This little video is one of the best explanations i’ve seen to promote good riding techniques in traffic. It’s produced by Cycling Savvy, a program with the Florida Bicycle Association. They have collected a lot of great information on that website, good job.

The video shows clearly one of the biggest hurdles for many new commuters, and one of the biggest sources of stress while riding in traffic: finding a place to be on the road. Bicycle riders have full legal access to the roads, and yet many drivers (knowingly or not) intimidate cyclists who are trying to ride those roads. Fear of being “in the way” of motorized traffic makes the cyclist constantly compromise their road position and although the compromise position can feel the least stressful, it’s often also the least safe.

(Don’t bother with the sidewalk argument, bikes (at least for able riders over about 12) don’t really belong there. It’s patently unsafe for the cyclist, drivers and pedestrians alike. So, we’re riding in the street. A quick link to the Minnesota Traffic Laws as they pertain to bicycles is in order. I’m also talking about the vast majority of roads that don’t have a proper bike lane and where there’s no viable independent bike path.)

Once you’re in the street, you’re dealing with widely varying road conditions (cracks, potholes, broken bits that fell off of cars) and traffic. Riding a bicycle with cars going past faster than you can ride is a very uncomfortable situation, and one you can’t fully appreciate unless you’ve done it. I firmly believe that we’d be better off requiring all drivers to spend a week cycling everywhere for their transportation, but i digress. You naturally don’t want to be near cars, so you ride on the edge of the road, or the gutter, which adds the stress of reduced lateral margin plus the accumulation of all the dirt and garbage that collects in that space of the road.

Riding on the shoulder is fine as long as there’s enough shoulder for cars to pass safely. A safe pass is legally defined as a 3-foot margin around the overtaken vehicle (the bicycle in our case being the vehicle). As clearly shown in the animation above, when there isn’t at least three feet of space around the cyclist, a car will try to ’sneak by’ with minimal passing space while staying in their own lane. Countless times i’ve had this happen to me when riding too far to the right. It’s like drivers forget how to change lanes, or fear to do it.

The solution is to ride fully in the lane. This way the driver has to choose a lane; they have to either pass or slow down. They may honk, at which you wave and smile and continue on your way. It feels presumptuous to do this as a cyclist, but it’s truly the safest thing to do. You’re removing the bad compromise option of letting the car get by without a lane change and making the lane decision a binary one, as it is for all motorized road users. This lane or that one, period.

Don’t be a dick about it, of course – if there’s a widening in the road and a couple of cars behind, try to let ‘em by. Do unto others, and all that. But especially if you’re on a 4-lane road and there’s no shoulder, that right lane should be all yours. Plant those tires in the right car tire track and ride on, friend. In Minnesota, where i live, using a full lane also gives you the very necessary ability to wind around potholes and other road hazards without weaving in and out of traffic.

The nutshell for all of this to remove ambiguity in traffic. Ambiguity is one of the biggest problems with cycling safety in traffic. When drivers complain that cyclists are breaking the rules of the road (because they all run red lights and stop signs!), it’s often the entirely realistic fear of a collision. When a cyclist and one or more drivers both approach a 4-way stop, say, the legal and rational expectation is that both parties will at least slow toward a stop to see who will get clear priority to proceed, just as you’d expect if it were all cars. When the cyclist doesn’t stop, or at least slow enough to make their place in line obvious, the likelihood of a crash and stress for everyone increases greatly. It’s worth saying that likewise when the driver tries to be nice and wave the cyclist through, they’re contributing to the problem.

Between this and the recent bacteria-powered batteries, it looks more and more like the next wave of tech advances are going to come from some of our tiniest co-habitators. How dumb will we look for the whole antibacterial soap thing when we’re embracing and farming bacteria as a way of life?

I love the whole idea of science coming full circle, that the more we learn about our planet, plants and animals, the more solutions we find right under our noses (or in them, as the case may be). Our future might indeed not be a computerized, mechanized world, but a world that looks much simpler and more agrarian than we have had in centuries.

