On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 8:05:50 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 3/17/2018 8:53 PM, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 2:35:10 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-03-17 14:06, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, March 17, 2018 at 9:25:02 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-03-17 08:15, jbeattie wrote:

[...]

Joerg also needs to read-up on current and past federal
transportation financing -- ISTEA, SAFETEA-LU, MAP-21 and note
that the Orange Overlord is gutting federal transportation
funding -- shifting costs onto the states for the huge,
incredible, the bestest infrastructure projects ever! Most of the
big bicycle projects in Oregon were funded in large part by the
feds. There was also state and local funding under the Oregon
Bicycle Bill.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/rex-b...b_3861490.html




Just open some government land (which they are now doing) and let people
ride their MTB there. That solves a lot of the missing bike links.
For example, thanks to Arnold Schwarzenegger we've got this
connector from Lotus to Folsom:

https://s3-media4.fl.yelpcdn.com/bph...rXV2vLEQ/o.jpg



Before that the ride was much longer and quite hazardous (I almost got
clipped by a motorcyclist there). Now the ride is like a
mini-vacation but you do need a serious MTB. Rim brakes like in the
photo are not recommended on this route.

Oh, so tax payers should be paying for your "serious MTB" route?
That's dopey. Government should be installing infrastructure to
reduce inner-city and suburban congestion -- and providing useful
connectors for ordinary cyclists and not the super-gnarly mountain
biker mountain-lion tamers. Focus on the topic: "bike paths" and not
super-awesome, scary mountain bike trails.


People out here are different and that may be hard to understand for
city folk. For example, when I came back from Placerville on the usual
route (singletrack) a bunch of kids and their dad came by. Dad had to
drop off the car for service, they loaded all their MTBs and rode back..
Just a normal day in paradise. They sure rode like they know how to
handle MTBs.

Pfff. You move to a airpark-golf-course community and make it sound like you're the Donner Party crossing the Sierra. You are city folk. If you can ride to Costco, you're not in the middle of nowhere.

I'm not impressed by someone who hauls his kids in a car, gets out and then goes trail riding. I can do that around here, too (assuming I still had small kids) -- but it's not relevant to transportation planning in general. Do the awesome mountain bike kids ride to school? I would find that more impressive. Living near the hills give you easy access to trails, and maybe even makes them relevant connectors, but your mythical person who would ride if there were infrastructure is not going to be dragging his or her ass over dirt trails to get somewhere.

Exactly. Joerg is all about anecdotes, and believes his "I saw one
guy..." tales trump all data.

When he does deal with data, it's to say "Well, 1% bike mode share is
excellent for America." Or "Well, all those facilities don't work
because they're built wrong. It's the _next_ facility that will perform
miracles."

He should spend more time investigating transportation policies and maybe even getting on the Cameron Park CSD board of directors -- or some bicycle advocacy group. I'm not that happy about the direction ultimately taken by the BTA (now the Street Trust), but it accomplished a lot back in the early days. I can look around Portland and identify specific projects we accomplished -- bikes on TriMet, the re-do of the massively popular Hawthorne Bridge crossing, the Rose Quarter bike facilities and all the bike lanes put in to comply with the Bike Bill -- including the one I ride practically every work day (unless taking an alternate route). This was because of button-up bicycle advocates and not the lunatic fringe wanting to promote gender equality among whales (a frequent problem with advocacy groups -- fringe interests taking over). Our fearless leaders knew all the ins-and-outs of ISTEA and angles for selling bike projects in a way that meant money for state or local planning bodies. We also caused city planners to educate themselves on bicycle infrastructure -- Mia Burke in particular who turned it into a huge business, Alta Planning. Joerg could go to the people in Folsom and find out exactly how they did all the magical things the people in Cameron Park are too busy golfing or flying to care about. He could go there in his stage coach and talk to the country folks, speaking in that special country-folk way. Maybe stop at Costco on the way home.

-- Jay Beattie.