Build it and they won't come

On Sun, 1 Oct 2017 00:37:44 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/30/2017 11:49 PM, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 30 Sep 2017 21:21:36 -0500, Tim McNamara
wrote:

On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:28:35 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

I still think the very best facilities are wide clean shoulders or
bike lanes. You can sweep them, and they aren't full of dogs and
walkers, etc., etc.

Ah yup. Bicycles are vehicles, the facilities for vehicles are called
"roads." The road just has to be wide enough. IMHO even a striped bike
lane is unnecessary. Here's the hard part- drivers and rders just need
to follw the laws, use some common sense and have tolerance for each
other. The problem with bikes as transporation is not infrastructure,
it's human nature which has a need to feel the world is "mine" rather
than "ours."

They allow for passing other bicyclists without hitting some on-coming
cyclist like the dopey two way cycle tracks -- which are fine if you
like conga lines or bike herds.

My accident back in May was a head-on collision with another cyclist, on
a segregated bike trail (actually MUP, but there was only us on it
there) through a park. Amazing amount of damage was done.

Thailand has a rule that, pending other proof, the larger vehicle is
deemed to be at fault so if an automobile runs over a bicycle unless
the auto driver can come up with some sort of proof that "the bicycle
did it" he will be forced to pay all costs. Medical care, lost work
days, new bicycle, etc. In the event of death he may be charged with
the equivalent of manslaughter although the normal practice is to
offer some form of financial compensation to the family of the
deceased which, if accepted, will negate any legal charges.

This doesn't mean that cars never hit bicycles but certainly does seem
to reduce the incident of the "attacks by pickup-ups" I see mentioned
here.

Does that apply if a big bicyclist hits a little bicyclist?

I wouldn't like that. It's not that I'm very big; I'm very close to
average. But in bicycling, the little guys already have too many
advantages! ;-)

Unfair as it may seem a 18 wheel truck driven by a midget that hits a
bicycle ridden by some big brawny guy still gets to pay :-)
--
Cheers,

John B.

On 2017-09-30 17:02, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 3:57:35 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-30 11:43, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 7:59:49 AM UTC-7, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-29 17:47, jbeattie wrote:

[...]


... This is literally the view out of my office window,
although I'm 10 stories higher:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7286/1...d422079d_b.jpg


Nike, Intel, etc., etc. is over those hills.


That ain't what we'd call a "hill". More like a bump.

Sure, it isn't Mt. Hood, but it's an 1,100 foot elevation gain
from my basement parking lot in a couple of miles, which is more
than most people are willing to do except maybe on an eBike.
What you will do is one thing. What the couch potato who is going
to be saved by bicycle infrastructure will do is another.


The then bike route needs to be longer and go around it.




... They are steep. Now we get lots of people on the flat
east side.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7613/2...6661f837_b.jpg


Mostly on-street bike lanes and bike boulevards. No fancy tracks
required.


They may be steep but not for long. I always have to get back
up from 100ft or so to 1450ft where I live, with lots of ups
and downs in between. That is because nearly all errand runs
require a ride to Folsom or Rancho Cordova. A run to
Placerville requires about 30-40mi round trip, mostly on rough
and hilly singletrack. One of the hardcore riders out here does
that pretty much daily (but farther, about 60mi).

Yes, and how many of the fat women at the local Safeway are going
to do that -- or even their brutish husbands?


They will never ride no matter what you give them. I am thinking
about those who are still athletic enough but 20 years from now
will have become blimps. LOTS of people I meet whoe are willing to
ride. When I say to them that I take a county road and then the
bike path they immediately decline. However, they say yes when I
grudingly agree that we truck the bikes to the trail head. Those
ain't slowpokes, they are serious riders.


... We're talking about building infrastructure and getting
non-gnarlymen riding bikes. We can trade stories all day about
the difficult things we've done or do. People who really want to
ride don't need any infrastructure. I managed for decades riding
in SMS-ville Santa Clara Valley with no infrastructure. Closer
to your home, I've ridden all of HWY 49 with no infrastructure,
in fact all around the Sierra, Tahoe, Yosemite, etc., etc. No
problems.


I had a very close encounter with a utility truck whose driver
obviously had forgotten about the ladder rack on the right side
when he passed me. I will not ride there anymore and now use the
car on Hwy 49.


OTOH, I've ridden in Sacramento and Roseville in places that
really did suck (more than the rest of the area which sucks
generally). I'm not against bike lanes, but I see little
practical value in many separated facilities in light of the
expense, difficulty cleaning and inevitable infestation by
walkers, dogs and others.


