Caltrans To Spend $26 Million On Widening Hwy 199

Some of the best cycling anywhere can be found in California’s remote Del Norte county. In particular, Hwy 199 running from Crescent City to Grants Pass (OR). Now Caltrans wants to make “improvements” to Hwy 199, in order to permit heavy over-sized trucks to use the highway:

Friends of Del Norte, Center for Biological Diversity, and Environmental Protection Information Center (EPIC) filed suit in state court challenging the $26 million “197/199 Safe STAA Access Project.” The project would increase unsafe heavy and oversized truck use on narrow roadways along the designated “wild and scenic” Smith River Canyon, increasing the likelihood of deadly accidents and toxic spills, especially in dangerous winter conditions. The project would harm old-growth trees and habitat for protected salmon runs and hurt tourism and local residents.

“The North Coast has been under assault by massive Caltrans projects that the agency refuses to examine for their cumulative impacts on local communities and sensitive environments,” said Gary Graham Hughes, executive director of EPIC. “For Caltrans to barge ahead with this huge project on the precious Smith River after the explosion of controversy around the Willits Bypass project in Mendocino County shows that the agency is completely oblivious to concerns of North Coast residents.”

“Another bad idea by Caltrans, trying to jam an unnecessarily wide highway into a narrow canyon despite the impacts,” said Jeff Miller with the Center for Biological Diversity. “Public distrust of Caltrans is at an all-time high with revelations of Caltrans quality-control issues on the new Bay Bridge, conflict over the massive Willits Bypass project, the need for court and federal intervention to resolve Caltrans problems with the Niles Canyon project, and the agency’s proposal to needlessly vandalize the ancient redwoods of Richardson Grove State Park.”

The purpose of the project is to create a reliever route for I5. This isn’t for the benefit of Del Norte county, as most of the trucks would just be passing through.

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Bikeshare is a Nazi Plot

Or as Krugman puts it, Nazi islamic bikes from hell:

Not, I hasten to add, because annoying conservatives is the goal per se; instead, what we’re getting is a wonderful window into the conservative psyche. Here’s Front Page magazine:

Bicycles are one of the obsessions of Mayor Bloomberg and his transportation secretary Janette Sadik-Khan. Khan is the granddaughter of Imam Alimjan Idris, a Nazi collaborator and principle teacher at an SS school for Imams under Hitler’s Mufti, Haj Amin al-Husseini. The bio of his son, Wall Street executive Orhan Sadik-Khan, frequently mentions the bombing of the family home in Dresden and surviving trying times after World War II. It neglects to mention that the times were only trying because their side was losing.
…
In partial revenge, Khan has made many New York streets nearly as impassable as those of her grandfather’s wartime Dresden.

No, this isn’t a parody.

It isn’t hard to see why conservatives are upset about Citi Bikeshare. The program is a private venture by a financial firm, not requiring  government subsidies. Conservatives hate that sort of thing.

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Another Helmet “Study”

Yet another flawed bike helmet study:

Researchers analyzed the number of U.S. bicycle deaths between 1999 and 2010 and found that states with bicycle helmet laws reported about 20 percent fewer bike-related fatalities among people younger than 16 years old.

“The impetus is that when you make it a law, parents realize it’s important and parents get their kids to do it,” said Dr. William Meehan, the study’s lead author from Boston Children’s Hospital.

About 900 people die as a result of bicycle crashes every year in the U.S. and about three quarters of those are from head injuries, according to Meehan and his colleagues.

Previous research has found that wearing a helmet may reduce a person’s risk of a head or brain injury by up to 88 percent, but few studies have looked at the effect of helmet laws on national injury and fatality rates.

If you read the actual paper, the final sentence shows the problem with the methodology:

The present study did not address the effect of helmet laws on ridership.

There are other problems. The paper (unless there is a longer version?) lacks any data, just presenting the conclusions. It does not correlate bike fatalities against a state’s overall traffic fatality rate.

However, the biggest problem with this (and all other helmet studies) is the lack of data on bike facilities. Bike helmets are no substitute for proper bike facilities. Instead of focusing on bike helmets, states need to provide safe routes for kids to ride away from the danger of motor vehicle collisions.

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Where is the Routine Accommodation?

