top of my lungs. The driver moved into the passing lane perhaps 50 feet before passing and seemed to glare at me as though I had somehow caused her some imposition. I said a prayer of thanks for not having joined the ranks of innocent bicyclists struck from behind in greater Louisville.

A few days later I read Larry Preble's horrifying account of watching a motorcyclist, stopped at an intersection, get struck from behind by a motorist traveling at high speed. The crash took place in broad daylight on a straight rural Indiana road. The motorcyclist was clearly visible, and people on the scene made no mention of the guilty driver appearing intoxicated. The guilty driver reportedly said, repeatedly, "I didn't see him!" How on earth do drivers in unchallenging driving situations fail to notice human beings clearly visible directly in front of them?

Perhaps "unchallenging driving situations" make these crashes more likely. On the Clark Memorial Bridge, as on that rural Indiana road, drivers face such easy driving conditions that they have little incentive to pay attention. They have essentially no traffic potentially crossing their path, few or no intersections or signs to obey, and low likelihood of encountering a person, animal, or inanimate obstacle. I suspect that many drivers treat these situations as a license to space out. That attitude might work for a few hours at a stretch, but it can't remain safe over the millions of vehicle-hours of driving that occur on lightly traveled roads in the US every day.

This weekend, two weeks after my experience on the bridge, triathlete John Carr became the latest cyclist in greater Louisville killed by an overtaking motorist - the C-J account is here. The motorist, driving on a suspended license while intoxicated, fleeing the scene, and resisting arrest, has been charged with murder and other crimes enough to keep him in prison for decades. Yet, when a sober motorist makes the same deadly mistake and stays on the scene to talk with the police, that motorist generally faces no punishment more severe than higher auto insurance rates. We need to change our legal system to punish deadly inattentive driving and make abundantly clear that operating a motor vehicle has weighty responsibilities. The myth of carefree driving may help to sell cars and trucks, but I do not accept its cost: thousands of preventable traffic deaths per year.

Just a few pieces of broken glass

2009-07-23T14:10:00.000-07:00

... remain on the street at the site where a hit & run driver threw a commuting cyclist into a parked car early this morning. The cyclist's hand shattered the glass covering the left taillight of the parked car. This caused injuries severe enough to require hand surgery today. The cyclist's father says that he'll be fine... of course after weeks or months of pain and disability.

I don't know enough about the crash to begin to assess blame, except for the obvious part: the law (KRS 189.580) requires the operator of a vehicle involved in an injury crash to stop and render aid, and to report the crash to authorities. The driver can avoid some further legal consequences by reporting the crash within 10 days, but she or he has already failed to stop and render aid.

The crash took place on westbound Grinstead Drive at Bayly Avenue at about 6:30 AM today. The injured cyclist is not aware of any witnesses. The car hit him from behind and he was unable to provide any vehicle description beyond "a red car." At this point, it is probably a red car with some damage to the front bumper. If you know anyone who may have seen or heard the crash, please urge them to call the LMPD non-emergency number (574-7111) during business hours and file a report.

I recently found a huge repository of Kentucky traffic crash data and am working to mine as much useful information as possible regarding crashes in our area involving bicycles. I'll let you know what I find. To start, here's a thought-provoking statistic:

In Louisville Metro over the past 5 years (2004-2008), 11 bicyclists lost their lives in traffic crashes. Using conservative estimates of bicycle usage from a recent national study, I calculated that this equates to one fatal crash per 7.5 million miles of bicycling in Louisville Metro. Given the poor bicycling behavior seen around here every day, we could certainly improve this rate dramatically. If we also got help from motorists (less speeding, distracted driving, and DUI, and simply paying better attention), we could probably cut our fatal crash rate by a factor of 10.

Dropping our bicycling fatality rate deserves our concerted effort. Nonetheless, even at the current fatality rate, the extension-of-life benefits of bicycling vastly outweigh the risk of death while riding.

Bike-To-Work Day, Week, Year, Lifetime

2009-05-18T11:33:00.000-07:00

Congratulations to Scott Render and the city's Bike Louisville team for their successful events for Bike-To-Work Day this past Friday. They got several hundred people, including many first-time bicycle commuters, to ride bicycle to work on Friday. A large crowd assembled at the Bike-to-Work Celebration at Fourth Street Live, and the combination of events garnered quite a bit of media attention including pieces in the Courier-Journal, WAVE-3 TV, WLKY TV, and Louisville Business First. Bicycling for Louisville was among several organizations staffing booths at the Bike-To-Work Celebration.

I appreciate the special events, such as the Mayor's Hike & Bike rides and Bike-To-Work events, that encourage participation by people who don't identify themselves as cyclists. Someone who has enjoyed a 15-mile group ride or who has ridden bicycle to work, even once, will have more sympathy for bicyclists on the road and a more open mind to community investments in better bicycling. To tap the full potential of these promotional events, though, we need to take the next step and help these new or occasional riders develop the skills and attitudes for riding regularly.

Bicycling for Louisville offers two resources toward this end: our How to Bike to Work website and our adult bicycling skills classes. The hands-on Confident Cycling course, in particular, teaches skills and knowledge of value to nearly anyone who rides on streets with automotive traffic. The course really does build confidence as well as competence. Both the course and the website include information gleaned from many years and hundreds of thousands of miles of bicycling experience. If you consider yourself a seasoned bicycle commuter with little need for additional training or information, I encourage you to check out the Benefits of Bicycle Commuting page on the website. It might help you bring new riders into the bike-to-work fold.

If this post sounds like blatant promotion of Bicycling for Louisville and our programs, I won't argue with that description. I hope that you take advantage of these resources. Give us suggestions on how to improve them, and tell us what else you need to support safer and more enjoyable bicycling, and what you think would get more people bicycling. I look forward to hearing from you.

Ridiculous anti-bike rants

2009-05-14T11:39:00.000-07:00

Every time the online edition of the Louisville Courier-Journal includes a story about bicycling or bicycle facilities, or even about a bicyclist injured or killed by an incautious or inept motorist, some online readers will post vitriolic anti-bicyclist comments. In addition to malice and ignorance of the law, these comments often make ridiculous assertions that violate all available evidence.

A good (?) example comes from the comments to today's 2-paragraph news bite in the C-J about the mayor's admonition to motorists to watch for bicyclists tomorrow during Bike-To-Work day. One person who frequently posts nasty comments about bicyclists wrote, "If you ride a bike to work then you are a loser. The only exception is a kid under 16 doing a paper route or if your name is Lance Armstrong...any other person is a loser. Put down your huffy and find a real job so that you might be able to actually afford a car."

A typical bicycle commuter in greater Louisville saves about $1000/year in commuting expenses and $1000/year in health care & insurance costs, while improving her or his quality of life. Many bicycle commuters enjoy the ride to & from work, and miss it if circumstances force them to take another mode of transportation for a day. How many motorists can say that? If saving money, feeling better, and having fun while commuting makes me a loser, than I'd rather be a loser than a winner.

Perhaps it makes more sense to ask, what game do I want to lose or win? It sounds as though the comment-writer seeks prestige above all else. If so, at least for a few more years, commuting by car will provide more prestige than commuting by bicycle. I would prefer to win the game of health, happiness, environmental stewardship, and household economics. For that, commuting by bicycle scores a big victory over commuting by car.

Thunderous progress

2009-04-03T13:54:00.000-07:00

Every year, Thunder Over Louisville - the largest annual fireworks show in the US - attracts hundreds of thousands of spectators to the Louisville waterfront to kick off the final two weeks of revelry preceding the Kentucky Derby. This year, for the third in a row, free valet bicycle parking will be available to people who avoid the automotive gridlock by riding bicycles to the festivities. Bicycles won't be allowed at Waterfront Park, but people may ride on the streets to the valet bike parking location, probably at the corner of Witherspoon Street and Preston Street/River Road.

A cloud has hung over Thunder during the 17 years that I have lived in Louisville. Each year, the Clark Memorial (2nd Street) Bridge is closed not only during the fireworks show (which uses the bridge as its launch site) but also for roughly 3 days before the show. The Clark Memorial Bridge is the only legal crossing of the Ohio River for pedestrians and bicyclists within 39 road miles of Louisville. In other words, from Wednesday or Thursday until Sunday morning of Thunder week, you can't walk or ride bicycle across the Ohio River in greater Louisville. There is no alternate route, and until now no alternative besides catching a ride on a motor vehicle crossing on one of the interstate highway bridges.

In 2003, while I worked for Louisville Metro government, I listed 24/7/365 cross-river access as one of my top priorities for the City in its effort to promote bicycling. The people heading the city's bicycle program at the time did not act on that suggestion. In recent months, Jackie Green has threatened to sue state and local agencies over the closure of the Clark Memorial Bridge for Thunder. He points out that the bridge closure denies to non-motorized travelers the Constitutionally-protected right to cross state lines. His lawsuit threats and a barrage of e-mails resulted in meetings, in which I participated, with a representative of the Mayor along with top management of Kentucky Derby Festival, which runs Thunder.

At the first meeting, Thunder organizers stressed the safety and security threats posed by allowing unauthorized people on the bridge in the presence of tons of explosives. The elaborate fireworks show takes over 2 days to stage and a few hours to clean up afterwards. It quickly became clear that they could not possibly allow people walking, bicycling, and running across the bridge during that time. We considered and eliminated a wide range of ideas, including launching the fireworks from the abandoned Big Four Bridge. Eventually we settled on running a van with bike rack every 10 minutes or so to shuttle bicyclists and pedestrians across the bridge. It will operate from the beginning of the fireworks set-up on Thursday at 6:30 AM until Saturday at 11 AM when the fireworks equipment prohibits any traffic. Kentucky Derby Festival agreed to provide the van and driver. We agreed that the bridge would remain closed, with no shuttle, from Saturday at 11 AM until Sunday at about 2:30 AM when the safety inspector sounds the "all clear." This arrangement will reduce the cross-river transportation blockage from nearly four days to less than one day.

I see this as a huge improvement, even though it does not entirely eliminate the inconvenience to bicyclists and pedestrians. The eventual solution lies in the reopening of the Big Four Bridge as a pedestrian and bicycle bridge. It could remain open except perhaps during the air show and fireworks show, and could reopen immediately afterwards. With the prospect of federal money to refurbish the Big Four in the next year or two, we may not need to rely on a van shuttle for more than two or three Thunder weeks.

Jackie is not satisfied, because we have the agreement only in an e-mail and not in a formal, signed legal document. I have every reason to believe that Kentucky Derby Festival will live up to its promise, and I laud them for acting so quickly to solve a problem that came to their attention only a month or two ago.

We continue to make progress getting major institutions to consider bicyclists routinely in their planning. The highway engineers and transportation planners increasingly consider bicyclists in their plans, as their written policies now require. University of Louisville and Bellarmine University officials are showing interest in making their campuses better for bicycling. Development officials and, slowly, developers have begun to make room for bicyclists. Now, Kentucky Derby Festival and other event organizers (such as the promoter of last year's My Morning Jacket concert on the waterfront) are promoting bicycling as a way to get to and from major events. We still have lots of work to do, but the wheels are turning.

Tour de Frankfort, Stage 4: exhausted

2009-02-26T16:01:00.000-08:00

Today marked another major learning experience. After over a year of trying to get meetings with legal experts regarding the problems of pedestrians and bicyclists struck by motorists, suddenly David Morse and I found ourselves in a room with two key legislators and six of the leading (and most influential) legal minds in Frankfort, to discuss House Bill 88. It quickly became apparent that House Bill 88 is dead for this session. We got new hope, though, of resolving some of the conflicting legal interpretations that have confounded us since the beginning of this campaign.

I still don't know who called the meeting or assembled the invitation list, but Rep. Jim Wayne and Pierce Whites were prominently involved. Pierce Whites serves as general counsel to House Speaker Greg Stumbo, and formerly served as Deputy Attorney General under Stumbo. Also present were House Judiciary Committee Chairman John Tilley, a lawyer from Kentucky State Police, the state's Public Defender, and two key staffers of the Legislative Research Commission (both lawyers, one a leading expert in Kentucky criminal law). Obviously, David and I knew less about the law and about the legislative process than the others present.

I'm too exhausted to give a fair accounting of this meeting now, but wanted to give you the capsule update. House Bill 88 is dead for now. The key sticking points are:

the idea that existing laws already cover most or all of the cases of concern to us; and
the belief that reckless driving resulting in collision with a pedestrian or bicyclist is not so grave as domestic violence or DUI, the only two exceptions in the Kentucky law that otherwise requires a law enforcement officer to witness a misdemeanor in order to issue a citation or make an arrest for it. Lacking this gravity, legislators and law enforcement officials do not want to allow police officers to cite crash-causing reckless drivers without witnessing the crash.

This first opinion marks a stark contrast with the repeated statements of Louisville Metro Police Department officials. The panel of lawyers assembled in Frankfort today seemed amazed that we had been told that police and prosecutors had no options to prosecute the drivers who hit Chips Cronen and Cynthia Flowers, for examples.

Rep. Wayne remains committed to our cause. Rep. Tilley agreed to hold a meeting of the Interim Joint Committee on the Judiciary this summer to address our concerns. Reps. Wayne and Tilley will invite to testify at least one prosecutor and at least one police official, to gain clarity on the lack of prosecutions of apparently reckless drivers to whom various existing criminal statutes would seem to apply. Perhaps we will decide that the answer lies in educating police officers and prosecutors rather than in changing the law. Perhaps we will decide to pursue a change in the law, but take a different approach than used in HB 88. Perhaps we will decide that HB 88 does exactly what we need, and that we merely need to build and apply a stronger citizen advocacy network to pass it. I'm open to any of these options. You can be sure, though, that Bicycling for Louisville will not abandon the cause: Everyone in Kentucky, especially pedestrians and bicyclists, will benefit from a drastic reduction in reckless and inattentive driving. We will not likely see this drastic reduction without serious real-world penalties for reckless drivers who hit people.

Tour de Frankfort, Stage 3: stuck in the pack

2009-02-25T12:37:00.000-08:00

The statistical brief from yesterday's visit to Frankfort for House Bill 88:

Number in Bicycling for Louisville delegation: 5 (a new record)

Number of conversations with legislators: 6

Number of new cosponsors for HB 88: 0

Yesterday, David Morse, Fred Crismon, Dennis Pastor, Ron Schneider, and I went to Frankfort in an effort to influence Rep. John Tilley, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, to schedule a hearing and vote on HB 88 in the Judiciary Committee. Without this, the bill will die in committee, never going back to the House for a vote. Based on our conversation with Rep. Tilley a week ago, we knew that we faced an uphill climb.

We hoped to influence Rep. Tilley by getting other members of the Judiciary Committee and the House Democratic leaders to urge him to have the Committee act on HB 88. Three committee members told us yesterday that they would ask Rep. Tilley to do so. A fourth seemed so discouraging about the bill's chances that I chose not to ask her to speak with Rep. Tilley. House Speaker Greg Stumbo and Speaker Pro Tem Larry Clark did not make themselves available to meet with us yesterday. I don't hold this against them - they both have many more powerful organizations and individuals seeking their time on behalf of other issues. We have no idea whether they support or oppose HB 88, if they have thought about it at all.

I left Frankfort yesterday wondering whether our window of opportunity for HB 88 had passed. With the Judiciary Committee not acting on the bill this week, I knew that we might not have enough time for the bill to make it through all of the necessary steps before the end of the short legislative session.

A phone call came a half-hour ago giving me new hope for passing the bill in the current session. Rep. Jim Wayne, the sponsor of the bill, just planned a meeting tomorrow with some key legislators, leading legal experts in the Legislative Research Commission, and outside interests with a stake in the bill. Bicycling for Louisville will have a seat at the table. He hopes that we can work out compromise language to resolve legal issues raised by some members of the House Judiciary Committee. Rep. Wayne would not have added this meeting to a very busy schedule if he considered it hopeless to pass the bill in the current session.

I will prepare myself to represent clearly the aims of the bill and how we hope it will work with existing statutes. Even if we succeed tomorrow, our bill faces several other challenges before it can pass. After yesterday's disappointments, the meeting tomorrow is a cause for hope.

I thank David, Fred, Dennis, and Ron for spending several hours yesterday lobbying as citizens for HB 88. If we have success tomorrow, Bicycling for Louisville will put out a call for citizens to join us in Frankfort next week to show support for HB 88 at the crucial Judiciary Committee hearing. Stay tuned to our website for updates!

It was the best of ideas; it was the worst of ideas

2009-02-16T10:47:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, the day of the Louisville Bicycle Summit II, the Courier-Journal reported on Metro government's application for federal funding to build a bicycle commuter service station in downtown Louisville. I don't use the term "bike station" because the nonprofit organization Bikestation in California owns the trademark to that term (whether written as one word or two). They have no involvement in Louisville's plans and have made clear that the city does not have their permission to use that term to describe its project.

Predictably, the C-J article gives glowing words from the mayor's spokesperson about the value of a bicycle commuter facility downtown. Almost as predictably, some folks who take issue with Mayor Abramson's budgetary priorities were immediately on the warpath, calling this an "idiotic, limited-appeal project" that will divert funding from projects of more benefit to the community. Predictably, the truth lies somewhere in between.

The Mayor's team sets forth the project as a way to encourage bicycle commuting by people who work downtown. Indeed, many avid cyclists work in downtown Louisville but do not commute by bicycle. On the fiscal front, they defend it as a federally-funded project that will cost the city nothing aside from the dedication of some land already owned by the city. Federal Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) money, for which Metro has applied to fund this project, cannot fund fire stations or Otter Creek Park or libraries, but can fund projects to reduce motor vehicle use by increasing the attractiveness of bicycling.

Many will criticize any government expenditure to increase bicycling for transportation, believing that bicycling inherently appeals to many less people than driving does. They do not believe that bicycling will ever play the central transportation role in US cities that it plays in many European cities. They do not understand how an increase in transportation bicycling can reduce congestion faced by the remaining motor vehicle drivers, or grasp that bicycling can significantly reduce our fuel consumption and pollution emissions. For them, no bicycle-serving facility will ever have an acceptable cost-benefit ratio, because they believe the benefits will be nearly zero.