A couple of weeks ago I took this from Rancho Cordova to
Sloughhouse (where the farmer's market is):

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/phot..._22551636.jpeg



Wide, no speed limit, no slowpoke cyclists. Once while on it during an
errand ride to Rancho I pushed it to 25mph which I can only hold
for a few minutes until my tongue hangs on the handlebar. Felt like
Eddie Merckx. But only for a couple of minutes when ... whoosh ...
another guy on a road bike blew by and disappeared in the
distance.

This was part of today's errand ride to Western Bikeworks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOerVf2fuGM (stop at 5:00 -- guy
goes the wrong way, not to the bike shop). Except I was going up.


At least it's gradually up and not ups and downs like here. Sometimes I
wish there was a long bridge from one ridge to the next.


Once to Pittock Mansion (didn't go to the park area), I keep going up
maybe another 300 feet in elevation and then along the hills to the
downhill into my part of town. https://tinyurl.com/y7omhpxg No
facilities. Lots of broken pavement, and it clouded up and rained.
Waaaah! But my hydraulic discs were awesome!


You don't need facilities with roads that have so little traffic. That
guy's bike looks loaded like mine often does except I do not have front
panniers (yet).


On the way there, however, I did use a bicycle facility. This one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMFDuOLfPd0 (in reverse) and then on
some bike lanes downtown. No physically separated facilities.


Bike lanes along all major roads. What more do you want? We don't have
that on most roads in my neighborhood. Hence hardly anyone rides.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2017-09-30 18:27, John B. wrote:
On Sat, 30 Sep 2017 15:57:46 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-09-30 11:43, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 7:59:49 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-29 17:47, jbeattie wrote:

[...]

... They are steep. Now we get lots of people on the flat east
side.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7613/2...6661f837_b.jpg
Mostly on-street bike lanes and bike boulevards. No fancy tracks
required.


They may be steep but not for long. I always have to get back up
from 100ft or so to 1450ft where I live, with lots of ups and downs
in between. That is because nearly all errand runs require a ride
to Folsom or Rancho Cordova. A run to Placerville requires about
30-40mi round trip, mostly on rough and hilly singletrack. One of
the hardcore riders out here does that pretty much daily (but
farther, about 60mi).

Yes, and how many of the fat women at the local Safeway are going to
do that -- or even their brutish husbands?


They will never ride no matter what you give them. I am thinking about
those who are still athletic enough but 20 years from now will have
become blimps. LOTS of people I meet whoe are willing to ride. When I
say to them that I take a county road and then the bike path they
immediately decline. However, they say yes when I grudingly agree that
we truck the bikes to the trail head. Those ain't slowpokes, they are
serious riders.


But how many are "still athletic enough"?

Retired Lieutenant General Mark Hertling said in a 2009 speech that
75 percent of civilians who wanted to join the force were ineligible
due to being overweight.

"Of the 25 percent that could join, what we found was 65 percent could
not pass the [physical training] test on the first day. Young people
joining our service could not run, jump, tumble or roll the kind of
things you would expect soldiers to do if you're in combat, he pointed
out.


It's a classic mistake the military often makes. I was also not great in
the physical entrance exam but then they quickly saw that I could leave
everyone in the dust on 20+ mile hikes with full gear. Things can be
trained. "Athletic enough" means there is enough potential to train in a
reasonable time and no health issues that have manifested hardcore (like
COPD and such) where there will be no improvement.

For example, it is normal that the first few months of cycling are
frustrating. It sure was for me when, after a 15+ year cycling hiatus, I
couldn't even make it up the hill across from our neighborhood. Now I
can crank it up there without even shifting much.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2017-09-30 18:55, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/30/2017 6:57 PM, Joerg wrote:

A couple of weeks ago I took this from Rancho Cordova to Sloughhouse
(where the farmer's market is):

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/phot..._22551636.jpeg

Wide, no speed limit, no slowpoke cyclists.

That MUP would be fine with me. Last week we used a similar one with our
novice cyclist friend. It was perhaps not quite as nice, but still nice
enough. It was very pleasant.

Why was it pleasant? Mostly because there were almost no other users on
the MUP. I like them fine if they don't cross many roads, if they are
smooth and wide enough, and if there's almost nobody else using them.

However, that set of criteria isn't very useful for getting funds to
build one.


