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Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75



 
 
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  #1  
Old December 25th 03, 08:29 AM
The Danimal
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

(Mike Tantillo) wrote in message . com...
Actually, there is a source of funding for this. TEA-21, the
transportation spending bill that just expired, had a special fund for
adding bike lanes to roadways, making bike paths and other bike-only
facilities, adding "share the road" signs and other warning signs, and
adding bike route signs to existing roadways, along with any other
necessary improvements to make roadways bike friendly. The only
stipulation is that it the primary purpose has to be bike
transportation, not recreational use. That means commuting by bike,
or running errands by bike. The purpose is to reduce pollution and
emissions by encouraging people to switch from motorized transport to
bikes.....


I don't understand the prejudice against recreational bicycling
implied in the transportation bill. Recreational bicycling
tends to replace some recreational driving. If people
weren't out enjoying themselves on bicycles, many of them would
probably be out enjoying themselves in cars. So if the goal is
to reduce driving and its attendant external costs (support
of terrorism via petrodollars; the obesity epidemic; the culture
of violence; etc.) it would seem to make more sense to focus
on recreational driving first, or at least equally, since
that is the form of driving the bicycle competes with best
in the car-dominated U.S.

Recreational group rides are often the best way to
train adult cyclists to ride on roadways used by cars.
Putting people on bikes with no instruction at all and sending
them into the seething maelstrom of rush-hour traffic is a
good way to alienate people to bicycling altogether, not to
mention killing some of them. It makes more sense to introduce
people to bicycling in pleasant conditions (supportive groups,
lightly-traveled roads) and let them gradually increase the
voltage as their skills allow.

It's good for the government to promote bicycle commuting, but
the return on investment is probably lower with an arbitrary
prejudice against recreational bicycling, because bicycle
commuting tends to be substantially less enjoyable than
recreational bicycling for a variety of reasons:

1. Commuters have less freedom to choose their routes.
2. Commuters have to travel at the worst times for bicyclists.
3. Commuters need secure parking.
4. Commuters usually need to conform to fashion standards suitable
only for sedentary people.
5. Bicycle commuters often have to ride (and face traffic) alone.

People tend to do whatever feels best. Driving cars in heavy
car traffic feels better to most people than riding bicycles
in heavy car traffic. There is no way public funding in the
U.S. can generally reverse that emotional equation in the
short term.

But introduce millions of people to well-run, well-organized
recreational group rides, and utilitarian bicycling will tend
to grow of its own accord. When people are routinely riding
50 to 100 miles on recreational outings, a 5-mile errand
through the city seems less daunting.

this wont really help much with congestion since those who
ride to work in sunny warm weather will want to drive in rainy, or
cold weather.


The impact of weather is proportional to ride length. Riding
in the cold for 15 minutes is nothing compared to riding in
the cold for 3 hours. It's very hard to remain comfortable
on a long cold ride, due to problems such as sweat build-up
on the torso, and the uneven impact of cold on extremities
such as the cyclist's feet. With the shorter ride, the cyclist
does not need to match clothing to conditions so precisely.

Bad weather discourages driving too. Even commute mileage is
to some degree elective. During bad weather, a commuter is
less likely to run additional errands (and generate more
vehicle-miles). Who wants to go shopping in a rainstorm?

But it still gets people off the roads during good
weather.

Notice I said TEA-21, the bill that just expired. I'm not sure if the
new bill has been passed by Congress (the new one is called SAFTEA)
yet, but i'd expect it would have similar funding provisions in it.
Tim, perhaps you should write to your city/county/state officials and
ask that they request funding for more bike lanes in Cincy from
SAFTEA.


Bike lanes are a very mixed bag. They tend to fill up with broken
glass, tree litter, garbage, etc., because car tires do not sweep
them. It's better to have wide curb lanes so motor vehicles normally
run close enough to the curb to sweep the trash, but the lanes are
wide enough for cars to pass bicyclists.

Despite all the taxes drivers pay, there never seems to be enough
money to pay for collecting all the garbage drivers throw.

Another good arrangement for moderate-use two-lane roads
is to have a central turn lane cars can straddle momentarily
to pass bicyclists.