As a life-long transportation cyclist, I do not accept this anti-bicycling viewpoint. Unfortunately, though, the Mayor may be barking up the wrong tree with the proposal for a bicycle commuter facility downtown. In my view, we lack some necessary conditions to proceed with this project, as attractive as it appears.

Nearly all of the several successful facilities run by Bikestation, as well as the McDonald's Cycle Center in Millenium Park, Chicago (which inspired Mayor Abramson's enthusiasm for a cycle center here), are located close to a fixed-rail transit station used by thousands of people daily. The rail station makes a natural site for a major bicycle parking facility, which makes a bike + rail commute attractive and draws a large enough group of users to support the bicycle-related businesses located at the cycle center. The train serves people who may live quite a distance from downtown, and brings them within easy bicycling distance of nearly any downtown destination. The bicycle makes the train more attractive by replacing a long walk or a transfer to one or more local buses in order to reach one's destination. With no transit hub through which thousands of commuters travel each day, Louisville does not seem well situated to make heavy use of a bicycle commuting center.

People might also ride their bicycles downtown and then use the bicycle commuting center to lock their bicycles and shower before work. This leads to three questions: 1) Will the bicycle center be located close enough to their offices for them to want to walk between the two points? 2) Would the money and political capital to build a bicycle center be better invested providing good parking and shower facilities at workplaces? 3) Do the people who might use the bicycle center feel comfortable riding downtown in rush hour traffic? If most of the cyclists willing to ride downtown are already doing so, then the bicycle center won't do much to increase our bicycle commuting mode share.

When the Louisville cycle center idea first came up a couple of years ago, I had a conversation with the executive director of Bikestation. She agreed that the lack of a transit hub might make it difficult for a bicycle commuting center to succeed here. She stressed two elements of planning for a successful cycle center: a market study to assess demand, and a business plan to determine how user fees or other income could meet the operating expenses of the station. I urged Metro government in 2006 to take these steps; to the best of my knowledge, they have not. Even if money falls from heaven to build a state-of-the-art bicycle center downtown, it will cost money to run it. A bicycle retailer or repair shop, a cafe, a bike rental business, a tourist information kiosk, and any other supportive businesses will need enough customers to keep their doors open. No sane business owner would start a business, or lease space in a cycle center, without a business plan.

In about 2004, Jackie Green bought the building at 107 W. Market Street where he now operates the Bike Courier Bike Shop and CBD Courier service. He immediately called the location the Bike Depot. He searched for a restaurateur to open a cafe there, and repeatedly sought the interest of Metro officials to create a bicycle parking operation there. The location would have required much architectural creativity to serve all of those purposes well. Perhaps that dream was never achievable. But nobody in government or the private sector was willing to partner with Jackie to build the dream, even with Jackie having assumed the financial risk of owning the property.

Against all odds, Jackie and shop manager Russ Hisle have built a successful (or at least surviving) full-service bike shop at 107 W. Market Street. No matter whose money Metro plans to invest in its cycle center, I urge them to give careful thought to its current and potential market, its operating expenses, and the financial prospects of supportive businesses located in or near the center. Without such thought, Metro will likely find itself with a white elephant that anti-bike commentators and politicians will use to torpedo funding for bicycle-supporting projects for years to come.

Tour de Frankfort, Stage 2 - the progress continues

2009-02-14T12:56:00.000-08:00

David Morse and I went back to Frankfort on Thursday night, a few hours after the end of the Louisville Bike Summit II. We stayed overnight with friends in Frankfort so we would have only a short trip to get to the Capitol Annex for meetings starting at 8 AM Friday. We met with five legislators and spoke with another by telephone. By the end of the day, our bill (HB 88) had eight cosponsors (up from four last week) including three members of the House Judiciary Committee. For the bill to pass, the Judiciary Committee must take action on the bill and send it to the floor of the House with a favorable report.

In addition to initial sponsor Jim Wayne (Louisville), cosponsors now include Mary Lou Marzian, Tom Burch, Reginald Meeks, and Tom Riner of Louisville Metro, along with Charles Siler (R-Whitley County), David Watkins (D-Henderson), and Kevin Sinnette (D-Ashland).

We met with Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Tilley of Hopkinsville. He seemed sympathetic to our aims and supportive of giving the bill a hearing, but cautioned us that the committee faces a tremendous workload for the remainder of this short session. He gave us no assurance that he would push HB 88 high enough on the committee's agenda to assure that it would receive a hearing and vote. He was not blowing smoke - over 20 bills face the committee, along with some important matters resulting from the unlawful extension of the 2008 legislative session beyond its deadline set in the Kentucky Constitution.

We are reaching out to HB 88 supporters who live in House District 8 (part of Hopkinsville and parts of Christian and Trigg Counties near the Tennessee border), asking that they contact Rep. Tilley (their Representative) to urge him to post the bill to the Judiciary Committee this week. If hearing from several of his own constituents does not do the trick, we will ask for a broader show of citizen support. Once the bill has a hearing date in the Judiciary Committee, we will ask supporters to write to all Judiciary Committee members who have not already cosponsored the bill.

Each visit to Frankfort includes surprises. As we waited for staffers of House Judiciary Committee members to call us into meetings (several of which never took place), David took advantage of wi-fi access to check the list of cosponsors on the LRC website. Two new cosponsors, whom we had not contacted, appeared on the list - Reginald Meeks of Louisville and Kevin Sinnette of Ashland. We called their offices to schedule meetings with each of them, to thank them for their support and ask their advice on how to move the bill forward. It was Friday afternoon and the House and Senate had adjourned. Most legislators had already headed homeward. Reps. Meeks and Sinnette were not only in their offices, but answered their own phones!

I thanked them both and asked for a few minutes to see them. Rep. Meeks had no time to spare, but told me how to reach him in Louisville on Monday. Rep. Sinnette said he could give us a few minutes. We rushed to his office, shook his hand, and asked how he had taken an interest in HB 88. He replied that he is a cyclist and rides with his hometown club! Developing relationships with individual legislators is a crucial part of lobbying. The work we do this year may not result in passing HB 88, but might lead to even more important lobbying victories in 2010 and beyond. Making a connection with a bicyclist in the House can serve us well in the future, as long as he keeps his seat!

To address a comment on my previous post, passing HB 88 will not automatically usher in a new era of peace and tranquility on the roads of Kentucky. It can, however, help in some important ways:

1) providing an understandable state law on which to base simple statements in driver's ed, traffic school, and public service announcements: driving recklessly and hitting a bicyclist or pedestrian can land you in jail - the law says so right here...

2) providing a basis for prosecution of reckless drivers specifically for hitting pedestrians and bicyclists - not because they were DUI or fled from the scene or had drugs in the car. The resulting news stories will convey that reckless driving is no longer acceptable and that we no longer look at reckless driving crashes as "accidents."

3) giving sincere, concerned police officers an easy way to press charges against reckless, crash-causing drivers in many cases in which they have no easy option now.

4) eliminating an excuse that less-concerned officers may use for not filing charges against reckless drivers for hitting pedestrians and bicyclists.

5) eliminating an excuse that some bicyclists use for their failure to abide by traffic laws - "the law doesn't protect me, so I can't be bothered obeying it."

6) beginning a public dialogue on the traffic laws and how to make them more effective in reducing the carnage on our roads.

7) demonstrating that bicyclists and pedestrians in Kentucky can work together effectively to win changes in state law.

The campaign to pass HB 88 is the beginning of the journey, not the end. It may be easy to dream of laws that will solve huge problems in one fell swoop, but difficult to write them and even more difficult to get them passed! We chose to bite off a small chunk with HB 88 in hopes of winning incremental progress.

Tour de Frankfort, Stage 1 results

2009-02-11T11:23:00.000-08:00

When in Frankfort with friends last week to lobby for House Bill 88, I realized that our legislative advocacy effort had much in common with a stage race. Many months of preparation took place before we made our first appointment to visit a legislator, just as a racer puts in months of training before entering a race. The effort to pass this bill will unfold over several weeks; each day's results contribute to the overall cause, but a single day's success or failure usually does not dictate the outcome. If we do not win this year, "there is always next year" as in racing. Those of you who follow bicycle racing might think of this post in the same light as blogs kept by racers between stages of stage races. I'll keep it short in order to get back to work on the campaign.

HB 88 defines a new criminal violation, "vehicular assault of a bicyclist or pedestrian," as a vehicle operator hitting a bicyclist or pedestrian while driving recklessly. It authorizes law enforcement officers to issue a citation or make an arrest for this violation on the basis of probable cause (in other words, good reason to believe that the violation has been committed). Current law prohibits officers from issuing citations or making arrests for non-felony traffic infractions unless they witness the infraction, except in cases of DUI. For this reason, police rarely file charges when bicyclists are hit, regardless of the severity of injury suffered by the cyclist. HB 88 would change that.

We visited several members of the House Judiciary Committee, which must report favorably on HB 88 in order for it to progress to the full House of Representatives. Three legislators decided to cosponsor the bill, and three others said they would consider supporting it, perhaps with some modification. It was clear to us that face-to-face conversations with the legislators helped us make the case for the bill and build support for it. We learned quite a bit by listening to them, too. I would say that we had a very good day for Stage 1.

Stage 2 takes place on Friday, when we return to Frankfort to meet Judiciary Committee chairman Rep. John Tilley (D-Hopkinsville) in hopes of winning swift committee action on the bill. The legislative session lasts only three more weeks, with the committee meeting probably three more times. We have a small window of time in which to get the committee to act on HB 88. For now, our full effort must go toward winning the support of Rep. Tilley and Judiciary Committee members. If that goes well, we will return to Frankfort to lobby the entire membership of the House. If our work with the Judiciary Committee does not bear fruit, our race is over... for this year.

Strong opinions, needlessly strong language

2009-02-10T11:32:00.000-08:00

I'm thrilled that some folks find this blog helpful for starting discussions about important issues in cycling safety, the cycling environment, and behavior of road users. The burst of comments regarding my post about red lights and stop signs encourages me. A reader wrote that he found the language of some recent posts offensive, although he appreciates the blog. I agree with him that the foul language (whether in the post itself or in an avatar) adds nothing to the discussion and puts off people who might otherwise find it valuable.

Rather than moderating comments, I prefer to urge readers to post their comments using language that you would consider inoffensive in conversations with your children (or grandchildren) and your parents. I will moderate comments only if self-moderation by comment-posters does not do the trick. Please continue to bring your passion and your best thoughts to the discussion, but please leave the crude language to private venues.

Thanks,

Barry

Red means stop

2009-01-27T18:29:00.000-08:00

I can't believe I need to write this, but I guess that the time had to come. Yes, bicyclists need to stop at stop signs (except in Idaho) and red lights. Yes, they need to stay stopped at traffic signals until the signals turn green or until conditions allow for a legal turn on red.

I write this in response to a comment posted by reader Freedom Bikes:

"I saw this on a bicycling forum. Any truth to this?

'A lot of forward thinking bike communities (L'ville, KY for instance) totally advocate running reds/stops safely and have quantifiable data as to why it is safer to do so.' "

Nope, that's pure urban legend. One prominent bicycle advocate in Louisville (my friend Jackie Green) urges cyclists to ignore red lights and stop signs "when safe." All of the relevant local government officials, and all of the local bicycle safety instructors, and everyone on the board and staff of Bicycling for Louisville, disagree with him. Jackie sets forth his "as soon as safe" doctrine for leaving intersections, regardless of the presence of stop signs or the phase of traffic signals, here. He justifies it with a list of snippets from news articles about chain reaction car crashes that injured or killed innocent bystanders. Neither Jackie nor anyone else has performed any analysis of the relative safety of running red lights and stop signs "safely" versus obeying them. The anecdotes shared on his website merely show that cyclists and pedestrians sometimes get hurt by motor vehicles struck by other motor vehicles. They do not show any differential in danger between intersection and non-intersection locations or between whether or not the bicyclist or pedestrian was stopped at an intersection when hit.

Kentucky traffic law clearly requires bicyclists to obey stop signs and traffic signals in the same way as motorists must. Given the frequency with which motorists complain to me about bicyclists running stop signs and red lights, it seems to me quite likely that this behavior contributes strongly to the anti-bicyclist sentiment that leads to road rage assaults against bicyclists.

According to the League of American Bicyclists, 8% of car-bike crashes resulting in injuries are caused by the bicyclist running a stop sign or red light. Focusing on getting out of the intersection quickly will inevitably result in bicyclists spending less time evaluating the traffic conditions, more mistakes, and more crashes. At a stop sign or red light, I have much greater concern about getting hit by vehicles who have the legal right to go (that is, the cross traffic) than by the vehicles who have the legal obligation to stop (that is, the ones behind me).

Jackie bases his revisionist view on a Louisville ordinance stating that the traffic law applies to bicycles "... except those provisions of this traffic code which by their very nature can have no application." Even in the unlikely event that a bicyclist could get a judge to believe that the stop sign and red light laws by their very nature have no application to bicyclists, the Kentucky code contains no such provision and the local ordinance cannot supersede the state law. A bicyclist in Kentucky who crashes while running a stop sign or red light has thrown away most of her or his legal rights by having run the stop sign or red light.

If you've read this blog over the past several months, you know that I am no fan of stop signs and traffic signals. I consider other means of traffic control more appropriate in a majority of circumstances. With the well-informed and experienced bicycle advocates of Portland, Oregon seeking an Idaho-style yield-and-roll law for bicycles at stop signs and turning right on red, I am inclined favorably toward that option. Kentucky law clearly prohibits rolling through red lights and stop signs, though, and I believe in the benefits of everybody following the law.

When we make up our own rules, others on the road do not know what to expect of us. This results in confusion, chaos, and destruction - especially for us, the most vulnerable road users. When motorists feel compelled to abide by inconvenient traffic laws and bicyclists ignore those laws, motorists understandably resent our behavior. Angry, resentful motorists are not good for my health as a bicyclist! Even with their flaws, our traffic laws are worth following. We can't expect motorists to obey speed limits when we can't bother to obey stop signs and red lights. To borrow a slogan from San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, we need to "Give Respect to Get Respect." That starts by obeying the laws - as they are now, not as we wish they were. Cleaning up the scofflaw reputation of bicyclists will go a long way to strengthening our hand when we go to the state legislature to reform the traffic laws.

From ice to insects in 9 hours flat

2009-01-23T05:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning, I was pleased to ride on mostly dry roads at 28 F. Turning right at a stop sign from a side street onto Payne Street, I needed to swing wide to avoid a thick patch of ice that seemed to come from melted and refrozen snow in an on-street parking space. Other than that, nothing interrupted a pleasant ride to the office.

The temperature rose to 53 F during the sunny day, giving a welcome respite to the many folks here who suffer in cold weather. At 6 PM, unlocking my bicycle outdoors after a stop in St. Matthews, I saw something unexpected: a swarm of insects slightly bigger than gnats flying around a bush. These little critters were getting a jump on spring. With the temperature staying above freezing last night, perhaps they will survive until it drops back into the 20s tonight or tomorrow night. I was startled to leave home yesterday morning in the winter and return home last night in the spring!

We still have nearly 2 months of winter ahead of us, and inevitably many swings of weather. As the cyclists commenting on my preceding post noted, it takes trial and error to find clothing that allows comfortable riding in a given set of weather conditions. Each of us has different, and even changing, needs. My cold-weather commuting works in part because of the relatively short distance and time: 5 miles or under 25 minutes each way. Longer rides can pose greater challenges and dangers if you find yourself under-dressed before arriving. If you choose to try riding in colder weather, try it gradually on days off when you can head home or stop in a warm place if you find yourself getting uncomfortably cold. I see no point in arriving at work with frostbite!

Zero - isn't that something?

2009-01-19T15:25:00.000-08:00

Friday's morning low of -1 F matched the lowest temperature in Louisville since 1996. By the time I got on my bicycle, the temperature had climbed to zero - nonetheless my lowest bicycling temperature in 13 years or more. We had dry roads, so ice wasn't a problem. I remembered having ridden at -5 F in the mid-1990s, but wondered whether I could still hack the cold.

Much as I remembered, I found fogging/frosting lenses to be the biggest challenge. I wear shades with a clear polycarbonate lens that wraps from temple to temple and covers the bridge of my nose. They have prescription inserts that ride inside of the outer lens. The wrap-around lens protects the bridge of my nose and keeps my eyes from watering due to the frigid wind. I used anti-fog eyeglass cleaner on both the inner and outer lenses before getting on the bike. With a silk balaclava rolled up at the bottom to avoid covering my mouth, I had a fighting chance of keeping my breath from fogging the lenses. Past experience had taught that fog condenses on lenses when I stop moving, and that it freezes onto the lenses quickly when riding in such cold weather.

The balaclava kept my nose and cheeks warm enough, but interfered with my breath enough to cause my right lens to fog at the first stop sign. From that point on, I exhaled by blowing forcefully away from my face. That, along with a crosswind, helped to keep my left lens clear.

As for keeping hands and feet warm, I offer this advice: Start Warm and Ride Hard. When core body temperature drops below a threshold (which differs from person to person), the body reduces circulation to the extremities in order to conserve blood flow to the brain and internal organs. This means cold hands and feet. My threshold temperature is pretty high. Even when I feel comfortable overall, my hands and feet get cold. To ride on cold days, I put on my head covering (balaclava or helmet liner) and my outer layers 15 or 20 minutes before heading out the door. This makes me toasty - perhaps even overly warm - and ensures that my hands are warm when I put them into the gloves. Even so, I need insulated mittens over my gloves for weather below about 28F. Mittens over gloves means I can't grip small objects. In other words, I need to pull off cleat covers, buckle helmet, tighten shoes, etc. before going outside. That's tough if the bicycle is outside in an unheated garage!

