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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Just Another Day on the Nimitz

I guess this is why they named I880 after a military guy. It is a war zone out there.

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“You’re the second legislator I’ve pulled over today”

I am shocked to discover Florida Highway Patrol may have an unwritten policy of not issuing traffic tickets to Legislators:

A state trooper who said he was “trying to be nice” stopped a state legislator for speeding on I-10. But instead of writing Rep. Charles McBurney a $250 speeding ticket, the trooper, in his own words, “cut him a break” and offered him a much cheaper alternative of a $10 fine for not having proof of insurance. As a result, he got fired.

McBurney said he was not going 87 miles per hour as Trooper Charles Swindle alleged, and that his cruise control was set at 75. The lawmaker also said he did have proof of insurance, which he said Swindle didn’t request. Outraged by the trooper’s conduct, the lawmaker complained to Col. David Brierton, head of the Florida Highway Patrol — and last week the FHP fired Swindle for violating department rules, including conduct unbecoming a public employee.

Swindle has hired a lawyer and is challenging the firing and claims the patrol has a long-running unwritten “quid pro quo” policy of not issuing traffic tickets to state legislators.

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Orlando Police Officer Hits Pedestrian, Leaves Scene

Here is another outrageous story from Florida of a police officer acting with complete disregard of the law:

WFTV obtained more video Friday that shows an Orlando police officer hitting a pedestrian with his squad car. Police will only say he’s under criminal investigation, but Officer Michael Fiorentino-Tyburski is still allowed to patrol the streets.

It’s been almost three months since the pedestrian was hit at Hughey Avenue in downtown Orlando.

An investigator concluded in January that the officer was at fault for leaving the scene. The video shows the victim, Tetris Nunn, rolling over Orlando patrol car No. 8128 with Fiorentino-Tyburski behind the wheel.

On Friday, Channel 9 obtained the 911 calls and radio transmissions in the case. On the radio transmission, Fiorentino-Tyburski can be heard dodging questions his own department was asking him.

The conversation with dispatch went like this:

“Ten-four. We just got a caller for a Signal 4 at Hughey and Washington and we’re just trying to figure out if that was you,” the dispatcher said.

“I’m not there anymore. Who called it in?” asked Fiorentino-Tyburski.

“Signal 4″ is code for a crash and it was the victim who called it in on an witness’ cellphone. He said the officer hit him and left the scene.

“Did the officer say he was coming back or why did he leave if he hit you?” asked the operator.

“Uh, he just hit me and, you know what I’m saying, he was, he blamed it on me and he just took off,” said the victim.

Here is video footage of the incident. Investigators say the victim was jaywalking. Unfortunately, the ped signal isn’t visible in the video, although it does appear he was walking with a green light. The Google Streetview location of the intersection is here.

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The Last Time the NTSB Made a Bike Infrastructure Recommendation was in 1972

Each year there are tens of thousands of fatalities on the nation’s highways. A disproportionate of those are non-motorized users — bicyclists and pedestrians. Given that the NTSB has made over 13,000 safety recommendations, you might think at least some of those would relate to the dismal state of our bicycle infrastructure, right?

A search of the NTSB online database finds hardly any mention of bike safety. I could find just a single report, which simply gives general guidance that the use of bicycles should be encouraged by the DOT and Dept. of Health. It was issued in 1972 — during the Nixon Administration.

I spent over an hour trying different keywords, but could find nothing else on bikes. On the other hand, I had no trouble at all finding reports on airplanes, trains, and automobiles.

It is ironic because the NTSB was specifically created by Congress to give outside, independent advice to highway planners. State and Federal transportation agencies have been so clueless about bike planning, you would think this would have been the one area where the NTSB outside “experts” provided guidance.

So for anyone at the NTSB who might be reading this, here are a few suggestion topics:

1. Incorporating Dutch cycle guidelines into highway design manuals
2. Design of car doors to reduce/eliminate bicycle “dooring” (perhaps an interlock system in the door latch that flashes the rear hazard lights for at least 3 seconds before opening the door).
3. Improve visibility from truck cabs, so as to reduce bikes/ped collisions.
4. Designing car bonnets to reduce pedestrian injury/fatality in a collision.

I am sure NTSB staff can think of some others — if they aren’t too busy worrying about airline baby seats.

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Florida’s Speeding Cops

What is it about Florida that their government officials don’t feel the need to obey the speed limit?

A three-month Sun Sentinel investigation found almost 800 cops from a dozen agencies driving 90 to 130 mph on our highways.

Many weren’t even on duty — they were commuting to and from work in their take-home patrol cars.

The extent of the problem uncovered by the newspaper shocked South Florida’s police brass. All the agencies started internal investigations.

“Excessive speed,” Margate Police Chief Jerry Blough warned his officers, is a “blatant violation of public trust.”

The evidence came from police SunPass toll records. The Sun Sentinel obtained a year’s worth, hit the highways with a GPS device and figured out how fast the cops were driving based on the distance and time it took to go from one toll plaza to the next.

Speeding cops can kill. Since 2004, Florida officers exceeding the speed limit have caused at least 320 crashes and 19 deaths. Only one officer went to jail — for 60 days.

A cop with a history of on-the-job wrecks smashed into South Florida college student Erskin Bell Jr. as he waited at a red light in Central Florida three years ago, hitting him at 104 mph. Bell is now severely brain-damaged.

“Every day, you pray for a miracle,” said his father, Erskin Bell Sr. “Had this officer’s behavior been dealt with, maybe he would not have run into our son.”

Law enforcement officers have been notoriously reluctant to stop their own for speeding, and the criminal justice system has proven no tougher at punishing lead-foot cops, records show.