As others have noted, many cyclists have long used this common sense approach to riding in traffic. When you’re earning your own momentum with real physics class-style sweat-inducing work, making a complete stop becomes a tedious thing. Boo hoo! you say, you’re riding a bike for exercise, right? What’s the big deal?

Try this scenario: you’re riding a bike home alone, late at night and hit a red light. There isn’t a car within view, but current traffic law says you should wait several minutes there until the light changes to proceed. No matter how tony the neighborhood, a pedestrian wouldn’t stand in the middle of an intersection waiting for a light to change; you would feel too vulnerable, and it’s the same for a cyclist. Substitute being alone for being cold, riding in the middle of winter, and it’s a health issue too.

The counter-argument is the slippery slope; that giving special consideration to cyclists will allow all sorts of law-flouting by 2-wheeled hooligans. That’s exactly what we’re planning, people, full-on cycling mayhem in the streets. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This proposed legislation is quasi-important not because it’s allowing cyclists to stop only optionally, it’s important because it introduces into law the idea that cyclists are a different class of road user. This could backfire, of course, and lead to further laws that would relegate cyclists to permanent 2nd-class status on the roads, requiring use of cycle paths, etc. Or it could lead to cementing our place on the roads and recognizing that (just like oversize trucks, for example), we belong on the roads but with some minor modifications that allow for the reality and nature of the vehicle.

So go vote already (at the end of the article).

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.

One by-product of not biking to work every day is that i’ve had a lot more radio time lately in the car. There was an interesting story on MPR this morning about a recent political poll showing the radical differences between the central city and suburbs. The thumbnail version is that the closer you live to downtown, the more liberal you probably are. Within the city proper, 77% of the residents identify as democrats. Get to the inner ring of suburbs, and just over half of the residents call themselves democrats, and once you’re in the exurbs, there are 10% more republicans.

This seems somewhat expected, given typical urban statistics, but it still makes for an interesting map. According to the radio story and the people interviewed, the new republican stronghold in the state is a ring of suburbs that are 95% white, affluent, and somewhat isolationist in nature. They’re people who want their own space, and can afford both larger properties and the additional transportation cost of living away from their fellow man. This from Rockford, MN mayor Mike Beyer: “You’re not part of an apartment complex, which is a communal area. Communal to me is social, and social goes to socialism. But here, it’s your space, your time, your business, and that’s generally conservative people.”

Yes, all of us in the city live in apartments are are socialists. We have to sign papers and carry cards.

Those values that are apparently driving the rich white conservatives out of town are the opposite of what i look for in where to live. I like knowing my neighbors and shopping in places where they recognize me and having the option more often than not to walk or bike for an errand because i only need to go a few blocks. I love realizing that i haven’t started my car in over a week, and that my kids ask to walk to the store for a snack or to bike to their friend’s house. There’s security in knowing that my neighbors and friends are looking out for each other. I have my house and yard and our own playset, but those features are no more important to me than my front porch, or the alley.

The political polarization is interesting in light of the fight over the recent transportation bill here. It was passed over the governor’s veto, and that’s a good thing. The current federal administration, seems to think that they can continue to cut taxes while spending gobs of money on things like an overseas war. Our governor, likewise, seems to believe that we can maintain even our piss-poor standard of roads in the state let alone new bridge construction and other infrastructure maintenance without any new money coming in. This despite a $6 BILLION shortfall claimed by the DOT for projects scheduled in the next few years. Who’s paying for this? Our kids are. Yes, it’s all on borrowed money, so Chinese investors own us now. Our jobs are being shipped overseas, and soon we’ll all be working the counter saying, “Would you like shrimp chips with that?”.

It’s also interesting because more specifically (and speaking generally) the very conservatives who live in the outer suburbs and do the majority of the driving (living further from work and having no public transportation options) are the ones who refuse to pay for anything while still demanding more road capacity. The only thing they’re actually conserving is their own wallet. Residents in the city get grief for wanting to build things like light rail as a way to reduce congestion, but we’re generally willing to help pay for it. This is conservation on a much larger scale, and it takes bigger thinking than the view from the steering wheel.

This is one reason i’d rather ride my bike.

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.

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?