Riding hard keeps my core temperature high. Often, my hands will start warm, get cold within a mile or so, and then warm again after about 3 miles of fairly hard riding. I have had little difficulty keeping my feet warm on 5-mile commuting rides since I began using neoprene shoe covers over my riding shoes. I have not found an equally good solution for keeping my feet warm when riding in ordinary walking shoes, which are too wide to fit inside cycling shoe covers. With shoe covers and riding shoes, I wear a single pair of calf-length wool blend ski socks.

This morning, I rode into the office at 14 F. After riding at zero on Friday, it felt remarkably comfortable. With the snow over the past couple of days, though, I needed to walk my bicycle over icy spots on neighborhood streets before riding on the salted main roads.

I'll end by disagreeing with one common piece of winter commuting advice. Don't bother dressing in layers, except to get to your own personal comfort level in the given temperature. On a short ride at low temperature, you don't want to stop to remove a layer, especially if that requires taking off mittens to adjust or stow a piece of clothing. Instead, wear outer layers with zippers or velcro that allow you to adjust how much air gets inside. While stopped at a light, or while coasting on a low-traffic stretch of road, you can easily loosen a velcro-fastened cuff or open an underarm zipper or front zipper. This is much more practical than taking off your outer layer, let alone removing an inner layer. If you need to add warmth during a winter commute and you already have your zippers closed, pull a bandana or short scarf around your face or neck. Never ride while wearing a scarf long enough to get caught in your spokes!

Layering makes good sense on rides over 10 miles long in weather above freezing. You dress for the starting temperature and stop on the road to add or remove clothing to suit the changing conditions. During most commuting rides, you will get to work before the temperature changes by more than 2 degrees.

Classifying bicyclists: as easy as A B C?

2009-01-12T07:35:00.000-08:00

If you attend the Louisville Bicycle Summit II on February 12, you will probably hear mention of A, B, and C bicyclists: A for advanced; B for basic, and C for child. (Click here to learn about and sign up for the free, all-day Bicycle Summit, about which I will write more later.) According to the engineers and planners who use this A-B-C scheme, A bicyclists are experienced, skilled riders willing to ride an almost any road open to bicyclists. B bicyclists are casual riders, willing to ride on low-traffic neighborhood streets, not-terribly-busy streets with bike lanes, and on paths. C riders, children, need low-speed, low-traffic neighborhood streets or paths to keep them safe from cars.

It seems like a reasonable scheme, and for several years I accepted it even though some national bicycle advocacy leaders disliked it. I've grown increasingly uncomfortable with it, though. Here are some arguments against separating bicyclists into groups for planning purposes, and some alternative approaches that make better sense to me.

Most of us know some drivers who avoid driving on expressways, or in heavy urban traffic. We know others who will go out of their way to drive on an expressway to avoid the inconvenience of stop signs and traffic lights. We also know inexperienced drivers, including teens and recent immigrants. Yet the traffic engineers and transportation planners don't divide motorists into categories and discuss which subset of drivers will use a particular new or redesigned road. They look at each road as part of a roadway network to serve the needs of the full range of motorists. Good transportation planners look at the various parts of the network (limited-access highways, major and minor surface roads, and neighborhood streets) and prioritize investments in the parts of the system that most need improvement.

I would like to see a similar approach for bicycling infrastructure. Rather than considering bicyclists as three groups, consider the variety of functions that a given road or path might serve for bicyclists - casual recreational riding, short-distance transportation, long-distance transportation, high-speed sport and fitness riding, riding in groups, and so on. Then, consider how this particular road or path fits into the bicycle facility network. Set the goal of providing appropriate roads or paths to serve each bicycling function in each part of the community, so people don't need to drive somewhere else in order to ride bicycle! In short: classify the bicycling function, not the bicyclists.

This acknowledges that the same bicyclist might have different needs and desires at different times. I choose very different routes for my solo commuting and errands than I choose for recreational rides with my wife, for riding with children, or for group rides. Pegging me as an A rider does not account for my variety of bicycling needs.

The A-B-C rider classification scheme also tends to fragment the bicycling community and undermine advocacy. The most well-informed bicycle advocates tend to be highly experienced bicyclists. Many public officials label us as A riders and then assume that we have lost any sense of what less-experienced bicyclists need or want. Of course, some avid riders choose to stay in the world of bicycle aficionados, with little concern or sympathy for the desires of less devoted bicyclists. It is unfair, inaccurate, and self-defeating to assume that all experienced riders have made this choice. Some of us stay in touch with the broader community of bicyclists and know first hand the desire to ride comfortably at low speed and with a minimum of threat from faster vehicles. My ability and willingness to ride on Shelbyville Road at rush hour does not reduce my appreciation for a quiet path far from motor vehicles, or my sympathy for people who can't imagine riding on a busy road without special bicycling facilities.

Instead of talking about "classes" of bicyclists, let's focus on developing a network of facilities to serve the broad spectrum of bicycling activities. Louisville has adopted an innovative Complete Streets manual and policy calling for each new or expanded roadway to provide for the needs of bicyclists and pedestrians. Let's get to know this manual and refer to it every time we consider a roadway project. As bicyclists, let's speak up for our own needs while recognizing the needs of others. Most of all, let's remember that it's all good: any bicycling that does not harm or threaten someone is worthy of our respect and support. The sooner fast, avid riders value and make common cause with slow, casual riders and vice versa, the sooner we will grow into a movement that will change the face and heart of our community.

Winter weather wagers

2009-01-09T08:15:00.000-08:00

We have had a real winter this year in Louisville, though with very little snow thus far. In the first four days of winter, we experienced temperatures down to 5 degrees F, then rain falling at 34 F onto sub-freezing roads, then nearly two inches of rain with temperatures in the low 40s. Seven of the first 10 days of winter had significant winds, too, with average wind speeds of over 8 mph and maximum winds of at least 21 mph. January has been slightly warmer than normal; nonetheless, this morning had commute-hour temperatures of around 24 F. All of these conditions present different challenges to bicyclists.

The "wagers" in the title of this post refer to the weather-based decisions a bicyclist must make before venturing out in temperatures near or below freezing. A slight difference in road surface temperature or moisture can mean the difference between safe and unsafe riding. The weather report from the airport or downtown might not give an accurate picture of the conditions you will encounter on your ride, even just a few miles away. For example: It rains in the afternoon, with temperatures above freezing. Overnight, the forecast calls for temperatures dipping to the upper 20s to low 30s. If the temperature stays above freezing through the night, or if the roads dry before the temperature drops below freezing, you can have an ice-free ride to work the next morning. If the roads stay wet while freezing temperatures set in, you can encounter icy roads. You need to guess, based on the morning weather report and the conditions on your own street, whether it is safe to ride in the morning.

Also, you need to learn your own tolerance for cold temperatures. For temperatures from the low 40s down to the upper 20s F, I can ride comfortably wearing nothing over my face other than a headband under my helmet. Below about 28 F, I replace the headband with a fleece helmet liner, and I need to wear wrap-around eye shields rather than ordinary eyeglasses to keep the bridge of my nose from painful cold and to keep my eyes from watering. To ride in the low 20s and below, I need to cover my nose and cheeks with a folded bandana. If I fail to use these precautions, I will have a very uncomfortable ride.

I guessed wrong on December 23 on the trip home from work. At 5 PM, the National Weather Service posted a temperature of 34 F with rain, so I thought I would merely have a wet, but not icy, ride home. I didn't account for the fact that the temperature had been well below freezing for 2 days. On the way home I hit a slick spot that nearly caused me to crash. I coasted the last few blocks at 5 mph, with my feet off the pedals. Regardless how much bicycling skill you have or what type of bicycle you ride, I urge you not to try riding in potentially icy conditions. One unlucky combination of ice and traffic could ruin your life.

Not to end on a dire note - I enjoy riding in the winter. The cold air makes me feel more alive, the roads often have less traffic, and everything looks clearer and brighter in the absence of the summer haze. Riding year-round means that I never need to talk myself into getting back on the bike in the spring, and starting a spring ride at a temperature of 45 F feels like a walk in the park!

The Traffic Lights Turned Green for Christmas

2008-12-22T07:05:00.000-08:00

I wonder if reader Purple Haze can identify that reference to Jimi Hendrix...

I wrote earlier that traffic engineers at Louisville Metro were looking into how to make the inductive loop traffic detectors in our fair city respond to bicycles. A couple of weeks ago, their efforts and mine started to pay off. Dirk Gowin, who oversees bicycle and pedestrian transportation programs for the city, met me and two traffic signal technicians at the corner of Spring Street and Payne Street to test the loop detectors with various bicycles. As usual, only the less busy of of the two streets (Spring Street in this case) has loop detectors. One of them would detect a steel diamond-frame bicycle, but not my mono-tube recumbent bicycle. The other would not detect any of the five test bicycles. To my amazement, the technicians needed only to change the sensitivity setting on the detector circuit board to make the first detector respond to all of the bikes. For the other loop, swapping one circuit board for another made the signal responsive to all of the bikes. Voila! an intersection fixed!

From there, we went to five other intersections. With one exception (apparently due to a problem in the underground loop itself), the technicians made all of the loops sensitive to all of the bicycles. The other newly bicycle-sensitive signals are located at:

Payne Street and Lexington Road
Payne Street and Baxter Ave. (westbound only; the eastbound loop appears damaged)
Bellaire Ave. and Frankfort Ave. (the first signal west of the railroad crossing on Frankfort Ave.) Have patience - this signal takes 45 seconds to change.
Hillcrest Ave. and Frankfort Ave.
Bauer Ave. and Frankfort Ave.

Weather permitting, the crew will go out again a week from today to reset another several traffic signals to respond to bicycles. I have provided a list of ten more intersections in the Highlands, Original Highlands, Cherokee Triangle, Clifton, St. Matthews, and farther out US 42. If you know of signals with loop detectors that will not respond to bicycles, please e-mail the locations to info@bicyclingforlouisville.org and I will add them to the list. We can't guarantee a quick fix to any intersection. If the wire loop buried in the pavement does not work properly, the signal probably won't get fixed until the next repaving of that street. Given the city's interest in making the signals work properly for bicyclists, though, I expect we'll see lots more progress over the next few months. Thanks again to Dirk Gowin and Pat Johnson of Metro Public Works for making this happen.

A final reminder: At least until Metro Public Works begins stenciling bicycle logos on the sweet spots of the loop detectors, you will need to know where to place your bicycle to trigger the signal. For a dipole loop (which looks like a rectangular outline on the street with its corners cut off), place your bicycle on the line along the right or left edge of the rectangle. For a quadrupole loop (which looks like a long dipole loop, but with another line running lengthwise down the middle of the rectangle), place your bicycle on the middle line. In either case, you do not need to move the bicycle beyond the stop bar painted on the ground. Anywhere on the line of highest sensitivity should trigger the detector. If you have trouble with any of the detectors mentioned above, write to me and I'll try to get it repaired.

Making progress

2008-12-03T10:34:00.000-08:00

Metro government officials have made good use of comments from Bicycling for Louisville lately. In response to my complaints about bicycle-insensitive loop detectors at traffic signals, two engineers at the Department of Public Works and Assets have been looking into how to improve the situation. They made clear that improvements will need to take place gradually: the loop detectors get replaced routinely in connection with repaving a street, but are too expensive to replace otherwise. They have decided to make bicycle-sensitive detectors their new standard, to place the "sweet spot" of the detector behind the stop bar, and mark the sweet spot so cyclists can find it easily. I'm thrilled. Thank you, Dirk and Pat.

As money becomes available (and one can only guess when that will happen), they also want to move the signal-change buttons back farther from the intersection of Spring Street/Adams Street with Story Avenue so that a bicyclist who stops to hit the button will be able to ride back into a safe lane position before the light turns green. My comments spurred this change, too. Thanks again to Dirk Gowin (Public Works) for listening.

Two of us from Bicycling for Louisville, with help from Scott Render in the Mayor's office, appear to have influenced Louisville Downtown Management District (LDMD) to use simple design guidelines to ensure that the next round of artistic bike racks downtown actually serve well for parking bicycles. After looking at several sets of bike rack standards from around the country, I supplied LDMD the ones developed by Atlanta Bicycle Campaign for a design competition a few years ago, with one added requirement. I thank Ken Herndon of LDMD for listening to the bicycling community and taking advantage of this opportunity to make their investment in public art serve also to improve the stock of functional bike parking downtown.

Dirk Gowin at Public Works has responded very rapidly to an incident in which an experienced bike commuter crashed (without injury, thankfully) on the railroad tracks on Frankfort Avenue when an impatient motorist attempted to pass him on the right (!) while crossing the tracks. Dirk has explored several options for improving safety at that badly angled crossing and is pressing to find a solution that the city can afford. This has involved a long (and continuing) dialogue with me and three other League Cycling Instructors associated with Bicycling for Louisville.

In his first year at Public Works, Dirk has gone beyond any of his predecessors in the city's bicycle program to seek and incorporate input from technically savvy members of the bicycling community. I probably give him heartburn sometimes, but he keeps listening to me and we keep learning from each other. I really appreciate this improvement in the quality and quantity of communication. It bodes well for cycling conditions in Louisville Metro.

Puzzling pedestrian pronouncements

2008-11-25T09:19:00.000-08:00

Yesterday evening, I rode east from downtown as usual on Liberty Street. One-way eastbound, it has four travel lanes and a left-side parking lane from Second Street to Preston Street. Between First Street and Preston Street, both of the two rightmost lanes become right-turn-only. These two lanes carry heavy traffic to the interstate highway on-ramp between Floyd Street and Preston Street, and to right-turn destinations before the ramp. To avoid the heavy traffic and make my path obvious, I ride in the third lane from the right - the rightmost lane that serves my destination. Just east of Preston Street, the right-turn lanes disappear and this becomes the right-hand through lane.

As I rode in the middle lane of Liberty Street near 1st Street, a pedestrian on the sidewalk shouted, "Get out of the street!" I smiled at the absurdity of it. I was riding at 21 mph, keeping up with most of the traffic. No vehicles were waiting behind me; as usual, 90% of the traffic drove in the lanes to my right, and the remaining cars chose to pass me on the left. Had I attempted to ride at that speed on the sidewalk (even if that were legal), I would have terrorized any pedestrians including the one who would have me get off the street. My riding on the street created no possible inconvenience or hazard for the person on the sidewalk. What motivated him to show disdain for my riding on the street?

Would he have shouted had he seen a bicyclist near the right-hand curb? I don't know. A construction worker in a building shouted at me to get out of the traffic lane on Muhammad Ali Boulevard one morning a few weeks ago. Again, I could not conceivably have been causing him any difficulty or delay. Again, no traffic was "stuck" behind me. A few years ago, a man standing at a bus stop on Frankfort Avenue shouted at me to get off the road. That time, I was riding far enough to the right to allow overtaking vehicles to pass me easily. I stopped and asked him why he thought I should not ride on the road. "You slow down traffic," he said with certainty. (I disagree - a topic for another post.)

Kentucky averages 53 pedestrian deaths per year due to car crashes. I have never heard of a pedestrian in Kentucky killed by a bicyclist. (If you know of one, do tell - I don't want to spread misinformation.) Pedestrians ought to appreciate people using bicycles instead of cars to get around. Even if I did slow traffic, thoughtful pedestrians should celebrate that, rather than berate me for it. Faster traffic increases the number and severity of pedestrian crashes.

In fairness, many pedestrians have shouted encouragement as I rode hard to keep up with the traffic lights, asked me about my unusual bikes, or said, "Cool bike, mister!" They have thanked me for yielding to them in crosswalks and commented on my bright headlight. Sometimes we will nod or wave to one another.

Somehow, though, I feel that the pedestrians who take offense at my riding in the street reflect a widespread notion that we need to address. That notion says that speed trumps safety, civility, patience, and diversity. You have a right to the road only if you can maintain the speed limit. If your finances or beliefs or preferences compel you to travel somehow other than by private motor vehicle, you need to stay out of the way of the cars - the legitimate road users. Even when a bicyclist keeps up with traffic and takes pains not to delay motorists, the notion holds. People tend to reject information that challenges their preconceived ideas.

Roads and intersections and traffic signals designed to accommodate bicyclists make our lives easier and safer. I celebrate any improvements in these facilities. Still, if we really want to make bicycling a viable option for a broad swath of our society, we need to overturn this prejudice that makes even some pedestrians look askance at bicyclists on the streets.

Seeing red, part 4: trying but not succeeding

2008-11-14T13:52:00.000-08:00

Louisville Metro government has had bicyclists serving in some key bicycle-related planning and engineering jobs since 2000. They have understood most or all of the problems discussed in the past 3 posts about traffic signals. They have tried at least three solutions thus far. Why, then, do we still have problems with red lights here?

Some of the newer inductive loop detectors at Louisville traffic signals use the quadrupole loops recommended in the website on bicycle-sensitive traffic detectors. You can tell the quadrupole loops by the three parallel black lines in the pavement along the direction of travel (photos of traditional dipole and new quadrupole designs, called "figure 8 loops" on that page). You can see them, for example at the intersections of Pee Wee Reece Road and Taylorsville Road (near Bowman Field - map), E. Liberty Street and Baxter Avenue (map), and Spring Street and Payne Street (map). Unfortunately, the design details of the quadrupole loops in Louisville result in at least half of them (including two of these three) failing to trigger for bicycles. Some that will detect bicycles (such as the one at Liberty and Baxter) require a bicyclist to place one wheel at exactly the right location, often beyond the stop bar. Merely switching from dipole to quadrupole loops does not solve the problem - the physical and electrical details of the loops need to be right.

A couple of years ago, Metro installed experimental bicycle-sensitive loop detectors on Spring Street on both sides of the intersection with Mellwood Avenue (map). Spring Street, a marked Bicycle Route, has bike lanes on each side. Metro installed the bicycle-sensitive loops in the bike lane, which makes sense only until you recognize that a bicyclist heading northwest (toward downtown) on Spring Street needs to merge left into the main travel lane to keep from getting hit by motorists turning right from Spring Street onto Mellwood Avenue. I don't like a design that forces bicyclists to choose between triggering the light and risking getting right-hooked. In addition, Metro never marked the pavement or in any other way informed bicyclists of the purpose or location of the bicycle sensors. Most local bicyclists I know have no idea the sensors exist until I mention them.

