04.30.09
Posted in Bike-to-Work Day
by Mark Dieterich at 9:13 pm
Started in 2008 and back by popular demand, the Providence Bicycle Coalition will be leading Bike Trains into the city on Bike to Work Day, May 15th! For those who may be unfamiliar with the term, a bike train is one or more experienced bicycle commuters who follow a published route with predetermined meeting points. Other cyclists can hop on and off the train at any point. It’s a great way for new cyclists to give bicycle commuting a try in a safe environment!
Please note… we’ve done our best to estimate times at which these trains will be passing certain points on the maps. We’d encourage everyone to get at specified locations a bit early, to ensure you don’t miss the train. We’ve also tried to indicate places where it would be safe to wait, not necessarily where there is parking available.
This year, the PBC is sponsoring three bike trains following predetermined routes:
View Bike To Work Day 2009 in a larger map
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Posted in Advocacy, Alerts, Bike Commuting
by Mark Dieterich at 8:49 pm
Bike-to-Brown and a RIDOT new post are reporting that the Washington Bridge Pedestrian/Bicycle Way is finally open again. After closing in October 2007, it’s certainly been closed for long enough! RIDOT is stating that
The path will eventually be closed again when the Department is ready to begin construction on a project to convert the remaining portion of the old bridge into a wider bikeway and linear park.
But I think it’s well within the cycling community rights to demand better. They’ve shut down the Washington Bridge, seriously deminished the ease and safety of using the Henderson Bridge, and made riding over the Division Street Bridge a task only to be attempted by experienced cyclists. If the roadwork required to complete the Washington Bridge Linear Park were being completed for automobiles, they wouldn’t completely shut down the bridge and I think it’s only right they treat cyclists the same. The PBC will do what we can to encourage RIDOT to do the right thing, can we count on your support?
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04.28.09
Posted in Tales from the Trenches
by Mark Dieterich at 4:46 pm
I’m out for a walk on this beautiful day and at one point crossing over Thayer Street, in a crosswalk. As I’m about half way across the street, a car comes rolling down the road, right through the crosswalk and in front of me. This happens right in front of the two police cars you see in this picture. The Providence Police officer is too busy talking on his phone to do anything, who knows what the Brown officer is doing. I realize that police can not notice every little incident, perhaps they both just missed this little interaction. My gut tells me, they wouldn’t have done anything even if they had noticed what happened, am I being too harsh?
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Posted in Advocacy
by Mark Dieterich at 2:41 pm
I happened upon upon a post on the Bike Bis blog, referencing the 2007 annual report on bicycle fatalities (pdf). Of note in the report is the fact that
bicycle fatalities across the U.S. dropped for a second straight year in 2007 to 698 deaths, representing a 9.5% decrease from the previous year.
For Rhode Island, the bicycle statistics are
1 fatalities; 1.4% of total traffic fatalities; 0.95 deaths per 1 million population;
The NHTSA reports there were a total of 69 traffic fatalities in 2007. When you factor in the fact that there were 13 pedestrian fatalities, this means that just over 20% of the fatalities were inflicted upon non-motorized forms of travel. My friends, this is simply unacceptable. I have yet to be able to find the dollar amount spent for safety projects in Rhode Island, but I highly doubt we would see that 20% of those dollars are put towards increasing pedestrian a cyclist safety. Does anyone have pointers to this information?
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04.24.09
Posted in Bike Commuting
by Mark Dieterich at 12:28 pm
The Providence Bicycle Coalition is proud to announce the start of our Monday Bike Trains project. During the months of May, June, and July we have experienced bicycle commuters who have kindly volunteered to lead bicycle trains into providence. We are starting the program off with three routes:
View Monday Bike Trains in a larger map
Anyone interested in trying bicycle commuting is encouraged to join one of our trains. The East Bay (Blue) and Blackstone River (Green) bike trains will start running on May 4th. The South County bike train will start running on May 11th. Times at which we anticipate the trains will reach different locations along the route are indicated by place markers.
If you have questions, you can email the leaders with questions.
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Posted in Tales from the Trenches
by Mark Dieterich at 10:08 am
Perhaps I’m just being utopic, but in my world, I expect police to know the laws, understand the intent of the law, and to be upstanding examples of how other motorists should behave. In the past two days, I’ve had two separate incidents that, unfortunately, had police shaking up my utopic view of the world.
I rode home via the East Bay Bike Path last night. As I was passing the Providence port area, there were two tugs out maneuvering a freighter into the dock. Since 9/11, any time a big ship is being maneuvered like this, there is now a police presence on the bike path. Sometimes it includes swat teams, other days like yesterday it involves a single cruiser. The cruiser yesterday felt it was within his rights to park on the bike path, covering the entire paved area. Uh… no… Last time I checked the bike path didn’t allow motorized vehicles, why don’t they send out bike cops? I know, crazy idea. Could they at least send out an officer who has some respect for the users of the bike trail and is willing to pull off onto the grass? I find the whole act a waste of taxpayers dollars. Seriously, what are they trying to prevent that this small show of force will actually achieve?