They did in Folsom, big time. Most look like this:

https://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bph...BeiCSIPQ/o.jpg

Major roads are crossed either via tunnels or via MUP bridges. At one
busy road you even have your pick, a tunnel or this bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/w5QGBnkE9852

It's great. I can go through there in the thick of rush hour and roll
right through. No cars. They are all above doing a slow crawl while I
don't even have to tap my brakes are intersections. Ok, 15mph speed
limit but nobody minds if you are a few mph above and ride carefully.

This is how a successful bike path system is built.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On 2017-09-30 19:46, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/30/2017 7:18 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-29 22:25, John B. wrote:
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 23:15:56 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 9/29/2017 10:30 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-28 18:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/28/2017 6:29 PM, Joerg wrote:

Why do people ride bikes there? Mainly because of the cycling
facilities. Another reason is health, Europeans are on average less
obese that Americans and there are reasons for that, one of them
being
cycling.

Build it and they will come, it has been proven time and again.

In the U.S., it's been proven time and time again that "build it, and
maybe 1.5% will come, if you're lucky and cycling is fashionable
in your
area."


In some areas a lot more came...

If you count 3% as being "a lot more" than 1.5%. Seems to me it's a
difference between negligible and negligible.

but 1.5% is a respectable number for the US.

IOW, you've lowered your standards to the point that you consider any
non-zero number to be respectable.


No, I just do not have a glass-half-empty mind like you seem to have.

Don't pretend it's a "half empty" vs. "half full" situation, Joerg.
You're bragging about 1.5%. Those who understand math know that 1.5% is
nowhere near half full. Numbers matter!

You have repeatedly brought up the health benefits. Did you suddenly
change your mind?

There are benefits to exercise. But those benefits occur only in those
who exercise. Every week I visit a town with bike paths, but almost
never any bicyclists in them. Seriously, I might see one bicyclist every
year on some of them. Those have certainly produced no measurable health
benefit. And despite your claims of potential miracles, that situation
exists in most U.S. towns. Remember, you're bragging about 1.5% -
something that anyone with numerical sense recognizes as negligible.


Broaden your horizon and visit an area where they do better. Like Davis, CA:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lHdbIhL0eso


Cycling, like most things, is subject to the whims of fashion. It
may be "cool" for a while; then who knows? Muscle cars may come back in
style, and the teens whose moms and dads ride bikes may decide that
anything Mom or Dad do is stupid and geeky and must be avoided.


Doubtful.

Some of use started adult cycling during the 1970s "bike boom."
Multi-speed bikes were suddenly so popular, it was hard to find one to
buy in most towns; the bike shops had sold out.


That was different in Europe where I lived at that time. You could
always buy a 10-speed. I bet it was the same in the US because our
catalog retailer (Quelle) and Sears worked closely together. So I can't
imagine Quelle having tons of 10-speeds in stock and Sears none. My
first one came from them. Not because the LBS didn't have any (they had
lots) but because it was the best deal.


That happened without any bike facilities, just like it happened again
in San Francisco just a few years ago, without any bike facilities.


They have no choice. Have you been there lately? Vehicle traffic is in a
constant state of constipation and a bike is the only way to get around
fast.


Then suddenly, the popularity was gone. Yes, some of us fell in love and
kept bicycling. But I've met many more people who rode for a year or two
in the early '70s and never rode again. And they won't ride again even
if a bike path appears at their own front door.


They will. Plenty of examples in our area. Except the ones in our
neighborhood have bike racks on their car's receiver and cart their
bikes to teh trail heads. In the valley they do what I do, riding right
from their garages.


(BTW, last Sunday the guy living three houses away from mine asked if
any of our bike club members would be interested in his 1970s ten speed.
That's 2x5=10 speeds, BTW.)


If it's a rare model Peugeot or a nice Italian classic ...


Sorry, Joerg, you're claiming Stevenage bike facility designers screwed
up based _only_ on the fact that almost nobody in Stevenage rides.
You're using 20-20 hindsight.

https://waronthemotorist.wordpress.c...s-not-britain/


Oh, good grief. The article is complaining in part that 1960s Stevenage
designs are not as good as 2015 Netherlands designs.


Because they aren't. Not even close.


... It ignores that
1960s Stevenage designs were considered every bit as good as
Netherlands' at the time. ...


By whome? The Queen of England?



... It also complains that Stevenage has developed
beyond the reach of the bike trail network.

