Build it and they will come - but where are they?

[Frank Krygowski]

What we've heard: "Build it and they will come." That is, separate the
bikes from the cars with paint; or better, with flexible poles; or even
better with parked cars, and bicycle riding will surge. People will
leave their cars at home, and America will become Amsterdam. Or at
least, Amsterdamish.

What else we've heard: "It's working! After adding just one bike lane,
my little town had a 100% increase in bike mode share! It went from 0.2%
to 0.4% and 0.4% is really good for America!!"

What the data show:
https://cyclingindustry.news/wp-content/uploads/2018/04/t2.jpg

That's from
https://cyclingindustry.news/townley-how-new-mobility-could-soon-overwhelm-the-traditional-bike-business/

They're building it, and the design consultants are getting wealthy. But
"they" don't seem to be coming.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[Andre Jute]

Okay, so Americans won't ride on the road with the cars, and they won't ride in cycle lanes "protected" from cars. So, perhaps, Americans just don't want to cycle, or their infrastructure is already so far developed in favoring the automobile that they're right not to cycle, because it's impossible.

The question is, Franki-boy: Why should your underlying assumption that cycling is superior to driving have any greater validity than their underlying assumption that an automobile is a necessity of life? Do you have an answer that doesn't rely on some faith-substitute, like Gaia-worship?

Andre Jute
Carfree for a generation now. I practice what I preach.

[sm12...@gmail.com]

NYC has been counting the number of people entering and leaving its central business district (Manhattan below 60th St) annually for many years. Bikes have been included since the mid 1990's. There are mechanical counters for both bikes and vehicles on the bridges. Here are the inbound rush hour readings for bikes and vehicles for 2016 - the latest year.

Brooklyn Bridge Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 306, 261
Brooklyn Bridge Vehicles(8-9am, 9-10am): 2,553, 2,532
Brooklyn Bridge Pct Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 11.99%, 10.31%

Manhattan Bridge Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 438, 401
Manhattan Bridge Vehicles(8-9am, 9-10am): 1,673, 1,369
Manhattan Bridge Pct Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 26.18%, 29.29%

Williamsburg Bridge Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 667, 659
Williamsburg Bridge Vehicles(8-9am, 9-10am): 2,062, 2,001
Williamsburg Bridge Pct Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 32.35%, 32.93%

Queensboro Bridge Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 424, 309
Queensboro Bridge Vehicles(8-9am, 9-10am): 2,266, 2,048
Queensboro Bridge Pct Bikes(8-9am, 9-10am): 18.71%, 15.09%

[Duane]

I think taking cycling percentages for the US on a whole is misleading.
It’s a pretty varied country. Ask Jay for example about his conga line
commute in a place that isn’t exactly flat. Last time I was in New
Orleans there were bikes and bike lanes everywhere. Even had a redneck
neighbor bitching about them to me before my sister told him to watch it.

Maybe if you take just commuters it’s different. People tend to not live
near their jobs. At least until urban regentrification starts.

At any rate, just arguing against infrastructure doesn’t make much sense in
my opinion. Better to argue against bad infrastructure. There’s enough
of that to go around.


--
duane

[jbeattie]

In a typical US city, you need to build for cars and you need to build for bikes, and I think doing both at the same time is the best idea. If you strongly favor bikes over cars in a city that is not dead flat and that has a dispersed population, you end up with Portland -- monumentally bad motor vehicle traffic and a lot of dopey, sub-optimal facilities for bikes.

We succeed in bringing cyclists in from the established, close-in east and west side neighborhoods, but we keep adding population in suburbs where commuting to work by bike is not possible -- except by eBike, which I think is going to be the next big thing.

SPEAKING OF -- I was riding home last night, and since it was NOT raining and miserable, I decided to go home up through the cemetery -- which involves a long MUP from downtown, over the tail end of a recently reconstructed bridge (with redundant bicycle facilities) and up a hill with no traffic because it is a cemetery, although you have to hoof around a fence. https://bikeportland.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/0-16.jpeg Joerg heaven -- no cars, although the facility can be filled with dopes on bikes.

So, I was climbing up the bridge approach and some guy passed on a bike with a gas motor on it -- not even an eBike. That's what I predict for the future: bad MV traffic will produce butt-cracks on gas/electric motor bikes speeding down the bicycle facilities with no possible police intervention. I get into scrapes with the eBike low-life on a regular basis -- people who are clearly not cyclists or even pretending to be cyclists. They are just ratting-out down the facilities on juiced-up bikes.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Duane]

Just got back from a ride. The weather is finally improving. Was a balmy
5c. Some fat idiot in an oversized SUV felt he had to tell us to take the
bike path. I pointed out that the highway was one block over. Asshole.
He wasn’t even going in our direction. Just felt he had to exercise his
ownership of the road. Not even sure which bike path he’s talking about.

