Bicycle Austin Blog

Austin Clean Water is working on Duval between 38th and 40th in the north-bound bicycle lane.  The surface of the lane is now uneven because temporary cold mix asphalt has been used to patch the road.  The project will continue approximately for the next 30 days then a permanent and even surface will be installed in the bicycle lane and the bicycle lane line restriped.  Some of you might have found its current condition nearly unrideable but rest assured that it will be restored.

Nathan Wilkes

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[Believe it or not, I agree with you that there should be more posts directly relating to bicycling in Austin, but until then... onto the blog post.]

A TV news story from the Twin Cities in Minnesota: SAWKAR: The safe bicyclist

The following is my e-mail to them:

Subject: “SAWKAR: The safe bicyclist”
Date: Thu, 01 May 2008 22:20:27 -0500
To: KSTP Investigative Team <inve...@kstp.com>

Regarding:
“SAWKAR: The safe bicyclist”
http://kstp.com/article/stories/S429050.shtml?cat=118
– both video and web story

I hope that someone in your office will take the time to read this. I have been a long-time advocate and student of bicycling and road safety so I suspect that my comments will be worth your while.

* Running another vehicle off of the road is a dangerous act for the victim. Oftentimes, the level of negligence in running another vehicle off of the road is criminal. Going through a stop sign without stopping on a bicycle is not necessarily dangerous to anyone (aside from the bicyclist), though if it is dangerous to others. In the latter case, it is the danger created that is an issue, not merely the fact the bicyclist went through a stop sign.

* Your investigative reporter was likely breaking at least two laws when interviewing the bicyclists while driving on the street:
When passing, a vehicle must generally complete the pass and not drive side-by-side with the vehicle being passed. In Minnesota, a motor vehicle must only pass a bicyclist at a safe margin (the video indicated an unsafe margin) and explicitly never less than three feet (the video possibly indicated this as well). Having a conversation between a motor vehicle and a bicyclist while in motion, should a collision occur, is likely to be cited as a traffic violation.

* Check the speed of motor vehicles when they have no reason to slow down other than the posted legal speed limit. (This is *not* the same as checking MnDOT data of a street for what the 85th-percentile motorist does.) You will find that motorists habitually break the law in this regard.

* Watch where motorists stop when approaching stop signs (or traffic lights) if they indeed come to a complete, legal stop at all. Many, perhaps most, motorists will stop ahead of the legal stop line. Numerous collisions with pedestrians and bicyclists have occurred because motorists often (or typically) fail to stop *at* stop signs. The only bicycle-car *traffic* collision that I have been involved in in my twenty-five years (and tens of thousands of miles) of bicycling resulted from a motorist failing to stop at the proper place at a stop light.
Note that the last on-street video clip in your segment shows a motorist failing to stop at a stop sign (while the bicyclist stops), yet your commentator fails to mention the motorist’s violation. Is a bias of yours against bicyclists showing through in this case?

* The implication for why bicyclists failing to stop at stop signs is a moral issue rather than just a legal issue was not addressed in your story, yet it was assumed that it is a moral issue. Indeed one could say that breaking any traffic law is a moral issue, but then the suggestion that bicyclists stand out in breaking laws when compared to motorists would need to be addressed if the suggestion is that bicyclists are doing something wrong while motorists are not. Aside from the much greater danger to others created when a motorist breaks a traffic law as opposed to a bicyclists breaking a traffic law, the general frequency of law breaking between bicyclists and motorists has never been compared scientifically (to my knowledge and to the knowledge of many prominent figures in bicycle or motor law).

* Indeed, Idaho has an existing law that permits bicyclists to treat stop signs as yield signs, just as the bicyclists shown in your story have done. In addition, other jurisdictions are currently considering similar laws. The fact that other communities, similar to Minnesota’s, do not consider a bicyclist treating a stop sign as a yield to be a traffic infraction gives a strong indication that it is not inherently an immoral act.
Motor vehicle laws were essentially written for and because of the nature of motor vehicles. There are some existing laws in every state that differentiate bicyclists from the main class of motorists, essentially because of the difference in nature of the two modes of transportation. Those laws are growing in number, including in Minnesota.
Maritime “traffic” laws have a significant dependency on the size and propulsion method of the boat vehicle to which the laws apply. There is little reason to prevent such differentiation in laws for urban street traffic.