The second incident ocurred as I was riding into work this morning. As I was passing through Barrington, a police officer felt it was appropriate to park his/her cruiser on the sidewalk. The officer was nowhere to be seen, was not parked in front of a house, and the cruiser did not have it’s lights on as if the officer were responding to a call. In fact, my gut tells me it was a cruiser parked there to slow down traffic. Unfortunately, it also caused a child using the sidewalk to ride to school to get off and venture into the road and a pedestrian trying to walk on the sidewalk to also venture into the street. I’m sure glad the police were there to help these two.
I completely understand that police, at times, during the course of their work must park or drive places where normal cars should not go. However, this should not be the norm, it should not be done lightly, and it should never be done when they are not responding to an emergency. I’d be happy to have an officer comment on these observations and explain why such behavior makes sense.
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04.22.09
Posted in Advocacy
by Eric at 10:05 pm
For many of us, I think, it’s always a nice surprise to find a high-ranking government appointee that isn’t a tool.
Check out his bike-related Earth Day blog post here. This administration is putting its our money where its mouth is by mandating that a certain percentage of ARRA (economic stimulus) funds must go to “transportation enhancements”, which are usually bike, ped, and public transit projects. Add to that the new Dept of Energy program that makes grant money available to bike projects, and we’ve got a whole mess o’ cash coming down the pipe to those government agencies that make a good ask.
So… Pakistan may be about to fall to the Taliban, and we use four million unrecycled plastic cups a day on airline flights alone, and apparently Providence is the hardest city in the US in which to live (that’s just bs), but I’m convinced that conditions for cyclists in Providence will continue to improve. And that Secretary LaHood is not a tool.
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Posted in General
by Mark Dieterich at 9:58 pm
As some of you might already know, multiple states have been considering the implementation of an “Idaho Stop Law“. Orgeon’s current attempt was pronounced dead in the last few days. I’ve also heard that California, Montana, and DC have considered such laws. Would such a law legalize what is already common behavior or would it just incite anger amongst motorists and encourage more cyclists to behave badly?
For the uninitiated, Idaho has, for the past 20+ years allowed cyclists to legally treat stop signs as yield signs. This video does a fairly good job of describing what the law is all about. Such a law would not mean cyclists can just blow through stop signs, but it would mean that cyclists can legally perform rolling stops, as is fairly common with cyclists around the country. In fact, Idaho has pretty steep fines for cyclists who blow through a stop sign, on the order of over $300+!
What’s your take on such a law, would it help or hurt the cycling movement?
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Posted in Advocacy
by Mark Dieterich at 6:01 pm
I’ve now seen this same statement plastered on a number of sites, the most recent on the House Republican Leader’s (John Boehner) Blog:
Just take a look at how some of the so-called “stimulus” dollars are being spent. In spite of promises of transparency and accountability from the Administration, hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars are being spent on wasteful projects: a skateboard park in Rhode Island, bike racks in the District of Columbia, highway studies instead of construction projects …
While I can’t stand up and defend a skateboard park, I’ll certainly stand up and proudly say that bicycle parking is NOT a waste of the taxpayers parking. In fact, I think it is money well spent. What better way to spend stimulus money than to hire people to put in parking racks and promote alternative transportation? In fact, the League of American cyclists posted some information in a recent Trash Talk column that suggests that bike infrastructure has a higher return on investment than road expansion and significant job growth.
Currently there are two leading congressmen leading the assault on bicycle infrastructure projects. If you feel your tax money is being well spent funding bicycle infrastructure projects, then I would encourage you to write Congressman Cantor and Congressman Boehner and let them know bicycle infrastructure IS a valid infrastructure expenditure.
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Posted in Advocacy
by Mark Dieterich at 3:48 pm
Back in January, Massachusetts passed new bicycle laws that should help to better protect cyclists. The MassBike website does an excellent job of summarizing the new laws, which among other things:
- Making “dooring” a ticketable offense
- Requiring motorists to stay a safe distance to the left of cyclists and, when passing, to return to the right only when they have safely passed the cyclist
- If the lane is too narrow to pass a bicycle at a safe distance, while remaining in the lane, then they must use another lane to pass
- Prohibiting motorists from taking an abrupt right turn after passing a cyclist
- Motorists must yield to bicycles when turning left
- Motorists Liable for Hitting Bicyclists Riding to the Right. Bicycles, unlike other vehicles, are permitted to ride to the right of other traffic (e.g., on the shoulder), and motorists are not permitted to use this fact as a legal defense for causing a crash with a bicyclist.
In addition,
police recruits are now required to receive training on the bicycle-related laws, bicyclist injuries, dangerous behavior by bicyclists, motorists actions that cause bicycle crashes, and motorists intentionally endangering bicyclists.
At the same time, the law also eliminates the need for individual towns and cities to implement spcecific laws on how cyclists are ticketed for violating traffic laws. Now, they have adopted the same procedure as police use for motor vehicles. According to a WickedLocal article, earlier this month Newton Massachusetts police wrote their first citiation for a cyclist who apparently ran a read light.
“The cyclist was struck by a vehicle who had a green light. The car was not speeding and it was not their fault,” said Lt. Bruce Apotheker. “The cyclist admitted that he shouldn’t have gone through the red light. Officer Charles Edrehi issued a citation to the cyclist for failure to stop for a red light.”
I know this issue will draw mixed opinions from you cyclists, so let’s hear it.
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