a midway bikelog

Commenting on, and headline stolen from today’s Strib article.

The gist of the article is that people are noticing that Minneapolis and the west metro in general are getting the majority of cool new transit projects. This is not news to those of us who bike; it’s not entirely a coincidence that Mpls has over double the rate of bike commuters than St. Paul. Minneapolis has that lovely and well-used Minneapolis Greenway -vs- the indefinitely stalled St. Paul Greenway extension, not to mention the older well-designed paths for those heading west out of town. Minneapolis and the west metro in general has more businesses, more population density, but frankly they’ve also worked harder to get new and expanded transit projects implemented.

St. Paul is trying to play catch-up starting with the central corridor light rail project, which will run 4 blocks from my house. This is a good thing, and the numbers on the Minneapolis Hiawatha line are starting to bear out the predictions for growth along light rail lines, raising the stakes for getting something moving on the east side. The problems we’re running into in St. Paul though are emblematic of the difficulty of rebuilding a lost infrastruture: mainly that of routing around historic locations and public institutions. Hang-ups like these don’t do much to encourage other new projects, even if many of them are unique to building in a downtown area.

Further east, the problem is density – the lack of population density and the overload of density in the public representatives. Woodbury and other eastern ‘burbs have been built up with a sprawling lack of planning that practically precludes central transit service. Wisconsinites from Hudson are a better target ridership than most of the east side within the 694 loop.

It wouldn’t surprise anyone that my own response to the Stillwater commuter complaints is to ‘move closer to work, if your commute is a burden’. What’s more surprising to me is the overwhelming percentage of comments to the story that are saying the same thing. I guess given the usual pro-driving response that cycling stories usually get, i expected more sympathy and demands for more road lanes. Instead, the call is for more personal responsibility for the choices made, and encouragement to make the changes they seek. In short, if the east-siders want rail, they’d better clue in Michele Bachman, because so far she has fought against anything that doesn’t resemble a person traveling in their own vehicle.

The commuting discussion inevitably gets tied into gas prices, but to me this really misses the point. Sure, the monetary cost of the commute goes up and down with the price of gas, and woe to those who had planned their budget around low gas prices. (Hint: it won’t stay under $2 forever, it’ll go back up again, guaranteed.) No, the real question for me isn’t the money, it’s the time and angst. Is it really worth living where you live to spend so much of your life in the car every day? It would be really hard for me to wash away 5 days of rush hour in even a good weekend.

I liked living (and working) in the country when i did, and i’d love to live where i could bike off into the woods from my back door and not see a paved road for hours. But if the cost of that is spending 3 hours every day navigating through traffic, i can’t reconcile that against everything else i could do with that time. Increasingly, it seems others are reaching the same conclusion. Time is nigh for the east siders unhappy with their commutes to either get busy moving or get busy lobbying.

Y’know those times when you’re passing through an intersection while someone coming toward you is waiting to turn left? An’ if they’re the impatient sort, they’ll sort of creep along until you’ve passed enough for them to proceed? Yeah, it’s really annoying when i’m the one driving through, and it’s downright threatening when i’m on a bike.

I keep track of my bike miles on a little web app i wrote a few years ago, and one of the things i like to track is the amount of gas saved by biking places rather than driving. I flag commute rides, so only the bike rides that arguably replace what could have been a car trip count; so weekend rides just for fun add miles, but don’t count toward the gas total.

I last updated the file that contains the variable for gas prices back in December, and i don’t remember if i changed the going rate for gas then or not. It has been at $2.80 for a while, so it’s probably been longer than that. Today i bumped it up to (a somewhat conservative) $3.50/gallon to generally keep pace with current prices. My gas savings for the year to date magically went from $37.16 to $46.45. That’s two extra Chipotle burritos!

That’s for a little over 13 gallons of gas, or about what my car would need for a fill up if i were running on vapors. I haven’t been filling up the tank very often at all since spring riding season kicked into full swing, but i have noticed the stickers on pumps instructing drivers on the $50 limit some (at least Visa and Discover) credit cards apply to pay-at-the-pump purchases. They’re told to put in $50 worth, then start again like they’re visiting twice (or even more, i suppose, for some vehicles). I’m going to go back to my high school habit of putting in $10-15 worth of gas in at a time as needed to avoid the $50 hit. I should need another $10 in a month or so.

A lot of people weekly drive the 300+ miles that i’ve commuted by bike for the year so far. For long-distance commuters, it’s an unavoidable expense in the short term because of living and/or working where bike routes and mass transit are non-existant. I wonder how long this added expense will go on being quietly absorbed before we start to see either a cultural move back to cities or a big suburban push for alternative transportation infrastructure. The bus lines will most likely win over bike lanes, but maybe we’ll finally start looking at commuter trains more seriously. Maybe we’ll finally get a really family-friendly bike route from downtown out to the MN Landscape Arboretum or something.

