Weekend Bike Blogging: Bike Boxes I Can Believe In

In the store, or at the airport, a "bike box" is a box that is supposed to have a bike inside of it.

However, at an intersection, a "bike box" is when you make a space at an intersection ahead of the "traffic stop here" line. They are often combined, as in the picture, with a "protected by paint and optimism" bike lane. In some cases for traffic lights that are tripped by stopped vehicle detectors, as in the YouTube clip below, they include a more sensitive stopped bike detectors in the bike box, so that the sensitivity of the regular vehicle detector does not have to be adjusted.

Looking at the overall concept, as [http://bikexprt.com/bikepol/facil/stopline.htm John Allen does in A LOOK INTO THE "BIKE BOX"], this is yet another case of, probably subconscious "if only we could kill off these cyclists we wouldn't have to worry about them" thinking by traffic planners.

One thing the bike box does is amplify the encouragement of the regular "protected by paint", aka "kill the cyclist", bike lane to pass stopped motor vehicles on their right side. This is a practice that you can get away with day after day, but sooner or later you are going to end up trying to go straight when a car is trying to turn. And given the fact that the car is risking its pain job and you are risking an extended stay in the hospital, that is a monumentally stupid habit to pick up. Its bad enough that "protected by paint" bike lanes encourage this habit - the "protected by paint with a prize at the end" is even worse.


Watching the Danger Live on YouTube

The second thing the bike box does is allow the cyclist to get to the left hand side of the lane "in the safety of the bike box" - which is to say, "protected" by the paint of the vehicle stop line. Picking up the Bike Box Youtube in the third example, we can see how effectively the main vehicle stop line protects the bike box from incursion by motorists - as in, not at all.

At 1:00 into this clip is a safe passing on the right - because the car is turning left. But in a single share traffic lane, if the left turning car is in the left part of the lane, the cyclist can pass just as safely without requiring a bike lane at all.

At 1:15 into this clip, and then again at 1:40, we see the key to designing Bike Boxes as if we want cyclists to live.

In the first case (1:15), a cyclists could have used the bike lane to try to sneak around the car to get into the bike box to get in front to prepare for their left turn. But then, what if the signal changes "mid-sneak"? Either they try to get the car a left hook - and the cyclist of course loses whether they are receiving or delivering a right or left hook - or they have to wait until traffic is clear to merge left. Safer, and worst-case-quicker, to simply merge left behind the car and wait to turn left.

Indeed, lots of cyclists sneaking around the right to get in front of cars for left turns, and sometimes getting caught, could well encourage drivers to encroach on the bike box to prevent it.

In the second case (1:40), a cyclist arrives at the bike box, stopping on the bike indicator to trigger the signal. A car pulls in behind, and then a cyclist pulls in behind the car - instead of trying to sneak unsafely into the bike box on the right hand side of the car.

So while the bike box is a death trap, an aware cyclist can easily avoid the trap. For the expert cyclist, who uses it optionally and when appropriate, it offers the convenience of being able to trip the traffic signal. On the other hand, an inexperienced or confused cyclist is more likely to be killed.

Surely a bike box that is less likely to kill the inexpert cyclist can be designed?


Painting a Safer Bike Box

The idea of using the bike box to enter from the right and then get positioned for a left hand turn is a clear kill-the-cyclist idea. Consider the example from John Allen, pictured to the right. The bike box in the top right, which is already occupied, is not likely to have a car seeing a new green and driving through a cyclist lining up to turn left. The bike box in the bottom left, though, which is empty, is more inviting for a cyclist to go around right to get left - and sooner or later, there will be a car that is looking up to see green and then down to see the cyclist too late.

So that is the first thing to get rid of. That does not mean the bike box should not exist on the left hand side. It is safe for a cyclist who has already merged left to occupy that slot waiting for the light. Its just encouraging death or injury to try to sneak in "over the top" of traffic waiting on the light.

This means, of course, that there should be two boxes - with the space between barred to cyclists.

If there is a "protected by paint" bike lane, the solid line should not extend to the box. Instead, left turning cycle traffic should be warned to merge left safely for a left turn, and then straight through traffic warned to merge into the traffic lane to pass through the intersection. Before the start of the bike box, a cycle lane should be marked "right turn only" - and only of there is a cycle lane to turn directly into - because the only time it is even plausibly safe to pass cars on the right is if turning right inside of the traffic lane.

Indeed, in a "turn right on red with caution" state like here in Ohio, there is no need for a traffic indicator in that case - a right turn only bike lane turning into the a bike lane is a cyclist that can look out for crossing cyclists heading to the bike lane. Its only the through and left turn cyclist who needs the signal tripped.