* You imply in a paragraph that obeying the law means wearing a helmet. What are the laws in Minnesota and/or the Twin Cities requiring helmet use on bicycles? There are none. You also suggest that a bicyclist not wearing a helmet gives bicyclists in general a bad name. Keep in mind that helmets do nothing to prevent a collision with a motor vehicle, nor do their use in themselves indicate an adherence to law.

* While the fault of the bicyclist may be indicated in half of the collisions in Minnesota, what is left out of that statistic is that in the cases where the fault goes to the bicyclist, the at-fault bicyclist is on average much younger than the cases where the bicyclist was not at fault. Furthermore, many of the collisions between motorists and bicyclists are with bicyclists of an age less than twelve. The idea that adult bicyclists are at fault in about half of the collisions is simply incorrect.

* Bicyclist safety and bicyclist behavior are indeed important. I am not disagreeing with you about the need to address both of those. However, your exhibition of bigotry(?) by exaggerating the significance of the misbehavior of bicyclists is not a healthy way to go.

* Do I follow the traffic laws?
As a bicyclist, I follow the traffic laws as or more closely than nearly(?) every motorist in Austin. I am still threatened with violence by motorists and at least daily put in danger by a negligent motorist breaking the law.

Tom Wald
Native Minneapolitan (23 years)
Austin, Texas resident
Austin Bicycle Advisory Council, councilmember
League of Bicycling Voters (Austin), board director
University of Texas Orange Bike Project, co-chair

Callie Long hit bicyclist Brett Walrath with her Lexus in 2003 and left him for dead. She was caught, tried, and convicted, but given only five years of probation. She paid no fine, and as long as she doesn’t violate her probation, will face no jail time. Adding insult to injury, the newspaper article about the slap on the wrist shows an ad for a car right smack dab in the middle. (Lubbock Online on the conviction, and on the sentence)

The Austin Cycling Association, Yellow Bike Project and League of Bicycling Voters will host an Austin City Council Candidate Forum on the evening of April 7 at the LCRA Board Room, 3700 Lake Austin Blvd., 78703 (time to be announced). The City Council election for places 1, 3 and 4 will be held on Saturday, May 10 … during Bike Month.

This is our chance to show council candidates that bicycle issues will play a critical role in Austin’s future. And the best way to demonstrate our significance is to show up in mass! Stay tuned for more info, including results from the LOBV candidate survey at http://www.lobv.org. Here’s the list of candidates who have announced intentions to run, although we won’t have definite candidates until the March 10 filing deadline.

City Council Races*= incumbent

Place 1 Lee Leffingwell* Jason Meeker Allen Demling

Place 3 Jennifer Kim* Randi Shade Ken Weiss

Place 4 (Betty Dunkerley’s seat) Cid Galindo Robin Cravey Laura Morrison Samuel Osemene Jennifer Gale

William F. Buckley, Jr. died today. He was often cited as a conservative, but apparently in his 1965 NYC mayoral campaign he had proposed “an elevated bikeway on Second Avenue” and “bicycle lanes on major thoroughfares.”

I just want to remind people that using bicycles as an urban transportation solution transcends a liberal/conservative divide. Bicycles are a pragmatic, functional, and efficient component of a healthy urban transportation system.

Some see transportation bicycling only as a hippie/liberal thing, but only so long as they stay in their caves (and strangely, a lot of people want to stay in their caves).

Sources: Statesman, NY Times, Wikipedia

So, in many central areas of Austin, there has been a growing incidence of break-ins (burglaries) of houses recently. The perpetrators kick in the front door and steal. Unfortunately, this happened to a friend of mine in December. She had been riding the bus to work (at my recommendation - after all it is free for us), and I asked her had she been keeping it up? No. She drove to work. I, perhaps not very consolingly, made the observation that if she buses to work, her car is in the driveway and thus, the thieves will not come, most likely.

As I worried about my own safety after her break-in, I was more reassured since I do bike commute and my trusty but not-often-used car sits in the driveway. I also have a territorial dog, so I figured I’m not a good target!

Keep up the biking or busing and decrease your likelihood of a break-in …. not statistically proven but still fun to consider. (I think the dog thing actually has been proven though.)

There are several upcoming meetings where bicyclists can offer input.

