genec

I suggest you go back and read this thread over again... I have not mentioned support of bikelanes at all in this thread... I have suggested traffic calming (which the traffic circles do, while still allowing a continuous flow of traffic) and I have posted several articles that outline various new ideas of traffic engineering.

I have endorsed Portland, but if you believe they are only about bike lanes... then I think you should take a harder look.

My whole main thrust here is that roads have, since the advent of the auto, been designed with the auto in mind... and that premise is changing... (hence the "new paradigm" mentioned in the OP).

My particular niche is about reducing the speeds on shared roadways. Bike lanes do not do that. Widening streets does not do that. And lest one think I have this incredible hatred for autos... I have no problem with high speed freeways... and the use of the auto on those roadways.

I do however believe that in general the US has gone way too far in encouraging the use of the auto in every aspect of our lives, much to the detriment of other forms of transportation, and our public health. It is time for that pendulum to swing back the other way as demonstrated by examples in London and NYC to name a few cities.

genec

And I say again... show me the results of your "education programs..." No where I am aware of, that has focused on education alone, has a modal share for cyclists above 1%.

I can point to scores of examples where education, along with well designed roadways, and cycling facilities (not mere lines of paint) have resulted in cycling modal shares well above 10%

kob22225

A few things to look over to see why you are wrong that the future can look just like the past (at the cultural level BTW, not just what the occasional individual Ted Kaczynski or Chris Chandless can 'survive' at, at least temporarily):

1) Graphs of population over time

2) Graphs of energy usage versus economic activity over time

3) Graphs of petroleum product usage over time

4) Graphs of new crude discoveries over time... with the quality of discoveries and extraction costs laid on top of that.

kob22225

Perhaps you can (with some manipulations) show correlations. That is it.

Read what I wrote. There is no reason for any of us to fight over this point. It isn't important enough.

pacificaslim

Sorry Genec, but you'll need to show the research to keep using that word "resulted in" and claiming certain things are what result in more bike use. Personally I suspect it's mainly culture (pop-culture) and very little to do with facilities and road design.

FWIW, I can point to examples where absolutely no education, terribly designed roadways, and no cycling facitlities other than parking, coexist with modal shares far above anywhere in the usa. These places either are too poor to afford cars or very rich (e.g. Japan) but have properly emphasized walking and public mass transit such that bicycles become a logical part of daily transportation.

kob22225

Great. I hope you join me in opposing them. If not, I hope you expend zero energy advocating for them... and help explain why they are bad to others fired up pushing them.

I also hope to see you drop your "roads are now awful for bicycling and only good for auto" rhetoric. It is not true and does not help bicyclist learn to enjoy their bicycling.

I already mentioned why I think vigourous opposition to bikelanes, _when_ the idea is presented, will always play a strong part of my bicyclist-related advocacy effort. I don't ignore everything else, but when others loudly push this idea - bad at a basic level and awful for cultural education - bikelane opposition will always stay near the top of the stack.

Overtstated as a practical problem for bicyclist use and safety on the US roadway system. Pushing this overstated view gets in the way of teaching bicyclists how they can enjoy and use their bicycling more, right this minute... tomorrow.

I also do not hate autos (or the drivers of them). But we part ways in a big way when it comes to freeways, especially a freeway through or near urban and village areas. (Plus, I suspect you are setting yourself up for a fall in your area of greatest concern when you fail to see how the freeway segregationist/major-dividing ideas/mindset go hand in hand with pressure to build the other elements in the rest of the surface road net you are fighting and works against getting the general behavior by road users you want [if not _exact_ structures you seem enamoured of at the moment.])

RobertHurst

I don't think anybody has claimed the future must look just like the past. Except for maybe Nietzsche with that whole eternal recurrence thing.