So, that's my idea of a better bike box. It does not encourage habits likely to get novice cyclists killed before they have a chance to become experienced cyclists. It retains the advantage of having a dedicated cycle trip detector. It supports left turning cyclists positioning themselves so through motor traffic can pass them safely to their right. And it allows marking between the left and through bike boxes that indicates far more clearly to the driver not to encroach on the box.

REM: Stand Thing about Direction
 : : :Wonder Why You Haven't Before

Occasional Bike Blogging: Fixing Broken Cables with the Internet

Disclaimer: I don't know what the hell I am doing, so this is not a How To. Actually, getting this done despite not knowing what the hell I am doing is kind of the point.

A couple of weeks ago, I finally got serious about trying to get my rear derailleur back into action. It had seized up during the winter, and while I got some rear gears back at that time, I was down to three speeds on the front derailleur again.

So I was trying the dry lube, working it in on all joints, working the derailleur mechanism, and cleaning off the crud it was bringing up. Except no matter how progress I seemed to make, when I went to shift it, it seized up again. And then another round.

Until the cable snapped.

Fudge, now I had to change the cable. So I hit the internet to try to see what is involved with changing the cable. One of the first hits I got told me that when a derailleur is sticking, its normally the cable rather than the derailleur mechanism.

Aha, that sounded right. Lesson One: check the intertubes for advice first, before getting started on a new job.

I finally found the site for the people that made my shifter. You change a shifter cable by releasing it from the derailleur (check), feeding it up through the cable guides (check), then pull it out of the shifter after peeling the grip back to get to top of the cable (uh, no need to try to pull the shift mechanism apart). The cable was rusty enough to make it clear what the problem was ... that damned Northeast Ohio road salt would be one way to put it, but of course, that is not a part of the environment under my control. Lesson Two: oil your cables regularly in the winter, even if it is so bloody cold outside you don't want to go out to the garage.

Now, I had two cheap 5 speed shifters I got as part of the project to make a back-up ice-bike out of the cheap $60 fifteen speeds I bought to get to work at the warehouse last year. So I got one of the rear shift cables out of one of those, and got to work threading everything through again.

And, yes, I oiled the cable before threading it through each of the cable housings.

I got the cable connected in, thanks to my handy ratchet set (Lesson Four: a lightweight ratchet set in the framebag sure is handy), cut it to length, and started working on the adjustment of the derailleur set screws, to get all seven rear gears back.

It took about two minutes of fiddling for the rear cable housing to fall apart. Ah, so it wasn't just the cable.

Rummaging around, I was able to find a front back cable housing that seemed like it would work for the last of the rear gearshift housings. It was a little longer, but it fit.

Well, except, ahem:

, cut it to length, and

Yup. Lesson Five: adjust, work it around, check that its all OK to go, and then cut. IOW, push the irreversible to the last, don't advance it to the first.

It was a hot day, and at this point I took a couple of hour break, and watched a DVD of The Third: The Girl with the Blue Eye (and, no, I don't have the $60 it costs, even on sale ... I rented it from Netflix). After finding the second of the five speed shifters, I started over. Lesson Six: when you have parts on sale for about the cost of shipping, go ahead and buy two. You never know when you'll need them.

To make a short story long, its now working.

Which is all a long prelude to a short reflection. Before the internet, I would have been walking to the library for a book on bike repair, then heading off to the other end of the bus line plus a half hour walk past that to the bike shop (one decent bus route in the whole county, which doesn't connect up to Akron's bus route system, and the Bike Shop is past the end of it ... there's a lesson in the heavy hand of Auto-Uber-Alles development in outer suburbia) ... and of course, the task would probably have been spread over multiple days.

Mind, its fairly convenient to the (not yet complete) recreational biking trails, but that's handier when the bike cycles than when it doesn't.

Instead, I saw the five speed shifters on sale at [http://www.nashbar.com/ Bike Nashbar], so I had the cable on hand (just the luck of the standard set, since what need replacing was the shifter), found advice on changing derailleur cables in about ten minutes, and the product specific guide from the manufacturer in another five.

While newspapers try to work out how to commercialize the news that they used to give away for free as wrapper for display ads and classifieds, protected by the economies of scale of the printing press ... the internet continues to offer access to information with growing efficiency.

Enough efficiency that even I could go from near total ignorance to changing my rear shift cable in under an afternoon.