The biggest problem is street parking. Many roads would
be adequate for bicycles and cars if they weren't a tax-subsidized
parking lot. A parked car chews up road space for hours on end,
making its impact on congestion much worse than a moving car.
Parked cars also create great danger, by destroying sight lines
to the right, and concealing objects (pedestrians, opening
car doors, cars pulling out) that can suddenly jump into a
cyclist's path. The speed variance is much worse with parked
cars, compared to typical moving cars in urban traffic. The
cyclist passes the parked cars at a relative speed equal to
his actual speed, which easily exceeds 30 MPH on a downhill.
Traffic on the left pressures him to ride too closely to
the parked cars on the right. The cyclist riding between
moving cars and parked cars has danger on all sides.

Recreational paths would fall under the jurisdiction of the state,
county, city, and national park services, not any DOT. Though people
do use recreational paths for commuting as well as for pleasure.


Recreational riding is the enjoyable recruitment tool and
training mechanism for eventual bicycle commuters. And yes, whenever
a recreational path can be part of a commuting route, it is often
very good for that use. Serious recreational bicyclists often
disparage bicycle paths because they do not accommodate
serious bicycle speeds and techniques (in particular, paceline
riding), but during typical commute hours a bicycle path won't
usually be too crowded with erratic children, and most commuters
ride alone.

For those who might criticize the spending of federal transportation
dollars, some of which were obtained through road user fees, remember


that automobile users enjoy massive subsidies: the huge
government military expenditures in support of the
Endless Petroleum War; the cost of "free" automobile parking
spread to all customers of commercial establishments;
direct government subsidies for the fossil fuel industry;
government spending on automobile safety; government
spending on health care for the victims of the modern
sedentary lifestyle (how could so many people manage to
become obese without cars? And who pays for the lost
income of people killed or maimed by cars? Private insurance
covers some, but not all); the cost of policing and
traffic control paid partly by municipalities from
property taxes; etc.

Nothing as pervasive and economically important as the car
is going to pay its own way in a democracy where majority
vote is all it takes to shift costs. Cleaning up this or that
automobile-related mess from general tax funds is easy to
do because "everybody" uses cars. Thus there is no serious
political lobby demanding to pay for the invasion of Iraq
with gasoline taxes. Or to allocate enough gasoline-tax
revenue to clean up all the garbage motorists throw. Or
to require motorists to pay for their congestion costs. Etc.
Asking motorists to pay their full costs is a political
nonstarter. Only electoral minorities can be made fiscally
responsible, and then only when they have no effective lobbies.

that bike lanes improve safety for all road users.


Maybe. Bike lanes don't help when they fill with trash tossed
by motorists.

What is it about the nature of the automobile which encourages
so many drivers to throw trash? The automobile has sufficient
carrying capacity so the driver is not inconvenienced by
carrying the trash to the next proper waste receptacle.

On separate bike paths there is remarkably less litter. Sure,
a few jackass bicyclists or pedestrians may toss an empty
Gatorade bottle, but a bike path out of throwing distance from
motorists is almost clean enough to eat from, compared to
any highway. Perhaps this is because people traveling under
human power cannot carry as many packaged goods from which
to generate trash.

...usually in any
accident involving a bike, a car is involved too.


Actually that is not true. Certainly when a car is involved
the result is usually very serious, but most bicycle accidents
result from non-car hazards such as mechanical failure,
road hazards (wet leaves, gravel, trash, ice in winter, potholes,
sewer grates), hitting another bicyclist, hitting an animal,
riding too fast down curvy hills, etc.

Once I did an interesting swan dive into the pavement when
I ran over a discarded soft-drink can. I hit it at just
the right angle that it crumpled around the front tire of
my mountain bike, gripping the tire tightly, and when it
rotated with the tire up to the fork crown, it stopped the
front wheel from turning and flipped me neatly into the
air. This all took place in less than a second.

Bicyclists enjoy riding with other bicyclists, but riding in a
group actually increases the danger. The biggest danger in
a group is when a cyclist following another cyclist closely
touches his front wheel to the leading cyclist's back wheel.
The cyclist's biggest vulnerability is the front wheel. It
doesn't like being touched, banged, skidded, locked up, etc.
Even running over a squirrel can sometimes sufficiently
disturb the front wheel to cause a crash.

Although the auto
driver's chances of survival are far better then a cyclist's, the car
driver will still have an accident on his record, which is not
something anyone wants to have to deal with.


Every time a motorist leaves the Hummer at home and rides
a bike, the risk to all the other road users declines.

Getting hit by a bicycle is not as bad as getting hit by
a Hummer.