The objection is to your wild-eyed claims that suburbia must be 'dismantled.' Nothing will get dismantled and to suggest such a thing makes you seem dangerously radical -- Cultural Revolution-style -- or just so out-of-touch to make your ideas easily dismissable. The suburbs will continue to evolve, devolve, maybe rather rapidly in response to changing conditions. Some suburbs are already on their way to becoming the new ghettos, rundown and partially abandoned like parts of Detroit. But, for the time being, people live quite happily in suburbia -- most Americans live in what could be described as suburbs -- and may object to having their neighborhoods 'dismantled.' Better go back to the drawing board on that one.

I tend to agree that we are entering a new era in energy. But there is a lot more uncertainty in the energy situation than you acknowledge. Recent developments in ongoing economic collapse suggest that all-time peak petroleum demand may have occurred about a year ago. The world was using about 86 million barrels-per-day and oil producers were just barely able to supply it all. The market was tight as a drum and ripe for exploitation by large volume traders. Now demand has contracted and there is a supply glut, a complete turnaround. There is now a lot of extra oil. New oil sands projects in Alberta are being canceled and postponed indefinitely. Even after gas prices settled down Americans continued to drive less. Of course this could re-turnaround and head back the other direction and bring a price spike even higher than last year's, or a continuous ramp up to the heavens. Or, may I suggest it might never turn back around. Or, it might turn back around but not for many, many years (after the '79-82 spike and subsequent recession, demand didn't return for many years). If alternatives are developed in the meantime it's entirely possible they will steal the thunder of the looming petroleum crisis or keep it forever in the future. Or someone might discover some huge new deposits. I don't believe that will happen, but there is still a small possibility.

RobertHurst

Have you ridden in Southern California?

kob22225

Chipcom appeared to be saying something approximately that, and he is who I was responding to specifically.


Sure it is debatable how to phrase things if I was an attempting-to-be-elected official who wants to do what is needed once elected. But I'm not that. I am an individual attempting to describe the situation as it is, and suggesting the policy tool I believe most likely to succeed - government _expenditure_ and design policy on transportation rather than government dictated cost assesments and specific-product-purchase/behavior-related taxation schemes.

The truth is that suburbs _will_ devolve in a relatively rapid manner over the coming decades. Government policy pretty quickly must shift gears in a major way - removing all protections against that devolution occuring - if this change is not to be too ugly. It is a big deal, I'm not denying that, but we need to start getting the population's head around that. I don't think the public can be 'fooled' into this major shift.

kob22225

San Diego for a week back in early 1990's

invisiblehand

But if you are going to ignore correlations when it comes to making inferences about cycling, what are you left with? In other words, I would argue that much of our knowledge is fuzzy in nature but the language that the majority uses fails to acknowledge it on a regular basis.

kob22225

I don't ignore correlations in life or in these discussions.

However, the argument that bikelanes create modal share is not convincing, even without closer examination of any correlations that may (or may not really) exist , as presented by the person making the claim that bikelanes create modal share.

I lived 6 months in Japan in a place without a single bikelane. The modal share appeared at least as large as any I have ever seen in Portland OR.... just to mention one of the many places and times a good modal share correlation study would need to include.

RobertHurst

I think he was saying that we can look at history to help us predict the future, and I agree with him.

Okay, but you used the term 'dismantle.' What government policies do you envision that will 'dismantle' the suburbs, or do you just need to be more careful with your language?

It's hard for me to imagine any government policy that could have a more profound effect on suburban development than the bursting of the housing bubble that just occurred. In suburbs around the nation new construction came to a screeching halt. I can't think of any examples from history of government edict in a democracy having such a drastic and sudden effect. Quite a bit too late it seems, having built lots of crap in recent years. People may be paying quite a bit less to live in these suburbs than their developers envisioned, but I wouldn't bet on any of the new physical structures getting dismantled for quite a long while. And the archetypal postwar suburbs are here to stay folks, they evolved and diversified and now perform all the functions of little cities. Nobody is dismantling that. If you are talking about cultural/emotional constructs or paradigms of new home construction when you say 'dismantle,' I think that already happened. See how easy that was?

kob22225

Not how I read him.

