SPECIAL HAPPENINGS

SPECIAL FFBC BOARD MEETING
Date:  Monday, April 30, 2007
Time:  6:30 pm
Location:  SuJu’s Coffee & Tea
Subject:  Goals and Vision for FFBC

Attendees:  Karen White, Jim Herman, Sydney Friedenberg, Jason Sage, Mike Northrup, Ron Mitchell, Conni Smith

The purpose of this informal special meeting of the Board was to brainstorm about future goals for the Club.  The Club has financial reserves and ongoing income in excess of its expenses as currently budgeted.  The goal is to create guidelines for projects that will enhance the club, benefit its members and the cycling community and set limits on financial reserves.

Brainstorming on issues and goals:

• Primavera – should the Club continue or not continue hosting this annual event; it’s a lot of work and requires major volunteer recruitment;
• Subsidize the new club jersey;
• Rent a meeting room for general membership meetings – something nicer and more comfortable for members and better suited for presentations and workshops;
• Reduce the number of whole membership meetings since so few members come to the monthly ones; make the ones we do hold more social, entertaining, informative;
• Pizza Rides have become the pizza races, leaving the newer and more leisurely riders behind with little pizza by the time they finish.  It was pointed out that these are an active social gathering.
• Progressive training rides for men, similar to the Cinderella training rides;
• Hire a trainer to conduct classes on bike safety;
• Buy a projector; issues arose about who will house it, bring it, pass it on;
• Formal ride leader training; most agreed this would be valuable for interested members and have a secondary purpose in filling out the ride calendar.

 
The Board focused on a few of these projects:

• Continue hosting the Primavera as it is a payback to the cycling community that hosts supported rides;
• Find a better meeting room for the general meetings and be prepared to pay for it; no amount was discussed.
• Reduce the number of general meetings.  The Board discussed which months and which events warranted a meeting, but came to no firm decisions:
• March (or early in the year) – Pedal Pounder Awards
• April – Primavera last minute planning;
• June – Race Team’s Crit – volunteer recruitment;
• Late Summer – Club picnic (social event, not a meeting);
• September – Board elections (required meeting)
• November – present the budget to the members for approval. Also discussed was posting the proposed budget on the Yahoo List prior to asking for member approval at the meeting;
• December – Holiday party (social event, not a meeting)

Mike Northrup volunteered to investigate locations for a new meeting room.  He will also write up his ideas regarding general meeting dates and his proposed guidelines for prudent levels of reserves for the Club.

No firm decisions were made, but the Board agreed to meet again to continue this discussion at 6:30 pm, Monday, May 21 at the Pizza Patio.

Other:  Jason Sage announced that the Crit’s new date is Saturday, June 30.  He also asked the Board to consider setting aside money as a backup for 1 year of Crit expenses – approximately $6,000.  The Board agreed to consider it.

The meeting ended about 8:00 pm

by Fred Oswald, LCI #947

How would you feel about driving a car on a road designed by an engineer who does not know how to drive and does not understand the rules of the road?  Does this sound insane?  This is the situation that faces people who drive bicycles.  Such misunderstanding causes serious mistakes, including

• Contradicting safe practices
• Failing to encourage (or even discouraging) cyclists to follow standard rules of the road
• Misunderstand bicycle operation in traffic
• Building bicycle sidepaths (multi-user paths beside roads) with dangerous intersections at cross-roads and driveways.
• Building bike lanes in the door zone of parked cars
• Placing bike lanes on steep hills
• Routing bike lanes to the right of right-turning traffic
• Encouraging left turns from the right edge of road

There is an inherent fallacy in the practice of building separate bikeways (sidepaths and bicycle lanes) alongside roadways.  The fallacy is the assumption that such facilities make cycling safe for those who do not know how to do it properly.  The fallacy is dangerously wrong for at least four reasons:

1. All of the skills required for riding safely on the roadway are also needed for riding on bikeways.
2. Because the facilities complicate the roadway and create intrinsic hazards, more knowledge is needed for riding there safely than is needed on the roadway.
3. The facilities often include explicit hazards due to defects in design, construction and maintenance.