So what was the Stevenage council supposed to do? Continually spend
money each time a new bike trail design was proposed? Continually expand
the network each time a new development was built? How could they
justify that expense when almost no one was using bikes?


Do what most German city planners notoriously fail to do: Visit the
Netherlands, Denmark, or some (very few) cities in the US. Learn!


And the one thing the article gets right is actually its main message:
"the main point — that the primary reason people don’t cycle in
Stevenage is because it’s a town built for easy motoring — everybody is
agreed."

Everybody except you, Joerg!


Then my buddies should have been driving back when I was at the
university. Nearly all had cars, gas was still reasonably cheap, nice
big connector roads, autobahns, an automotive paradise. Yet they cycled.


1% is negligible in this field, just as it's negligible in almost every
other field.

So you want to promote spending bundles on segregated infrastructure to
get negligible results.


With that attitude we would never have had MRI machines, space
shuttles, jet aircraft, satellites, and so on. I have a different
philosophy.

If MRI machines detected only 1% of the problems doctors looked for; if
space shuttles failed to reach orbit 99% of the time; if jet aircraft
successfully took off only one time out of a hundred, etc. then we would
have rightly called them failures.

Somehow the same math doesn't matter to bike segregationists.


It does if designed right. Ok, the head back into the sand now :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Sunday, October 1, 2017 at 7:15:13 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-30 17:02, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 3:57:35 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-30 11:43, jbeattie wrote:
On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 7:59:49 AM UTC-7, Joerg
wrote:
On 2017-09-29 17:47, jbeattie wrote:

[...]


... This is literally the view out of my office window,
although I'm 10 stories higher:
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7286/1...d422079d_b.jpg


Nike, Intel, etc., etc. is over those hills.


That ain't what we'd call a "hill". More like a bump.

Sure, it isn't Mt. Hood, but it's an 1,100 foot elevation gain
from my basement parking lot in a couple of miles, which is more
than most people are willing to do except maybe on an eBike.
What you will do is one thing. What the couch potato who is going
to be saved by bicycle infrastructure will do is another.


The then bike route needs to be longer and go around it.




... They are steep. Now we get lots of people on the flat
east side.
https://c2.staticflickr.com/8/7613/2...6661f837_b.jpg


Mostly on-street bike lanes and bike boulevards. No fancy tracks
required.


They may be steep but not for long. I always have to get back
up from 100ft or so to 1450ft where I live, with lots of ups
and downs in between. That is because nearly all errand runs
require a ride to Folsom or Rancho Cordova. A run to
Placerville requires about 30-40mi round trip, mostly on rough
and hilly singletrack. One of the hardcore riders out here does
that pretty much daily (but farther, about 60mi).

Yes, and how many of the fat women at the local Safeway are going
to do that -- or even their brutish husbands?


They will never ride no matter what you give them. I am thinking
about those who are still athletic enough but 20 years from now
will have become blimps. LOTS of people I meet whoe are willing to
ride. When I say to them that I take a county road and then the
bike path they immediately decline. However, they say yes when I
grudingly agree that we truck the bikes to the trail head. Those
ain't slowpokes, they are serious riders.


... We're talking about building infrastructure and getting
non-gnarlymen riding bikes. We can trade stories all day about
the difficult things we've done or do. People who really want to
ride don't need any infrastructure. I managed for decades riding
in SMS-ville Santa Clara Valley with no infrastructure. Closer
to your home, I've ridden all of HWY 49 with no infrastructure,
in fact all around the Sierra, Tahoe, Yosemite, etc., etc. No
problems.


I had a very close encounter with a utility truck whose driver
obviously had forgotten about the ladder rack on the right side
when he passed me. I will not ride there anymore and now use the
car on Hwy 49.


OTOH, I've ridden in Sacramento and Roseville in places that
really did suck (more than the rest of the area which sucks
generally). I'm not against bike lanes, but I see little
practical value in many separated facilities in light of the
expense, difficulty cleaning and inevitable infestation by
walkers, dogs and others.


A couple of weeks ago I took this from Rancho Cordova to
Sloughhouse (where the farmer's market is):

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/phot..._22551636.jpeg



Wide, no speed limit, no slowpoke cyclists. Once while on it during an
errand ride to Rancho I pushed it to 25mph which I can only hold
for a few minutes until my tongue hangs on the handlebar. Felt like
Eddie Merckx. But only for a couple of minutes when ... whoosh ...
another guy on a road bike blew by and disappeared in the
distance.