Mostly he was wasting space with cryptic - and I suppose to his mind - 'gotcha' one-line posts.

To the degree he was attaching meaning, I read it as:

The community patterns of the past will be just fine in the future. We have little new to learn, and not much to do, to figure this out fine.

I think ignoring the biggness and newness of our situation - being complacent on the sofa in front of the McMansion TV in the evening 32 miles away from you daily place of employment - will continue to be a much much bigger danger than not remembering how to mill grain off of a water wheel axle.

Transportation policy and expenditures were the primary "rubber-hits-the-road" physical things that helped assemble our suburban nightmare. Changing those transportation policies and expenditures will lead to its dismantle in relatively short order.

I'm talking about both, see last paragraph of another of my letter to editor:

https://web.mac.com/kob22225/Site/Oba...obama_vic2.txt

I have to disagree about the mental dismantle. Hasn't started yet at all. I think the recent crash might actually have a little more _physical_ dismantling element to it before mental.

Look at what government noise is so far for recovery and stimulus: 1) "help people stay in their homes" meaning here, the exact, the specific, structure/location of their original poor, anti-social housing 'choice'; 2) building and rebuilding "roads and bridges."

kob22225

Some other policies I think might be OK to help with the physical and mental dismantle of suburbia needed, in a letter to a candidate for my US Rep:

https://web.mac.com/kob22225/Site/Oba...es/summers.txt

The Human Car

Aw yes, the evils of paint that suddenly makes destination positioning hard to imposable to only those not VC trained and that's why opposing bike lanes is more important then teaching VC itself as it's much better to have a system that results in wrong way riding, sidewalk riding and gutter bunnies for the non VC trained.

Just let me know what century (since decades are not sufficient) VC will have a statistical significance and maybe I'll join your anti-bike lane club around that date. Till then trying to exaggerate the dangers of bike lanes is not doing your cause any good IMHO.

RobertHurst

No I don't think so. It might change the pattern of future development or the pattern of evolution of existing developments. I don't see much dismantling in the foreseeable future.

You also underestimate the amount of fat that can be trimmed off the American lifestyle in order to retain the basic outline of that lifestyle -- suburban, car-based living. Instead of dismantling the paradigm and all that jive, suburban Americans can just drive less and buy less crap to pay for increasing fuel prices, when and if fuel prices start increasing again. They'll start tele-commuting on a more regular basis, which is huge. They'll begin to buy electric cars. They'll ride bikes. Etc.

There is a lot of weirdness and confusion in your word dismantled. Were the 19th century cities dismantled? In some respects, yes, multiple times. In Denver there are typically three or four or five generations of structures that have existed on the same lot downtown since the city's birth. (And Denver is quite new for a city, starting from nothing in 1858-9.) Yet the street grid that the pioneers laid down remains today, lined with skyscrapers. Downtown is still in the same place. The streetcar suburbs that grew up around 1900 are still there, though the streetcar systems were dismantled long ago. Most of the mansions of the streetcar suburbs remain, many divided into apartments. The carriage houses are filled with autos or tenants. Some of the mansions of the streetcar suburbs have been dismantled and replaced with apartment buildings. Does that mean the streetcar suburbs have been dismantled? I would say they are still there, just very different. The suburbs of the 1920s have evolved less drastically, now surrounded by multiple layers of subsequent development and filled in here and there with apartments and shopping centers. The same process takes place in the outer rings, making old suburbs more city-like over time.

I think you need to get away from this idea of 'dismantling' and be more realistic about the way things actually work.

Exactly. Uncle Sam is on his way from China with two giant suitcases and he's going to try to keep the ball rolling and get those suburban houses filled. If any congressmen were proposing smashing the paradigm I missed it.

kob22225

I believe you mis-read the nuance of my position.

1) Bikelanes - as an official hard and fast infrastructure manifestation of public ignorance about best bicycling practice - hurt the good education we need to give the public about roadway bicycling.