I agree with you about building for cars and bikes. This area was built
for cars. But a bike lane on this road wouldn’t hurt. Of course a law
against stupid would work too.

--
duane

[Frank Krygowski]

On 4/21/2018 2:50 PM, Duane wrote:
>
> Just got back from a ride. The weather is finally improving. Was a balmy
> 5c. Some fat idiot in an oversized SUV felt he had to tell us to take the
> bike path. I pointed out that the highway was one block over. Asshole.
> He wasn’t even going in our direction. Just felt he had to exercise his
> ownership of the road. Not even sure which bike path he’s talking about.

One of the best roads out into the countryside goes past a high school.
Maybe 15 years ago road gained three or four mushroom developments of
McMansion houses, but the road itself is a narrow, two-lane former farm
road with deep ditches at each side.

Last year the township got a grant to put in a sidewalk linking two of
the developments to the school. Good idea!

Except yesterday as I rode out into the countryside, I had two motorists
telling me to get on the ******* sidewalk. With one, a guy, it was just
a quick shout, to which I just shook my head "no." The other was a fat
woman driving an environmentally correct hybrid electric car. She was
amazingly abusive, blaring the horn and yelling obscenities. It didn't
matter to her that it's a sideWALK.

Maybe the saying should be "Build it and you will be harassed if you
don't use it."

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

On 4/21/2018 1:50 PM, Duane wrote:
> jbeattie <jbeat...@msn.com> wrote:
>> On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 5:01:37 AM UTC-7, Duane wrote:
>>> Andre Jute <fiul...@yahoo.com> wrote:
>>>> On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 1:21:56 AM UTC+1, Frank Krygowski wrote:

-snip weather, riding etc-

> 5c. Some fat idiot in an oversized SUV felt he had to tell us to take the
> bike path. I pointed out that the highway was one block over. Asshole.

> He wasn’t even going in our direction. Just felt he had to exercise his
> ownership of the road. Not even sure which bike path he’s talking about.

>
> I agree with you about building for cars and bikes. This area was built

> for cars. But a bike lane on this road wouldn’t hurt. Of course a law

> against stupid would work too.

So far none of those has made a dent.

--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

[sms]

In my house, the new infrastructure has resulted in an 100% increase of
household members cycling to work.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 4/21/2018 4:03 PM, sms wrote:
>
> In my house, the new infrastructure has resulted in an 100% increase of
> household members cycling to work.
>

OK.

In our house and in our previous house, I cycled to work using no
special segregated infrastructure at all. Nobody else cycled to work.
But given that my wife had home health medical clients all across the
county, that's not surprising.

Near the houses of each of our adult kids, there are bike lanes and/or
separate MUPs. Nobody in those families cycles to work. One still rides
occasionally, including some trips to the store, but puts in far more
miles running. The other doesn't ride at all, despite bike lanes right
outside the front door.

More interesting to me is visiting the town where one kid lives. Yes,
there are bike lanes. Yes, they have gravel in them. They just don't
have bikes in them - IOW, I see about two bikes per year using the lanes.

One of those lanes is on my normal route to their local hardware store.
It runs along the curb past a playground all the way up to a T
intersection, where almost all traffic turns right. It's an invitation
to a right hook crash.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[AMuzi]

Frank, you don't see the big picture.

If a couple million dollars of pavement and striping in
Santa Clara increased a household's commuters from one to
two, then it's clear that if the nation would merely replace
all structures with underground bunkers and pave everything
dead smooth, without curbs or automobile lanes, we could
have 330 million commuters! Extrapolate, man!

[Andre Jute]

I wouldn't pay too much attention to Franki-boy Krygowski; he's statistically illiterate, and not overly attached either to any truth that doesn't serve his perversely distorted narrative. You need to check anything he tells you with an original reliable source.

Those are pretty good local bicycle spot shares, considering the size of New York. Thanks for quoting them. It would be great if we could generalize to the entire country from there, but that would be a bridge too far (pun intended).

Andre Jute
Only the best numbers are good enough

[Andre Jute]

The most misleading bicycle statistic in the States is the one about annual sales of bikes. I have no reason to doubt the tally, but clearly bike sales don't mean those bikes are ridden which would, in almost any other field, be at least a reasonable conclusion.

