Sharrows

Sharrows are those chevron shapes you see on streets sometimes that indicate that car drivers should be ready for bikes in the lane. It's an explicit direction to cars to share the lane. It's a feature I like, although there is a debatable downside since drivers may assume that the absence of sharrows means bikes should not be present. The most prominent example in my neck of the woods is on Dean Keeton St.


My attention was recently directed to a study (an actual! scientific! study - find it here) showing the benefits of installing sharrows, especially in reducing the risk of one of my greatest fears: dooring. Dooring is when a parallel-parked driver opens their door in front of a biker in the "door zone" who is then forced to choose, in a split second, between attempting to stop, hitting the door, or swerving into the lane (there may or may not be a car there, and there's probably not time to check). It's definitely a great way to get the heart pumping and circulate adrenaline.

The best way to avoid being doored is to ride outside the door zone. If you have to ride to the side, take the lane early when there are parallel-parked cars, and watch for tell-tales on parked cars. Brake lights switching off or interior lights turning on are a good sign that the driver-side door is about to open. I also have a habit of looking in the side-view mirror to see whether there is a person in the driver seat. I never assume that person sees me and slow down or give a wide berth in case the door opens.

When a sharrow is installed, a bike rider can have more confidence riding in the lane outside the door zone, and many of these things are not an issue.

Be safe, ride hard.

Parking

I was reminded today one of the big reasons why I commute by bike: parking. Today I am picking up my wife from the airport and had to drive to school so I can leave straight from here. I thought that I would just suck it up and pay a few bucks for parking in the garage so that I wouldn't have to hunt for a spot. The sign at the garage stated that times greater than 2-1/2 hours cost $10, so being the cheap grad student that I am, I pulled out and went hunting. After some extended searching, I found a spot about 6 blocks away from my building and squeezed my minivan into a tight parallel parking spot.
Some of you who do this every day may be rolling your eyes at my complaining, but how can you get used to this? Call me spoiled rotten, but I love passing long lines at red lights and stop signs, and I love even more rolling right up to my building without having to hunt for a spot.
And on that note, have you ever stopped to notice how much urban space is devoted to parking? Take a few minutes and imagine yourself as an alien visiting earth for the first time and trying understand why our cities are the way they are. You might be tempted to think that growing cars is a major agricultural activity by the devoted to the Mighty Automobile.

Write your senators!

A quick call to action regarding the upcoming stimulus bill. Apparently, there is all kinds of finagling for new road building projects at the expense of mass transit and rail projects. I read a recent article in Time that pointed out that our investments should be in repairs and maintenance rather than new roads and highways. You can see the reasoning below.
May I suggest a letter something like this:

Dear Senator,
I am writing to urge you please to make sensible decisions regarding transportation in the upcoming stimulus package. Mass transit and high-speed rail project fund must not be raided for further road building. In addition, highway dollars should be channeled toward repair and maintenance. This will increase safety, provide jobs, reduce the growth of sprwal, and reduce future expenses in maintenance and repair. By contrast, new road project, while they do allow for ribbon-cutting and pork boasting, only increase future maintenance burden and encourage sprawl and therefore petroleum dependence. Please resist the political expedience of new highway projects and emphasize our existing infrastructure.
sincerey,

You can find your representative here and your senators here.

Two Little Biking Rants

One for the cars:

Why do cars feel the need to accelerate and swerve to get in front of me at a stop light or stop sign!!!?? We're both going to stop anyway, and I'm probably going to pass you on your right anyway. If you don't leave me room to pass, then that's just really rude, and if you do leave me room, what's the point?

And one for the bikers:

Why not stop at stop signs? Especially when there are cars two deep in each direction, when you blow through without a care in the world, it disrupts the turn-taking and does all bike commuters a big disfavor by pissing off the drivers. I'm sympathetic to blowing stop signs on empty residential streets if you at least make a motion of slowing down, but out in the busy-traffic public? Come on!

Yeesh!

Bike Sharing in D.C.

I'm taking a quick break from writing my dissertation proposal to point out this great idea: Washington D.C. is following the example of Velib (oops, their website's english pages turn out to be in french!) in Paris, France to set up a bicycle exchange program. SmartBike DC is the name of the public/private program wherein, ClearChannel gets an advertising monopoly on bus shelters in exchange for running the low-cost program. $40/yr gets you a membership entitling you to a 3-hr no-additional-cost rental of a 3-speed bike to get around the city. The stated purpose of the program is to relieve pressure on the congested transit system, so it's aimed more at residents and people who work in the area and need to get around the central business district than at tourists who want to see the sights. The rental locations and fee structure are clearly geared toward this market segment.
Presumably someone has studied this and decided that is the most important market at present, but with the number of tourists in D.C., it seems crazy not to set up a bunch of stations around the main mall and make a short-term membership available to out-of-town visitors, too.
All in all, I'm happy to see the program. More people are becoming interested in human-powered transportation as gas prices go up. Maybe we'll see this model in more and more cities.

Gas Consumption Drops!

According to the Energy Information Administration, gas consumption in the U.S. is projected to drop this year for the first time in 17 years ago. (Did it really drop 17 years ago?!) Read the same article I did in the New York Times. This is apparently the consequence (finally) of high gas prices and a slowing economy. I wonder how the bicycle makers are doing. Interesting question: in a slowing economy with rising fuel prices, do people buy new bikes or dust off old ones and ride every once in a while instead of driving?
One piece of anecdotal evidence, which doth not a trend make: today when Ian and I biked our 1.5 km to Sun Harvest for groceries, the bike rack was full and there were at least two other bikes self-locked against the wall. I have never yet seen that at this store, which I ride to with some frequency, but the weather has been nice and it could just be coincidence.

Human Powered Car Gets Pulled Over!

Now here's a concept I can get into:

Four people pedaling a stripped out Buick Regal. It's a little funny that they got pulled over since the charges apparently were thrown out in court. Major bummer about the towing charges to get it back to the studio where it was built... Check out the full story here. Thanks to CommuteByBike.com for the tip.

Clearly this is not a motor vehicle, so does it fall under motor vehicle laws? Why would it not be OK to drive this when bikes are OK? I think we need more cars like this!

Answers to the Ultimate Question

...because the weather was beautiful: clear, sunny, cool; I had spent way too long in the cave, I mean lab, breathing diesel fumes with Thumper; and finally, in a stroke of wonderful coincidence, I passed a line of 42 cars waiting for the stop sign at Shoal Creek and 45th.

Now, what was the question???

While we're talking about why we like to be outside so much, check out this pic of our happy family enjoying the great outdoors last weekend. Hannah commented on this on her blog...