Share the Love with Those on the Road

This week is Virginia’s first Cyclist and Pedestrian Awareness week, a good opportunity for everyone on the road to pay a little extra attention to everyone else on the road.  In recognition of the event, Car Less Brit, MyScoper, and RIDE Solutions encourage you to share the love on Friday afternoon, September 18th, in downtown Roanoke, as we pass out balloons and host an impromptu love-fest-parade for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers alike (check out the Intermodal Love Facebook event page for more).

The number of bicyclists on the road in the Roanoke area has grown dramatically over the last 18 – 24 months, which makes safety of an utmost concern.  For example, I rode my bicycle down to the Veer showing at the Taubman with my daughter in tow in a trailer last Friday evening.  At a stop light, the car behind me was a bit impatient to turn right while I was waiting for the light to change to continue on ahead, so she decided to squeeze past the trailer and gun it down the road, coming within inches of my daughter.  The light changed almost immediately, making her impatience and dangerous action all the more infuriating.  If I had been a car, would she had taken the chance?  Maybe, but if so and she misjudged the distance, what would have been the worst of it – some scratched paint and angry words exchanged?  Instead, she took a chance with my daughter.

Cyclists on the road deserve the same respect as any other vehicle; car drivers need to keep that in mind, and be more aware that we’re a bit more vulnerable than other vehicles.  So have a little patience.

On the other hand, if cyclists want to be respected as vehicles on the road, they need to act like it.  Too often on my commute home (in a carpool), I have seen cyclists blow through a stop sign on a certain well-traveled Tuesday night riding route, even as they approach the intersection three or four abreast.  At Roanoke Memorial Hospital one morning, I saw a cyclist squeeze between two rows of cars, one waiting to go straight up Belleview and another waiting to turn left onto Hamilton Terrace.  He rode to the front of the line and didn’t bother to signal, so none of the drivers knew if he intended to turn or go straight, and when the light changed there was some confusion as folks waiting for him to start moving.  In each of these cases, the cyclists decided not to act like vehicles and injected unpredictability and confusion onto the road.  Behaving like a vehicle is not just a right, it’s a responsibility, a way to signal to all the other vehicles on the road that you know the rules, you’ll obey them, and they can trust you.

If an automobile had tried either of these stunts, they’d be ticketed, and if someone got hurt they’d be cited for reckless driving.  So should the cyclists, frankly.  It’s not just the automobile drivers who need to pay attention to safety.

This week, take a moment to show your fellow road-users some love, no matter what kind of vehicle they’re on or in.  But you don’t really have to hold hands if you don’t want to.

Divisions Along Two Wheels

These recent comments by Roanoke’s Car Less Brit deserve our attention.  They stem from a conversation he and I had after the Manif Spaciale that took place on Friday, August 7th.  He had, as he mentions in his post, received concerned comments from other advocates that this event would set back the cause of those who had worked hard to improve the lot of cycling in the Valley by forcing conflict with automobiles.

As it turned out, the event went off without a hitch, with the blessing of City government and police both, and most drivers seemed nothing more than bemused.

As River points out, however, this indicates that something rather remarkable has happened:  the number of folks in the biking community has grown large enough to have some measure of internecine dispute.  This isn’t to say that some of the subgroups that River mentions hadn’t already existed – River Laker is certainly not the first car less Roanoker, for example, and there have always been subgroups of recreational riders, from casual Greenway cruisers to Mill Mountain endurance climbers.  Still, it seems the profile of cycling and its multiple uses is growing, particularly – in the case of the Manif Spaciale – as a political or activist statement.

I think this is an inevitable result of any kind of growth – book clubs probably break off into Horror vs. Literature factions at some point – and I would argue that it’s a good thing.  It means, in part, that the awareness of cycling and cyclists is being raised on many fronts – practical, cultural, political – and it means the needs of a broader audience of people are likely to be aired and met.  It’s entirely possible that as this growth and fracturing continues that some of these groups may not be able to get along at all – cities where Critical Masses are common are starting to see a backlash from kinder, gentler riders – but we’re not there yet.  I don’t think anyone has to worry about any one of these subgroups actually sabotaging the greater work of making the region more bicycle friendly; in fact, I think the work requires this kind of diversity of users if we’re ever going to be truly and broadly friendly.

Welcome, Moona

There’s a third participant in the Car Less Brit experiment:  Moona Cancino, who is chronicling her adventures here.

Like Chris Howell before her, she was inspired (or perhaps cajoled) by the Car Less Brit to join the slowly swelling ranks of those abandoning their cars (or at least leaving them behind as much as possible) and taking advantage of cleaner, cheaper, friendlier transportation options.  Though the Experiment was never intended to be a bicycle-specific phenomenon (River has made some efforts to highlight the other modes available in Roanoke), it has, for reasons I intend on exploring at a later date, largely focused on the bicycle.  I was glad, therefore, to see the following comment in Moona’s second blog entry:

I have just as many adventures walking as I do biking.  So I would simply like it to be known that walking is my first love.  It is much simplier than riding a bike.  I never have to fix a flat, true my tires, or grease the chain.  I can go as I am.  Really you can, I’ve meet a few naked walkers on my travels!  Yes, I may write about riding my bike in Roanoke, but Roanoke has embraced me in all different modes of transportation.  Remember this experiment is not simply about riding your bike and being crazy.

Right on.

Good luck to the Car Less Brit and the Car Less Moms.  We’ll be watching!

Taking Up Space

First, a disclaimer:  I offer the following information because I think it’s a sign of the growing bicycle culture in the valley and the different kinds of events and spectacles that culture is generating.  Regardless of whether or not I agree with an event, it’s worth taking note that there are some pretty interesting things happening now.  In general, I don’t support efforts – from bicyclists or drivers – whose purpose is to create conflict between the two groups; there is a place for that sometimes, but I am wary of too much aggression on either side.  The event discussed in the post below has some potential to cause conflict and aggravation, but I am going to defer judgment here and assume that the Car Less Brit will approach this, as he has approached everything so far, with a sense of fun and adventure, and that all the other participants will do likewise.

There.  Got my official duty over with.  Now to the fun stuff.

The Car Less Brit has got something cooking – Manif Spaciale, a demonstration of sorts (not quite a protest) involving applying large, light rectangular frames to bicycles so that they take up the same footprint as a motor vehicle.  The event was started by a group from Montreal to illustrate the impact of motor vehicles simply from a size perspective.  From Car Less Brit blog post on the subject:

The immense space that each car uses – to transport an average of 1.3 people every working day – has led to the mass destruction of buildings, countryside, and green spaces into parking lots and roads throughout North American cities.

To graphically illustrate the huge waste of space of the car and the negligible space taken up by the bicycle, we used wood frames to convert our bicycles into the approximate size of cars and cycled in unison down the main street of Montreal.

The Car Less Brit will be bringing a little bit of that flavor to Roanoke.  If you’re interested in getting involved, you can get more information on his Facebook event page.

This demonstration really gets to one of the core principles of transportation demand management – efficient use of space and resources.  Once you see the bikes riding down the street with their bulky frames in place, you’ll get a sense of how much sheer space we use to move a single person around; consider how that drives decisions about road widths, where roads go, how much space is needed to move traffic, and what else we could do with that space, and you’ll get an idea of one of the major impacts of single-occupant vehicles and why agencies like RIDE Solutions work so hard to get people into high-occupant modes:  We could be doing something much more productive (like parks and more greenspace in our cities, for example) than just paving it.

The Clean Air Campaign in Atlanta has a fantastic illustration of the principle of concentrating on moving people, not cars.