2) Mandatory bikelane use laws and laws that turn destination positioning principles on their head, label proper behavior "illegal" (though not impossible and I for one will continue to ride properly no matter how bad the law may be.) Sure this proper behavior is already somewhat under fire in the culture right now, but bikelane placement in places with mandatory bikelane usage laws steps the dangers of that up a notch.

Again, I believe you miss my nuance. Because bikelane design is illogical at its core, opposing bikelanes _is_ education.

Again, you seem to be missing my point.
Is bikelane paint the acute cause of death and destruction? Of course not - for just about the same reason they provide ZERO safety improvement: they are a (bad) design feature in search of a safety problem that does not exist. The outrageous attention 'bicycling' advocates give bikelanes is all part of the miseducation they represent.

The problem with bikelanes is the bad education they represent - the re-inforcement of _existing_ poor patterns of thinking and behavior in the population.

kob22225

Here are my claims right back at you:

1) You overestimate the effectiveness of fat-trimming within the existing paradigm in the face of the magnitude of the problem.

2) You underestimate how smug the average pandered-to American will be about themselves over any piddly fat trimming they may do within the existing paradigm. They will then just turn around and reward themselves with 6 or 7 new presents that will have 2X the impact of their 'trimming'.

If it helps you get a handle on the level of weirdness I mean - my answer is: Yes, absolutely, of course. And a dismantling of _at_least_ those proportions is headed at American Suburbia.

I also think the date you used is instructive... For what is coming in the next ~20 years... think "Industrial Revolution" level paradigm shift.

I think it is well past time we continue to minimize the magnitude of what is before us if we don't want the changes coming to be uglier than they need to be. Time to drop the fallacy that any 'fat trimming' and alt-fuel ideas (though those have to be in there of course) will let us get to the other side of 25 years from now in a sensible and grown-up manner.

kob22225

BTW

I think the realistic nature of my plan is its strongest feature.

The public policy I see getting us down this path through revolution is the strongest part of my argument.

I see a potential for improved equity and I see a better understanding of the American political philosophy mindset in my idea that transportation infrastructure expenditures should be the main tool for getting us through the Revolution.

It is an incremental and qualitative change in policy that has the greatest potential to create revolutionary change in community and cultural patterns. It uses an approximately existing level of government power in an area where essentially _everybody_ is already a pinko communist whether they own up to that or not (given the people Eisenhower supposedly got the idea for the interstate highway system from, I suppose I could insert another poltical philosophy title in here... but I know Goodwin is lurking out there waiting to get me): the collective's/government's primary role in making the transportation system look the way it does - which is the primary physical thing dictating how our communities/culture are configured.

(BTW, part of my semi-more-detailed thinking would shift significant elements of _commercial_ transportation back to the private sector from what we have now [KOB-thinking calibration note: I consider long haul trucking on existing system as having _at_least_ as much 'public' sector character to it as 'private' sector])

invisiblehand

I don't think that the general argument for accommodations or simple consideration rests on bike lanes.

The Human Car

I'm really not sure what's illogical about designating a portion of the roadway where 95% of cyclists travel anyway as a bikeway. Strong opposition to something that really does not amount to anything greater then an ant hill is not educational, it's splitting hairs and a waste of time. By your logic we should also oppose all speed limit signs because they cannot correctly state the maximum safe speed under all circumstances and opposing them will be educational so therefore increase safety.

kob22225

Great. Let's all drop all support and advocacy for bikelanes... and the rest of the argument can remain.

kob22225

The argument and illogic is in designating and delimiting vehicle-class specific space on roadways.

PS
A large percentage of bicyclist now do not ride where they should, when they should. That 95% statement actually helps make the case against drawing solid lines circles and arrows around, with a paragraph on the back of each example of poor behavior/location.

The Human Car

Hey then lets oppose HOV, bus lanes and truck pull out lanes as well.

In regards to you PS maybe but that's why there is no significant change in safety as there is not much of a difference between before and after. But what if bikeway engineering closely mimicked VC default riding position, what then?