How far could ever-increasing gasoline costs push society? Will we make visits to friends across town overnighters, to avoid having to bike the kids home 20 miles late at night? Will a series of Inns catering to cyclists pop up along the Munger trail, giving lodging to weary travelers heading for the north shore? Will my neighbors begin lobbying to keep horses in their garages next to the chicken coops? Will the Amish finally take over the country, driving their wagons around the abandoned carcasses of rotting Escalades with spinner hubcaps faintly creaking in the breeze? We can only hope, my friend, we can only hope. In the meantime, i’m working on my beard and nail-free carpentry skills.

Pretty cool article in the Seattle Times about a mixed-mode bike/waterbike commute. There are people who take shortcuts across lakes here too, but generally only in the wintertime, and they don’t have to change vehicles.

Commuting in the liquid lane

The video on the story is also good. I like the idea of a camping version, wonder how that would go over in the BWCA. Of course, the latent racer in me wants to have sprint races on one of the local lakes with these. And maybe build one purely for speed. 5mph? I gotta think we could double that. Lower design, sleeker pontoons, lighter, of course. Hmmm…

This morning’s commute was in the best weather we’ve seen in weeks. Cool and dry, partly cloudy and a little breeze, comfortably riding in regular old work clothes. As i waited on the light at the first main intersection, an obviously homeless guy came up and said hi, chatted about the weather and said ‘praise the lord’ about five times. He smelled strongly of listerine and pine sol, but he was pleasant enough and had kind eyes hiding amongst his matted hair and beard.

A few stoplights later, i chatted with another guy apparently waiting for a bus, bagged lunch in hand. He seemed a little mentally slow, but commented on the weather and said that it looked like fun to be riding a bike. We had a pleasant two minutes small talk while the light cycled through, and we wished each other a nice day.

With the bustle of commuting and managing traffic, even riding a bike can sometimes be an isolating experience. This morning though, a couple of nice (aside from the disinfectant smell) little moments of humanity that nobody in their car could have had even if they could get past the initial appearance of these characters. Life on the human scale is a much richer existence.

Metro Transit – Commuter Challenge

Metro Transit has a new challenge going to encourage people to take the bus or train, carpool, bike or walk. Ok, it’s a pretty good thing to encourage people to try transit options other than driving their car. And it’s nice that there are prizes to encourage people to give it a try. But what are they saying with these prizes? Let’s take a look:

iPods (4)
Bicycles (6)
6 megapixel digital cameras (2)

Listen to music, ride your bike, take pictures. Good stuff. Next?

Salon gift certificates (3)
Mall of America gift cards (3)
31-day transit pass

Reward your effort with a little pampering, bike or take the train to the Sprawl next time. OK. Next?

$75 in gas
Grand Prize A flat-screen TV (an $800 value)

That trip on the bus sure was an experience, eh? Now go burn some gas. And go back to sitting on the couch.

Six bikes is a good thing, and iPods and cameras make fine prizes. But perhaps more of the prizes could encourage further alternate transit use. How about making some of the bikes folding bikes, and promote that they can be taken along on the train? Make the grand prize a nice Breezer Uptown 8. How about 6 months free bike locker rental? Even non-bike related, how about sports tickets to venues on train & bus lines? Restaurant gift certificates for places on transitways. Something. Sheesh, already.

I LIKE that the trains are using wind and solar power, and that the busses are using some biodiesel. I’m really looking forward to having a train line nearby. But let’s get the message straight, eh?

via the Bike Show

Ken Livingston, current Mayor of London who has a plan to make London the greenest city in Europe, recently had this to say about SUV drivers there: “Buying a gas-guzzing 4×4 vehicle is an individual choice, but it creates carbon emissions that contribute to global warming and harm everyone. It should be no more socially acceptable than to claim the right to dump rubbish in the street.”

One large part of the London plan to reduce traffic and pollution is the congestion charge that is applied to people who want to drive within the downtown area. A proposed revision to that charge would create an additional higher charge to drivers of larger vehicles (SUVs). Here’s a link to the complete plan on the city of London website.

I don’t think such a congestion charge would work well here simply because of the sprawling geography, but it’s an interesting idea. We do have something of that beginning with the for-pay express lanes on 394, but that only applies to single-vehicle occupants, and i don’t know how many people buy passes for that toll lane.

Another option, of course, is to change the major highways into toll roads such as in Chicago. Again though, Mpls-St. Paul is too sprawling a city to manage that, and likely a good chunk of traffic would divert to major city streets instead, just moving the problem to everyone’s front yard and creating still more sprawl from those trying to escape the mess.

Taxing the roads is the wrong approach though, and i think London is on the right track; they’re making it part of an overall plan to reduce carbon emissions in an effort to fight the source of global warming. As part of this effort, it makes sense to go after the low-hanging fruit of SUVs and other sources of energy waste. Since a congestion charge is impractical, how about changing the structure of the vehicle tax to base it on the efficiency rather than the selling price of the car? Use the money to pay for programs such as low-cost loans for homeowners to properly insulate older homes.

Here’s another nice idea: post weight limits on residential streets.

