Matt Yglesias

Bicycle Turning Lanes

Lord knows I love seizing bits of the roadway away from motorists but this creation of a separate left-hand turn lane for cyclists strikes even me as overkill:

Not that I mind or anything, but this kind of seems like a solution in search of a problem.

Safety in Numbers

As I’ve noted before, the evidence suggests that as the number of cyclists in a city increases, the level of safety-per-cyclist increases so quickly that more bike riders leads to fewer bike accidents:

Saturday after having spent all week being jealous of the German bike lanes and the large number of German urban cyclists, I finally got the chance to rent a bike and ride around Berlin. You can really experience the safety in numbers phenomenon first hand:

The crux of the matter is that on any busy street there are always cyclists. In many circumstances, this is dealt with through the provision of good bicycle lanes, often physically separated from auto traffic. But where that’s not the case the bikes are in the street and the cars are well-aware that there are bikes in the street and conduct themselves accordingly.

At the same time, German cyclists seem to me to go slower. In part, it’s a matter if the bikes. People typically seem to have hybrid or mountain tires rather than road tires (necessary for going over cobblestones or streetcar tracks) and often their bikes are configured in a European-style upright posture, both of which lead to slower speeds.

Bike Lanes in Saxony

Dresden and Freiberg had some bicycling infrastructure that a DC bike commuter can’t help but be jealous of. From the looks of it, Frankfurt is also quite bike-friendly but I haven’t really been outside much. Here’s a very convenient separated lane:

And here’s some nice red striping that extends through the intersection and improves visibility:

And here we have a lane separated out from the sidewalk:

For whatever reason in Northern Europe bicycles seems to be the predominant alternative to cars whereas in Southern Europe you see more scooters and mopeds and such. I’d sort of like to come up with a theory as to why that it (it’s flatter in the north?) but no obvious one is coming to mind. I note that relative to the United States, you see cyclists in Germany (like in the Netherlands) from more walks of life—more older people, more people with carseat attachments for kids and such.

The Libertarian Parking Garage Challenge

A couple of days ago, Cato’s Tad DeHaven took aim at a new bicycle storage facility being built at Union Station in Washington, DC. I remarked ” I look forward to the day when the Cato Institute does a blog post denouncing each and every publicly financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America.” To which DeHaven responded yesterday:

I denounce each and every federally financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America on non-federal property. I’m one of those quaint individuals who recognizes that the Constitution grants the federal government specific enumerated powers. Using federal tax dollars to finance local parking garages, lots, bike centers and racks is not one of the powers granted to the federal government. So let me rephrase my statement from yesterday: Look, I harbor no animosity against [car drivers], but under what authority — legal or moral — does the federal government tax me in order to build [parking garages or lots] for parochial, special interests?

To be honest, rather than addressing my concern I think this response highlights the hypocrisy I was pointing out. I have no doubt that on some abstract level DeHaven is opposed to all kinds of federal funding of local transportation projects (though I note that a facility relating to a train station in the national capital seems like a plausible area of federal concern) but in practice he denounces a specific bicycle parking project as an example of unconstitutional waste while not in practice complaining about car facilities.

But I fired up the old Google and found plenty of specific examples of federally-funded parking garage projects. This one in Fairfax County cost $28.8 million. Here’s a story about “an application for $130 million in federal grant funds to help pay for a parking garage complex in downtown Bartow.” Here’s an account of a $9 million parking garage in Vermont “Partially funded with federal transportation money.”

And, look, I’m not kidding about this: I really do look forward to the day when the Cato Institute starts specifically denouncing all of this stuff and really going after it. As a supporter of bicycle initiatives, I think it’s nice to see the federal government kick some bucks into a bicycle facility. But as you can see that money is dwarfed by what’s spent on public (and, yes, federal) subsidies for automobile parking facilities. I would gladly equalize federal funding for car parking and bike parking at $0 per year. But I get annoyed when friends of limited government pick on the crumbs handed to cyclists while completely ignoring the loafs going to cars.

