On Yer Bike!
2009-05-11
New Urbanism
I'm not only about cycling...I also aspire to a greener environment which dovetails nicely with cycling. Another topic that dovetails well with both a greener environment and cycling is urban planning, a subject the county planners seem to have slept through in school if they even went to the classes. Here's a little video on "New Urbanism":
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Saw your post on chainguard about BFS.
ReplyDeleteA comment:
I think we need to work towards a culture where existence or not of paved shoulders neither hurts nor helps any official organization's measurement of bicyclist 'friendliness'.
Perhaps brand new ideas like programs that monitor the paved surface conditions within travel lane. Even contemplating revolutionary ideas like jurisdictions with responsibility having statutory requirements to maintain surface conditions on existing roads to some particular level - allowing additional miles built or additional width on any road only after existing miles of surface meet certain minimum requirements. But using bicyclists as an excuse to widen _any_ roadway? No thanks.
I never meant to imply that shoulders were a good thing, only that LAB seemed biased toward separate facilities. NY state puts wide shoulders on all state roads to facilitate snow removal and just happen to be excellent cycling facilities during fair weather. The region of Ohio I lived in for 12 years did similar shoulder treatments for the same reason although they got far less snow and correspondingly smaller shoulders. Bear in mind I am only talking about roads outside the urban areas.
ReplyDelete"New ideas for monitoring paved surface condtions..." I was actually thinking about that this morning and now have an idea for a new post. Stay tuned.
Check out Wayne Pein's chainguard reply. Count me with him in that sentiment.
ReplyDeleteI realize you primarily meant outside urban areas. However both as acute design - and definitely as a system-level design/expense/behavior-promotion thing - I would say it is debatable whether suburban-to-rural location public roadways with big honking amount to excellent cycling facilities.
But here is another point: Yes this characterization is debatable, but it is a debate that a group of people all working for the promotion of Vehicular Cycling does not need to resolve among themselves before uniting behind the most important targeted issues of VC. However for me to join with others on these efforts, they need to drop promotion of shoulders as 'bicyclist friendly facilities' from their official work while wearing their VC advocate hat - Because 1) I disagree with that characterization, 2) my wider stronger views on macro-transportation issues opposes most-to-all widening or addition of paved shoulders to existing roadways - certainly not to any degree it becomes a kind of default recommendation even for rural roads... maybe especially not for rural roads.
I repeat: "I never meant to imply that shoulders were a good thing, only that LAB seemed biased toward separate facilities."
ReplyDeleteMy preferred routes tend towards narrow country roads with no shoulders. I have no problem with taking the lane in town, be that town Greensboro, NC or Washington, DC (I lived in Metro DC until last September). I really see no reason to build bike specific facilities anywhere. I see the focus of bicyclist advocacy needing to be on education and enforcement of existing laws.
>I repeat: "I never meant to imply that shoulders were a good thing,
ReplyDelete>only that LAB seemed biased toward separate facilities."
That's good. Thanks.
But to explain my sensitivity:
Our present context is
1) a culture where bicyclist advocacy organizations actively push for shoulders on roadways as part of their official organization efforts and call that bicycling improvements.
2) most individuals in the culture have the unquestioned belief that roadways with shoulders are great for bicycling and roads without shoulders are dangerous for bicycling.
So when you mention NY state highways with big shoulders as great for bicycling, I'm going to have a negative response to that.
I should have remembered the sensitivity from following Chainguard. Sorry about that. My general views actually tend to be fairly closely aligned with yours to begin with. The aim of my original post was at LABs apparent bias towards separate facilities such as bike lanes and MUTs, I forgot shoulders could be classed in the same group.
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