A Bicycle Lane Children’s Story
by Lewis DerkinsJuly 31st, 2008, 9:08 pm
Today Bob Korfhage, the former president of Siskiyou Velo bicycle club, treated Southern Oregon’s large contingent of five-year-old Mail Tribune readers to an elementary lesson on bike lanes.
I am going to quote this in its entirety, and systematically ridicule it before your very eyes.
At the moment, I’m lying here between the paved traffic lane and the gravel shoulder, staying cool until the sun warms me up. During the hot day, most vehicles pass me by without giving me so much as a wink. I prefer to think that’s because they really don’t appreciate my importance.
I am a rather nondescript entity, just a strip of pavement on either side of the roadway, typically bordered with solid white stripes eight inches wide, with an occasional stenciled outline of a bicycle.
Ignoring the fact that this is written to appeal to people who can’t yet appreciate the complexity of Dr. Seuss, I think vehicles readily appreciate the “importance” of bike lanes. We take road capacity away from cars that constitute 86.7% of all commuting trips and give it to a form of transit that .5% of people use. Then we claim induced demand as a rationale not to expand roads despite the fact that we just forced the entire capacity of the “bike lane” into the remaining traffic lane which caused the problem in the first place. Next we compound the problem by turning this lane into a BRT lane and soon we’ll have a bicycle paradise.
And you know what, let’s not ignore the fact that this is written in a tone reminiscent of kindergarten nap time after all– who exactly is this supposed to appeal to? Do bicyclists find this cute? Am I supposed to find this cute? The tone of this whole thing speaks more to the lack of intelligence behind most bike advocacy rather than the need for more of the same.
Each day my peace and quiet is interrupted by a noisy onslaught of vehicle traffic, usually far too close for comfort. Adding insult to injury, those car and truck tires generate a “sweeping” effect that pushes all kinds of debris onto my surface. It’s terribly humiliating to be covered with grit, broken glass, syringes, cans, dead animals (peeuw — they stink!), plastic sacks of garbage, nails, screws, bolts, staples, and much more. It’s a wonder cyclists are willing to ride on me when I look like this.
Other things that ruin my day are parked cars and garbage cans lined up along me blocking my route, loose gravel from intersections and driveways thrown onto my surface, and clumps of dried mud dropped by tractors.
Never mind that those horrible cars pay for my bike lanes since my beloved bicyclists don’t pay for any of it. Oops, sorry, they pay general taxes. Of course cars pay them too, but …cars are evil, bike lanes are good!!
I don’t want to sound like a grouchy old fuddy duddy, but life is tough when I can’t achieve my reason for being: safety for bicyclists.
Except that this hasn’t actually been proven to enhance safety. In fact, New York doubled it’s bike infrastructure and there was no decrease in bike fatalities. Bike injuries declined slightly, but pedestrian injuries are through the roof. The nice bikes actually kill pedestrians at the same rate as cars, and injure them at much higher rates.
A helpless bike lane being terrorized by a 'motorized beast'There are some bright spots in my life, of course.
The best part of my day is when a bicyclist quietly cruises down my mid-section, treating me with proper respect and appreciating my function within the transportation system. I like to think I provide them a safe refuge amongst the motorized beasts that cruise my shoulder.
Occasionally, a street sweeper cheers me up by clearing all the debris from my surface. Man, does that make me feel like a million bucks.
While trying to ignore the bizarre quasi-industrial-erotic description of a bike “cruising the mid- section,” I’ll just point you to the fact that a bike lane doesn’t offer you any “safe refuge” from anything. It’s a painted line on pavement. The double yellow doesn’t prevent people from crossing into head on collisions, and this thing doesn’t generate some magical, protective forcefield. The best way to ensure your own safety on a bike is to obey the traffic rules, ride defensively, and behave in a predictable way.
My official title is “bicycle lane.” According to Oregon Statute 801.155, that means I’m part of the highway. I’m adjacent to the roadway, designated by official signs or markings, for use by persons riding bicycles, except as otherwise specifically provided by law.
You see, my cousin and I are quite different. Although you often see cyclists riding on my cousin’s surface area, it wasn’t really designed for safe cycling.
Some motorists confuse me with my cousin, the road shoulder. Oregon Statute 801.480 describes “Shoulder” as the portion of a highway, whether paved or unpaved, contiguous to the roadway that is primarily for use by pedestrians, for the accommodation of stopped vehicles, for emergency use and for lateral support of base and surface courses. [1983 c.338 §88].
The shoulder wasn’t designed that way, but the road was designed to accommodate cyclists. Unfortunately, bicyclists couldn’t follow the rules like everyone else so we have to treat them differently to make them feel like they are more protected when they aren’t.