This year, a block away and with equally little fanfare, Metro installed pushbuttons on Spring Street/Adams Street at its intersection with Story Avenue (map). A bicyclist facing a red light on Spring/Adams can pull over to the curb, hit the button, and wait only a few seconds for the light to change. (The buttons work.) Alas, this again requires the bicyclist to ride to the right-hand edge of the street. For a bicyclist riding NW on Spring Street, this causes no problem because traffic on the intersecting street (Story Avenue) goes one-way to the left. For a bicyclist riding SE on Adams Street, though, motorists coming from behind may turn right and hit the bicyclist who has just ridden from the curb after pushing the button. To use the button, the bicyclist must take an unsafe position on the road. As with the bicycle-sensitive loop detectors a block away, no signs or pavement markings alert bicyclists to the existence or function of the button.

In all of these cases, I suspect that it would have cost Metro no additional money to install a bicycle-sensitive loop detector as the traffic detector in the middle of the right lane. It would have cost a bit more to add the necessary bicycle logo (scroll to the bottom of the page) to mark where bicyclists should stop to trigger the light. The problem: some traffic engineers don't believe that bicyclists and motorists can ever be trained to accept the validity of a bicyclist riding in the middle of a vehicular traffic lane, even if only at an intersection. It's time to try a well-designed, adequately funded educational campaign to raise public awareness and change behavior of motorists and bicyclists. Sometimes, education can accomplish goals that engineering cannot.

Seeing red, part 3: Sensor-actuated signals

2008-11-09T17:02:00.000-08:00

Take a look at the road surface when you approach a traffic signal. If you see a tar outline of a rectangle with cut-off corners, the road holds a coil of wire that acts as a metal detector to trigger the traffic signal. If a car stops on top of that metal detector (a.k.a. inductive loop sensor), the car will trigger the light to turn from red to green. But what if a bike stops on top of the sensor? Usually, nothing at all.

When an electrical engineer's explanation of bicycles and sensor-actuated traffic signals first appeared online in 2003, I brought it to the attention of Metro traffic officials. The article explains how to make the loops sensitive enough to detect bicycles without getting triggered by larger vehicles in adjacent lanes. It also tells how to mark streets to show bicyclists the "sweet spot" of the sensor. Several cities have made bicycle-sensitive loop detectors their standard. The Louisville Metro Complete Streets manual approved in 2007 mentions bicycle-sensitive signals once, but does not require or recommend making all sensor-actuated signals sensitive to bicycles.

How much of a problem is this? If you don't care about whether bicyclists stop at red lights, then you probably won't rank it high on your list of necessary improvements to our bicycling environment. I make a point of riding according to traffic law, and these bicycle-ignoring signals drive me crazy. Here's a short top-of-the-head list of signals that I can't trigger, no matter where I place my bicycle on the sensors: Spring Street at Payne Street; Payne Street at Baxter Avenue; Country Lane and Brownboro Road (in front of Doll's Market); North Bellaire Avenue at Frankfort Avenue; and Hillcrest Avenue at Frankfort Avenue. The light at Hillcrest and Frankfort is even more crazy-making, because it flips back from green to red 2 or 3 seconds after a motor vehicle gets off the sensor. A bicyclist waiting behind a motorist at this red light can make it through on green only by tailgating the motorist and sprinting.

I expect that Louisville Metro and the surrounding counties have hundreds of intersections controlled by sensor-actuated signals. Maybe half of these signals will trigger for a bicycle placed at exactly the right spot; the others won't trip for an individual bicycle, ever. These sensors usually get replaced whenever the road is repaved. It costs little to make the new detectors bicycle-sensitive. City, county, and state traffic engineers: Please build signalized intersections that work properly for bicyclists. How can you expect us to obey red lights that don't recognize our existence?

Seeing red, part 2: timed lights

2008-11-07T14:05:00.000-08:00

On several one-way streets in downtown Louisville, traffic signals are timed to allow vehicles to proceed at a steady speed through a string of intersections without needing to stop for any red lights. These synchronized traffic signals work well as long as the vehicles can maintain that set speed within a few mph.

In my experience, I can ride through 6 or 7 green lights in a row on some of these streets if I ride fast: at least 23 mph. On my commuting bicycle, I simply can't ride that fast. Yesterday, I did some measurements and calculations to learn how fast a bicyclist needs to ride to keep up with the traffic signals, and if any slower-than-car speed could allow a bicyclist to cruise through all green lights.

For the test case I used East Main Street, a common commuting route with a bike lane. The signals are timed to allow a driver going at 34 mph to go from a green light at one intersection to green lights at all of the following intersections. Riding at 24 mph, one would fall behind the signals by about 5 seconds each block plus another 5-10 seconds delay if you need to start from a full stop or a low speed. This fast rider would get through about 7 intersections before getting stopped by a red light. At 20 mph, a rider would get through about 5 intersections before encountering a red light; at 15 mph, 3 intersections; at 12 mph, only 2 intersections before needing to stop again. How slowly would you need to ride to encounter all green lights? You would need to poke along at less than 10 mph.

Someone riding from the east end of Market Street to 3rd Street, for example, would have red lights add 1 minute to the trip if she or he rode at 20 mph. Red lights would add 2-1/2 minutes to the travel time for a 12-mph bicyclist. That comes to a 30% time penalty for the 20-mph rider, and a 40% time penalty for the 12-mph rider.

If Metro re-synchronized the signals for a 25 mph speed limit (instead of 35 mph), the 20 mph bicyclist could get to 3rd Street or beyond without stopping, and the 12 mph bicyclist would arrive one minute sooner. But what about the motorists who could drive at only 24 (instead of 34) mph? The travel time difference for this 10-block trip would be 51 seconds.

Bottom line: If Louisville (or another city with synchronized downtown traffic signals) wants to make its downtown safer and more accessible to bicyclists and pedestrians, they need only re-time the traffic signals for a lower speed. This will decrease the number and severity of car crashes (including crashes with bicyclists and pedestrians), make it much easier for pedestrians to cross the street, and allow bicyclists much less delay due to red lights. The cost - a minor inconvenience to motorists.

Seeing red

2008-11-03T14:19:00.000-08:00

Most major streets in greater Louisville meet at intersections controlled by traffic signals ("signalized intersections" in traffic engineering lingo). In spite of the number and severity of crashes at signalized intersections, the inconvenience of stopping at red lights regardless of traffic volumes, and the high cost of building and maintaining these intersections, I took them for granted until recently. It seemed as though they must improve traffic flow and safety compared to other options (stop signs, for example) or else the traffic engineers would stop using them. I certainly don't want a more chaotic traffic environment than we have now.

As regular readers know, I prefer modern roundabouts (not traffic circles) to signalized intersections in many situations. I believe that one-lane roundabouts could replace many of the traffic signals in our area with benefits for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. Of course, a transition from signalized intersections to roundabouts would cost money and involve controversy. Even in the best-case scenario, we will have lots of traffic signals for years to come.

As long as we use traffic signals, we need to make them functional for all legal road users. In Louisville, we have two basic types of traffic signals: signals timed to turn from red to green on a fixed schedule, which might differ for different times of day (for example, morning rush hour versus evening rush hour); and signals that stay green for traffic along the more major street until a sensor detects vehicles waiting on the smaller street. I'll call the first type "timed signals" and the second type "sensor signals." Locally, very few signals of either type work well for bicyclists. Tomorrow, I'll explain the problems and explore solutions.

Getting the facts straight

2008-10-10T07:13:00.000-07:00

The tragic car-bike crash that ended Jen Futrell's life gave a glimpse into some of the factors that impede progress in improving bicycle safety and traffic safety in general. The hackneyed and defeatist "tragic accident" language came up repeatedly, even among some people grieving Jen's death. Of course, the motorist didn't mean to hit and kill someone. Nonetheless, he chose to pass a bus on a busy road without being able to see whatever was on the other side of that bus - in this case, a law-abiding bicyclist. That was a foolish, reckless choice, not an accident.

Another impediment that arose predictably after the crash is the familiar blame-the-victim mentality: "Everybody knows it is too dangerous to ride bicycle on Bardstown Road" so we bicyclists should stay off it for our own good. The drivers whose incautious, impatient decisions make it dangerous don't need to drive differently, because "everybody knows" that they never will. Instead, bicyclists need to stay away from their chosen destinations on Bardstown Road or find a less direct route to them in order to leave Bardstown Road to the motorists. This infuriating argument also came up after the death of Chips Cronin on the Clark Memorial (2nd Street) Bridge last year and the death of Vance Kokojan on Outer Look in July. In all three cases, the motorist undoubtedly caused the crash - yet people blame the bicyclist simply for being there.

A more subtle obstacle to improving safety also appeared in these three car-bike crashes, and many more: the near-impossibility of getting good information about what happened. If the public would receive clear, validated information about the circumstances and causes of a crash, people could learn from the experience and change their behavior. Even if very few people in the general public would take advantage of this information, those of us who work to improve traffic safety could use it to focus our efforts and develop effective campaigns to curb the most dangerous driving and bicycling behaviors.

The crash that killed Jen offers a better than usual example of how hard, and how important, it is to do this. Media reports and e-mail messages circulated by friends at various points gave incorrect information on her age, which vehicle struck her, and even when she died. (The memorial demonstration and placement of a ghost bike took place two days before her death.) Retellings of eyewitness accounts and descriptions of a security-camera video of the crash disagree on whether the motorist passed the bus on the right or on the left. I have yet to hear an explanation of the lanes in which the three involved vehicles were traveling, and the presence or absence of on-street parking nearby. One story makes the motorist's driving sound wildly reckless; another makes it sound ordinary, though ending with a tragic bit of bad luck.

LMPD apparently awaits toxicology results to determine if the driver was under the influence of any drugs at the time of the crash. Even when they complete their investigation, though, they do not ordinarily release any details about a crash. News outlets might report any charges filed (say, DUI), but they rarely learn or publish details that could help us understand what actions could make a similar crash less likely in the future. We need clear information from the law enforcement agency conducting the crash investigation. Only with such information can we make good choices on how to invest public resources to reduce crashes.

Jen's funeral

2008-10-07T13:49:00.000-07:00

Twelve bicycles parked

Singing, prayers, memories

Drought yields to good rain.

One cyclist dying, another injured

2008-10-03T07:16:00.000-07:00

Jennifer Futrell, the 27-year-old woman struck by a minivan on Bardstown Road on Tuesday is close to death of her injuries. An e-mail message circulated this morning prematurely announced her death. I was with her and her father in her hospital room a few minutes ago. She never regained consciousness after the crash. Her family and the medical staff expect her to die within hours due to brain injuries sustained in the crash. She would be the third bicyclist killed by a crash with a motor vehicle in Louisville thus far in 2008. This would match Louisville's worst recent one-year bicyclist death toll. At least two of these bicyclists were killed while doing nothing wrong. I feel terribly sad, but anger will rise to the top soon.

Yesterday at about 6 PM, another driver struck another cyclist from behind, this time on East Broadway. To the extent that one can find good news in such a story, this latest incident has some. According to the Courier-Journal report, the bicyclist's injuries appear not to be life-threatening. In spite of fleeing the scene, the motorist was apprehended by police and charged with DUI, leaving the scene, and drug-related and other offenses. The involvement of alcohol, drugs, and hit-and-run make this driver easy to arrest and prosecute. Kentucky law specifically allows police officers to arrest people for DUI or hit-and-run without having witnessed the incident. This driver will not likely escape punishment.

Jennifer's family has had good legal help since immediately after the crash. They will choose whether to file charges against the driver who hit their daughter. A security camera video and numerous eyewitness accounts provided enormously more information than usually available about a traffic crash. While respecting their choice and the choices of other grieving families of crash victims, we need to reform the attitudes and legal structures that fail to hold impatient, distracted, incautious drivers accountable for their deadly actions as long as they commit them while sober. Lives are on the line, every day.

Crash update

2008-10-02T17:31:00.000-07:00

The woman struck from behind by a car on Bardstown Road on Tuesday remains in the ICU with multiple skull fractures. I have not heard her prognosis. Close friends are visiting her room, though she remains unconscious. My heart goes out to her family.

I heard today that alcohol was not involved in the crash. Instead, the cause appears to have been impatience: a motorist who refused to believe that the TARC bus ahead of him or her had a good reason not to drive in the right lane and not to drive faster. A colleague pointed out that a driver following the bus at a safe distance could have seen the bicyclist in the right lane in time to avoid hitting her. The creepy raw video footage from the TV traffic helicopter showed the van stopped perhaps a hundred feet beyond where the smashed bicycle was propped against a tree. This gives me the impression that the driver went a significant distance after hitting the bicyclist before bothering to stop. This suggests that she or he was going faster than 35 mph (52 feet per second) or wasn't paying attention to driving, or both.

This crash and two of the four most recent fatal car-bike collisions in Louisville have involved motorists hitting appropriately visible bicyclists from behind. Though statistics show that most car-bike crashes involve motorists turning across the path of cyclists, the relatively infrequent car-hits-bike-from-behind crash is more deadly because the motor vehicle is more likely to be moving fast. This gives an explanation for the observed effectiveness of on-street bike lanes at reducing bicycle crash deaths.

I wish I could think about crash probabilities and driver education and street design in abstract terms, but I can't. There is innocent blood on the street. It makes me sick to see the inevitable come to pass. Impatient drivers taking unnecessary risks every day in often-futile efforts to save a few seconds. We now have a young bicyclist clinging to life because one of those drivers didn't get away with the impatient maneuver. The wrong person is suffering for it.

Creepy crashes

2008-10-01T07:27:00.000-07:00

Halloween is 30 days away, but yesterday was the creepiest day of the year for me in terms of traffic crashes. On my regular route to work, I pass through the intersection of Liberty Street and Baxter Avenue, just after passing under the railroad overpass. Yesterday morning, at the exact location where I would typically stand at the traffic signal waiting to turn right onto Baxter Avenue (heading toward downtown), I needed to change lanes to avoid a minivan stopped across the median and sideways into my normal lane amidst crash debris. Another involved car was stopped nearby, along with a police cruiser. I have no idea how the northbound van ended up sitting in the westbound lane, but I was mighty glad that I hadn't been standing there astride my bicycle when it arrived.

In the afternoon, a friend informed me of a crash that had critically injured a bicyclist on Bardstown Road near Grinstead Drive. I had ridden there just a few days ago. A bicyclist traveling southbound on Bardstown Road had been hit by a minivan also heading southbound. News reports have thus far given no clues about the cause of the crash. Epitomizing the rush to release sensational news, a television news report of the crash and the accompanying photos and video alternately report the victim as a teenager and a 27-year-old woman, and the striking vehicle as a minivan and a TARC bus. It turns out that the TARC bus on the scene was not involved in the crash, and the victim was indeed 27 and not a teenager. I got the creeps from the photos and video (filmed from a helicopter), though they do not show the victim or any obvious gore. Just the tell-tale bicycle with a crushed rear wheel, leaning against a tree behind yellow police tape...

The crash happened at about 3:40 PM on a day with good visibility and no precipitation, on a street with quite a bit of bicycle traffic. An eyewitness account, which I received second-hand, said that the bicyclist was riding in the middle of the right southbound lane, being passed by a TARC bus in the left southbound lane. The minivan had been following the bus and swerved to pass it on the right. While doing so, it hit the bicyclist. This sounds eerily similar to the crash that killed bicycle commuter Vance Kokojan in July.

If you know any of the eyewitnesses to yesterday's crash, please ask them to contact Bicycling for Louisville if and when they are willing to talk about what they saw. Learning what actually happened in injury crashes is critical to our ability to change the factors that cause these crashes. It also helps us learn the strengths and weaknesses of the justice system in protecting the rights of bicyclists.

A fellow cyclist informed me this morning that the crash victim is in the ICU, unconscious. He had spoken with her father. Please hold the injured cyclist and her family and friends in your prayers or positive thoughts.

Why do people ride the (bad) way that they do?

2008-09-25T16:37:00.000-07:00

Thanks for the great comments on my most recent post! John asked the $64,000 question - or the $2 billion to $6 billion question, considering the staggering annual cost of traffic crashes in Kentucky: why do people bike (and drive) in disregard to traffics law and safety statistics? Do they not know the law? Do they find it inconvenient to obey traffic laws? Do the violate the laws out of rebelliousness?

People do what we believe will benefit us, as long as we do not fear some risk that would outweigh the benefit. If I believe that riding on the sidewalk is safer than riding on the street, and I do not fear getting punished for riding on the sidewalk, I will ride on the sidewalk. I say "believe" and not "think" because we make many (most?) of our decisions with little or no rational basis. Everyone who rides a bicycle in the city decides whether to ride on the sidewalk or on the street, but darned few of us have read anything about relative crash probabilities for sidewalk riding versus on-street riding.

One can make similar observations about a great many decisions that people make: in which neighborhood to live, what career to pursue, what car or bike to buy... We almost never even attempt a life-cycle cost-benefit analysis of the decision. If we do, we inevitably hit a brick wall when we encounter a variable for which we have no information, for example, the likelihood that the economy will change in ways that make my chosen career obsolete or unsatisfying. Even if we are inclined to think carefully about the safest way from point A to point B by bicycle, most of us do not have the information or skill to compute the objective best answer.

If the choices facing us so often overwhelm our capacity (or stomach) for rationality, how do we make these decisions? A key part of the answer is our tendency to follow social norms: what we see other people doing and, in particular, the behavior that we see modeled by people we respect or admire. Our parents and teachers and religious leaders set social norms for us early in life. For example, the religion and political leanings of our parents are the most potent predictors of our own religion and politics.