The presence of separate bikeways makes people feel "comfortable" while riding dangerously.  This makes them less willing to learn safer methods.

Intrinsic Problems of Bikeways

Separate bicycle facilities treat cyclists as though they are rolling pedestrians, rather than drivers.  This treatment makes them feel they are separate from traffic and encourages them not to follow the rules of the road.  Violating the rules of the road often leads to crashes.  As it is, too many cyclists on the road fail to follow basic traffic law, such as stopping for red traffic lights.

The problem is much worse for those who ride on sidewalks and sidepaths.  In the photo at right we see two cyclists who were riding on a multiple-use path in the median strip of a park roadway.  The path has a pedestrian "Walk" signal, controlled by a push button.  Like most path riders, they did not wait for the signal but rather crossed illegally, dodging turning traffic from the road.

The blue bike lane shown at right represents the best of a bad practice.  The lane seems to be far enough from the curb, thus it avoids the door zone of parked cars.  By running left of the right turn lane in the distance, it puts straight-through (but not turning) cyclists in the correct location.  Finally, it has adequate room. 

However, even a "best" bike lane encourages mistakes.  The bike lane stripe encourages cyclists to stay to the right and motorists to stay left, even when the rules of the road require otherwise.  If a fast cyclist (perhaps descending a hill) catches up to a slow car, there is a tempting clear channel for passing in the motorist's blind spot.  This can lead to a collision if the motorist turns into a driveway or parking spot while the bicycle is passing.

Separate facilities attract beginners.  (This is one of the reasons that "bicycle advocates push for the facilities.)  Beginners often turn left directly from a bike lane without first merging to the left turn lane and without yielding to overtaking traffic (the "shooting gallery" approach).  We have also heard of beginners making right turns from a bike lane by swerving across right-turning traffic, Even knowledgable cyclists, who know enough to merge to the proper place on the road to make a turn or to avoid hazards, experience trouble from separate bicycle facilities because they encourage motorist resentment.  Some motorists become vigilantes, harassing any cyclist not in "his place".  The existence of a designated "bike route" on one road makes it very difficult to convince city officials to make improvements or repairs on a parallel route.  Separate facilities make educating cyclists much more difficult. 

Explicit Bikeway Mistakes

Many separate bicycle facilities have explicit dangers, in addition to the intrinsic hazards discussed above.  The photo at right shows a marked bike lane that routes cyclists across a "free-running right" at a highway entrance.  Cyclists are encouraged to swerve across the path of traffic on the ramp.  Motorists using the ramp are expected to yield to traffic crossing the ramp.  This is intensely dangerous because both cyclists and motorists are directed to violate standard traffic rules.
The proper cyclist's route, staying in the through lane and avoiding the ramp, is shown by yellow dots in the figure.  This avoids swerving across the path of motor vehicles.  You can see more problems from blue bike lanes in "Blue lane": really a lane, or a diagonal crosswalk?

The City of Portland, Oregon has been experimented with painting bike lanes blue to warn travelers of "high-conflict areas".  Although the blue paint may help alert some motorists to the non-standard intersection, it does not make bad engineering safe.  It would be much better to simply follow sound practice and avoid creating the conflicts.

Our goal is to investigate the effectiveness of colored pavement markings in reducing conflicts.  To do this, we have selected ten conflict areas with a high level of cyclist and motorist interaction and about which area motorists and cyclists had complained.  We then chose seven for initial testing, and painted them blue.  ...   The conflict area in all cases had already been defined with dashed lines, as well as, in most cases, signs indicating the need for motorists to yield to cyclists.  The painted area and its accompanying sign are intended to remind motorists that they are crossing a bicycle lane and need to look first and yield to any through cyclists.  They are also intended to caution cyclists to be careful in the conflict area. [1] 

Another frequent source of hazards is bikeways that are crammed into inadequate space.  The photo at right shows a very narrow shoulder (varies from 1½ to 3 feet wide) that was made into a dangerous bicycle lane in a recently awarded Bicycle Friendly Community, Carrboro, North Carolina.  The width of this shoulder is much less than the 4 feet minimum width for a bike lane as specified in the AASHTO Guide [3].  Ironically, the road itself was hardly hazardous to start with.  It is a one-way, 16ft wide, rural section, residential street five blocks long with a 4-way stop sign at each block.  The posted speed limit is 20 mph.