Bike/Ped Safety Funds Survive Senate Vote

CalTrain station, Menlo Park, CA (cc photo by Richard Masoner)

Elana Schor reports on failed efforts to strip funding for bicycle and pedestrian safety in the Senate:

Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) and Jim Webb (D-VA) voted with Coburn to allow states to opt out of a current mandate to spend 10 percent of federal transportation aid on bike and pedestrian paths, bike-ped safety education, and other programs.

Coburn’s amendment fell short by a vote of 39-59, with three other Democrats, Sens. Russ Feingold (WI), Evan Bayh (IN), and Claire McCaskill (MO), also aligning with the majority of Republicans in favor of the opt-out.

Shame on everyone. Small amounts of money to promote walking and cycling are good for the environment and for public health.

On a related note, I look forward to the day when the Cato Institute does a blog post denouncing each and every publicly financed parking lot or garage in the United States of America. Somehow I think that if we equalized public funding for car park and bike parking at $0 that would on net work to the advantage of non-drivers.

Safety in Numbers

When riding your bicycle through an urban area, it certainly feels safer to bike when other people are also biking. When a bunch of people are riding on the same block, they’re much more visible to cars than a solo cyclist. And when drivers become accustomed to their being cyclists on the road, they’re more aware of the potential presence of bikers. Ben Fried at Streetsblog points to evidence of the “safety in numbers” effect coming to New York City:

As the number of riders in NYC goes up, the aggregate quantity of accidents is going down. So the rate of accidents is plummeting. Obviously, bicycling as a mode of transportation isn’t going to work for all locations—its viability has a lot to do with terrain. But there are a lot of places in America, including Washington DC, where it can be a very useful addition to the mix. And I know that one reason some folks in Washington don’t want to take it up is that it feels unsafe. But what we’re seeing here is that incremental improvements in safety can, if they get more people out on the bike paths, lead to a positive feedback loop of more pedaling and more safety.

House GOP Proposes Hundreds of Billions in Useless Budget Gimmicks

Eric Cantor (R-VA)

CNN reports on House Republicans’ efforts to get serious about cutting the budget:

The House Republican leadership upped the ante Thursday in the ongoing debate over the size and scope of the federal budget, unveiling a proposal to cut spending by $375 billion over the next five years. [...] President Barack Obama “challenged us to come up with budget savings, and today House Republicans encourage him to not only look over our proposed … common-sense taxpayer savings, but to join our effort,” House Minority Whip Eric Cantor, R-Virginia, said in a statement.

It turns out, however, that there’s no real proposal here. Instead, “The bulk of the GOP’s proposed savings would come from capping non-defense discretionary spending at the level of inflation.”

A blanket cap in spending is not a good idea. For one thing, it’s incredibly indiscriminate. For another thing, it’s oddly un-inclusive. If we’re just going to reduce outlays in an arbitrary, across-the-board way, why should defense and Social Security and Medicare and Medicaid be left off the table? Well, presumably they don’t want to cut the defense budget because they think it’s important. But isn’t the FBI important? Prisons? If Medicare’s important, isn’t the CDC important? What would be helped by slashing Pell Grants? When the Obama administration proposed $17 billion in federal spending cuts, the announcement was generally met with mild derision at what a small share of the overall pie that is. But the point is that they found $17 billion dollars worth of cuts that there are actual reasons to believe are worth making. It’s easy to generate a high headline number by being arbitrary. But it’s also easy to do devastating damage to the country.

A much better AP story gets that there are only about $5 billion a year in actual cuts here. And just to piss me off personally, one of the the specific items they want to cut is federal support for bicycle routes. I’ll be the first to admit that not that many people use a bicycle as their primary means of conveyance, but there are about fourty times more of us than George Will realizes, and we’re using a commuting method that’s good for the environment and helps reduce traffic congestion for everyone else. Conservatives seem to have decided that bicycles are funny and un-American, like Puerto Rican food and volcano monitoring, but I don’t really see what their reasoning is.

