Chris Buck

I <3 PowerPoint.

I’ve been to Academy of Natural Sciences forums before, so I know that PowerPoint presentations are the norm … but still, was anyone else surprised when David Byrne started clicking off slide after slide?

Last night’s bike lecture, led by the Talking Heads co-founder and author of Bicycle Diaries (Viking, $25.95) — which was only OK, despite what they tell you, and I’m a bike head — began a little late. There was a video montage of bikes in cinema (The Wizard of Oz, The Sound of Music, unidentifiable ’80s movies, etc.) to keep the audience placated, though. Then, at around 6:30, Byrne took to the stage, in a black button-up shirt and loose, comfy-looking black pants, looking as dapper as ever. Byrne hasn’t really aged at all — he looks the same as he did 20 years ago, but with gray hair.

I was only able to stay for an hour, but here’s what I learned: (more…)

The Daily News‘ Stu Bykofsky and I have a little back-and-forth going over the bike lanes on Spruce and Pine, and today I invited (okay, challenged) Stu to take a bike ride with me and CP’s Isaiah Thompson first down a city street without a dedicated bike lane and a city street with one.

Last week, in my editor’s letter, I accused Stu of being a bully. And this morning, Stu sent me an e-mail that read:

“Stu bullies motorists today. Don’t miss it!”

And I’ll hand it to Stu for sticking it to the maniacs who find it acceptable to operate their two-ton steel, glass and vinyl weapons on residential city streets while texting, dialing and/or talking on cell phone.

And though I take issue with his use of statistics in some of his bike lane pieces, he’s got good numerical backup in this morning’s piece:

That cellphone use creates deadly distracted driving is disputed by no (sane) person I could find - and I even looked on the Internet, the corkscrew colony for crackpot contrarians.

Cell-phone use quadruples the risk of an auto accident, according to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety. It causes 636,000 crashes, 330,000 injuries and 2,600 deaths annually, according to the Harvard Center of Risk Analysis, which estimates the cost at $43 billion.

All age groups use cell phones while driving, but it creates an unusual effect among the young - the least experienced drivers and the most cell-addicted:

“If you put a 20-year-old driver behind the wheel with a cell phone, their reaction times are the same as a 70-year-old driver who is not using a cell phone,” says University of Utah psychology professor David Strayer. “It’s like instantly aging a large number of drivers.”

Is it an easy target? Sure. But a very worthwhile one nonetheless. In the piece, Byko makes enforcement suggestions that would be well applied to cyclists as well.

Drivers have been warned, but many continue to roam with phones in hand. Does this come from a misplaced sense of entitlement - or no sense at all?

Why do they persist? Not enough enforcement.

Solution? Blanket enforcement.

For a week, police should stop and ticket every violator they see. They are not hard to find.

Skip a few weeks, then repeat as often as necessary to drive the fear of enforcement - and the $75 fine - through their gooney-bird skulls.

To all the people who complain about scofflaw cyclists — yes, there are cyclists who bend and snap the law. And the reason they do is that there’s next to zero enforcement (and that cyclists are regularly  treated as non-entities by the police and drivers).

phillyist.com

A couple of days ago, I got a rather chipper email from the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia, the region’s largest bicycle advocacy group.

In it, Executive Director Alex Doty wrote the following (emphasis added):

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Neighborhood Bike Works is taking full advantage of the Martin Luther King holiday and day of service, recruiting volunteers to help spruce up its old and *new* locations.

REI and the Bicycle Club of Philadelphia are sponsoring the event (REI is kicking in a $7,000 grant for an Earn a Bike mountain bike program) and there’s still time to volunteer (today and in the glorious future of 2010). Locations are below.

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It’s as if all our middle school dreams have come true: As was announced last week, David Byrne, he of  Talking Heads, solo work, Sessions at West 54th and, most recently, bicycle advocacy, will be in town to talk about bikes. On Feb. 4, Byrne will sit on a panel entitled “Cities, Bicycles and the Future of Getting Aroundâ€� with Alex Doty of the Bicycle Coalition, sustainability director Katherine Gajewski and the excellently named urban theorist Ignacio Bunster-Ossa. All will be moderated by PennFuture’s Christine Knapp at the Academy of Natural Sciences.