Most of us were taught as small children to play on the sidewalk and not in the street. We learned that streets and cars are dangerous. We have "learned" from advertising that the best way to improve traffic safety is to get into a car with more safety features: roll cages, crumple zones, seat belts, front and side air bags. This emphasis on crash safety encourages us to rely on the vehicle, rather than on our own driving behavior, to keep us safe. In other words: crashes are inevitable, and there's nothing you can do to change that except to stay as far from moving cars as you can, unless you are inside one. Facing intelligent people with statistics from reputable sources showing the increased risk of sidewalk bicycling versus on-street bicycling often results in puzzled expressions and convoluted explanations as people defend their lifelong training to stay away from cars.

In another post, I will address the suggestion that we distribute a pocket card explaining the reasons to follow some key bicycle safety practices. The short answer: such a card might help, but only in the context of a well-designed and thoughtfully executed social marketing campaign. Indeed, social marketing may prove the way out of the wilderness in terms of improving bicycling behavior significantly in less than a generation.

Low average, high variability

2008-09-23T12:08:00.000-07:00

During the past few days, I've seen lots of bicyclists out at night without lights. Last night, a couple demonstrated a trifecta of unsafe bicycling: riding on the sidewalk, against traffic, without lights after dark. Sadly, many bicyclists appear to feel that riding on sidewalks renders it unnecessary to ride on the right side and to ride with lights after dark. Quite the contrary: Sidewalk bicyclists traveling against traffic are more than twice as likely to get hit as sidewalk bicyclists going with traffic. Likewise, the difficulty that motorists have seeing bicyclists at night without lights is compounded by riding on sidewalks, outside of many drivers' range of visual scanning. This morning, I shouted at yet another bicyclist riding toward me and other traffic on Muhammad Ali Boulevard (a one-way street). He seemed both puzzled and annoyed that I would tell him not to ride against traffic.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I have encountered bicyclists the past two mornings riding with flashing LED headlights during daylight. One also wore a very conspicuous reflective vest. Of course, they both wore helmets. Not incidentally, I know both of these riders. Safety-conscious riders in Louisville go to extremes to make ourselves visible in mixed traffic.

In Louisville as of 2008, we seem to have a small, tight-knit group of bicycle safety paragons amidst a sea of bicyclists showing no awareness of basic cycling safety principles. (Of course, there are people in the middle of the spectrum, too.) This is our baseline against which to measure progress in our efforts at public education on bicycle safety. Bicycling for Louisville will offer three sets of Confident Cycling classes for adults over the next several weeks, funded by Louisville Metro government. Metro is working on a series of bicycle safety Public Service Announcements for television, to release next month. We hope to work with Metro government over the next several months to offer a wider variety of bicycling and driving safety programs to reach various audiences. How much will these programs raise the standard of bicycling behavior in our city? Watch, and let us know what you see.

In the dark and out of gas

2008-09-16T11:50:00.001-07:00

Two days ago, the remnants of Hurricane Ike passed through greater Louisville. We received essentially no rain, but for two hours had winds gusting to 70 mph. In the grand scheme of things, this would rate as a minimal encounter with a hurricane. As fate would have it, though, the two hours of wind shattered thousands of trees and hurled large tree limbs dozens of feet, bringing down over 6,000 power lines and leaving over 300,000 people without electricity. Our power company, LG&E, had already sent many workers to the Houston region to help with hurricane relief prior to having an unprecedented demand for their services back home in Louisville. Today, major streets are still blocked by downed trees and utility poles and many neighborhoods remain without electricity.

Transportation here is suffering not only from the trees, poles, and lines stretching across major and minor streets, but also from the lack of electricity to power traffic signals and street lights. One can drive for a mile along a street with functioning traffic signals and suddenly face a string of dead signals requiring all-way stops. I need a special effort to remember to stop at dark signals, because I am so conditioned to responding to the illuminated signals. Riding last night through darkened sections of Cherokee Triangle and Crescent Hill required constant vigilance to avoid downed trees, storm debris, broken guy wires, and ordinary road hazards that would ordinarily show up in the light of street lamps. Confused drivers at dark, unsignalized intersections add to the danger.

We probably still have over 150,000 people without electricity. Many gas stations have stopped operating, either because of lack of electricity to pump the gasoline or because of disruption of their gasoline supply. Grocery stores without backup power supplies are losing perishable goods for lack of refrigeration. Gradually, people without electricity are losing not only the food in their own refrigerators and the electricity in their own homes but also the ability to go elsewhere to get food, wash clothes, or otherwise take care of business. LG&E says that it could take another 10-14 days to restore power to all of its local customers.

Enough of Louisville is back in operation now (including, thankfully, the office of Bicycling for Louisville) that most people can probably walk or take a bus to meet their immediate needs. Our transit system, TARC, is still working - though with much stress on their staffers working under difficult conditions to keep the buses going. Most Louisvillians will probably remember the aftermath of this wind storm as a major inconvenience but not a tragedy.

Nonetheless, it leads me to consider how little it takes to turn modern life upside-down. Loss of electricity affects our homes, our livelihoods, our food supply, and our transportation. Interruption of our gasoline and diesel supplies would have similarly far-reaching effects. Obviously, relying more heavily on bicycling for transportation would not eliminate all of these vulnerabilities. It would, though, improve our resilience to deal with extreme weather events and other disasters.

Understanding road rage; River Road (Louisville)

2008-09-15T10:35:00.000-07:00

This morning, a friend wrote and referred me to Bob Mionske's latest "Legally Speaking" column in VeloNews. The current column, "More rage," is the best piece I've read about road rage involving cyclists. In addition to describing the causes of road rage, it gives excellent advice on dealing with hostile gestures or actions by other road users. I urge you to read the entire article.

Coincidentally, this morning's e-mail also included a note from a driver who expressed that cyclists endanger their own safety by slowing motor vehicle traffic, especially on River Road. I could easily have dismissed the comments, because they displayed significant ignorance of the traffic law. The tendency to blame cyclists for obstructing motor vehicle traffic and ignorance of traffic law are both widespread, though. We can only progress so far without addressing those attitudes and misconceptions, so I chose to write a respectful and detailed reply.

River Road is the only Kentucky Scenic Byway in Louisville Metro, and by far the most pleasant way to ride northeast from the city center. In my letter to the disgruntled driver, I identified a unique combination of attributes making River Road a perfect storm for tensions between motorists and bicyclists:

one narrow lane in each direction, with no paved shoulders
heavy motor vehicle traffic
heavy bicycle traffic, including many large group rides
long distances between intersections
lack of alternate routes
many blind curves and blind hill crests

My reply clarified motorists' and cyclists' legal responsibilities and asked for cooperation in making River Road better for all of us. I agreed with the driver that River Road does present real challenges to all of us. I'll share more of my reply in another post.

In the meantime, I ask that you consider how to make River Road safer and more functional for bicyclists, pedestrians, and motorists. This is a timely question, because Louisville Metro has just begun a $100,000 grant-funded project to create a River Road Corridor Management Plan, which will include recommendations for accommodating bicyclists and pedestrians. If bicyclists vilify or refuse to work with motorists, land owners, or other non-bicycling interest groups, we will not get what we need. I hope we will get ourselves into a cooperative, open-minded frame of mind before the first public meeting is announced. Of course, we have some core principles that we cannot compromise, including our right to use the road. We need to be ready to hear and respect other groups' core principles, too, in order to succeed in crafting solutions that work for all of us.

My impatience, your impatience

2008-09-12T11:28:00.000-07:00

On the ride to work this morning, I let my impatience overwhelm my better judgment and get me into a tight spot. This time, it had no bad consequences. I decided, though, that I need to do better.

My route to work includes Muhammad Ali Boulevard, which travels one-way westbound. East of Preston Street, it has parallel parking on the right-hand side. At Preston Street, the parking lane ends and the right-hand lane becomes a freeway entrance ramp. I ride in the right-hand through lane, avoiding the parking/right turn lane.

This morning, a queue of cars waited in front of me as I approached Preston Street. From experience, I know that most of the cars in that lane will cross the intersection and merge right onto the highway ramp. I saw the first few cars in my lane move toward the right once the light turned green and they started forward. The cars were moving at perhaps 10 mph due to traffic congestion. I made the poor choice of moving left to go around the car in front of me, assuming that it would merge right. When the car continued straight, I was stuck between two lanes of traffic. I slowed and dropped back behind the car, getting back into proper lane position. We both got stopped at the next traffic signal. Even if the car had merged right, I would not have saved any time by passing it as I tried to do.

I should have accepted the minor delay that often goes with riding in congested traffic and not tried to cheat the Devil to save a few seconds. My impatient behavior is exactly like the motorist behavior that I encounter most every day and that drives me crazy. This afternoon, a driver passed me too closely only to stop immediately in front of me at the next light. His destination was two blocks away, and he would have lost no more than 2 seconds by waiting behind me. As with my impatient maneuver a few hours earlier, his unsafe passing did not cause a crash. We both got away with it, this time. We also both made the roads a bit more tense and dangerous in exchange for an imaginary gain.

Traffic laws and law enforcement will never cause patience and courtesy. We need to cultivate those voluntarily. Now that I have seen my own impatience in action, I choose to do better.

One way, not necessarily the right way

2008-09-11T10:47:00.000-07:00

A welcome comment on my most recent post asked why I consider one-way street grids problematic, and whether I consider them bad for cyclists only or for all road users. I'll try to give one-way streets their due, and then explain why, on balance, I think that Louisville and Seattle downtowns would work better with most or all streets 2-way.

For confident, street-savvy bicyclists in places with narrow traffic lanes, multi-lane one-way streets provide a fairly attractive option. We can ride in the middle of the right lane, knowing that motorists can safely pass us in the lanes to our left. This is why I find it more comfortable riding on Chestnut Street downtown (one way, 2 travel lanes + on-street parking) than riding on Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill (2-way, one travel lane in each direction + on-street parking). On Frankfort Avenue, using the full right lane means forcing motorists into the oncoming traffic lane to pass me. (That still beats riding in the door zone of parked cars.) Two-way streets need one of three things in order to make it safe for cars to pass bicyclists: three or more travel lanes; striped bike lanes; or wide curb lanes.

One-way streets also make it easier to synchronize traffic signals so that people driving at a set speed (say, 3 mph below the speed limit) can proceed uninterrupted through several green lights in a row. Until much of downtown Louisville became a semi-permanent construction zone, traffic signals on the one-way streets going east and west were set up to operate in this way.

In a relatively congested downtown area, though, one-way streets cause numerous problems.

For bicyclists and motorists, they frequently require extra driving. A few blocks may not sound like much until you multiply it by thousands of vehicles per day on already-crowded streets.
They encourage wrong-way bicycling by local bicyclists wanting to save those few extra blocks.
They confuse people not familiar with the area. If I want to travel from the east to, say, 605 S 6th Street, I might logically head west on Broadway to 6th Street, at which point I realize that 6th Street goes the wrong way to get to my destination. If I'm not paying close attention, I might turn north onto 6th Street before realizing that it's one-way southbound... ouch.
In places such as downtown Louisville with a mixture of one- and two-way streets, the confusion is multiplied. Quick - in which direction do the following consecutive streets in downtown Louisville go: Hancock, Jackson, Preston, Floyd, Brook?
They prevent the use of pedestrian refuge islands to make long crossings safer, because vehicular traffic needs the freedom to move across all of the lanes.

I believe that our downtown would be safer and more convenient for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians if we switched to a two-way street grid.

Home again

2008-09-09T12:43:00.000-07:00

Returning to my regular Louisville commute for the past couple of days has given me a chance to check some of the things I wrote last week about the contrasts between Seattle and Louisville. I have not had any feeling of returning to earth after a visit to paradise. Indeed, the bicycling conditions are remarkably similar along the commuting routes that I took in the two cities: few places with space set aside for cyclists; stretches with lots of car traffic; a downtown street grid over-reliant on one-way streets; fair pavement conditions; numerous obstructions and hazards due to construction activities.

I have not noticed a big difference in behavior between Louisville and Seattle urban drivers, either, with the exception of much greater respect in Seattle for pedestrians in crosswalks. The big difference lies in bicyclist behavior. In Seattle, the great majority of bicycle commuters appeared adept at commuting by bicycle. Regardless of their riding speed, they predominantly rode bicycles that fit them properly, wore helmets, and carried their belongings in sophisticated waterproof panniers. Most rode in work clothes rather than bicycling clothes, and few rode on fancy road bikes, though I saw plenty of high-quality commuting bikes.

Yesterday, I saw a downtown Louisville bicyclist riding with his seat much too low, crossing the street at a walking pace in the crosswalk, riding from one sidewalk to another, without a helmet. He would have stuck out like a sore thumb in downtown Seattle. In a 5-minute span well after dark last night, I saw two riders without lights, both on major streets (Brownsboro Road and Frankfort Avenue). Even with vastly more bicycle traffic, I never saw bicyclists in Seattle riding after dark without lights.

Somehow, the bicycling community in Seattle has learned from experience or taught one another how to ride safely and efficiently. I believe that this happens much more quickly as the proportion of serious cyclists in a community grows. As a city develops a discernible bicycling community, that bicycling community establishes social norms for its members. Social norms affect behavior more powerfully than any formal education or law enforcement programs.

Seattle wrap-up

2008-09-07T14:26:00.000-07:00

On Friday morning, I had another unique bicycling experience. I had arrived in Seattle with my Bike Friday folding bike in its travel case and the rest of my traveling possessions in a large backpack. (I don't have the accessories to convert the travel case into a trailer.) If I rode my bicycle back downtown from Nancy's house, I could probably manage to carry the backpack but not the travel case. Repacking the Bike Friday into the travel case would require taking the bus downtown with two large pieces of luggage, during the peak of morning rush hour.

Nancy offered me another option: she could haul my luggage behind her commuting bike in her Burley trailer with me riding behind her. I packed my backpack into the Bike Friday travel case and loaded it into her trailer, and we rode together the five miles downtown. It was the first time I have ever bicycled with a baggage porter! Our route included one climb, perhaps 4% grade for about a half mile. We geared down and rode up at about 8 mph. Nancy was pulling probably 65 pounds of luggage and trailer up that grade!

Downtown Seattle has numerous hills much steeper than that. The steepest that I rode during my stay must have been 12% for a block. Anyone riding much around Seattle needs to learn to handle hills, unless they stay on the Burke-Gilman trail. As a result of building strength by riding the hills, many of the commuters I encountered kept a fast pace.

On the way to the conference on Friday, I counted 33 bicyclists - the highest of any of my 5-mile commuting rides. We had glorious weather all week, with low temperatures in the 50s and high temperatures in the 70s, with sunshine and no rain. I rode in business clothes all week without getting sweaty on the way to work.

What do bicycle advocates in Seattle think of the state of affairs there? After all, they have Cascade Bicycle Club with 10,000 members and 16 full-time paid employees, the famous and fantastically well-used Burke-Gilman Trail, and between 20 and 100 times Louisville's bicycle commuting "mode share" (the fraction of commuters who commute by bicycle). They have a downtown BikeStation and get priority treatment on ferries and other transit vehicles. Short answer: They are not resting on their laurels. With strong participation from Cascade Bicycle Club, the city in 2007 adopted an ambitious new bicycling master plan calling for major expansion and improvement of on- and off-street bicycling facilities. They have started a program based on the SmartTrips program used successfully in Portland, OR to encourage people to switch from single-occupancy motor vehicle trips to transit, bicycling, and walking. They have active bicycle safety education and traffic enforcement programs. Cascade has increased its membership by over 10% in the past year.

Bicycle advocates in Seattle have long since reached the goal of making bicycling a respected mode of transportation that handles a small but significant proportion of trips. Now, they work to make bicycling a mainstream mode, equal in importance and public consideration to driving and public transit. It looks as though they will get there within the next 10 years.

The ProWalk/ProBike Conference aims to make insight and experience from successful programs and policies available for widespread application. The people from Seattle gleefully acknowledged the ideas that they had "stolen" from Portland and other cities. The leaders in our field repeatedly invited the rest of us to use their materials and methods. We in Louisville will not need 30 years to catch up with Seattle and Portland if we accept this invitation.

It all counts

2008-09-04T21:49:00.001-07:00

Today was a big day for counts. On the 5-mile bicycle commute to the ProWalk/ProBike conference, I counted 21 bicyclists, all apparently fellow commuters. This roughly equals the number of bicycle commuters that I see during a typical week of morning commutes in Louisville. At the conference, I attended a morning session that included three presentations involving bicycle traffic counts and counting methods. It gave me ideas for where, when, and how to do more bicycle traffic counts in Louisville. (Bicycling for Louisville conducted morning and afternoon peak hour bicycle counts of 20 intersections in the spring of 2007.)

I joined an afternoon "mobile workshop" to see the ways in which University of Washington is encouraging its students, faculty, and staff to avoid driving alone to the campus. We stood on University Way one block off campus learning about measures taken to make the street safer and more inviting to pedestrian and bicyclists. During a 10-minute stretch at that intersection at about 4:30 PM, I counted 15 bicyclists - a pace of 90 bicyclists per hour, more than we counted at any of the intersections in Louisville. Remarkably, this happened during a "slow" time when the University is not in session. An hour later, we stood at the south edge of the campus alongside the Burke-Gilman Trail, a paved multi-use path over 30 years old. In six minutes, I counted 54 bicycles passing on the trail - a rate of 540 bicycles per hour! Although this was during rush hour peak (about 5:45 PM), it was again during a slow time of year for traffic in the University.

With or without bike lanes or paths, with or without school in session, Seattle has enormously higher bicycle traffic than Louisville does. During my glimpse of it, the Burke-Gilman Trail carried even more bicycle traffic than any of the Seattle streets I've seen. Over the past few years, Seattle has averaged about half of our number of bicycle fatalities (about 1 per year rather than about 2/year in Louisville). Even so, riding around Seattle has not given this Louisvillian a sense that the bicycling facilities here are all that much better than those in Louisville. Cascade Bicycle Club (with 10,000 dues-paying members and 20 paid staffers!) and the City of Seattle appear to agree. Last year, the City approved a new bicycling master plan with commitments to invest roughly $3 million per year for 9 years ($27 million total) on new and improved bicycle facilities. The plan calls for much more, as funds become available. The $27 million will go to carefully selected, high-benefit projects, not just some vague concepts or one or two glamorous big-ticket trails or bridges. The plan also has specific goals for these new facilities and programs: tripling the number of bicycle commuters from 4% of Seattle commuters to 12%. (I believe that fewer than 0.2% of non-home-based workers in Louisville commute by bicycle.)