Austin City Council meeting on Thursday, February 28, 2008 at City Hall, 301 West 2nd Street.

City Council will consider two issues of interest to us: (1) Approve the recommendations of the Street Smarts Task Force, and (2) Approve an agreement providing space for the Yellow Bike Project. For people who don’t feel like going to the meeting at 10:00 a.m. and hanging around until late in the evening waiting for a specific topic to be considered, you can go to City Hall and provide a very brief statement at your convenience, at any time as early as three days before the meeting. Mayor Wynn will read everyone’s comments during the meeting. The agenda item numbers will be posted on Friday, Feb. 22.

The Street Smarts Task Force Report can be found on the City of Austin website at http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/streetsmarts.htm

————————————————————-

CAMPO public input meetings:

The Capital Area Metropolitan Planning Organization must approve all federal funding to be used on transportation projects in the Central Texas region. The projects up for consideration are posted on their website at http://www.campotexas.org

People should attend one of the four public meetings–whichever one is convenient for you–and the public hearing on March 17, 2008. This hearing is one of the few opportunities we have left when the Transportation Policy Board must accept public input.

COMMUNITY MEETINGS
Austin - Wednesday, February 20, 6-8 p.m. – 505 Barton Springs Road, Austin

Round Rock Public Library – Thursday, February 28, 6-8 p.m.  – 216
East Main Street, Round Rock

Bluebonnet Trail Elementary – Tuesday, March 4, 6-8 p.m. – 11316
Farmhaven, Austin

San Marcos Activity Center – Wednesday, March 5, 6-8 p.m.  – 501 East
Hopkins Street, San Marcos

PUBLIC HEARING
Policy Board Public Hearing – Monday, March 17, 6 p.m.  – University
of Texas Thompson Center, Room 2.102, Dean Keeton and Red River,
Austin

CAMPO will be considering two sets of proposals. The first ones are TIP amendments for 2008-2011. The second set consists of 60 MM project applications for $122.9 million, including 16 bicycle/pedestrian projects for $14.2 million, but only $35.5 million is available for Metropolitan Mobility (MM) funding. CAMPO policy requires that 15% of MM ($5.3 million) be allocated for bike/ped projects.

The projects may be found under agenda items 6 and 7 at the CAMPO board’s last meeting on Feb. 4, 2008. The following list is a partial list of projects being considered. For details, see the CAMPO website at http://www.campotexas.org
SURFACE TRANSPORTATION PROGRAM (STP) METROPOLITAN MOBILITY (MM) PROPOSALS

City of Austin MoPAC Bike Bridge: $2.5 million (Total project cost: $3.9 million) for Barton Creek Bicycle Bridge at Mopac.

City of Austin Del Curto Path: $0.8 million (Total project cost: $1.0 million) for shared use path along Del Curto from Bluebonnet to Lightsey and on Lightsey from Del Curto to Clawson.

City of Round Rock Brushy Creek Trail: $2.4 million (Total project cost $3.0 million) for constructing two trail segments which will complete gaps along the Brushy Creek and Lake Creek trails.

CTRMA Hwy. 183-A Path: $1.2 million (Total project cost $2.5 million) for concrete shared use path along 183-A from FM 1431 to Brushy Creek.

City of Austin Little Walnut Creek Trail: $1.5 million (Total project cost $1.9 million) for concrete trail along Little Walnut Creek from Springdale Rd. to the MoKan RR ROW (near Johnny Morris Rd.).

University of Texas bicycle parking: $46,000 (Total project cost $74,000) for bicycle racks and bicycle lockers on UT campus.

Notable STP MM sidewalk proposals:

TxDOT MLK/FM 969 Sidewalks: $1.5 million (Total project cost $2.0 million) for sidewalks along MLK Blvd. from IH 35 to US 183.

TxDOT Decker Ln./FM 3177 Sidewalks: $1.2 million (Total project cost $1.5 million) for sidewalks along Decker Ln. from US 290 to FM 969.

TRANSPORTATION IMPROVEMENT PROGRAM (TIP) AMENDMENTS FOR 2008-2011

City of Austin bike routes: $2.0 million (Total project cost: $8.1 million) for bike routes in the Austin Metro Area.

City of Austin Northern Walnut Creek Trail: $1.3 million (Total project cost: $2.0 million) to construct Walnut Creek Trail.