If motorists were rationally selfish, they would pay other
motorists to disarm by riding bicycles.

-- the Danimal
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  #4  
Old December 25th 03, 11:19 PM
Dennis P. Harris
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

On 24 Dec 2003 23:29:07 -0800 in rec.bicycles.soc,
(The Danimal) wrote:

Recreational riding is the enjoyable recruitment tool and
training mechanism for eventual bicycle commuters.


no it's not, and you recreationists need to stop telling this
repeated Big Lie.


  #5  
Old December 26th 03, 05:25 AM
Rick
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

....stuff deleted

no it's not, and you recreationists need to stop telling this
repeated Big Lie.



Dennis,

I don't know of a single commute cyclist who did not begin cycling for the
purpose of recreation. I started cycling at at 6 and would ride simply for
the sake of riding. Sure, at times, I had a destination in mind, but more
often, I found riding was more enjoyable than, say, watching sports on TV.
Now, I both commute and cycle recreationally. Often, I use the same roads
for both.

Perhaps I am missing something in your perspective, but as written, calling
this a "big lie" is a big disinformation campaign.

Rick


  #6  
Old December 26th 03, 05:42 AM
Christopher R. Law
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

I don't understand the prejudice against recreational bicycling
implied in the transportation bill.


TEA-21 falls under the Federal Highway program and is intended to improve
transportation. A completely off-road facility intended purely for recreational
purposes would fall more under the parks and recreation departments.

Having said that, there is no reason why an on-road facility cannot serve both
transportational and recreational riders. In the past few years Delaware has
put bike lanes on Rt. 1 between the resort towns of Rehoboth and Dewey. During
the summer, the lanes are mostly ridden by recreational cyclists as the towns
population grows 10 fold with beach goers. Throughout the year, commuters also
use the route so both groups are served. Some of the recreational riders might
become used to road travel and decide to use their bikes as a transportational
option.

If, instead of putting in bike lanes, the state had decided to create a linear
park with a multiuser path, fewer of the purely recreational cyclists would
make the cross over to transportation as their home area would not have such
paths.

I'm not condemning bikepaths per se. I ride rail trails and mountain bike paths
occasionally. Most simply do not provide total home to destination routes. If a
person is afraid to ride in the road, trails are unlikely to provide the
necessary experience to prompt the rider to use roads, with or without bike
lanes.

Chris Law
Newark, DE
  #7  
Old December 26th 03, 09:49 AM
Max
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

"Rick" wrote:

...stuff deleted

no it's not, and you recreationists need to stop telling this
repeated Big Lie.


I don't know of a single commute cyclist who did not begin cycling for the
purpose of recreation. I started cycling at at 6 and would ride simply for
the sake of riding. Sure, at times, I had a destination in mind, but more
often, I found riding was more enjoyable than, say, watching sports on TV.
Now, I both commute and cycle recreationally. Often, I use the same roads
for both.

Perhaps I am missing something in your perspective, but as written, calling
this a "big lie" is a big disinformation campaign.



The relationship between "started cycling at 6 [for FUN]' and
cyclecommute as an adult is trivially apparent: You were on a Bicycle in
each case. Okay. You learned to ride when you were six. ok.

But it's also the same kind of tortured, painful, POSTMODERN --
bordering on dishonest -- rhetoric that's most often heard coming from a
post-disaster corporate spin doctor, or, dare i say it, Rush "Personal
Responsibility" Limbaugh. Be Real.

Appropriations bills aren't about 3rd or 4th order coupling constants.

Your defense is making my teeth spall as i sit here.

..max

--
the part of
was played by maxwell monningh 8-p
  #8  
Old December 26th 03, 05:17 PM
Rick
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75

....stuff deleted
Appropriations bills aren't about 3rd or 4th order coupling constants.

Your defense is making my teeth spall as i sit here.


So, what you are saying here is that you don't have an answer as to what the
"big lie" is. The reality is that any improvement made for cycling
transportation is a general improvement. You can't improve a road for
commuting only and ban joy riders from using said road. For this reason, I
find the differentiation between "commuter" and "recreational" riding to be,
essentially, nonsensical. What I asked was, how does one make that
differentiation when virtually all cycle commuters and virtually all
recreational cyclists use the roads for the same reasons, to move from
point-to-point.

Sorry about your teeth. Perhaps a visit to the dentist after the holidays
will help.