Seattle appreciates what bicycling already does for the city and its people, and wants more of the same. Its tremendous bicycling advantage over Louisville has relatively little to do with more or better bicycling facilities (notwithstanding the phenomenal difference between bicycling conditions on University Bridge in Seattle compared with Clark Memorial (a.k.a. 2nd Street) Bridge in Louisville). Over the next ten years, we'll get to see how much bicycling increases and bicycle crashes decrease in Seattle as they build more and better bicycle lanes, multi-use paths, and bicycle boulevards.

My first day as a Seattle bike commuter

2008-09-03T20:52:00.000-07:00

During the ProWalk/ProBike Conference in Seattle, I am staying with friends 5 miles north of the conference site. My friend Nancy, a long-time bicycle commuter, led me on the bicycle ride into downtown this morning during rush hour. The experience contrasted in some interesting ways with my commuting experience in Louisville.

Seattle has the fastest growth rate of any major US city and suffers from severe automotive traffic congestion. As you picture my bicycle commute here, keep in mind that I passed and was passed by many more cars this morning than I encounter on my commute in Louisville. No part of our trip was on the famous Burke-Gilman Trail or any other off-road path; we rode on streets with lots of cars, trucks, and buses. We had the use of bike lanes for perhaps a quarter of our route, and it was generally clean. The streets were in about the same state of maintenance as Louisville city streets, with occasional holes or cracks requiring dodging but no really bad stretches.

Immediately, I noticed the omnipresence of other bicyclists. During a 5-mile commute at about 7:30 AM, we were never out of sight of other bicyclists. For about a mile and a half, we rode amidst an accidental assembly of 7 bicycle commuters. I don't think I've ever seen 6 other bicyclists during an entire 5-mile commute in Louisville, let alone 6 others at one time. On the return trip at about 6 PM, I only briefly rode without another bicyclist nearby. During the round trip, I saw at least 20 other bicyclists. They all appeared to be riding to or from work or on another trip for transportation - no racing bikes or team jerseys or groups of riders socializing or riding in a pace line.

I don't recall seeing even one bicyclist blow through a red light. For about three miles, I stayed within a block of another rider who did a track stand at every red light, sometimes for nearly a minute. I saw no wrong-way riders and very little sidewalk riding. The Seattle bicyclists, like Seattle motorists, universally yielded to pedestrians in crosswalks. I see this only rarely in Louisville. Most of the pedestrians crossed in crosswalks after waiting for the "walk" signal, another rarity in Louisville. On streets with two or three lanes in my direction, motorists accepted my staying in the middle of the narrow right lane. In general, I found the motorists patient and accepting of my presence.

Some bicyclists made some iffy choices, swerving around buses or cutting around slow-moving cars. For the first and second times in my many years of urban riding, I had bicyclists pass on my right - bizarre and dangerous behavior. On the whole, though, I found the behavior of Seattle's rush-hour on-street bicyclists better by far than run-of-the-mill bicycling practice in Louisville.

The high number of bicyclists on Seattle streets appears to have had an unfortunate side effect: none of the other bicyclists waved, nodded, or acknowledged me at all, even when I greeted them. The relative rarity of bicycle commuting in Louisville seems to support a camaraderie that I enjoy. I hope that we keep that friendliness even as numbers of bicycle commuters increase.

At the ProWalk/ProBike Conference, I continue to learn about ways to make bicycling safer and more enjoyable and convenient. Still, it's fascinating and heartening to see how much better bicycling can be even in the absence of visibly improved streets and intersections. Better attitudes and practices by motorists and bicyclists make an enormous difference.

Learning to improve bicycling, part 1

2008-09-02T08:52:00.000-07:00

Later this morning, my bicycle advocacy colleagues and I will close the Thunderhead Alliance Leadership Retreat and head to Seattle for the ProWalk/ProBike Conference of National Center for Bicycling and Walking. Sitting at home with fellow bicyclists, I can generate loads of ideas about how to raise money to fund bicycle advocacy, how to engage diverse voices in the bicycling community, how to build partnerships to advance bicycling, etc. Here at the Retreat, we can go beyond ideas to talk about the experiences of our organizations - programs that have actually worked to achieve those goals. The wealth of collective experience is amazing.

I will come home with specific advice for making our website more useful and engaging for our members and the wider community, for delivering good advice on safe bicycling and driving to more people in our region, for winning good legislation at the state level, and for developing local support for crucial federal legislation. As importantly, I will return with recharged enthusiasm and optimism for our success in that work.

Beginning this afternoon at ProWalk/ProBike, I will immerse myself in the best examples of planning and design of bike boulevards, bicycle lanes and paths, bicycle-friendly businesses and neighborhoods, bicycle safety education campaigns, ways to measure bicycling, and other technical topics that affect our cycling environment.

Learning from the best and brightest

2008-08-31T18:07:00.000-07:00

Some of my recent posts have suggested ways that officials in greater Louisville and elsewhere in Kentucky and Indiana could improve bicycling conditions and traffic safety by adopting innovations proven elsewhere. I am following my own advice. From last night through Tuesday morning, I am attending the Leadership Retreat of the Thunderhead Alliance for Bicycling and Walking, the North American network of bicycle and pedestrian advocacy organizations. The organizations represented here range from embryonic (not yet incorporated, with no staff or membership) to established and powerful (up to 30 years old, with staff of up to 40 people and annual budgets of up to $3 million). Each person here is passionate about expanding and enhancing walking, bicycling, or both, and all of us have experiences and wisdom to share with each other.

At the Thunderhead retreat, I learn what our peers throughout North America have done to develop good relationships with partners in government, industry, and the media, to pass legislation strengthening the rights of bicyclists and increase funding for bicycle-related projects, and to serve the needs of cyclists in a wide range of communities. We inspire and educate each other, sharing what has worked well and what has fallen flat. We also give each other moral support to face challenges and stay true to our visions of our states and cities taking full advantage of the transformational possibilities of bicycling and walking. The retreat is taking place at a beautiful retreat center on Bainbridge Island, WA.

On Tuesday, most of us (including myself) will take the ferry to Seattle for the ProWalk/ProBike Conference of the National Center for Bicycling and Walking. This conference will have a more technical tone, with presentations describing leading research and practice in areas of urban planning, design of bicycing and walking facilities including roadways, and public education and other programs to encourage safer walking, bicycling, and driving. People who have led the development and use of street designs that I have recommended in this blog will be on hand for informal discussions as well as formal presentations.

Both of these events give me a chance to learn about the state of the practice and bounce ideas around with some of the most experienced practitioners in North America. They energize me for my work back home, and send me home with ideas, information, and contacts to make that work more effective in making bicycling safe, enjoyable, and convenient. As the week progresses, I'll share high points with you.

Patience lacking; patience rewarded

2008-08-26T14:47:00.001-07:00

On Saturday, I took my first long recreational ride in several months - to and from Corydon from a few miles east of downtown Louisville. After bouncing around on city streets through Louisville, Clarksville, and New Albany, the ride gets more rural as it climbs Edwardsville Hill on Corydon Pike. The last 13 miles or so follows Corydon Ridge Road, winding around and over roller-coaster hills into Corydon. Household tasks kept me home until midday, so I rode through the heat of the day. The temperature hit 97 F, making the hilly ride especially challenging.

Nonetheless, I was thrilled to be riding on country roads again. Even with the march of suburbia out Corydon Ridge Road over the past 6 or 8 years, it still feels a whole lot different than riding around town. All of those new housing developments mean more automotive traffic, though. Most of the drivers waited patiently behind me when blind curves or hill crests made it impossible for them to judge the safety of passing. A few drivers suffered from what I call impatience-induced psychosis. They risked head-on collisions to pass when they could not possibly see whether the left lane had oncoming traffic. Who in their right mind would risk their life and the lives of at least two other people in order to save no more than 30 seconds?

This morning, a friend shared a very different experience. He is an elite road racer who rides many thousands of miles each year. He was riding downtown alternately falling behind and catching up with a police car. When they both stopped at a traffic signal, the young officer rolled down his window and said, "It's nice to see a bicyclist obeying the laws." My friend was pleased that the officer would make a point to notice and thank him for his patience - stopping at stop lights. When we drive, let's thank bicyclists who do the right thing. When we ride, let's thank motorists who treat us with respect. It may not take anything more than common courtesy for us to stem the much-ballyhooed (but still unproven) rise of road rage between bicyclists and motorists.

How cool is that!

2008-08-25T13:13:00.000-07:00

On my way home from work on Friday, I saw another rider getting onto his bicycle. Far from the norm for downtown bicyclists, he was wearing an aerodynamic helmet and riding a time trial bicycle with bladed carbon wheels. He caught me at a red light and asked, in a European accent, "Is there a bicycle shop near here?" It turns out that he came from Denmark for the Ironman Triathlon in Louisville this weekend. This is his first visit to the continental US. He went to Hawai'i last year - I would guess for the Ironman, as well. We taught each other the hand signals for stopping in our respective countries: left arm bent at the elbow, hand pointing down, palm back in the US; left arm extended upward, palm forward in Denmark.

We rode together to a nearby bicycle shop where he borrowed a wrench to tighten his pedals. I gave him the phone number of some friends who frequently host Danish exchange students, as well as my own phone numbers. He politely declined my offer to ride with him on Saturday, saying that he needed to train on the triathlon route. I was astonished to have encountered a European triathlete on my bike ride home from work in downtown Louisville!

During the 2005 Louisville Bicycle Summit I could not have imagined that Louisville would in 2008 host an Ironman Triathlon with thousands of competitors from as far away as Europe. In the past three years, our city has hosted the Master's National championship series for two years, a major national cyclocross race, and many other races, and our region now has over 30 sponsored bicycle racing teams. Several community leaders avidly race bicycles. This marks amazing local growth in bicycle racing over the past 10 years.

This explosion of bicycle racing happened because some people convinced themselves it was possible and worked hard to make it happen. I take their example as an inspirational reminder that a similar explosion in transportation cycling and other types of bicycling can happen here if a few of us show similar hope and diligence. Let's make it happen!

Maintaining progress

2008-08-18T13:14:00.000-07:00

As I have written before, Mayor Abramson's commitment to improve bicycling conditions in Louisville has had a tremendous and generally positive effect. Significant changes in attitude over the past several years at local and state transportation and land use planning agencies, strengthened by good continuing education for their staffers, have also paid off in better designs for some new and rebuilt roads and intersections. Nonetheless, no bicyclist could mistake greater Louisville for Shangri-La. We still face many challenges with "the built environment" ranging from unnecessary inconveniences to life-threatening hazards. Here are a few thoughts for continuing to improve roads and paths to make bicycling safer, more convenient, and more popular.

First, enforce the bicycle-related standards that we have. About four years ago, the Land Development Code incorporated a provision requiring bicycle parking at new or expanded commercial and institutional developments. I haven't noticed a significant increase in bicycle parking at new buildings in Louisville since then. Louisville Metro has used grant funding to install spiral stainless steel racks on public sidewalks upon request by neighboring businesses, but that program is not intended to satisfy the Land Development Code bicycle parking requirement that private developers provide bicycle parking, just as they provide automotive parking, at their own expense. It appears that someone is failing to enforce a good new standard. Other local standards not consistently applied include where and how to stripe bike lanes (per the Metro Complete Streets Manual Chapter 4 - Market Street has several examples of inappropriate and nonstandard bike lane striping) and cleaning broken glass from automotive crash sites.

Second, develop new local design standards according to best practices proven elsewhere. The Metro Complete Streets Manual describes how to route bike lanes or multi-use paths through various types of intersections, but says nothing about how to design the intersections themselves. Two intersection designs, mini traffic circles and modern one-lane roundabouts, have proved excellent elsewhere and deserve application here. Both eliminate stop signs, dramatically reduce the number and severity of crashes, slow motor vehicles without requiring a full stop, and allow bicyclists to proceed safely through intersections without stopping in most cases. Another missing standard here is a safe street-path intersection design to keep cars off paths without using steel bollards (posts) that can cause injuries to bicyclists and runners. Even if bollards are deemed necessary, they should be painted a bright color and festooned with reflectors to minimize chances of crashes, especially at night.

Third, develop and apply detailed construction standards. Bicycles are much more sensitive than cars are to uneven or damaged surfaces. A vertical mismatch between a concrete driveway and the asphalt road surface, a pavement crack running parallel to the travel direction, or a utility grate or cap sunk an inch below the pavement can cause a catastrophic crash for a bicyclist. Public agencies in our region, as far as I know, have no construction standards to address these and other issues that may seem trivial to motorists but can have life-or-death significance for bicyclists. We need to assign to the appropriate agencies the responsibility to attend to these details.

Fourth, maintain what we have. Gravel, sand, crash debris, fallen leaves, etc. can make a shoulder, bike lane, or intersection dangerous for bicyclists. Standard twice-yearly street sweeping schedules cannot keep streets acceptably clean. We should increase the frequency of regular cleaning and maintenance for any street in the bike route network, whether or not it includes a striped bike lane. We should use truck-mounted pavement roughness detectors (already used in some places by Kentucky Dept. of Highways) to identify streets in need of patching or repaving. This would help apply our paving funds more efficiently than repaving on the basis of a fixed schedule. We need to set aside the money necessary to clean our paths immediately after storms that leave them covered with dangerous mud and debris. It should not take citizen complaints to get paths cleaned - the responsible agencies should have path maintenance included in their standard protocol for dealing with significant storms.

None of this work is glamorous, but all of it would contribute to major improvements in the bicycling environment. The bicycling community would do well to let our elected officials know that we appreciate the high-profile special events and announcements of new paths, but that the success of the mayor's initiative to make Louisville a bicycle-friendly city depends on taking care of the details in a systematic and continuing way.

Bike commuter down!

2008-08-15T18:29:00.000-07:00

I always find it painful to read or hear about a fellow bicyclist having been hit by a car. Lately, it has gotten increasingly personal. In the past 5 weeks, at least three commuting cyclists in Louisville have been hit by cars, and a fourth (Dan Cooley) was assaulted by a motorist. One death (Vance Kokojan), three sets of painful (though not life-threatening) injuries. In the past three days, at least two bicycle commuters have been hit locally. One is a friend and Bicycling for Louisville volunteer.

Each time I hear of a bike-car crash, I try to get in touch with the bicyclist or any witnesses to learn as much as possible about what happened. Thus far, I know next to nothing about the crash that happened yesterday. My friend who got hit on Wednesday has told me part of his story, and we'll meet on Monday to talk further. Everything that we can learn about these crashes can help us determine what can prevent future crashes. Sometimes, surviving bicyclists can learn something that they can do to protect themselves better. If a similar set of motorist or bicyclist errors shows up repeatedly, we can educate the public about them and urge the police to enforce the pertinent laws more strictly.

Bicycling for Louisville also wants to learn how well the legal system works for bicyclists. When do injured bicyclists receive a fair shake from the legal system and drivers' insurers? When do the bicyclists get a bum deal, even when the motorist bears most or all of the fault for the crash? This information is helping us to craft our vulnerable roadway users bill, and will help us get it passed in the Kentucky legislature.

If you or anyone you know in greater Louisville gets in a car-bike crash in which you believe that the motorist is (at least mostly) at fault, please contact us as soon as possible after the crash. We can put you in touch with lawyers recommended by other bicyclists and by fellow lawyers. We can tell you simple things that you can do to protect your rights and give yourself the best chances of a just settlement. If and when you are ready to talk about your crash, we will interview you respectfully to help the cycling community capture as much knowledge from your unfortunate experience as possible.

Through the sadness and anger, we continue to work diligently toward solutions that make bike-car crashes increasingly rare.

Returning to the scene

2008-08-13T11:18:00.000-07:00

After my near-crash yesterday at Payne Street and Charlton Street in Louisville, I thought more about what happened. One experienced urban cyclist told me that he had recently ridden through the intersection from Charlton Street. He noted that a driver stopped at the stop sign on Charlton could have difficulty seeing up the hill on Payne Street, the direction from which I approached. Dirk Gowin, Metro Louisville's chief transportation engineer and a commuting cyclist, disagreed. In his memory, a driver at that stop sign should have a clear view east on Payne Street.

This morning I rode through that intersection as usual, and then I looped back to see it from the perspective of the driver who almost hit me. Stopped at the stop sign on Charlton Street, I looked left and right to find how well I could see traffic along Payne Street. The view southwest toward Spring Street and Lexington Road was clear. To the east, I could see clearly for at least 200 feet. As I approached the intersection yesterday at 24 mph (or 35 feet per second), the driver at the stop sign should have had roughly 200/35 or about 6 seconds to notice me before I rode into her path. Six seconds sounds like a short time, but it's much longer than the 1 or 2 seconds needed to see and respond to an oncoming vehicle.

In other words, a careful driver at that stop sign at Charlton Street would have easily avoided any conflict with an oncoming bicyclist on Payne Street. The intersection can certainly be reconfigured to improve safety, but my first reaction was probably correct: the driver who nearly hit me had no excuse for causing this close call.

Heaven and hell

2008-08-12T07:32:00.000-07:00

How can anyone not ride bicycle in weather like this? During the morning commute today, greater Louisville had temperatures in the upper 60s and we expect a fifth day in a row (National Weather Service) with sunny skies and temperatures reaching no higher than the mid 80s. When I left work yesterday afternoon, the temperature was 81 degrees with a light breeze, sunny sky, and low humidity. It feels like paradise. This idyllic weather makes it easy to ignore hazards and challenges that otherwise might dim a cyclist's mood.