There are other safety problems with this bike lane, including the adjacent ditch with no recovery area.  The crown of the road and broken pavement increases the likelihood of riding into the ditch.  Concrete culverts at driveway crossings create fixed object hazards.  This street is adjacent to an elementary school; presumably the dangerous bike lane was installed for children.
The Bicycle Friendly Community program promotes facilities like this without warning about or even acknowledging hazards introduced by poorly planned facilities.  The only hazard considered is overtaking traffic (passing from behind).  As we show in part 7, overtaking traffic is a very remote risk.  Fortunately, Wayne Pein of the North Carolina Coalition for Bicycle Driving was able to convince the city to remove the bike lane signs. 

Bikelanes often encourage mistakes by both cyclists and motorists -- mistakes that cause crashes.  The photo at right shows a new bike lane in Berea, OH that passes to the right of a lane primarily for right turning traffic.  Cyclists are directed to a route that makes them cross paths with turning vehicles.  In the foreground is a sidestreet and a driveway to a drive-through pharmacy that will produce more conflicts with bicycle traffic.
The bike lane stripes discourage motorists from complying with Ohio traffic law §4511.36(A), which says:  Approach for a right turn and a right turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway.  The stripes are a traffic control device that encourages violation of this law.

Notice in the photo both the car making a turn and the truck behind were turning improperly because drivers followed the lane markings.  The green squares added to the photo show the correct path for turning traffic.  The yellow dots indicate the proper route for a straight-through cyclist -- avoiding conflicts by staying near the center of the dual destination lane.

This intersection essentially violates recommendations in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices [4], which says (page 9C-4):  A through bicycle lane shall not be positioned to the right of a right turn only lane. The MUTCD also says:  An optional through-right turn lane next to a right turn only lane should not be used where there is a through bicycle lane.  If a capacity analysis indicates the need for an optional through-right turn lane, the bicycle lane should be discontinued at the intersection approach.

An intersection with bike lanes striped right to the corner is referred to as a "coffin corner" because it is so dangerous.  You can read more about this and several other blunders that occur in just 1/2 mile of roadway (including door zone bike lanes) in Berea's Bicycle Blunders.

The Door Zone

Bicycle facility design is serious business. Done wrong it kills.  Some communities squeeze bike lanes into roads that do not have enough room.  They create serious safety compromises.

The city of Cambridge Mass. installed door zone bike lanes on several narrow and busy streets, including Massachusetts Avenue, despite warnings that they were unsafe.  The bike lane shown at right proved fatal for Tufts University graduate student Dana Laird in 2002.  If you look carefully at the photo, you can see that the open car door blocks almost the entire bike lane.  There is not room to avoid the door without encroaching into the motor lane.  (Remember, a bike is about 2 feet wide.  There is less than two feet between the open door and the left stripe.)  You can see a larger copy of this photo from the photographer's website.

Unfortunately, many other cities also install bike lanes in the door zone (see bottom photo at right) and these also cause causalities to cyclists.  You can read accounts of 16 recent door zone casualties (11 fatal) in an article called The Door Zone Project.

One of the most inexcusable examples of carelessness in bike lane design is illustrated by this statement:  The City of Chicago installs bike lanes on streets as narrow as 44 feet wide with parking on both sides.   Chicago published a Bike Lane Design Guide [6] that includes plans showing how they achieve this claim.  In their zeal to install bike lanes despite inadequate space, they distorted the size of the cars and trucks depicted in the drawings.

John Forester [7] added dimensions for the vehicles depicted in [6] by scaling from the drawing.  The vehicles are shown about 20 percent undersized, with some cars and trucks depicted as though they are less than five feet wide.  With the drawing falsified in this way, there seems to be almost enough room on this crowded street.  This author believes the Bikelane Design Guide is a glaring example of engineering malpractice.

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