Originally Posted by
Ender686
Thanks for the post up, Matt. I was starting to talk to my friends about who's policies they liked (one's a teacher with Richmond Public and the other's a planner) and this helps as well. I'll put it under my belt to read thoroughly later.
Poquemahone's right, though, the bike lanes here are silly or worthless. My commute is mostly on Va Bike route one and it includes that set of 18" lanes he mentioned.
The city's pretty good for riding in general. But I think normalizing the use of bikes for the city and making it safer for cyclists of all stripes to ride would be a better idea than trying to retrofit lanes for us. The addition of the bus lane on Broad Street downtown is nice for car traffic, but it's dangerous as all get out for cyclist as the busses are doing roughly the same speed. That and the bus driver's lack of recognition of cyclist's rights make it damn scary to be out around 8a or 5p. Enforcement of traffic and parking laws, in the Fan especially, would be helpful, too.
A small city program to give out blinky lights to riders would be a nice program to add along a pamphlet on cyclist rights and such. I'd be up for working on a program helping the ninjas to be seen.
The answer to the Broad Street problem is to ride it as little as possible. It's not a great cycling street anyhoo, and plenty of other options abound.
I've pretty much given up on RVA drivers; they seem to be incapable of recognizing simple symbols like a stop sign and more than willing to use their car as a weapon.
I do like the idea of a blinky distribution program, and certainly would be willing to help as much as possible on a cyclist's rights in the city pamphlet. It would be good if we could interest the city in it; perhaps we could talk to a couple of the councillours (Chris Hibbert seems approachable) and get the ball rolling. Certainly an advisory group to the city, made of local commuter cyclists, would help prevent future muck-ups like the Hermitage lanes. I know Bud Vye tries, but he really doesn't ride in the city much.
I've certainly seen a rise in the number of riders/commuters here-- in the last couple years, it's gone from me and a very few others to a lot more, which I believe is a good thing.