Alas, I'm glad that I didn't ignore too much on the ride to work this morning, because I almost got hit by a car. Riding down the hill on Payne Street westbound toward the corner of Payne and Charlton Streets (Google map), I narrowly avoided getting hit by a driver pulling out from the stop sign from Charlton onto eastbound Payne Street. I was heading downhill at about 24 mph (in a 25 mph zone) with another car following me at a respectful distance. I was bearing left to follow Payne Street as it bends at Charlton. The driver coming from Charlton was bearing left to get onto Payne Street eastbound. Vehicles on Charlton face a stop sign; vehicles on Payne Street do not. Traffic on Charlton Street should yield to traffic on Payne Street.

When the driver at the stop sign on Charlton failed to yield to me, we were on a head-on collision course. I yelled "Hey!" at the top of my lungs. Having already started to bear left, I was leaning the wrong way to make an emergency turn to the right (otherwise the ideal evasive maneuver). Instead, I turned harder to the left to clear her car more quickly. Had she not hit the brakes, she would have hit me broadside. She stopped in the middle of the intersection. I yelled some choice words into her open passenger-side window and continued riding. The driver following me pulled alongside me when the lane widened and asked, "Are you all right?" I said, "I'm fine." At the stop light a few feet later, I asked her, "Did that look as crazy to you as it did to me?" She nodded and said, "My heart was pounding!"

My coworker, another devoted bicycle commuter, observed that the strange geometry of the Payne/Charlton intersection frequently causes problems for both motorists and cyclists. For many years, Payne Street has been signed as a Bike Route, based on the low speed and volume of motor vehicle traffic compared to Frankfort Avenue and Lexington Road. When Louisville Metro designates a street as a Bike Route, shouldn't the Department of Public Works and Assets evaluate the street and its intersections for any necessary safety improvements? Budget constraints might not allow costly changes immediately, but the Bike Route designation should be accompanied by a plan, including time line, for any appropriate improvements. In the case of Payne Street, four such improvements stand out:

Replace the stop sign intersection at Charlton Street and Payne Street with a modern one-lane roundabout. This is much different than a traffic circle and has no stop signs. It would help to keep traffic on Payne Street to the 25 mph speed limit, reduce crashes at the intersection, and reduce confusion and inconvenience for drivers approaching from Charlton Street.
Repave Payne Street from Baxter Avenue to Lexington Road, where pavement cracks parallel to the travel direction threaten bicyclists with disastrous crashes. This section of Payne Street has had unacceptable pavement cracks for over 4 years, as detailed in a letter to Metro government in May 2004. (To their credit, Metro has fixed many of the maintenance issues raised in that letter.)
Make safety improvements at the traffic signal at Payne Street and Lexington Road. Consider replacing this signal with a modern roundabout, which would reduce traffic delays for motorists and end dangerous confusion about which lane to use. Each leg of the intersection has two lanes to serve three destinations, with each lane open to straight traffic and turning traffic. If a roundabout is deemed too expensive or otherwise inappropriate, use pavement markings to designate turn lanes.
Per #3, consider replacing the traffic signal at Payne Street and Spring Street with a 1-lane roundabout. The consideration of traffic signal versus roundabout will be quite different for these two intersections because of the difference in traffic volumes, numbers of lanes, and frequency of turning movements. If a roundabout is deemed inappropriate, mark turning lanes and install bicycle-sensitive traffic detectors to trigger the lights on both Spring Street and Payne Street. The existing detectors on eastbound Spring Street will not trip for bicycles.

If the vast majority of drivers (including bicyclists) paid close attention, showed patience and caution, and followed the traffic laws, we could get by with the streets and intersections that we already have. Good design of roads and intersections takes into account the common mistakes that drivers make and makes those mistakes less likely, less dangerous, or both. It will cost money to retrofit existing roads and intersections to improve safety for motorists, bicyclists, and pedestrians. In the meantime, we need to push private developers and government officials to use the best available cost-effective designs each time a new road or subdivision street network is designed and built. "The way we've always done it" doesn't cut it anymore.

How much is youth bicycle education worth?

2008-08-06T12:48:00.000-07:00

Last week, Bicycling for Louisville had to vacate the old church building that had housed our youth bicycle repair and safety education program. The owner of the building, Presbyterian Community Center in Smoketown, had given us free use of part of the building for the past three years. (Thank you, PCC!) Now, they have demolished the old church to make room for a new child development center.

While packing our belongings and moving them into storage, I reflected on the triumphs and challenges of the youth programs that we operated there. In 2005, as part of the grant-funded ACTIVE Louisville project, we launched a youth earn-a-bike program. In the program, kids 10-14 years old learned bicycle repair skills and could earn a bicycle to keep by helping to refurbish other bicycles. We also taught them bicycle handling skills and traffic safety.

Alas, earn-a-bike programs are difficult to operate at low cost without many dedicated and skilled volunteers. Teaching a 12-year-old how to repair a bicycle takes enormously longer than having a competent mechanic repair the bike. The instructors need excellent bike repair skills, teaching skills, and ability to maintain order among pre-teens in an environment rich with accident potential. Letting a repaired bicycle leave the shop without a thorough inspection (and possibly re-repair) by a competent mechanic opens the risk of injury to someone riding the bicycle, and consequently the risk of lawsuits. Ours was among many youth earn-a-bike programs that closed after a couple of years because we couldn't afford to provide enough qualified adult help for each student.

Packing up the shop gave me a chance to see again many of our experiments at making the program more effective and interesting for the young people. We had lots of good ideas, and some of them worked. Even our most successful summers or semesters, though, ended with only three or four students earning bicycles. Most of the students who started the program dropped out after a week or two, once they realized that they needed to work to earn a bicycle. A pre-teen ready to attack any bicycle problem with Vise Grips and a can of WD-40 often does not believe that some old person has something valuable to teach him or her about bike repair! God bless those gifted teachers and youth leaders who can lead young people to learn without making them feel like students in a class. I haven't developed that gift.

What about the triumphs? Taking three 11- and 12-year olds on an 18-mile bike trip and then on the Tour de Spirit rank as high points. We taught one 12-year-old to ride a 2-wheeler without training wheels. Three months later, he joined me on a 23-mile ride! Some of our students got pretty good at overhauling and adjusting the bearings on hubs, bottom brackets, and headsets. They developed skills needed to ride safely in traffic. We had fun together. I prize the memory of watching "our" kids riding through the neighborhood on bikes that they had refurbished and earned.

Were these high points worth the disappointments - the break-ins and thefts, dwindling enrollments, scrambling for funding, shutting down the shop? From a funder's standpoint, probably not. We have no way to show that the benefits justified the cost per participant. Perhaps a student who did not complete the program learned something that kept her or him out of a crash. Maybe the program built enthusiasm for biking among kids who participated only briefly or not at all. Maybe one of our graduates had a life-changing experience that would justify the entire cost of three years of running the program. We'll probably never know.

I know one thing, though. When I see a group of our young bicycling students start to "get it" - using proper lane positioning, scanning and signaling before turning, paying attention before entering or crossing a road - I know that our work is paying off. Every day, I ponder how to bring this experience to more youngsters in ways they can enjoy and absorb. Maybe we'll find the perfect formula and someday this blog will tell about the thousands of youth we have reached and how they have made bicycling safer and more widespread throughout greater Louisville. In the meantime, I will feel grateful for the opportunity to help a few youths learn to enjoy bicycling safely.

Pure Joy

2008-07-31T19:00:00.000-07:00

On Bike-To-Work Day in 2003, I conducted a 2-minute poll of people stopping at a booth at the downtown Louisville Bike-To-Work Celebration. Participants answered a handful of questions about whether and how often they commuted by bicycle, and reasons in favor of or against biking to work. People who rode to work rarely or not at all gave a variety of reasons in favor of bike commuting - getting exercise, saving money, etc. People who rode to work frequently almost uniformly gave high scores to a reason ignored by non-bike-commuters: biking to work is fun!

Even in dense urban traffic, most of us bicycle commuters enjoy our rides. Bicyclists who ride strenuous training rides or push themselves hard on recreational rides experience the equivalent of a runner's high, another form of joy. Riding a long touring day through unfamiliar terrain brings the joy of discovery and all of the sensory pleasures of the route, perhaps heightened by the pride of hauling ourselves and our bicycles over some scenic peak or mountain pass. Those of us who poke around neighborhoods and parks at a leisurely pace avoiding hills have the joy of moving slowly through a rich sensory environment observing the animals, plants, people, topography, and buildings that we so often miss when racing from Point A to Point B. Riding on a quiet country road or neighborhood street carrying on a conversation with a riding buddy provides a joyful camaraderie difficult to find in a stationery venue.

Fast, slow, strenuous, easy, distant, local, urban, rural... all of these rides have in common the joy that we encountered when we first learned to ride a bicycle. I have the pleasure and privilege of having all of these riding experiences at least occasionally, and of sharing them with other bicyclists. If you ride in any of these ways, you are part of my bicycling fellowship and community. I am grateful that thousands of people in Southern Indiana and north-central Kentucky take part in the bicycling community, and that our bicycling community continues to grow.

The American Love Affair with the Bicycle

2008-07-30T07:35:00.000-07:00

The "bikes versus cars" talk that peeks its ugly head from the C-J story chat in the aftermath of a car-bike crash and that occasionally oozes forth in other media is just the dark underside of a much more positive general view of bicycling in the US. The US public has a vast reservoir of good feelings toward bicycling.

The people who probably know the US psyche best work in the advertising industry. Pop quiz: In what advertisement did you most recently see a person bicycling? I'll bet that it wasn't a bicycle advertisement. Bicycles and bicycling are used to advertise cars, trucks, alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages, snack foods, health care, financial services, banks, insurance, travel... Advertisers use images of bicyclists and bicycles because the general public has good associations with bicycling. Bicycling means freedom, fun, health, independence. If only avid bicyclists felt this way, insurance companies and beer companies would not rely on the allure of bicycling to sell their products.

Closer to home, my wife and I encounter lots of happy responses when we ride our tandem bicycle through Louisville neighborhoods and parks. Strangers wave, greet us, and smile. We have the advantage of riding an unusual bicycle - a tandem recumbent - that plain and simple looks like fun to ride. (It is fun to ride!) We aren't going fast, or dripping sweat, or looking absorbed in athletic effort. Our favorite response came one day when we rode around the loop inside the Masonic Home property on Frankfort Avenue, and a man probably 70 years old sang to us, "For you'll look sweet, upon the seat of my bicycle built for two!"

It's time for us bicyclists to take advantage of the good feelings that current non-bicyclists have for bicycling. Assuming that everyone hates us is both self-defeating and inaccurate. Let's take the risk of inviting others to share our joy of bicycling - because most of them remember that joy from sometime in their lives.

Bikes Abound at Forecastle Festival

2008-07-27T18:44:00.000-07:00

This weekend's Forecastle Festival at the Belvedere in Louisville gave a glimpse of what "bike culture" could look like in Louisville. Dozens of bikes were locked along both sides of the entrance walkway, and another couple of dozen bikes were parked in the new valet bike parking racks set up by Bike Couriers Bike Shop just inside the gate. Some people walked their bikes or rode them (not a good idea in a crowded pedestrian environment) within the festival.

I saw more people wearing courier bags, bicycling hats, and bicycle-logo shirts than at any recent local event that did not have a bicycling theme. Many of the folks who came to the Bicycling for Louisville booth in the Activism area told us that they rode to work, rode everywhere, loved various types of riding... We didn't need to convince them that bicycling was a good idea!

We got a surprise bonus for participating in Forecastle this year. Visitors to the Activism area voted for their favorites among the 50 advocacy groups represented, with the top vote-getter receiving a $500 donation from Finlandia Vodka. They chose Bicycling for Louisville! Thanks to Brown-Forman (owner of Finlandia) for this generous donation and to all of the Forecastle Festival attenders who voted for Bicycling for Louisville. This donation will help us carry on the advocacy and education work that you have read about in this blog. If you would like to support our work or to volunteer, please visit our website.

Don't try this at home, or anyplace else

2008-07-25T10:11:00.000-07:00

What's up lately with wrong-way bicycling in Louisville? Yesterday, I saw at least five bicyclists riding against traffic on one-way streets or riding on the left side of 2-way streets. This morning, I saw two others. I see bicyclists of different races, ages, and apparent economic status levels riding against traffic everywhere from Northwestern Parkway in Portland to Frankfort Avenue in Crescent Hill.

Wrong-way bicycling is one of the top three ways that bicyclists get themselves killed by cars. The others are bicycling while intoxicated (no joke!) and riding at night without adequate lights. I consider all three suicidal. There is never a good excuse for doing any of them.

Most readers of this blog probably already religiously avoid wrong-way riding. You can use the following list to help educate others. If you even occasionally ride against traffic, please read on to see if this will help you change your mind and your bicycling practice.

Top 7 reasons NEVER to ride against traffic:

7) If you crash into someone else, you will most likely be held at fault. In other words, wrong-way riders give away their legal rights. If you like the idea of crashing with a car and then having to pay to get the car fixed, then wrong-way riding is for you.

6) Many traffic signs and signals will be difficult or impossible for you to see. If you ride the wrong way on a 1-way street, you will see only the back side of the traffic signals, so you won't know when traffic on the side street has the green light. Most Stop, Yield, and other traffic signs are posted on the right side of the street, so it will be easy for you to miss them and get into a crash with someone who is abiding by the laws.

5) You might collide with a bicyclist riding the correct way. If a right-way rider comes toward you and you avoid colliding, you might force one another into a curb, parked car, or moving car. If you cause a law-abiding cyclist to crash by riding on the wrong side of the street, you also risk the wrath of said law-abiding cyclist. For heaven's sake, NEVER ride against traffic in a bike lane! This is a real recipe for crashing with another cyclist.

4) Being able to see cars coming toward you doesn't help! Most urban and suburban streets have concrete curbs that will keep you from getting out of the way of an oncoming car. You see the car coming, and then you are trapped.

3) If you get hit, you will probably suffer more severe injuries because your speed and the motor vehicle's speed add up. A 35-mph car strikes a 12-mph bicyclist from behind at 35-12= 23 mph. A 35-mph car strikes an oncoming 12-mph bicyclist at 35+12=47 mph - twice as fast, with dramatically higher chances of severe or fatal injury.

2) The speed argument in #3 also means that drivers will have only one-third to one-half the time to see you and react to your presence as they would if you were riding in the same direction as the motor vehicles in your lane. If you think that too many drivers fail to notice you when you ride with traffic, just imagine what will happen when you give them only half the time to notice you.

1) A wrong-way cyclist crosses every driveway and street from the opposite direction that drivers on that driveway or street normally look to see crossing traffic. Wrong-way cyclists make themselves difficult or impossible for crossing drivers to see, because the roads are set up with the assumption that everyone drives or rides on the right-hand side. Coming toward a crossing driver from the wrong direction drastically increases chances of a crash.

Spread the word: Don't ride against traffic! Riding against traffic triples your chances of a crash, increases the likelihood of serious injuries, and makes you at least partially liable in case of a crash. If we could rid our region of this one common bicyclist mistake, our bicycle crashes, injuries, and deaths would probably drop by 30-50%.

Making Real Improvements

2008-07-24T07:47:00.000-07:00

In the wake of Vance Kokojan's tragic death, Mayor Abramson, Police Chief White, and citizens around the region have stated their opinions of what it will take to make bicycling safer in our region. Several priorities stand out, based on the experience of many cities around the world.

First, keep encouraging bicycling. Mayor Abramson and other Metro officials continue to tell the community that bicycling, for both transportation and recreation, is good for bicyclists and for the community at large. The Mayor continues to remind motorists that bicyclists belong on the roads. Thank you, Jerry. This message needs to stay front and center, because experience worldwide shows that more bicycling correlates with lower crash, injury, and death rates. (My July 17 post, "Good Times, Bad Times" explains this "safety in numbers" phenomenon.) We need to make sure that the frustration and fear that follow a bicyclist's death do not result in people riding less.

Second, address any factors that contributed to the specific crash. An avid bicyclist and fellow UPS employee of Mr. Kokojan has contacted the City's head transportation engineer suggesting two fairly simple steps to make Outer Loop survivable for other bicyclists who need to use it. First, keep the shoulders clean. Having a ridable shoulder would help bicyclists stay out of the path of high-speed motorists. Second, drop the speed limit from 55 mph to 45 mph. That stretch of Outer Loop already includes two traffic signals at UPS, so a lower speed limit will not significantly interfere with its function for motorists. Lower speed dramatically reduces the chances of death for a cyclist or pedestrian hit by a motor vehicle, and also makes it easier for motorists to avoid crashing. I spoke yesterday to the same Metro official and supported those two changes. Because Outer Loop is a state road, Kentucky Department of Highways will need to decide about changing the speed limit. Metro government can lobby for the change, but can't make the decision.

Third, learn from the crash. Comparing this crash with others helps to identify patterns that point to actions we can take to reduce risks. I'm thinking of four fatal car-hit-bike crashes in Louisville duringthe past 2 years: this most recent crash on Outer Loop, the May 4 pre-dawn death of a bicyclist struck by a police cruiser on Dixie Highway, the infamous death of Chips Cronen last July on the Clark Memorial Bridge, and the cyclist on Grinstead Drive killed by a motorist turning left onto Cherokee Parkway in 2006. Three of these four fatal car-bike crashes took place in dim light at or before dawn, one on a misty day. Motorists need reminders to stay alert to bicyclists in less-than-ideal light, and bicyclists would do well to invest in better-than-minimalist taillights and headlights for riding in poor light. We need to keep fresh batteries in our lights, too, and consider using reflective vests or other reflective gear when riding in dim conditions. At least three of the four crashes involved motorists simply not paying adequate attention, or hurrying without concern for others nearby. There is no excuse for hitting a clearly visible bicyclist from behind - this happened twice among these four crashes. We need laws and public education to make this obvious and to penalize guilty drivers in a way that makes a real impression on them and on others.