Bike lan oppressed by terrible mechanical monsterI’m so special there are laws that pertain specifically to me (It gives me a fat head sometimes). Look at this one: “A person commits the offense of failure of a motor vehicle operator to yield to a rider on a bicycle lane if the person is operating a motor vehicle and the person does not yield the right of way to a person operating a bicycle, electric assisted bicycle, electric personal assistive mobility device, moped, motor assisted scooter or motorized wheelchair upon a bicycle lane” (Oregon Statute 811.050: Failure to yield to rider on bicycle lane).
I’d like to give the writer of this “article” a “fat head”…with a tire iron.
My size varies, depending on where I’ve been built. The Oregon Department of Transportation requires me to be six feet wide if I’m a standard bike lane. However, I can be narrower (4 feet) when there are open shoulders or (5 feet) when I’m against A curb, guardrail or parked cars. In the city of Medford I vary from four feet to six feet wide depending on the classification of the street.
Ten years ago I was restricted to only a few streets and highways in the Rogue Valley. Now, I’m getting more respect, and am showing up in a lot of really cool places. I think I need to thank the city, county and state transportation planners for recognizing that I make the world safer for both bicyclists and motorists.
Not really – you make the road more inconvenient for motorists, and in all actuality you convince cyclists that they don’t have to obey the normal rules of the roads.
Messy wessy wittul baby needs cweaningI also know that I greet a lot more cyclists cruising on my backbone than I used to. Must be a sign of the times, or maybe gas prices. Hey, the other day, I even got a car to wink at me. Life’s not so bad you know. We all have a purpose. Mine is to help bicyclists and motorists share the road and respect each other.
The last sentence is the only thing in this whole post that is worth reading, and I disagree with it. Bicyclists and motorists do need to share the roads, but you don’t need a bike lane to do that, you need everyone to follow the law.
Hope to see some of you two-wheelers on my surface soon!
As a cyclist myself, I find this entire post insulting. Eat a bag of crap.
Posted in Bicycle Lanes, Bicycles |
Derk, Radical bicyclists are simply better than you. Not matter how you spin your numbers, the fact remains that these two-wheeled revolutionaries transport themselves around urban cores in a superior manner. Whereas the rest of us (including you) have succumbed to the propaganda of Big Oil, these round earthers have collectively decided to make a stand against selfishness and greed. They’re like thousands of Che Guevara’s, raising their collective fist against moral decay. You will never understand, my friend, because you’re nothing more than the shill of the auto-industrial complex. These radical bicyclists, on the other hand, are striving for nothing less than a perfect world, divorced from the seductions of the energy lobbyists, right-wing warmongers, highway pavers, and daily polluters who are hell bent on destroying the planet. These bicyclists are nothing less than environmentalist foot soldiers, liberating our fragile ecosystem one city block at a time. The automobile might currently be winning, but in the end it will lose because it is evil, and evil always loses. Not only is the automobile a source of death, destruction, and despair, it’s a symbol of everything wrong with our culture, society, and species. It’s the perfect embodiment of our lust, gluttony, greed, sloth, wrath, envy, and pride. It’s the reason we tramp off on all these military misadventures abroad. It’s the reason we won’t do anything about global warming. It’s the reason we’ve become the laughing stock of the Europeans. Derk, you might think you’re clever, with your jokes and your mockery. But the simple truth is that you operate on a much lower playing field, morally. You’re nothing more than a tool of Dick Cheney.
What would you call the tool of a tool?
Louisiana Banana at IHOP.
You heard it here first.
G-d Bless.
SEE YOU AT IHOP
Hiss Kaag
Maybe I’m in the minority, but I’m a cyclist who doesn’t care for most bike lanes. Sometimes they are nice if well thought-out. I don’t think a city needs to spend a lot to change its infrastructure overnight to make cycling safe. Instead I am in favor of painting sharrows on right lanes to to remind motorists that cyclists might be present and may use as much of the lane as deemed safe per the state vehicle code. That’s a relatively cost-effective and unobtrusive way to make the roads safer. The streets around UCLA already have these, and Los Angeles is experimenting with these on a few streets in the Eastside.
Despite L.A.’s image of being car-centric and hostile, I’ve only gotten honked at just once in the last six months, and that was stopped at an intersection. I have a 30 mile round trip to work which I sometimes ride half on the bus, and my monthly bike mileage is about equal to my car mileage.
I obey lights and stop signs, since I want to be treated as traffic. On the occasions when there isn’t anyone around I’ve been known to roll a stop slowly, but only after I can see both ways. I never take the right of way if I don’t have it, though many motorists have been very nice lately and yielding it to me anyway.
I write this to emphasize that motorist-cyclist relations aren’t nearly as bad as recent incidents might suggest. While the most shrill voices might get your attention, I maintain that there is a Silent Majority of cyclists who are safety-minded and by and large law-abiding. They aren’t angels, no, but they aren’t scofflaws either. Likewise the vast number of motorists are nice and knowledgeable about the law.