There are, of course, no more seats available, but those interested in attending the 6 p.m. reception and 6:30 lecture can sign up to be on the waiting list by hitting davidbyrneusf.eventbrite.com.

At a meeting last night, Deputy Mayor for Transportation Rina Cutler announced that the bike lane pilot program on Pine and Spruce streets has been deemed a success.

According to KYW:

Cutler says that during the pilot phase, bike traffic on Pine and Spruce Streets went up significantly on those streets while car traffic dropped 11 percent.  And average speeds, she says, dropped only slightly:

“The average vehicle speeds changed by at most two miles an hour, where the speeds changed at all.”

She says that change is not significant, making the pilot program in her view a success – so much so that the bike lane concept could expand:

“We certainly are going to take a look at additional east-west streets and try to figure out where else in the city we might want to do this.”

So the obvious questions are: Where next? And why just east-west streets?

I say Fifth and Sixth to connect Northern Liberties and the Northeast with Bella Vista and South Philly would be a good start.

Then maybe Walnut and Chestnut west of the Schuylkill to connect University City with Upper Darby.

Where do you want a bike lane?

Received a letter to the editor (which you can read in its entirety after the jump) from Darco Lalevic of the Pennsylvania Cycling Association about the recent uproar over driving and cycling and walking in the city.

Among his very interesting points:

• “Enforcement will not fix things” — he cites the 270,929 tickets issued to motorists in 2008 as proof that enforcement doesn’t alter behavior.
• More cyclists following the law — taking a full lane when entitled to, for example — would snarl traffic and thus “motorist aggravation and incidents of road rage would increase.”
• Cyclists are killed by cars much more frequently than pedestrians are killed by cyclists.

He builds the idea, brought up in a 2008 article in The Atlantic, that essentially there are too many rules and regulations on streets and roads in the United States and that more rules, perhaps paradoxically, lead to more accidents.

The city needs to embrace newer thinking on urban traffic engineering going forward. There are more ideas other than just converting a car lane to a bike lane. In fact there is ample evidence that our tendency to add more rules and more signs increases our risk.

It reminded me of a trip I took to Hanoi, Vietnam, in 2004 and the shock and general amazement I felt at the way traffic seemed to move effortlessly despite there being no traffic signals at all. As you can see in the video (not mine) above, the motorbike-preponderant traffic weaved in and out at intersections, darting and bending, behaving more like schools of fish than the vector-based traffic stateside. This piece on the blog Cafe Hayek gets more into this trend of minimizing traffic laws rather than making them ever more complicated to deal with each new issue.

Could this work in Philadelphia? Or would the chaos be catastrophic?

Read Darco Lalevic’s letter after the jump

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Joe Boruchow

Buzzing the tower

Local artist/Nite Lighter Joe Boruchow — whose exhibit Public Service: New Paper Cutouts at The Bean Cafe, (615 South St.) closes on Tue., Dec. 8, btw — sends a link to a piece he posted on his blog  his reaction to the heavy-handed proposals being offered by City Council to solve the great bike menace.

Quoth Joe:

For those familiar with the proposed bicycle laws in Philadelphia, I offer this cutout.   Not in Philly?  Check out how the tribal hill people of our city council suggest bettering our fine metropolis - http://www.philly.com/philly/news/local/70444347.html

My friend Chris McKenna just sent this video shot by bike evangelist Michael McGettigan of University City’s Trophy Bikes. McGettigan set up a camera at Rittenhouse Square — it appears to be the east intersection with Locust — to see if anybody at all comes to a full stop (that’s his red folding bike in the foreground). There are, count ‘em, three stop signs and a flashing red light which means, as McGettigan explains in the video, that drivers must come to a complete stop and then proceed when it’s safe. The coming to a stop issue is one that’s always brought up by people on the “cyclists are scofflaws” side of the urban biking argument whenever these things are hollered about.