Do these four crashes indicate a need for new facilities? Chips Cronen and Vance Kokojan were killed by motorists who could have passed them safely by moving into or staying in the left lane. It would have been wonderful if those roads had shoulders or bike lanes that would have allowed the bicyclists to stay out of the paths of these inattentive drivers, but its is clear than any driver with his or her head on straight could have avoided them just fine on the roads as they exist today. No new facilities could have prevented the other two fatal crashes. Bicycling for Louisville will continue to invest time in the slow process of improving the roads, while also putting an emphasis on improving the behavior of drivers and bicyclists through education combined with better laws and stronger law enforcement.

Good Miles

2008-07-20T18:24:00.000-07:00

This past week, I rode bicycle 157 miles - my highest 1-week mileage total thus far this year. Probably all of the active bicycle racers in Louisville and more than a few recreational cyclists, along with some bike couriers and long-distance commuters, rode at least that far during the week. My 157-mile week stood out for one reason: the longest single ride during the week was only 12 miles.

Each day, I ride 5 miles to work - perhaps a few miles longer if I take a detour. Then, I will ride to appointments, ride home, maybe take a tandem ride with my wife (including that 12-mile ride last Sunday) or ride with a group of students. My rides totaled between 10 and 36 miles each day last week. Sometimes, I was poking around the neighborhood at a leisurely pace, and sometimes sprinting to keep up with traffic signals downtown. I rode 25 miles on the day that I donated a unit of blood.

None of this makes me remarkable. Instead, it points out part of what makes bicycling remarkable. Those short rides add up to the same health benefits and mood lift that come from a long ride. We can fit short rides into a busy schedule and still keep ourselves in good shape without needing to set aside large blocks of training time. We can enjoy riding nearly anyplace, and have great fun on a 20-minute ride a few minutes from home. Short rides for work and errands and visits give us the opportunity to replace the costs and problems of car use with the benefits and pleasures of bicycling.

Never let anyone convince you that you need a special place or special excuse to enjoy a bike ride!

Doing Something About It

2008-07-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

This morning's online edition of the Courier-Journal includes more details about yesterday morning's death of bicycle commuter Vance Kokojan, along with heart-rending notes from friends and a family member. The WAVE-3 TV story concluded that "(i)t just turns out to be a tragic accident," evidently because Metro Police have thus far chosen not to press charges. The Courier-Journal story gives a more accurate description, citing LMPD Officer Phil Russell: "Under state law police are limited in the traffic and misdemeanor charges they can file in the case of an accident they don't witness... If, however, an investigation determines a driver's actions are wanton or indifferent to others, the findings could be presented to the commonwealth attorney's office for possible action..."

Kentucky law places traffic infractions into three categories: traffic violations, punishable by fines and points against one's license; misdemeanors, also punishable by jail time; and felonies, punishable by extended sentences in a penitentiary. Most speeding violations, right-of-way violations, running red lights, and other common infractions fall into the first category. Traveling the wrong way on a limited-access highway or operating a motor vehicle using an expired license, for example, classify as misdemeanors. Felonies include vehicular assault, manslaughter, homicide, and DUI on a suspended license. A police officer can cite or arrest a person whom the officer has reason to believe has committed a felony, regardless of whether the officer witnessed the incident. For misdemeanors and traffic violations, though, the law does not allow officers to cite people for infractions not witnessed by the officer.

In the vast majority of traffic crashes, no officer witnesses the crash and no charges can be filed unless the police and prosecutor decide to pursue a felony charge. A felony charge requires that the prosecutor prove that the defendant's action was wanton, reckless, knowing, or intentional. Each of these "states of mind" has its own legal definition, and each felony charge rests on a particular state of mind. Murder, by definition, is an intentional act. Wanton endangerment, by definition, requires "extreme indifference to the value of human life" but not an intention to harm the victim.

Bottom line: Police and prosecutors need to decide whether to charge an errant driver with a felony that would land the driver in the penitentiary, or not to file any charges at all. As we see time after time when bicyclists and pedestrians are killed by drivers, they usually choose the latter option, except in cases of DUI or hit-and-run. The law currently offers no middle ground.

Bicycling for Louisville has launched a campaign, Focus On The Road, to change this. Our proposed law, now being drafted by a legislative staffer, would do two things to plug this loophole and hold bad drivers accountable for injuring or killing vulnerable roadway users - bicyclists, pedestrians, equestrians, and road workers. First, it would more clearly define the driving behaviors that constitute felony recklessness. This would allow prosecutors to win felony cases more easily when drivers injure or kill a vulnerable roadway user while driving recklessly. Second, it would specifically allow law enforcement officers to cite motorists for non-felony infractions that the officer did not witness if those infractions resulted in injury or death to a vulnerable roadway user. The officer would issue the citation based on other acceptable forms of evidence such as physical evidence and eyewitness testimony.

Check our website for more information on the Focus On The Road campaign. Check back for updates, including why we chose this approach and how you can help us get the bill passed. When we have a complete draft of the bill, revised with advice from our legal team, we will post it on our website.

Holding drivers accountable for deadly driving will help us make the roads safer for all users.

Good Times, Bad Times

2008-07-17T07:41:00.000-07:00

Before seeing the morning's news, I planned to name this post "In the Cool of the Morning." Taking a detour through Seneca and Cherokee Parks and the Beargrass Creek Trail on my bicycle commute this morning, I saw 7 other bicyclists out enjoying the beautiful morning before the heat of the day set in. Watching those recreational bicyclists along with probably 20 runners and 10 walkers out on the park roads and trail got me thinking that Mayor Abramson and Health Department Director Dr. Troutman must feel great to see what seems to me a boom in physical activity in Louisville. They have worked hard to promote it and bring it about.

Alas, the morning news shows a different side of the story: a man bicycling in the right lane westbound on Outer Loop struck and killed by a car swerving from the left lane to pass a tractor trailer. The story chat to the online Courier-Journal story shows common threads:

the Mayor should stop promoting bicycling until the city improves the streets
the streets are too dangerous, so bicyclists should ride on the sidewalks instead
bike lanes won't fix the problem - we need better driving attitudes
changing attitudes can't or won't solve the problem - we need bike lanes & paths

It's a tragedy whenever a bicyclist dies in a crash, and my anger and sadness grows when the bicyclist was killed by an impatient and incautious driver. I understand the impulse to make pronouncements and point fingers when a fatal crash like this happens. We need to make sure that we are solving the right problem, though, rather than doing something just to do something.

As best I know, the victim in this crash was the second bicyclist to die in a crash in Louisville Metro in the year since Chips Cronin was struck and killed on the Clark Memorial (2nd Street) Bridge. The other was a man struck and killed by a police car while riding before dawn on Dixie Highway on May 4. What does this mean about the safety of bicycling on streets of Louisville?

Two bicycling deaths in a year falls within the range of bicycling deaths in recent years in Louisville. Of course, we want to see bicycling crashes, injuries, and deaths decline. Every death is one too many. Even so, today's tragic crash does not indicate a trend toward more crashes.
By all observations, many more bicycles are on the roads in Louisville this year than anytime in recent memory. If crash deaths stay roughly constant, that means that the rate of deaths per million bicyclists or per million miles of bicycling has gone down.
Research (download: 140 KB PDF) has shown that bicycling crash, injury, and death rates go down as more people ride bicycle in a given country or city. This makes sense for two reasons. First, motorists grow to expect bicyclists on the road and learn to drive safely around them. Secondly, the bicyclists grow in collective experience and help one another learn to ride more safely.
Both of these fatal crashes occurred in early morning. We do not know the lighting conditions during this morning's crash, but the May 4 crash happened before sunrise. We do not know whether the bicyclists in either case used lights or reflective accessories. Riding during dark without lights increases crash risks by a factor of 10 over riding in daylight.
These fatal crashes took place on Outer Loop and Dixie Highway, notoriously bad roads for bicycling. Yes, every surface road in Louisville Metro should accommodate bicyclists safely. While we work toward that ideal situation, we need to acknowledge that some roads clearly pose greater hazards than others. The great majority of bicyclists in our region avoid riding on Outer Loop and Dixie Highway, especially at night or during rush hour. To use crashes there and then as an excuse not to ride on other streets during daylight misses the point: on the whole, the health benefits of bicycling vastly outweigh the risks of injury or death from bicycling.

I mourn the death this morning of someone who was probably doing something that we celebrate and support - riding bicycle to work. He had every right to ride where he was riding, and did not deserve to be hit and killed. His family and friends did not deserve to lose him. Let us work to make bicycling safer for everyone, by changing BOTH behavior and road conditions. Let us continue to promote bicycling, because more bicycling means safer bicycling. Let us not let his death scare us away from doing something that gives us joy, saves us money, improves our health, and makes our community better in many ways.

How many people commute by bike in Louisville?

2008-07-14T07:09:00.000-07:00

Lots of folks have been asking lately, "Are more people biking to work now in Louisville?" Nobody has the data to know. Bicycling for Louisville did a bicycle traffic study for Louisville Metro government last year, but we don't have follow-up data to see how things have changed. KIPDA, which oversees transportation planning in our region, conducts a household travel survey every ten years. The most recent data, from 2000, showed that literally nobody rode bicycles to work! Obviously, they missed a few of us... Again, we lack follow-up data to identify trends.

My eyeballs tell me that both recreational and transportation bicycling are increasing rapidly. This morning on my 5-mile commute to work, I counted five other bicyclists. At least four of them looked to be commuting to work. Even two years ago, I rarely saw as many as two other bicyclists on the same route that I rode today. Nowadays, I usually see two or three other bicyclists as I ride to work.

Yesterday (Sunday) evening, my wife and I took a tandem ride through Seneca and Cherokee Parks and then along Beargrass Creek Trail before turning back for a slightly longer route home. Along the way, we saw dozens of bicyclists and only a few motorists. I think this was the first time in my 17 years in Louisville of seeing more bicyclists on the roads than motor vehicles, in the absence of a group bike ride. A summer Sunday evening with perfect weather brings out bicyclists, but I had never before experienced this in Louisville - probably twice as many bikes as cars and trucks on the roads!

Keep working toward Complete Streets

2008-03-13T13:19:00.000-07:00

At the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC last week, I learned about the "Complete Streets Act of 2008" (S. 2686) pending before the U.S. Senate. Like our Kentucky bill, SB 145, it would represent a significant step forward. I'll tell you about it in my next post. For now, here's an update on Kentucky SB 145. Given that it typically takes 7 years to get a bill through the US Congress, we should not pass up an opportunity to institute a state law that can improve conditions for bicycling and walking.

On Feb. 27, SB 145 was recommitted to the Senate Appropriations and Revenue (A&R) Committee, where it appears to have sat uneventfully. Given the tight budgetary times, I presume that some A&R Committee members would feel content to let the bill die in committee for fear that passing it would require Kentucky Transportation Cabinet to spend more money. SB 145 merely requires KYTC to "fully consider" providing for bicyclists and pedestrians when planning and designing roadways, and to report on those considerations. The bill, as written, has negligible budgetary impact.

Merely including consideration of bicyclists' and pedestrians' needs in KYTC's routine roadway planning and design process would constitute a step forward. In many cases, they would find that the they could safely accommodate bicyclists and pedestrians without spending more money. In other cases, they would find that a very small additional investment (say, 1% of the project budget) would yield a roadway that makes driving safer and more convenient while providing safe space for bicyclists and pedestrians. None of that can happen without routine consideration of the needs of non-motorized travelers. The annual report required by SB 145 would enable citizens to learn how frequently that consideration took place, how frequently KYTC acted on it, and whether their actions adequately addressed our needs.

I just called the Kentucky Legislative Message Line at (800) 372-7181 and left the following message for all members of the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee, along with Sen. Katie Stine:
"Support SB 145 (Complete Streets). Kentucky Transportation Cabinet can implement this policy within its existing road budget. SB 145 is an essential step toward creating a transportation network that serves all Kentuckians well."

I included Sen. Stine so she can see this message in favor of her bill. I urge you to make a similar call to encourage A&R Committee members to send SB 145 back to the Senate floor with a favorable recommendation. With a few days left in this legislative session, the legislature can still take this opportunity to move Kentucky toward Complete Streets.

Bashing, in a good way

2008-03-04T04:53:00.000-08:00

Saturday night saw the first Dream Machine Biker's Bash, a fund-raising party for Bicycling for Louisville. We exceeded all expectations for attendance (over 250) and proceeds (over $10,000). Thank you to all of you who joined us for our party! We had a great time.

Some crowd favorites included:

the wonderful food by Finbar Kinsella
the 5-minute roller bike-a-thons, featuring riders Chrissy Halioris, Nancy McElwain, Walter Lay, and Glenn Francisco. Glenn scorched the rollers with an average speed of 44 mph (5.9 km in 5 minutes)!
equipment displays from Scheller's, Bicycle Sport, Bike Courier Bike Shop, Bluegrass Bicycles, Clarksville Schwinn, and Goose Creek Cycles
active bidding on great silent auction items
the climactic raffle drawing for a $1000 shopping spree at Scheller's and ultimate overhauls from Bike Courier Bike Shop and Clarksville Schwinn. Congratulations to raffle winners Jerry Gordon, Carrie Christensen, and Phyllis Croce!

I thank our wonderful major sponsors: Scheller's, Planet Bike, SRAM, Jan Arnow, Republic-National Distribution Co. of Kentucky, Buchenberger, Darst & Eggers, Highland Cleaners, Barkstown, Bicycle Sport, Bike Courier Bike Shop, Bluegrass Bicycles, Clarksville Schwinn, Goose Creek Cycles, Donna Connell, YMCA of Greater Louisville, and ABC/Disney.

Special thanks to the people without whom the event could not have happened: event coordinator Kathy Schmitt; super-volunteers Tom Armstrong, Jim Duffy, and Garrett Adams; Bicycling for Louisville board members Steve Anderson, Jan Arnow, Kathryn Berla, Michael Crawford, Tim Darst, Joff Hoyle, Marilyn Motsch, Stewart Prather, Vertner Smith, and Dan Trabue; an amazing crew of event volunteers bearing a marked resemblance to the roster of the LBC Ya Yas; Mark and Lynn Luking; and our incredibly capable and hard-working office manager and all-around person-on-point Katie McBride.

Next week, I'll post some photos of the Biker's Bash. Stay tuned!

We already have ideas for a bigger and better Biker's Bash next year. Keep your calendars open for a Bicycling for Louisville Halloween event, too! Bicycle advocacy isn't all work - it's fun, too!

I leave in 2 hours for the National Bike Summit in Washington, DC, thanks to a scholarship from Planet Bike and Bikes Belong Coalition. When I return, I'll share what I learned from the leading minds in bicycle advocacy in the US.

Pedaling legislation

2008-02-28T13:34:00.001-08:00

SB 145, the "Complete Streets" bill introduced by Sen. Katie Stine, has been sent to the Senate Appropriations and Revenue Committee for further consideration before any possible action by the full Senate. This makes sense, given that any bill in this legislative session must withstand concerns about whether it will cost our cash-strapped state any money. Sen. Stine anticipated this concern by removing from this bill any mandate that the Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) spend any money to make roads more accommodating to bicyclists or pedestrians. Instead, SB 145 merely insists that the Cabinet "fully consider" looking out for our needs. If their consideration leads them to believe that accommodating non-motorized users would unacceptably increase the cost of a road project, they need not spend any money on our behalf.

What, then, makes SB 145 worthy of our support?

It makes the consideration of facilities for bicycling and walking a state law, rather than an obscure and often overlooked internal policy of the Transportation Cabinet.
It requires the Cabinet to file an annual report listing the roadways built or rebuilt, along with the reasons for not including pedestrian or bicycle facilities in any roadways built without them. This provides public accountability not currently present.
It is acquainting the legislature with the concept of Complete Streets, making it easier for us to find supporters for a stronger bill later.
It shows our appreciation for Sen. Stine's initiative and willingness to take a legislative risk, making it more likely that we can work with her for future bicycling and walking improvements.
It gives us the opportunity to urge our Senators and Representatives to amend SB 145 to make it stronger.

Again, with a simple call to a toll-free number, you can support SB 145. Call the Legislative Message line at (800) 372-7181 and leave a message for all Senators to support SB 145, the Complete Streets bill. If you have a bit more time to invest, click this link to e-mail Appropriations and Revenue Committee Chairman Sen. Charlie Borders urging that the committee hear testimony on SB 145 and report favorably on it, sending it back to the full Senate for action. Note that SB 145 will encourage the Transportation Cabinet to make new and rebuilt roads safely usable by all Kentuckians, and provide the Commonwealth with great financial benefits in terms of improved public health higher productivity, and more tourism.

Starting to Roll

2008-02-21T16:18:00.000-08:00

Welcome to Barry's Bike Blog. I will follow current events, concerns, proposals, experiences, and wild ideas related to bicycling in Louisville, surrounding Kentucky counties, and southern Indiana, with occasional forays into state and national bicycling issues.

We live in exciting times for bicycling. I see more people on the streets riding for recreation and transportation, more people taking part in more types of bicycle racing, and fantastic growth in the number, size, and prestige of races taking place in and near Louisville. New charity bike rides, memorial rides, and special event rides seem to spring up each year. Local and state elected officials and government staffers have taken much more interest in bicycling over the past three years or so, with the result of new laws and government policies regarding bicycling and the bicycling environment. If you ride, you know that we face plenty of frustrations, too. I'll share news and musings on all of these topics.

Starting tomorrow, I'll update you on bills in the Kentucky General Assembly with the potential to lead to many more miles of safe and enjoyable bicycling routes in Kentucky. If you want to read the bills and form your own opinions before reading mine, look at:

Senate Bill 145, to require routine consideration of bicycling and walking in roadway planning and design
House Bill 291, to create a state rail banking fund to preserve abandoned rail corridors for future rail-trails

The links above will take you to an overview and legislative history of each bill. Once there, click on the link with the bill number to download a Word (.doc) format copy of the bill.

I hope that you find this blog interesting and useful. Please post comments or e-mail me feedback and suggestions.

Wishing you a warm, dry place to sit out the ice storm...

Ride well,

Barry