BMW: Bike Commuters’ New Favorite Car Company

This seems like a promising development:

According to New Scientist, the pair have developed a prototype door that uses a range of sensors to detect any oncoming dangers, and work in concert with an accelerometer in the door to prevent it from being opened. What’s more, the sensors are apparently also able to detect the proximity of the object and adjust the resistance of the door accordingly — for instance, slowing the door down if you’re about to slam it into a lamp post.

My hope, of course, would be that this will prevent careless drivers from opening a car door right in the path of an oncoming bicyclist. But if you drive regularly and don’t yet own this fabulous technology, please do take a second before opening the door in your parked car to check for this scenario. Bad things can happen otherwise.

Barcelona Bicycle Policy

By Matthew Yglesias

The weather’s pretty soggy in Barcelona this week, but it still looks to be a pretty solid bicycling town. One feature that I wish more American cities has is bike lanes that are actually separated from the flow of traffic so that they can be used for bicycling rather than as double-parking lanes:

They also have a bike sharing service called “Bicing” that appears to use identical infrastructure to our smaller SmartBike DC program in Washington:

It occurs to me every time I see a bike share service in another city that it would do a lot to extend the utility of these things if there were some kind of reciprocity agreement in place between different bike sharing cities. I’m a SmartBikeDC member, but I rarely use it because like most people inclined to get around town on a bike I own a bike and usually ride that. It’s when I’m not in DC that I really want to use a bike share.

By Request: Winter Biking

Allan wants to know about “bike commuting in winter.”

This is my first winter as a bike commuter. I’d heard bad things about it but I haven’t found it to be a huge problem. The key breakthrough was when I figured out how to make my helmet big enough to wear my hat under it. That and remembering to wear gloves. Normally, I don’t wear gloves outside unless it really gets quite cold — it’s convenient enough to stick ‘em in your coat pockets if they get a little chilly, and keeping the gloves off leaves your hand free to fiddle with your iPod or whatever. But you can’t put your hands in your pocket on a bike, and you don’t need to manipulate any small objects with your fingers — what you need are some gloves to shield your fingers from the wind.

Beyond that, in all things related to bike commuting we need to look to our friends in Europe. The top bike commuting city is Copenhagen, not San Diego. If people can bike to work in Denmark’s winter (I even saw plenty of people biking around Helsinki in December) then it can be done wherever you might be in the USA as well. Unfortunately, American mindspace about bicyling tends to be dominated by the insidious recreational bikers, who’ve gotten it into people’s heads that even on a lovely day for a bike ride the act of pedaling requires intricate performance gear including funny biking outfits. But bike commuting is a whole different ballgame — you’re just trying to get to work, so you should wear what you would wear. If it’s cold, wear a sweater and a scarf under your coat. If you need to give a presentation, bike in a suit and fancy shoes. You’re not going to set world records in a bundled-up-for-winter outfit, but the point is just to get to work. See, e.g., the Copenhagen Cycle Chic blog.

But it all starts with a hat and gloves even in weather that you wouldn’t ordinarily consider nippy enough for ‘em.

Bicycle Safety Enhancement Act

All decent residents of Washington, DC will be joining me in supporting Jim Graham’s Bicycle Safety Enhancement Act of 2008. Click here to send some email to your City Council representative. The council doesn’t get all that much contact from constituents outside a relatively narrow group of usual suspects, so this sort of thing can make a big difference.

Fancy Bike Helmets

Denmark is known for its good design, and Copenhagen is one of the world’s great bike commuting cities. At the same time, bike helmets are known for making you look idiotic. So what the world needs is some clever Danish designer to come up with some bike helmets that don’t suck. And here comes Yakkay to the rescue.

Thus far, they don’t seem to have any available in the US. Which is too bad. Also all these helmets seem to be for women. But still, progress!

Repair Time

I swerved out of the way of a wayward pedestrian yesterday biking from the office to the gym, and wound up in a nasty pothole. Tire’s now busted and in need of fixing, so I’m going to suspend political commentary (well, okay, I might take a meeting with Lady Lynn de Rothschild, scourge of elitism) until I can fix the crisis.