What did McGettigan find? Hardly anyone —  cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, SEPTA buses, school buses (and, okay, cyclists, but we already knew that, right?) — comes to anything even resembling a complete stop unless there is a pedestrian directly in front of them. Most drivers roll right through. Some come to a stop only once they’ve entered the intersection to find a pedestrian already in the crosswalk.

What other intersections could use the McGetti-cam treatment?

Friend of the Clog/CP contributor Jesse Delaney sends this photo from Santiago, Chile:

Photo | Jesse Delaney

“Philadelphia should have these.”

Which leads us to wonder why even countries in the so-called developing world can have civilized cycling infrastructures while here in Philadelphia, BIRTHPLACE OF FREEDOM, every small gain by cyclists is met by some heavy-handed, ham-fisted, draconian/Stalinist attempt to curtail cycling.

This morning, Councilmembers Jim Kenney and Frank DiCicco introduced legislation aimed at reining in bicyclists.

The particulars: Three bills were introduced today, two as an either-or pair.

Councilman Kenney introduced two bills (co-sponsored by Councilman DiCicco) that each seek to increase fines for riding on the sidewalk (from $10 to $300), wearing headphones (from $3 to $300), and riding without brakes (a $1,000 penalty in one bill; confiscation in the other).

Councilman DiCicco introduced one bill (co-sponsored by Councilman Kenney) that would require all riders to register their bikes with the city (at a fee of $20), and mount license plates on their bikes. The penalty for not doing so would be $100.

The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia – which has been a vocal advocate for bikers’ following traffic laws – has voiced its opposition to these bills.

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As if you didn’t know: The Phillies won a tense game 5, forcing a game 6 tomorrow night in New York wherein Pedro Martinez will get a second chance to end the “who’s your daddy?” chants once and for all.

Also, SEPTA called an audible, announcing a 3 a.m. strike shutting down all city subway, bus and trolley service, essentially holding true to the letter of their word to not striking during the World Series home games. Yes, yes, we support the union’s right to strike, but tell it to the people waiting at bus stops at 5:30 this morning.

So we’ll take this opportunity to share a word with the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia who suggest you “Bike the Strike”:

PHILADELPHIA - November 3, 2009 - The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia urges SEPTA travelers to bike instead of driving. Commuters who bike will win out over those stuck in traffic jams of epic proportions.”Avoid the crush and bike the strike,” says Alex Doty, Executive Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. “Bike the Strike to save time, money and help shrink your waistline.  Plus, I guarantee you will have more fun than anyone trying to drive during the strike.”

In cooperation with Philadelphia’s Office of Transportation and Utilities, the Bicycle Coalition has established a Bike the Strike station at City Hall (Dillworth Plaza). The station has bike parking corrals, free coffee, bike maps and Bicycle Ambassadors on hand to give tips on bike commuting and personalized route planning.

Keeping safe while bicycling is critical.  “Bicycles are considered vehicles, so we also urge all bicyclists to obey the rules of the road,” said Education Director Breen Goodwin.  “It’s important for all bicyclists to be civil, courteous and comply with traffic laws, such as walking their bikes on sidewalks and stopping at all signals, to ensure the everyone’s safety.”

More biking tips after the jump: (more…)

As the Philadelphia Parking Authority makes the transition from meters to kiosks, they’re simply popping the meters off their poles.

This, of course, is bad news if you happen to have locked your bike to one of them, as parking meter poles, sans parking meters, are essentially useless, as a U-lock will just slide right off.

The meter/kiosk conversion happened on Second Street today, and on a now-meterless pole outside the Khyber, there’s a taped-on sign that reads “Your bike is inside the Khyber.”

According to Khyber tapminder/beer slector Jeremy Thomson, the bike, a purple and green Magna women’s mountain bike remains unclained. There’s a lock attached to it, so if you posess the key to that lock, you can head over to 56 S. Second St. and claim your bike.

Anyone out there lose their bike to the meter conversion?