This was part of today's errand ride to Western Bikeworks.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AOerVf2fuGM (stop at 5:00 -- guy
goes the wrong way, not to the bike shop). Except I was going up.


At least it's gradually up and not ups and downs like here. Sometimes I
wish there was a long bridge from one ridge to the next.

Hardly gradual -- it's all 6-20%. Quick way up has a maximum grade of 31%. The near or in-town climbs are all short, though -- less than 3-4 miles. I personally don't like the long open ascending rollers in your part of the world. There is something soul-sucking about looking at a long, open pitch. I feel the same way on Mt. Bachelor. http://cdn.velonews.com/wp-content/u...e3_714-089.jpg I prefer further up the road on the Sierra passes where you have shorter sight-lines and more of an alpine feel.


Once to Pittock Mansion (didn't go to the park area), I keep going up
maybe another 300 feet in elevation and then along the hills to the
downhill into my part of town. https://tinyurl.com/y7omhpxg No
facilities. Lots of broken pavement, and it clouded up and rained.
Waaaah! But my hydraulic discs were awesome!


You don't need facilities with roads that have so little traffic. That
guy's bike looks loaded like mine often does except I do not have front
panniers (yet).

Little traffic in the video -- a lot of traffic in reality. It was busy up there yesterday. Believe me, Portland has way too much traffic that is now spilling on to all the arterial and capillary roads.



On the way there, however, I did use a bicycle facility. This one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMFDuOLfPd0 (in reverse) and then on
some bike lanes downtown. No physically separated facilities.


Bike lanes along all major roads. What more do you want? We don't have
that on most roads in my neighborhood. Hence hardly anyone rides.

I thought we were arguing about separated facilities? I have no problem with wide shoulders or striped bike lanes. There are plenty of places with no bike lanes around here, and people still ride -- because that is what people do around here, but it is nice having a bike lane. When I moved up here in '84. I rode to work on a 55mph arterial on a fog line. I do like the fact that there is now a bike lane. Once out of town, however, I ride on the same types of shoulderless roads as you do. Most people do in rural areas.

-- Jay Beattie.

On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 6:44:11 PM UTC-7, sms wrote:
On 9/30/2017 4:18 PM, Joerg wrote:

snip

In my experience a motorized vehicle is the first thing that anyone
buys just as soon as he/she can find the money to do it.


That is changing in the US. For many kids it is no longer a worthy goal
to have a driver license at 16. Or in any of the years following that.
They are completely content not being able to drive, they have no desire
to. This trend greatly worries the auto industry.

It's the biggest change in teenage and young adult behavior you've seen
and it's got the vehicle manufacturers worried.
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/many-teens-dont-want-get-drivers-license/

We went through this with our kids, but they only delayed it about a
year. The thing is, you really want your children to learn to drive
while they are teens, as nerve-wracking as that can be. All the jokes
about driving skills based on ethnicity come down to the fact that those
drivers did not learn to drive as teens, they learned as adults. And
learning to drive these days, in a congested urban area, with a lot of
inexperienced adult drivers, is much different than when most of us here
learned to drive.

What would be good is moving to the model where you can cycle or take
public transit to work, and driving is more for excursions. This is the
case in many other countries where they have better transportation networks.

Do you really believe that is what's happening? Cars are just too easy. You're warm and dry. Or cool and dry. You don't have to use your own efforts to get places.

Look at the people going to "AGW" conferences and they are all showing up in large SUV's.

On Saturday, September 30, 2017 at 7:21:43 PM UTC-7, Tim McNamara wrote:
On Fri, 29 Sep 2017 08:28:35 -0700 (PDT), jbeattie
wrote:

I still think the very best facilities are wide clean shoulders or
bike lanes. You can sweep them, and they aren't full of dogs and
walkers, etc., etc.

Ah yup. Bicycles are vehicles, the facilities for vehicles are called
"roads." The road just has to be wide enough. IMHO even a striped bike
lane is unnecessary. Here's the hard part- drivers and rders just need
to follw the laws, use some common sense and have tolerance for each
other. The problem with bikes as transporation is not infrastructure,
it's human nature which has a need to feel the world is "mine" rather
than "ours."

They allow for passing other bicyclists without hitting some on-coming
cyclist like the dopey two way cycle tracks -- which are fine if you
like conga lines or bike herds.

My accident back in May was a head-on collision with another cyclist, on
a segregated bike trail (actually MUP, but there was only us on it
there) through a park. Amazing amount of damage was done.