Several years ago, the MTC adopted a Routine Accommodation policy for roads and highways in the SF Bay Area. It is a great idea, but progress on implementing the policy has been glacial. Case in point: the James Donlon Blvd extension in Pittsburg, CA.

This project will build a new highway, cutting through open space. It is being built to serve a sprawling new housing development, and to provide congestion “relief” on nearby Buchanan Rd. Despite the Routine Accommodation mandate, it is being designed to the Caltrans Rural Highway standard — meaning no bike facilities nor sidewalks. Bicyclists would be permitted to ride on the shoulder, but it will be alongside traffic moving at 55+ mph highway speeds. This part of Contra Costa county lacks good bike routes, relegating cyclists to busy arterials. If this highway is to be built at all, it should include a Class I bike facility.

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MARC Is Spending $153 Million On New Railcars Without Bike Accommodation

MARC is one of the few commuter rail operations in the US that still does not permit any on-board bike access. Not even the off-peak and reverse-commute runs. By comparison, some heavily used systems like BART Caltrain offer considerable bike accommodation — even during peak hours.

One of the excuses heard from MARC staff is that bikes could become a lethal “projectile” in the event of a collision. This is one of those myths that just won’t die. There has been decades of operational experience all over the world, and I have yet to find a single instance of a passenger being impaled by a flying bicycle. And that isn’t to say it isn’t theoretically possible, but then again it is theoretically possible for anything onboard a train to become a projectile — strollers, luggage, iPads, or other passengers.

Even if one accepts the bike-projectile-of-death theory, there always the option of installing bike racks. And what better opportunity than a $153 million order for new Bombardier bi-levels:

Governor Martin O’Malley announced today that the Maryland Transit Administration (MTA) is investing $153 million to acquire fifty-four (54) new “multi-level” passenger rail cars for the MARC commuter rail system. The cars, manufactured by Bombardier Transport, will replace older cars that have reached the end of their service life, allowing MARC to provide additional seating capacity while expanding its existing fleet. The Board of Public Works approved the purchase today.

Seating capacity on board is greater than those of the cars that they will replace. They will come in three variations. Fifteen (15) new “cab cars” that contain an engineer’s compartment for operation will seat 127 passengers. Thirty-four (34) “trailer cars” will hold 142 passengers, and five (5) cars containing bathroom facilities will hold 132 passengers. The new cars will have a useful life of up to 40 years. When they come online, MTA will retire twenty-six (26) single-level passenger cars and twelve (12) Gallery style cars. Overall, the MARC fleet will expand by sixteen (16) cars.

Oh, and the new cars will have zero bike racks. Nor any other kind of on-board bike access.

80% of the funding came from the Federal government. Federal transit grants come with a long checklist of requirements, including ADA, Buy-America, and Civil Rights. Bike accommodation really needs to become part of the Federal grant approval process. No Federal transit dollars should pay for this kind of crap.

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Canadian Bike Helmet Police

Perhaps ANSI should add “getting punched in the face by the police” to their bike helmet testing methodology:

A video showing a Vancouver man being hit in the face by a Vancouver police officer is now being reviewed by the department’s professional standards section.

The alleged incident happened Tuesday as Andi Shae Akhavan rode his bike, without a helmet, through downtown Vancouver.

Akhavan says he was stopped by two plainclothes officers and as they began ticketing him, he inquired if they had “something better to do.”

According to Akhavan, that’s when he was handcuffed and punched in the mouth, driving one of his teeth through his lip.

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GOP Legislator Defends Bike Tax, Says Bicycles Pollute More Than Cars

I thought the GOP opposed tax increases? Apparently, they make an exception for environmentalists:

Representative Ed Orcutt (R – Kalama) does not think bicycling is environmentally friendly because the activity causes cyclists to have “an increased heart rate and respiration.”

This is according to comments he made in an email to a constituent who questioned the wisdom of a new bike tax the legislature is considering as part of a large transportation package.

We spoke with Rep. Orcutt to confirm the email’s authenticity and to get further clarification.

“You would be giving off more CO2 if you are riding a bike than driving in a car,” he said. However, he said he had not “done any analysis” of the difference in CO2 from a person on a bike compared to the engine of a car.