Of course, someone might object that the online ordering of the five speed shifters is not resting on a sustainable foundation. However, I could see an electric rail network getting that order from the warehouse to nearby here ... certainly near enough for an electric delivery truck to get it to some central location within walking distance. I could even imagined the tick box option for the big brown electric UPS van to get the box to my house (for, obviously, a higher shipping charge than getting it to the local pick up center).

Indeed, its far more materially efficient for me to borrow the use of the existing UPS truck once or twice a month than to own a car so that I can drive to the mall or other place to spend money I would no longer have if I owned a car.

The question of whether the recovery from the mass market consumerist fever is an economic calamity or an economic opportunity seems to hinge on whether we can share the existing work around. If we can, its possible for many people to increase their real standard of living, even as market transactions are shouldered aside by social interactions.

I certainly was far better off being able to find out how to get my rear shift cable fixed in a single afternoon than I would have been without access to the internet ... and that is, partly, because of getting rid of the need to spend money. So that was a direct transfer from markets transactions to standard of living.

Taking the Old Road to Economic Stimulus

Elaborated from a comment at Agent Orange.

We need a moratorium on new roadwork built into the stimulus plan.

That does not mean, however, a moratorium on roadwork or bridge repair.

It does not even mean that no new transport capacity is added by the equipment that normally does roadwork. State Departments of Transport that are recommending road widening projects, connector road projects ... the same-old, same-old. But if we were to force the issue, they could certainly quickly whip up a wide range of "road technology" projects that would not dig us deeper into our Energy Dependence rut.

So, a moratorium on road widening, outer-belts outside the outer-belts outside the outer-belt, new I-state exits, new road bridges ... and fix what we got first. But take the widest possible view on what we have that is broken, because the broken bits of transport on and alongside our public rights of way are not restricted to cars and trucks by any means:

• Bring existing bridges up to a state of good repair
  
• Bring existing roads up to a state of good repair
  
• Construct sidewalks and right of way crossings to guarantee safe walking conditions for all urban and suburban streets
  
• Guarantee cycle access to all routes that should be shared right of way, by making bikes one of the design vehicles for any open right of way project receiving federal funding, focusing on safe cycling conditions on shared right of way and dedicated cycling routes to provide alternatives to and access routes across segregated motorways
  
• Provide safe rail crossings wherever the road interfere with the rail network
  

There is a tremendous amount that can be done, and there is no better time than the present to start training state Departments of Transport into a new way of thinking.

Action: Green Transport for Christmas (2009, 2010, etc.)

I have had a number of "I'd Like For Christmas" essays over the past three weeks ... now its your turn.

To say you'd like Pedestrian/Cyclists transport infrastructure in the Infrastructure Stimulus Package, sign the Rails to Trails Infrastructure Petition and share it with your friends (as I'm doing here).



To say you'd like Rail and other Public Transport infrastructure investment, sign the Transportation for America Petition and pass it along.

To say you'd like a Green Stimulus Package, sign the Sierra Club Green Stimulus Package Petition and pass it along.

Dear Joe, I want an Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. I) Sets out one possible framework for achieving Alan Drake's proposed electrification of STRACNET for a 36,000 mile network of electric freight rail capacity, coast to coast, with particular focus on a national Rapid Freight Rail network.



Dear Joe, I want a High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Pt. II). Samples the range of High Speed Rail and Rapid Passenger Rail plans already in progress across the country. This discusses how the Rapid Freight Rail system can be used directly to support Rapid Passenger Rail, and how the expansion of Rapid Passenger Rail provides a platform for expansion of true High Speed Rail beyond the "twin coasts" of the Northeast Corridor and California out here into flyover country.



Dear Joe, I want a Sustainable High Speed Electric Train for Christmas (Part 3) Focused on the Strategic dimension of the electrification of STRACNET, and in particular the opportunity to the vulnerability of our freight transport network to interruption of crude oil supplies while substantially reducing the energy cost of freight transport and, if the electrification of STRACNET is leveraged to add needed links to our Electricity Superhighway, provide substantial support for expanding Wind power to 20% of our nation's electricity supply ... while an electrified STRACNET that saved 10% of our crude oil imports would only consume 1% of our current electricity consumption.




Yglesias: Taking the Bus to a Public Transport Stimulus (MLW) ... extends the focus on a "quick spend" on the stimulus which is being used as an excuse by State Departments of Transport to focus on road widening ... to other "quick spend" projects, like funding expansion of public transport services, and upgrade/expansion of City Bus (and School Bus) fleets with more energy efficient, petroleum conserving or petroleum independent equipment.