Rick


  #9  
Old December 26th 03, 10:15 PM
Max
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Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75


"Rick" wrote:

What I asked was, how does one make that
differentiation when virtually all cycle commuters and virtually all
recreational cyclists use the roads for the same reasons, to move from
point-to-point.


Yet the entirety of the post to which i replied:

% I don't know of a single commute cyclist who did not begin cycling for
% the purpose of recreation. I started cycling at at 6 and would ride
% simply for the sake of riding. Sure, at times, I had a destination in
% mind, but more often, I found riding was more enjoyable than, say,
% watching sports on TV. Now, I both commute and cycle recreationally.
% Often, I use the same roads for both.
%
% Perhaps I am missing something in your perspective, but as written,
% calling this a "big lie" is a big disinformation campaign.

LET us examine these two posts.

Post A: "recreational cyclists use the roads for the same reasons, to
move from point-to-point."

Post B: "at times, I had a destination in mind, but more often, I
found riding was more enjoyable than, say, watching sports on TV"

Which is nothing at all like :cyclecommuting.

Tell you what, Go up to Wisconsin and hop on the Kettle Morraine trail
and cyclecommute to anything on that trail with running water and
electricity and i'll give you a job.

Or take Left Hand Canyon Rd. uphill outside of boulder and ride it to
the top for any kind of business other than buying gatorade or
hydroponic dope.

Your arguement is about as meaningful as 1=2 because 1^0=2^0.

Transportation bills are typically about promoting commerce via
transportation -- 6 year olds playing teletubby in the park are not
commerce via trasportation, sorry.

In cyclecommuting, the journey is the journey and your JOB is your
destination. In recreational riding, the journey is the destiniation is
the journey.

..max

--
the part of
was played by maxwell monningh 8-p
  #10  
Old December 27th 03, 01:57 AM
Rick
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Posts: n/a
Default Bike facility funding, was: Cincy - $350M to fix I-75


"Max" wrote in message
...

....stuff deleted

LET us examine these two posts.

Post A: "recreational cyclists use the roads for the same reasons, to
move from point-to-point."

Post B: "at times, I had a destination in mind, but more often, I
found riding was more enjoyable than, say, watching sports on TV"


Let me examine these post. Post 1 refused to describe why recreational
cyclists are different from commuters. Post 2 refused to describe why
recreational cyclists are different from commuters. I see I am convesing
with someone who doesn't understand the rudiments of what I've written.
I've cycle commuted for the past 10-15 years (not counting those few days
each year when I've driven, hence the ambiguity). In every instance, I've
cycled on the same roads on which I cycled for recreation. There is no
difference between the two types of trips. None. So if you have a point,
please present it.

Which is nothing at all like :cyclecommuting.

Tell you what, Go up to Wisconsin and hop on the Kettle Morraine trail
and cyclecommute to anything on that trail with running water and
electricity and i'll give you a job.

Or take Left Hand Canyon Rd. uphill outside of boulder and ride it to
the top for any kind of business other than buying gatorade or
hydroponic dope.


The above is meaningless drivel. It has no context whatsoever.

Your arguement is about as meaningful as 1=2 because 1^0=2^0.

Transportation bills are typically about promoting commerce via
transportation -- 6 year olds playing teletubby in the park are not
commerce via trasportation, sorry.


So? Are 6 yo's capable of using the roads? Are 43 yo cyclists capable of
using the road? Whether or not they are going to work isn't important.
Nobody builds the roads for cyclists and the adaptations politicians want to
make to roads to foster cycling are both pointless and unwelcome to the
majority of us who regularly cycle the roads. If you want to argue that a
specific bill fails to accomplish something, fine. I can probably find some
agreement with you. If you simply use ambiguously reference specific
geographical regions as examples of why something is "wrong," you will fail
to find anyone who agrees with you.

In cyclecommuting, the journey is the journey and your JOB is your
destination. In recreational riding, the journey is the destiniation is
the journey.


Again, so what? Have you cycle commuted? If you had, you would realize that
you began cycling for fun and then evolved into a commuter. This is a
univesal truth that began when the cyclist realized that cycling was both
fun and transportation. The original premise was that it was a "big lie"
that recreational cyclists became commuters. I asked for, twice now, an
explanation of that lie. You have twice failed to provide it. Since you have
no supporting evidence and I can find sufficient examples to the opposite,
I'll just assume you are a blathering heap of useless dung and add you to
the killfile.

Rick


 




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