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Colorado Supreme Court Overturns Bike Ban

Score one for the good guys:

The Colorado Supreme Court on Monday overturned Black Hawk’s controversial ban on biking inside the gambling town’s limits. Black Hawk’s 2010 bike ban violated state law that allows local municipalities to prohibit bikes from streets only when an alternate and nearby route is provided, the court wrote, siding with three cyclists who were ticketed for violating the ban.

The three appealed their $68 tickets — issued in June 2010 — all the way to the state’s highest court, which heard oral arguments in November.

The city of Black Hawk got creative in the case, like arguing that Colorado’s 3-foot passing law made it impossible to accommodate bikes. The court wasn’t buying any of it, agreeing with the cyclists on all points.

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Sharrows Are Not A Bike Plan

Once upon a time, sharrows might have seemed like a good idea for special situations. But now they are a way for communities to do “pretend” bike plans. Just stripe a bunch of sharrows on streets and voila! we have a bike network — without having to make messy political compromises on parking and lane removal. A great way for city councils to pretend to care about bicycling, without actually accomplishing anything.

For example, here is a map Alhambra’s proposed bike “plan“. As you can see, it consists almost entirely of Class III routes:

Bike advocates are correct in describing this as the worst kind of 1970′s bike planning:

Vincent Chang, co-founder of Bike SGV, said for local bikers, the draft plan came up short. It doesn’t have enough physical bike lanes, he said, and misses major streets like Fremont Avenue and Valley Boulevard altogether.

“I think it definitely needs a little more work,” Chang said. “To me it seems that this plan as it stands right now it’s not really effective, it would have been a plan in the 70s or something like that. It’s just really disappointing to be frank.”

Another example is Oklahoma City. Their plan will “stripe” some 200 miles of “bikeways”. You may think 200 miles of bikeways is awesome — but note that I put the words stripe and bikeways in quotes. That 200 miles of bikeways is all Class III infrastructure, with no special bike accommodation:

OKLAHOMA CITY — The first of more than 200 miles of bike routes, including shared lanes or “sharrow” bike lanes, are being installed in Oklahoma City. The sharrows are pavement markings which, along with new signage marking the routes, remind motorists to share the road with bicyclists and convey that the street is a preferred bike route. They are different from bike lanes because they do not allocate space just for the cyclist.

“Sharrows are being installed on streets like Hefner Road and NW 19th Street that are popular with bicyclists, but are too narrow for conventional bike lanes,” said transportation planner Randall Entz. “When they are installed downtown as a part of Project 180 renovations, they will also help to keep cyclist out of the door swing zones of parked cars.”

Here is a view of Hefner Rd. How can anyone seriously argue this road is too narrow for bike lanes?

View Larger Map

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This Bike Path Funded by Coca Cola

Does your city have a soda tax? Perhaps it should consider one.

This past election saw two Californian cities, Richmond and El Monte, vote on soda-tax ballot measures. Richmond’s Measure N would have imposed a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on sugar-sweetened beverages. The measure would have raised millions in cash-strapped city with a high obesity rate. A companion measure, Measure O, asked if the funds should be spent on “sports and health education programs aimed at local youths.”

The reasons for the tax is clear:

Children would have been the biggest beneficiaries of the measure. The soda tax would have helped children learn about nutrition so they could have made better decisions, and hopefully stopped lethal cycles of unhealthy eating passed down by their parents. About 50 percent of all children in Richmond are obese or overweight and 70 percent of them will most likely be unhealthy as adults. With statistics like these, supporters of the soda tax felt that drastic measures had to be taken.

Of course, the soda companies poured millions into defeating the measures. Richmond’s Measure N got just 33% of the vote. El Monte’s measure did even worse. Despite the electoral defeat, proponents aren’t giving up. They are promising to return in 2014 — and not just in Richmond.

Proponents of the soda tax are in it for the long-haul, and have good reason to be optimistic. The economy has devastated city finances, making the soda tax an attractive revenue source. And if the tax addresses a health epidemic, that sweetens (no pun intended) the deal.

Thus, I think it inevitable that cities enact soda taxes — and this presents a new opportunity for bike/ped advocates to fund projects.

We already know that cities with good bike and ped infrastructure have much lower obesity rates. If a city levies a soda tax as an anti-obesity measure, then there is strong argument to be made that some of the windfall go towards things like bike and ped infrastructure, and safe-routes-to-school programs.

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