Posted in bicycling, tagged Fremont on September 28, 2016 | 2 Comments »
Over the past year, Fremont has been busy striping new and improved bike lanes. Many of the projects are quite good, in particular the road-diet on Paseo Padre, and buffered bike lanes to the BART station. But then, they went and did this monstrosity:
Before this right-hook bike-lane went in, the street had just a single right-turn lane. So the new configuration just made things much more dangerous.
Posted in bicycling on September 23, 2016 | 3 Comments »
Don’t blame Congress, blame bike racks for the lack of research funding for the Zika virus:
When asked why the NIH did not choose to purchase cheaper bike racks, the NIH said the bike shelters are a “long-term investment.”
“The shelters help to protect bicycles from the elements, which in turn, protects the employee’s investment with biking to work and hopefully encourages others to commute by bicycle,” Moss said. “Promotion and support of bicycling as an alternative commuting option is essential for NIH compliance with federal guidelines to promote environmental stewardship and employee health benefits.”
The NIH referred questions about the price of the bike shelters to the company and the NIH Contracting Office.
The NIH has said it has “no money” to fight the Zika virus.
The typical cost for a sheltered bike rack is on the order of $10,000. The NIH purchased two of them.
Posted in bicycling, tagged helmets on August 26, 2016 | 1 Comment »
You see these stories in the news all the time. A bicyclist gets hit by a car and suffers a major head injury. It could have been much worse, we are told, but thankfully he was wearing a helmet. A shattered bike helmet is shown, with the implication that this could have happened to his skull:
While pictures like this are scary and dramatic, they are actually further evidence that bike helmets are ineffective. This helmet did not function in the way it was intended. In fact, it failed spectacularly.
Let’s review the physics of a bike helmet. They are constructed out of polystyrene foam (styrofoam) which is supposed to compress in a collision. This compression spreads the force out and reduces the acceleration of the brain as it smashes into the inside of the skull. At least that is how it is supposed to work — under ideal laboratory conditions where the impact force is perpendicular to the helmet. Actual collisions are chaotic events involving complex interactions. When subject to an oblique impact, the styrofoam will typically crack and break off without compressing. This is what appears to have occurred in the helmet shown above. If there is no compression, then it is unlikely the helmet absorbed the impact.
What is unfortunate about these kinds of news stories is that they give false hope about the effectiveness of bike helmets. And rarely do these stories ever mention the dangerous road infrastructure that caused the crash to happen in the first place.
Posted in bicycling, tagged helmets on August 25, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
We all know that mandatory helmet laws discourage cycling. But even after such laws are repealed, the effects can linger:
The city of Dallas has decided that Edward Adkins doesn’t need a bicycle helmet or a bogus fine and arrest warrant hanging over his head.
Adkins received a $10 ticket for failing to wear a bicycle helmet in September 2014, even though the Dallas City Council had changed the city’s safety ordinance months earlier to only apply to minors. Adkins said he couldn’t afford the ticket, which caused the fine to balloon to $259 and turn into a warrant for his arrest.
Adkins said he didn’t show up to court because he didn’t have the money to pay and thought he was guilty. He didn’t know the law didn’t require him to wear a helmet until a reporter told him.
He ended up giving away his bicycle because he didn’t want to pay for a helmet.
Posted in bicycling, tagged NTSB on August 5, 2016 | 2 Comments »
The NTSB has taken the highly unusual step of actually investigating a bicycle crash:
The National Transportation Safety Board is investigating the Kalamazoo bicycle crash that killed five people and injured four.
Officials with the NTSB confirmed Friday the agency is investigating the crash, and said its team already is in Kalamazoo.
NTSB spokesman Eric Weiss said the team will look at all aspects of the incident, including how it happened and how the truck hit the bicyclists. He said the team will reconstruct the crash and find out if there are any safety issues that could be improved, from the vehicles involved to the road.
Weiss said the NTSB is investigating because the agency has taken an interest in the case, and not at the request of local authorities.
“This is such a singular event that we wanted to look at the issues behind it,” said Weiss, who acknowledged it’s unusual for the NTSB to investigate crashes involving bicycles.
Posted in bicycling on July 21, 2016 | 7 Comments »
Bulb-outs, while useful in most cases, do have a number of drawbacks. They are very expensive to build, and often cause conflicts for bike lanes. It is much better to do these projects as full-blown Protected Intersections — which as it turns out can be much cheaper:
In 2010, Berkeley received a Safe Routes to School grant to add pedestrian bulb outs at this busy intersection. Hundreds of students cross this section everyday, which connects the North Berkeley Branch Library with neighboring parks and schools. Bulb outs shorten crossing distances for walking and place pedestrians where they are more visible to drivers. However, because bulb outs cause water to drain differently on the street, they are costlier to design.
When the project was delayed due to engineering staff constraints, Caltrans threatened to rescind the grant to fix the intersection. To their credit, Berkeley staff jumped into action. They quickly figured that the drainage design challenges are minimized by moving the bulb outs into the street. This move allowed them to maintain existing curb lines and drainage. Then, by moving the bike lane behind the bulb outs – abracadabra! – Berkeley created a protected intersection.
All bulb-out projects should be done this way.
Posted in bicycling, tagged Oakland on May 18, 2016 | Leave a Comment »
The good news is that planners are finally embracing cycle-tracks. The bad news is that they are still designing substandard cycle-tracks.
A previous posting discussed a substandard cycle-track in Alameda. On the other side of the channel in Oakland, we find yet another example of half-assed bike infrastructure. Oakland bike planners are proposing to build cycle-tracks on Fruitvale Ave. The cycle-tracks would run from the BART station, under I880, and out towards the Bay. For the most part, the project is satisfactory — except for the segment running past I880. It is that segment which is by far the most dangerous for cyclists. And it is in that segment where the cycle-tracks would disappear entirely. Bicyclists would have no physical protection from the heavy traffic coming on and off the freeway.
Even worse, the plan would sandwich an unprotected bike lane between a right-turn lane and through traffic. This is a proven failure, as demonstrated most spectacularly last week in San Francisco.