Every year that passes without the long forecast conversion to cycling, and with every failure of inadequate bike infrastructure, I become more convinced that the first things are missing or, to put it more positively, the Amsterdam experiment succeeded because the attitude of the people was receptive. You can see it in Dutch usages and laws. On a much more limited scale, you can probably see it in Portland even though the topography and infrastructure are both, according to Jay, not ideal, not to mention adverse weather for much of the year, but where trendy Gaia worship has led to substantial bicycle mode share. Your experience, and Frank's, and others you can find in any cycling conference, of being abused for being a cyclist, doesn't speak of a receptive attitude.

Andre
Ride tall

[Andre Jute]

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 4:24:41 PM UTC+1, jbeattie wrote:
> That's what I predict for the future: bad MV traffic will produce butt-cracks on gas/electric motor bikes speeding down the bicycle facilities with no possible police intervention. I get into scrapes with the eBike low-life on a regular basis -- people who are clearly not cyclists or even pretending to be cyclists. They are just ratting-out down the facilities on juiced-up bikes.

If you're suffering from low blood pressure, a visit to
https://endless-sphere.com/forums/
will raise any cyclist's blood pressure. It is where the guys hang out whose only interest in bicycles is as a frame to attach a humongous electric motor and gigantic battery. As far as they're concerned the pedals are for resting your feet, not to pedal.

Andre Jute
Lightly electrified

[sms]

On 4/21/2018 2:31 PM, AMuzi wrote:

<snip>

> Frank, you don't see the big picture.
>
> If a couple million dollars of pavement and striping in Santa Clara
> increased a household's commuters from one to two, then it's clear that
> if the nation would merely replace all structures with underground
> bunkers and pave everything dead smooth, without curbs or automobile
> lanes,  we could have 330 million commuters! Extrapolate, man!

Exactly. And you have to realize that "a couple million dollars" is
pocket change in the scheme of things. A "Bicycle Boulevard" costs very
little and results in significant increases. But we are now working on
converting striped bike lanes into protected bike lanes. It's necessary
because without a physical barrier the bicycle lanes are used for
pick-ups/drop-offs, loading zones, cell phone waiting areas, etc..

The big money has been in creating safe ways to cross freeways and other
major highways. A simple bicycle/pedestrian overpass across an eight
lane freeway will cost $8 million. We have two high schools where it's
extremely difficult for students living in one area to get to school
either by foot or bicycle, so they mostly get driven to school. The
proposed overpass will likely get at least a couple of hundred of these
students to cycle to school on nice days, and will also serve as a
commuter route for others.

$8 million pays for about 1/5 of a mile of above-ground light-rail line,
0.035 miles of above-ground heavy rail (BART), and about 1/2 mile of an
eight lane freeway. With our local transit agency having a 9% fare
recovery, I'd rather spend money on enabling more cycling.

[Frank Krygowski]

While it's unusual for me to agree with Scharf, bicycle boulevards and
access across freeways are two types of bicycle infrastructure that do
make sense to me.

To generalize the latter: Freeways were almost always installed with no
thought to their barrier effect on non-motorists. Driving several miles
to access the nearest crossing point is a minor burden for a motorist,
but a major one for someone not using an engine.

Similarly, it's not unusual for shopping centers to abut residential
areas, but have no access except a trip of one mile or more by motor
vehicle on heavy traffic roads. I favor bike-ped paths that serve as
direct connections. I also favor bike-ped paths linking cul-de-sac
housing developments. Those developments would then limit cut-through
motor traffic (their main goal) while allowing kids to get to school on
their own.

But as with all bike infrastructure, we need to defend our rights not to
use it if we choose. Like it or not, much of it is still badly designed.
Competent cyclists may have good reasons for using the normal road instead.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[jbeattie]

Here's my tale of woe: I just got back from a ride in the country with my son. Out in the butt-crack region of Clackamas county, this guy in a flashy jacked-up pick-up with giant tires roars by with no room to spare, obviously f****** with us and zooms off. I flip him off. The guy jams on his brakes in the middle of the road, throws it into reverse, lays a patch and starts back toward me. I keep riding full blast forward, hand over my brow looking at the license plate. The guy stops and drives away just as I catch up. Asshole -- and a coward. My son was flipping out, worried that I would get shot or something. I told him that you don't worry about the guys in >$30K show-trucks without a spot of dirt. They have too much to lose. Worry about the convicted felons in beaters with nothing to lose. The amazing thing is that everyone else gave us plenty of room. It's that one mega-asshole that can ruin your day.

So, infrastructure content: we did a large part of the return leg on a >20 mile MUP rail-trail. Light pedestrian traffic for such a nice day. Lots of cyclists, but mostly going the other way. It was a nice cruise. The roads are fine, too -- usually.

-- Jay Beattie.