Dear Barack, I want an Exurban Cycleway for Christmas ... shifts the focus to the most capital and energy efficient modes of transport ... cycling and walking ... with a local community accounts system that can get the funding out for a very large number of "micro-infrastructure" projects which can add up to a substantial encouragement to cycling and walking in large numbers of communities nationwide.

Including Twin Cities for Street's vision of The Future (result) of Freeway Expansion


I hope that you have long since signed one or more of those petitions, and that's all I really wanted for Christmas right now, so Merry Christmas to All and to All a Good Night.

Dear Barack, I want a Cycleway for Christmas

Xposted to My Left Wing, ProgressiveBlue, and Docudharma.

Twin Cities Streets for People present The Future (result) of Freeway Expansion:


A little bit optimistic and a little bit pessimistic at one and the same time, I'd say ... but, they really do have a very solid point.


Tales of Exurban Cycle Commuting

When I first started cycling to work at the warehouse, I took the long way around. This included taking the Hike and Bike recreational cycleway, then back roads, then getting across the Interstate with some shoulder riding by the State Route a short ways to the county highway overpass across the Interstate, then back roads to the Industrial Park.

It only took a couple of weeks to work out a more efficient route, and I only used the Bike and Hike trail a couple of times since then. As you can see, it mostly runs from one small town to a small park near to but not at a University town.

Now, the ride I took to work was quite insane in terms of a reasonable commute for anyone who actually has a life to live other than just trying to keep student loans from exploding ... but if the trail went all the way to Kent, I could definitely see using it sometimes during Spring, Summer and Fall ... for example, riding to the University library, or even past the college town to the sprawl big box retail zone just over the Summit County line.

But look at that "system". One solid green line, extended by a dotted line that means paint along the side of the road and some street signs warning cars to beware of bikes (kind of like the "beware of deer" signs, I guess), and two small dashes of green.

Now, when looking at the whole system, all those bits and pieces do tie together into a single system. Indeed, it was not this complete when I was using it ... the link up between the screened crushed limestone trail and the painted lines on the side of the road "trail" was opened up on the Saturday before election day.


The Fictitious Cycleways of Ohio

When we pull back and look at Northeast Ohio ... this is by no means unusual. A network has been laid out ... and slowly, more than a decade past the original completion dates in many cases, bits and pieces are being filled in.



And pull back still further, and the same is true statewide ...



Now, for the "planned extension", it may take some time to sort out transport easements ... but for many of the gaps, its a matter of chasing up finance between a drib from this township and a drab from that park system.

IOW, a lot of these bikeways are ready to break ground very quickly.


Is that Transport or Recreation?

Now, it should be kept in mind that most of these are "bike trails" rather than transport-oriented cycleways. And they do not clear them of snow ... instead, they suggest that the trails be used for cross country skying when snow is on the ground. Mind, that did not prevent me from taking the trail on by bike one winter evening as I took the long way home (Docudharma).

So, yes, its mostly recreation, or semi-recreational transport - taking the bike instead of a bus because its a nice day out. On the other hand, if someone can ride their bike to their recreation, ride on the trail for their recreation, and ride their bike home from their recreation ... that's still gasoline not burned. So the more complete these trail systems, the better.


"Fracking Bridge"s and Bike-Friendly Routes

The single worst stretch of the route to work I finally settled on was the fracking bridge

Not the bridge over the upper Cuyahoga river, which was no real trouble ... the bridge over the Interstate. The approach to the bridge from the south was too steep to accelerate, the morning traffic mostly consisting of people getting off the state route to take a short cut to work was dicy, and the shoulder was narrow with lots of road debris swept onto it by the traffic.

Of course, the bridge was there because the Interstate was put in, and the Interstate has to be completely grade separated ... but the grade separation only really catered to local car and truck traffic.

And while there were multiple routes to get from one place to another on county and township "highways" (and a warm thank you to city dwellers for subsidizing those country roads) ... if there is an Interstate Highway in the way, those routes are restricted to the overpasses and underpasses. Which, by their very nature, tend to channel car and truck traffic.

Every public street and road other than a limited access expressway is a potential bike route, at least in the state of Ohio. Cities and Villages can permit riding on the sidewalk, but they cannot restrict riding on the public right of way. And I relied heavily on that freedom in stitching together a route to work.

However, the Interstate Highway system violates that freedom when it breaks up public rights of way without providing bike and pedestrian friendly overpasses and underpasses.

So there's another entry for the New Energy Economy component of the stimulus package. Whether they are dedicated cycleways to the right of the shoulder, raised enough to prevent road debris from being swept onto the path, or separate cyclist overpasses ... and I'll note here that those fancy French single-arch "twisted cable" suspension designs sure do look purty ...