The German exchange student staying with us this year is also an avid cyclist, so it’s natural that we talk about bikes and cycling in the US -vs- in Germany. He says that there aren’t a lot of daily cyclists where he’s from (in the North), and most of them do it for sport rather than transportation. The few that do ride for transport or leisure though, ride what they call Holland bikes. They’re the typical roadster/english 3-speed-style bikes a lot of our parents and grandparents had, but haven’t been sold here new in 25 years. Well, they’re coming back. Here are a couple of interesting ones i’ve seen pop up in the last few months.

KHS Green

$270, 3-speed with coaster brake, includes fenders, rack, kickstand, bell and chaincase. It even uses the same tire size as the old Raleigh 3-speeds (ISO 590), but with a Shimano geared hub. This is the one that most recently caught my attention and made me realize that it’s becoming more of a trend.

Electra Amsterdam

(Not a direct link, stupid flash-based website. BTW, damn i hate flash websites that resize my browser. sheesh already)
Announced last year, now available, though i haven’t seen on in person yet. $550, with some nice additional features over the KHS, like alloy wheels and a generator-powered light. It’s a more modern approach in some ways, using 700c wheels, and a little more style-oriented, (I wonder know how long ‘leatherette’ grips will last) but it looks like a pretty solid deal overall.

I couldn’t help but also add this one:
Clever Cycles Bakfiets

From the clever folks who brought you the Stokemonkey. These will apparently be more in the $2500 range, but a whole lot more useful for the small family. Not a bad price when you consider it would replace a decent bike + Burley trailer or Xtracycle. Those are good solutions too, but the unified bakfiets design seems better for a dedicated bike.

There are other good commuter bikes coming out too; the new Specialized Globe, the Bianchi Castro Valley (they should have kept the drop bars), Novara Fusion, and most of the Breezer models. Most of those city bikes try to be more sporty though, and what i find interesting about the couple of bikes pictured above is that they are simple and functional, with really no pretense to be fast or sporty. This is probably what will doom them in the US market, but this is the sort of bike that anyone who is bike shopping at Target or WalMart should be buying instead. People, $270 is CHEAP for a bike – a $90 bike from a department store is simply cheap, and it simply won’t work well or last.

Twins ballpark planners design a trail to suit cyclists
(via KM)

This is good news; an important cycle path connection and it looks like some good input on the project from local users. The safety aspect is an important point, and nobody will want to ride through an enclosed tunnel if there’s any fear of someone blocking the way or waiting just out of sight. I haven’t seen reports of actual safety problems on the Greenway (despite some well-founded concerns, it being effectively a topless tunnel), but I also expect that most personal attacks (including those to cyclists) aren’t publicly reported unless there’s a death involved. The couple of cyclist attacks i have heard of seemed like just the wrong place at the wrong time, and not being targeted because of cycling.

Another interesting thing is that from the cyclist point of view, it’s a relief that something is getting done to complete some of the frustrating gaps in the Twin City area cycling network, but I wonder how the typical non-cyclist will react. There has been a lot of infrastructure work done around town over the past few years beyond the higher-profile projects like the Midtown Greenway. Miles of on- and off-street bike paths have been quietly installed, and they mostly don’t make the news perhaps because of their limited interest or low cost. However, now that there is more of an established cycling infrastructure, with more cyclists about, closing some of those aforementioned gaps is becoming more of a priority, and it ain’t going to be cheap.

In short, the era of plucking the low-hanging fruit of striping bike lanes is making way for the era of big projects, and of integrating cycling projects into nearly every infrastructure change around town. When the city of St. Paul held it’s Bicycle Summit last year, one very popular proposal was that the city officially adopt the Complete The Streets policy. In a nutshell, this policy requires that all street give equal and equally safe access to anyone using it, for any mode of transport. It’s encouraging to see this sort of thinking in the Twins ballpark planning, and we need to keep on city and highway planners on task to continue this trend.

An interesting video via Russ Stark

From the YouTube description:

Advocates from Transporation Alternatives, The Project for Public Spaces, and The Open Planning Project join “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz and Enrique Penalosa to call for New York City to consider experimenting with some physically separated bike lanes in the near future.

It’s a good short video, with some nice examples of different bike lane construction around the world. It’s interesting that London is used as an example while there are some serious cycling advocates over there trying to abolish bike lanes (with the idea that chaos leads to safer roads, in a nutshell).

I don’t think all bike lanes are wonderful or necessary, but having some physical separation on major routes would be a Good Thing. Interaction with traffic is (i think) the main deterrent to increasing the number of bike commuters. I can see the potential counter-argument that pedestrians won’t want to cross bike traffic to & from their cars, but i’d be interested to see how much of a problem it is in practice.

While watching the video, i couldn’t help but think that many of complaints about drivers would be solved by stronger enforcement of existing traffic law. Parking and turning on a bike lane should be disallowed, if it isn’t already, and enforced as such. Loading zones could be marked as allowed, otherwise cars ought to stay out.

Likewise, i can’t help but wonder how many fewer people would use a cell phone while driving if police more strictly enforced proper turn signal use?