[John B. Slocomb]

rOn Sat, 21 Apr 2018 15:21:39 -0400, Frank Krygowski

The Thai word for "sidewalk" translates to the English "Foot Path" :-)

>Maybe the saying should be "Build it and you will be harassed if you
>don't use it."
--

Cheers,

John B.

[Mark J.]

Did you ID the plates?

Mark J.

[Andre Jute]

On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 11:39:20 PM UTC+1, sms wrote:
> With our local transit agency having a 9% fare
> recovery, I'd rather spend money on enabling more cycling.

What, pray tell, is "a 9% fare recovery"?

Is Scharfie telling us that only 9% of passengers actually pay fares?

Andre Jute
Choo-Choso

[Duane]

The cities are the entities trying to use cycling to fix the clogged roads.
I’m less concerned with the number of cycling commuters than the number of
wingnuts confronting cyclists in general.

--
duane

[jbeattie]

No. I wish I had -- the guy was probably still 20 yards away when he took off, and in a spasm of hipness, I was wearing contacts and Oakley glasses lent to me by my son. I usually don't wear sports glasses, and my contacts are relatively weak.

This was out off Bakers Ferry Rd. -- we were riding a loop down the Clackamas River through Barton Park out to Boring and back on the Springwater, about 50 miles, which is the longest my son has ridden on his post-surgery ankles. He is used to riding the canyons in SLC with wide shoulders -- or no shoulders and no traffic (often on roads with gates). He practically went on strike when we hit Amissigger: https://tinyurl.com/ycvl3jpk 55mph and one lane each way no shoulder. You hit some hills after the tree line, and he shot up those, leaving me in the dust. He's stayed pretty fit with the trainer riding, but he does need to adjust to being on the road again, particularly around here. The traffic actually wasn't that bad -- just worse than he's accustomed to.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 4/22/2018 11:40 AM, jbeattie wrote:
> On Saturday, April 21, 2018 at 8:03:15 PM UTC-7, Mark J. wrote:
>>
>> Did you ID the plates?
>
> No. I wish I had -- the guy was probably still 20 yards away when he took off, and in a spasm of hipness, I was wearing contacts and Oakley glasses lent to me by my son. I usually don't wear sports glasses, and my contacts are relatively weak.

There have been a few times when I've wanted to get jerk's license plate
number, but I've almost never succeeded. Even if I see it and say it out
loud, it's difficult to remember in the midst of emotions triggered by
the offense, whatever that might have been.

I suppose pencil and paper would help. During a ride the other day, I
wanted to write downs something else (not a license plate) to remember
it when I got home. I had a pen in my handlebar bag but it's been there
long enough that it refused to write.

--
- Frank Krygowski

[John B Slocomb]

Here now, lets have no derogatory discussion of MUPS! My
brother-in-law is a pavement contractor and he is wildly in favor of
construction of special pathways. Says it is the best thing that has
happened to his business since bitumen was discovered :-)

[jbeattie]

iPhone photo -- or I could be one of those guys with a GoPro recording every insult, but I would prefer not to be that guy. Frank, you need to get into the modern ear. Pens are passe.

-- Jay Beattie.

[Joy Beeson]

On Sun, 22 Apr 2018 17:27:45 -0400, Frank Krygowski
<frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

> I suppose pencil and paper would help. During a ride the other day, I
> wanted to write downs something else (not a license plate) to remember
> it when I got home. I had a pen in my handlebar bag but it's been there
> long enough that it refused to write.

A #2 pencil always works. And if it breaks and for some reason you
don't have a knife, you could rub it on the pavement.

I always have a notepad handy, because I'm trying to increase my
average speed, so I note the time of each start, stop, and waypoint.
I hit 8 mph on one leg of my latest ride, which is an improvement of
60%. Of course, I have to start all over from scratch when the biopsy
heals. After re-starting at least twice during the winter. I'm
starting to feel superstitious.

--
Joy Beeson
joy beeson at comcast dot net
http://wlweather.net/PAGEJOY/

[Frank Krygowski]

Well, I am a dedicated retrogrouch.

I carry a smart phone, but it would take 30 seconds to dig it out of my
bag and get it in camera mode.

The only time I used it against a motorist was while walking on our own
street, which has no sidewalks. A punk in a "tuner" Japanese compact
came whipping around a corner and hit the brakes hard to avoid me. He
then yelled "Get off the road!"

I grabbed my phone and held it up as if I were taking a photo or video,
but since I had to power it up and select camera mode, I got no photo.
But when he motored off, he did so very sedately, and I haven't seen
that car again.


--
- Frank Krygowski

[sms]

On 4/22/2018 5:39 PM, jbeattie wrote:

<snip>

> iPhone photo -- or I could be one of those guys with a GoPro recording every insult, but I would prefer not to be that guy.