I agree with you. But also the police HAVE to enforce the laws about drivers not forcing bicyclists out of their way. Again yesterday when I started out on my ride, just two blocks away from my home at the stop sign a person in an SUV tried to take my right of way.

Taking my brother down to his eye doctor and back there are people speeding as much as 20 mph over the speed limit when they can plainly see that there is a solid wall of cars ahead of them less than 1/8th of a mile. There are heavy commercial trucks driving on the one freeway that doesn't allow this traffic.

Imagine how much money a government could make just off of enforcing the laws on the books. Instead yesterday I saw four cop SUV's pull over a bicyclist riding on the sidewalk. Now that guy might have been dangerous and I don't criticize that action but if there were that many cops available why am I riding to the far right of a 15 ft wide lane and having people passing within two feet of me?

On 10/1/2017 11:19 AM, jbeattie wrote:
On Sunday, October 1, 2017 at 7:15:13 AM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:

Bike lanes along all major roads. What more do you want? We don't have
that on most roads in my neighborhood. Hence hardly anyone rides.

I thought we were arguing about separated facilities? I have no problem with wide shoulders or striped bike lanes. There are plenty of places with no bike lanes around here, and people still ride -- because that is what people do around here, but it is nice having a bike lane. When I moved up here in '84. I rode to work on a 55mph arterial on a fog line. I do like the fact that there is now a bike lane. Once out of town, however, I ride on the same types of shoulderless roads as you do. Most people do in rural areas.

I did yesterday, 60 miles worth. A very pleasant ride with absolutely no
hassle from any motorist.

Actually, I started on our 30,000 to 40,000 vehicle per day arterial.
Much of it has shoulders, which I sometimes used.

Trouble is, the shoulders often have debris. Yesterday they weren't
terrible (as they are in early spring, before the sweeper trucks make
their semi-annual visit) but it's a bit worrying to be on the shoulder
as traffic passes, then see stuff ahead that could be gravel or could be
glass.

So my general policy is ride roughly in the center of the right lane if
traffic is sparse enough that they can easily change lanes to pass. I'll
ride the shoulder if it's clean and the traffic is dense (which, BTW,
varies minute by minute). And if traffic's dense and the shoulder has
significant debris, decide as I ride, sometimes taking the lane even
though it slows some cars.

BTW, with moderate to heavy traffic, I find 2+1 lanes to be pretty
pleasant. That's one lane each direction, plus a bi-directional turning
lane. Almost all motorists will pass quickly and smoothly using at least
part of that center lane.

Most of the country roads, of course, had none of the above, and were
very pleasant indeed.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 10/1/2017 10:29 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-09-30 18:55, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 9/30/2017 6:57 PM, Joerg wrote:

A couple of weeks ago I took this from Rancho Cordova to Sloughhouse
(where the farmer's market is):

http://photos2.meetupstatic.com/phot..._22551636.jpeg

Wide, no speed limit, no slowpoke cyclists.

That MUP would be fine with me. Last week we used a similar one with our
novice cyclist friend. It was perhaps not quite as nice, but still nice
enough. It was very pleasant.

Why was it pleasant? Mostly because there were almost no other users on
the MUP. I like them fine if they don't cross many roads, if they are
smooth and wide enough, and if there's almost nobody else using them.

However, that set of criteria isn't very useful for getting funds to
build one.


They did in Folsom, big time. Most look like this:

https://s3-media3.fl.yelpcdn.com/bph...BeiCSIPQ/o.jpg

Major roads are crossed either via tunnels or via MUP bridges. At one
busy road you even have your pick, a tunnel or this bridge:

https://goo.gl/maps/w5QGBnkE9852

It's great. I can go through there in the thick of rush hour and roll
right through. No cars. They are all above doing a slow crawl while I
don't even have to tap my brakes are intersections. Ok, 15mph speed
limit but nobody minds if you are a few mph above and ride carefully.

This is how a successful bike path system is built.

Looks just like Stevenage. I forget: What's the bike mode share in
Folsom now?

Ah, I found some data. About 1.2% in 2010. But apparently it's less
now. This site
http://cal.streetsblog.org/2016/03/0...uting-by-bike/
alludes to California cities in the nation's top 20 for cycling commuter
mode share in 2016. But Long Beach makes #18 with just 1%, and Folsom
isn't listed.

Build it an over 99% won't come after all. Worse than Stevenage!

--
- Frank Krygowski