That sense of impunity infuriates many Floridians. Those concerns erupted in October, when a state trooper clocked Miami Police Officer Fausto Lopez driving 120 mph through Broward County on his way to a moonlighting job.

“They think that they have carte blanche. Who’s going to catch them? Who’s going to do anything about it?” said state Sen. Steve Oelrich, a Gainesville Republican and former sheriff.

“Something needs to be done.”

 

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Florida Secretary DOT Raises Speed Limit After Getting Ticket

Florida Dept. of Transportation Secretary Ananth Prasad got a speeding ticket for doing 44 in a 35 mph zone. Soon afterwards, the Department conducted a speed survey of the road, and raised the speed limit:

Police used driveways, side-streets, and a strip mall to catch speeding motorists. And then one night police stopped the wrong guy. State DOT Secretary Ananth Prasad. He was cited for doing 44 in a 35. “I was at fault, so she wrote the ticket and I did the driver’s ed. All is good”, says Prasad. He added, “started getting a lot of phone calls about people getting ticketed going through that stretch”.

He ordered a study.

The mathematically weighted study came back saying the road could handle a limit of 47 miles per hour. “Our study did show that it was artificially constrained”, says Prasad.

The city complained, saying the higher limit went against their efforts to create a walkable environment. Prasad prevailed the road is now posted at 45.

Business owners say the police have disappeared. “We haven’t seen them recently. Not since last six months”, says BJ Joshi, business owner.

Reporter: “That’s when they changed the limit”.

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Why Does Lindsay Lohan Still Have A Driver’s License?

In court today, Lindsay Lohan’s attorney submitted a Not Guilty plea on reckless driving charges:

Lohan is charged with reckless driving, lying to police about whether she was driving when her Porsche slammed into the back of a dump truck, and obstructing police from performing their duties. The accident occurred while Lohan and her assistant were on their way to shoot a beach scene for the television movie “Liz and Dick.” The actress told police that she wasn’t driving, but police suspect she was behind the wheel.

Lohan already has two DWI convictions, and was also caught driving on a suspended license. She has been involved in numerous accidents. The Jalopnik blog asks the obvious question: how does Lohan still have a driver’s license?

At the very least, her car insurance must be ridiculous. Lohan and driving were enough of a concern for Lifetime producers to specify that she couldn’t operate a motor vehicle while they were filming Liz & Dick, in which Lohan starred as Elizabeth Taylor (the insurance for the picture would have been too high). Just this year, she’s been involved in three accidents, one of them a hit and run.

I’m sure her high income helps with the car insurance payments, but a more troubling question is why the DMV has not taken action? Sadly, it probably isn’t because she is rich and famous. It is rare for the DMV to revoke anyone’s license, even when there is ample reason to do so. 

The tabloid press, of course, enjoys playing up Lohan’s driving antics. And it is all fun and games, until she hits a babystroller.

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World’s Most Dangerous Highway

With an official death rate of 180 per year, the N2 is perhaps the world’s most deadly highway. It was financed by the World Bank. Like most of their road projects, it was done with the purpose of speeding up motor vehicle traffic, without any regard to pedestrians or cyclists:

 On the road with me is Greg Smith, an affable Australian who works as the regional director for the International Road Assessment Programme (iRAP), an organisation that star-rates and assesses roads around the world mile by mile. Bangladesh’s road accident record is bad, but it is by no means unique. Around 1.3 million people now die every year and 50 million are injured on the road, the vast majority in poor countries such as Bangladesh. Road accidents now kill more children than HIV and Aids, malaria and diarrhoea put together.

“Basically this road is like driving a 10-tonne truck through a pedestrian mall,” Smith says. “And nobody is doing enough to stop it.”

He points to the sides of the road: no crash barriers. In the middle of the road, there is no central reservation to prevent dangerous overtaking and stop the majority of the head-on collisions. No pedestrian footpaths, no footbridges, no traffic lights or speed controls.

“They built this road with absolutely no basic safety features,” he says. “As an engineer I look at this road and all I see is a systematic failure. And this is a World Bank road. You would never ever build a road like this in a developed country.

Deaths and injuries do not factor into World Bank cost-effectiveness calculations:

At the World Bank no one wants to be linked to the N2. When I ask how they can account for an almost 50% rise in accidents since the 2005 renovation I’m told the N2 is an “old project”, that they have suspended all road building in Bangladesh because of corruption, and that a rise in accidents post-renovation is “to be expected” when there is more traffic on the roads. They say road safety is one of the Bank’s biggest priorities. And, ultimately, all the Bank did was give the loan. It’s up to the government to do the rest. It is “their” road.

“We want to see economic growth and greater access to markets associated with renovating a road,” says Ellen Goldstein, country director for the World Bank in Bangladesh. “We clearly don’t want to see hospital beds filling up. But there is definitely a financial trade-off to be made by every developing country not just with road safety but with other development issues. The ability to get to Sylhet in five or six hours is unbelievable compared to what it once was. So when you look at the huge economic benefit this brings then, of course, you will have a cost, which is the potential for fatalities and injury.”

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Parking Rightsizing

The next time merchants in your downtown demand another parking garage because of the parking “shortfall” you can recommend a radically simple solution: Shrink the size of the parking stall.

Whereas the size of a standard American parallel-parking spot is 23 to 24′ long, in the UK it is more like 20′. In France (and much of continental Europe) it is 18′.

Just imagine if the parking spots in crowded downtown areas were reduced by 6′ — that increases parking utilization by a whopping 25%.

Oh, but what about the poor SUV drivers who can’t fit their Lincoln Navigator into an 18′ stall? Well, so what? Why should cities reduce their parking supply by 1/4 to accommodate oversized SUV’s? And in any case, anyone who can afford to gas up an SUV can pay to park their vehicle in an offstreet garage.

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