City of San Marcos Aquarena Springs/Post Rd. Bikeway: $0.7 million (Total project cost: $1.5 million) to construct bike trail between Texas State Univ. and Aquarena Springs.

City of Austin Jollyville Rd. Bike Crossing: $21,000 (Total project cost: $0.8 million) to improve bike crossing at Arboretum Blvd.

City of Hutto Cottonwood Trail, Phase II: $0.1 million (Total project cost: $0.6 million) to construct Cottonwood Trail in Hutto.

Travis County Gilleland Creek Trail, Phase II: $0.1 million (Total project cost: $0.6 million) to construct concrete trail along Gilleland Creek from Pflugerville City Limits to Northeast Metro Park.
Safe Routes to School: Various projects from Cities of Austin, Florence, Taylor, and Pflugerville.

Also notable: City of Round Rock has a project for Wyoming Springs Rd. which does not adhere to CAMPO’s policy requiring bicycle facilities with all projects. The project description says, “Sidewalks for pedestrians and bicycles.” Sidewalks are not among the facilities considered appropriate for bicycles.

The Street Smarts Task Force–a group of some 30 people designated by the mayor and city to make recommendations for promoting bicycling and making it safer–recently concluded its work. The final report is now circulating through city boards and commissions and will be presented to the City Council on February 28. (You can see the final report at the bottom of http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/council/streetsmarts.htm, although it’s the not the pretty version, which hasn’t been posted yet.)

The task force members had a lot of talent and expertise, although I wonder a bit about the woman who asked pointedly during the second meeting, “Why are we talking so much about bicycles?” I do think the final product is worthy of commendation, which is just the other side of China from condemnation, although it did give men like me a pause to think of a condom nation, with everyone playing it safe. Unfortunately, this report–like so many created by task forces–faces the prospect of withering away in a file drawer, thousands of words carefully crafted just to be laid to rest in a morgue of type, with words questioning themselves in eternity. “Oh why was I born with an ‘i’ instead of an ‘e,’” laments “insure.” Until it’s neighbors “need to” and “the focus” yell, “Shut up ya whiner!” and  the tenant above–”tht”–screams, “At least you didn’t end up a typo!” and “must also focus,” the phrase with the split infinitive cries to be reunited…until the chorus of words and syllables and utterances realizes that it is making no sound at all. Then one day, little Larry Leonard lisps in alliteration “Street Smarts … Street Smarts … Street Smarts ….” as he pulls a copy of the final report from a city library shelf and wonders what they were thinking when they came up with the tagline, “Different Spokes for Different Folks.” Then he wonders why his father wasn’t more like Mr. Drummond, instead of an abusive dullard with callouses (sic) on the undersides of his fingers from six-pack rings, which tugged against the flesh while he waited behind lotto ticket buyers in convenience stores.

Where was I? Anyway, I thought it would be good to take a look at the highs and lows of this 10-month process.
(more…)

Here is a video that runs most of the length of the Minneapolis Midtown Greenway.

I’m posting this to provide inspiration for what Austin’s Lance Armstrong Bikeway going through the middle of Austin, east-and-west, could be like. The Minneapolis Greenway has a lot to teach us about how to make an Austin bikeway a success. Some issues are not directly relevant — in Minneapolis it was important to keep the south side of the trail unobscured so that the sun could melt the greenway snow — some analogies can still be found — an Austin bikeway would ideally be at least partially shaded, probably by trees. Concerns and prevention of crime are significant to any urban bikeway or trail that is just beginning to be used.

The Midtown Greenway Coalition is is a 501(c)(3) non-profit citizens’ group that has provided stability for the project for the last 15 years. Recent major news was the completion of a landmark bicycle and pedestrian bridge over a highway and rail lines. Currently, groundbreaking is starting on a central bike center, which will be immediately adjacent to the greenway in a central location.

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I maintain a local bicycle advocacy calendar. The primary sort of events that I have posted are for the City of Austin, CAMPO, TxDOT, and UT Austin. This TinyUrl is helpful when sending the calendar link in e-mails: http://tinyurl.com/2vpnuk

I strongly encourage people to bring to my attention any upcoming events that I have neglected to post. From what I hear, there are interested people who use this calendar to stay abreast of advocacy events in Austin, so let’s make sure that all of the news gets out there.

You can reach me at tomwald@hotmail.com