You need a GoPro. Remember Mike Jacubowsky's video up on Skyline
Boulevard in San Mateo County <https://youtu.be/mrzbgEXGgWg>.

[sms]

On 4/22/2018 5:39 PM, jbeattie wrote:

<snip>

> iPhone photo -- or I could be one of those guys with a GoPro recording every insult, but I would prefer not to be that guy.

Be that guy,
<https://blog.sfgate.com/stew/2012/04/27/berkeley-bicyclist-hit-run-video/>.

[sms]

On 4/22/2018 4:27 AM, Duane wrote:

> The cities are the entities trying to use cycling to fix the clogged roads.
> I’m less concerned with the number of cycling commuters than the number of
> wingnuts confronting cyclists in general.

Delays due to traffic congestion increase exponentially with more
vehicles, not linearly. A 10% reduction in the number of vehicles, by
whatever means, would greatly reduce congestion in my area.

It's not going to be bicycles that are the top contributor to vehicle
reductions, but if they can contribute just 1-2% it would be
significant. The corporate shuttles from Facebook, Apple, Google, Yahoo,
Genentech, etc., contribute a couple of percent. The big problem is the
awful state of public transit in Santa Clara County. This has been
driven by the City of San Jose which wields tremendous influence when in
comes to transit spending. If you want to go to downtown San Jose from
outlying suburban towns then it's very easy. If you want to go from
outlying suburban towns, like Cupertino, Saratoga, etc. (or San Jose
suburbs like Almaden or Willow Glen), to the job-rich areas of eastern
Mountain View (Google), north San Jose (Cisco), or north Santa Clara
(Intel), north Sunnyvale (Linked In, Yahoo, Lockheed) then it's very
difficult and slow on public transit.

For my wife to take public transit to her job it would be at least a 90
minute ride, with a change of buses, plus about 15 minutes of walking.
On a bicycle it takes her about an hour, but she rides very slowly and
refuses to use a lightweight road bike, preferring her cruiser
<http://oi37.tinypic.com/24awjn6.jpg>. Every time I suggest a lighter
bike she insists that she likes the extra exercise.

Some people in r.b.t. have a distorted view of the value of bicycle
infrastructure since they are perfectly happy to ride without any.

[Frank Krygowski]

On 4/23/2018 11:21 AM, sms wrote:
>
> It's not going to be bicycles that are the top contributor to vehicle
> reductions, but if they can contribute just 1-2% it would be
> significant.

What is the relevant definition of "significant"?

Between 2016 and 2017, annual U.S. miles driven increased 2.8%.
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/02/21/516512439/record-number-of-miles-driven-in-u-s-last-year

If bicycles reduced that by 1% to 2%, things would be back to where they
were in about four to eight months. I wouldn't call that significant.

> Some people in r.b.t. have a distorted view of the value of bicycle
> infrastructure since they are perfectly happy to ride without any.

Hmm. We just joined some friends for a ride of a bit over 30 miles.
Maybe five miles were on a near-empty MUP. That was nice. The rest was
on perfectly ordinary roads with no special bicycle infrastructure. That
was just as nice.

I thought people who are perfectly happy to ride without special
infrastructure are called "cyclists."


--
- Frank Krygowski

[sm12...@gmail.com]

On Monday, April 23, 2018 at 11:21:36 AM UTC-4, sms wrote:
> On 4/22/2018 4:27 AM, Duane wrote:
>

<snip>

>
> Delays due to traffic congestion increase exponentially with more
> vehicles, not linearly. A 10% reduction in the number of vehicles, by
> whatever means, would greatly reduce congestion in my area.
>

<snip>

That's not been the case in NYC. There have been yearly cordon counts dating back to the 1960's. All taxi trip origin/destination and elapsed time data has been available since 2009. This permits estimating speed (congestion) within any area in the city.

The results show that within Manhattan's CBD (below 60th St), cordon counts across the CBD boundary are at 30+ year lows. The results also show that average speeds are also decreasing.

[sms]

In many cities, what is contributing to increased congestion is the
decrease in the use of public transit and the increase in the use of
services like Uber and Lyft.

<https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2017/12/how-to-fix-new-york-citys-unsustainable-traffic-woes/548798/>

Investor-subsidized ride services like Uber and Lyft versus
taxpayer-subsidized public transit. The former is not sustainable,
Uber's loss jumped 61 percent to $4.5 billion in 2017, but if they can
eliminate the cost of paying drivers with the use of self-driving cars
they could turn things around. Lyft is not doing quite as badly, their
losses are at least decreasing.