... and, indeed, its OK if the bridge connects two side roads that used to be a single road before the Interstate, somewhere in the vicinity of the road overpass. And, by the same token, where its easier to go under than to go over, a cycle subway with pedestrian sidewalks is also acceptable.


The Road Not Taken ... because of all those Fracking Trucks

Now, every once in a while, I had to stop by the bank after work. My ride was so insanely long for my limited cycling capabilities that I could not get to the bank in my home town after the end of the first shift (7:00am to 3:30pm ... 8 hours plus an unpaid half hour lunch break). So I'd have to take the State Route down to the closest bank branch, and then take the State Route that led from that town to the town where I'm living.

And I know that there are some even more insane bike riders who will just ride on the State Route and dare the trucks to run over them, but I just do not have the heart for that kind of conflict. Ride on a 35mph or 45mph country rode, and most drivers will react like you kinda belong there ... or at the very least like they are not 100% sure that you don't belong there. Ride on a busy one-lane-each-way State Route, and far more drivers are 100% sure that you do not have any right on that road (even if, by Ohio State Law, I do).

So for those rides, I declared caution the wisest form of valor, and rode on the shoulders.

Once I got into my home township, riding on the shoulders was not too bad. And between the warehouse and the town that hosted the branch of my bank, riding on the shoulders was good to excellent ... the road had recently been resurfaced, and the shoulders were a smoother ride with a more reasonable grade than many of the country roads I used.

But between the Bank and the boundary line of my home township, riding the shoulder was an exercise in imaginative trail riding.

So this is the third item I'll list here: ridable shoulders.

A quick Google of rideable shoulders is illuminating on this score ... cyclist rely on shoulder riding in a wide variety of contexts for precisely the situation I describe here.

• Letters to the Editor in the San Juan Islander on a story about narrow roads with unpaved shoulders
  
• Talking about a route for a cycle ride in Austin
  
• Describing a (recreational) Loop in Colorado over the Great Divide
  
• Describing riding conditions for the Lyons-Estes Park Challenge route in Colorado
  
• An Ultra-Cycling piece on "Riding the Two-Laners"
  

So, well, its not just my imagination. A formal specification of what constitutes a rideable shoulder and money that can be used for establishing a rideable shoulder (including a pay-back provision if future road widening takes it away again) is something that would be of benefit to today's cyclists ... which means, of course, it will encourage more to ride.


How in the Hell can such tiny programs be included in the Bail-Out?

OK, so how to fund all this?

Getting Congress to vote on putting in that cycle and pedestrian bridge (or subway) over Interstate 80, quite possibly 5 to 10 years in advance of any local effort to stitch it into a laid-out on-road "share cycleway" system ... that's a bit unlikely.

On the other hand, if a local area had a choice of allowed spending projects, and decided to spend it on that ... well, then, the local area just may have a better idea of local conditions and where local development is likely to head than a Congressional committee.

So this is my idea: an accounts based system, with a "use it or lose it" provision to ensure that it works as effective stimulus spending.

Who gets an account? Every incorporated city, suburb and village and every unincorporated township or parish in the nation. The money goes out on an equal per capita basis, and a set of allowed projects are set up, the account holders submit their projects for verification that they meet the guidelines, and the money is disbursed.

This is supposed to be a two-year stimulus bill, so put two year's worth of money in each account, and establish a deadline for when account holders have to submit their projects during each year of the funding. Multiple projects can be submitted, and more than a single year's funding can be included in a submission. If any account holder does not have a submission in, their allocated funds are shifted to front-load the spending from account holders who have put in their projects, and their account for the second year is adjusted. If an account holder does not have have sufficient approved projects to use their allocation by the submission deadline for the second year, their funds are re-allocated to the areas that have projects in.

So, every locale has a chance to get funding for the first year, those who are quick off the mark get their projects funded first, and everyone really has a chance to get funding for the second year ... by that time its "you snooze, you lose".

Obviously we don't want blood on our hands here, so the projects would not include funding for painting "bike lanes" on the sides of city streets. If a street is wide enough to allow a bike lane, it is safer for the cyclist to allocate all of that width to the rightmost lane, and post "share the road", and "caution for bikes merging left" signs at appropriate intervals.

And full respect has to be given to walking as well ... if a local suburban area is establishing a walkable "town center", that should be supported as well.

So in terms of projects:

• Sidewalk construction and repair
  
• Construction and repair of dedicated cycleways
  
• Construction and repair of recreational Bike and Hike trails
  
• Construction and repair of cyclist and pedestrian bridges and underpasses across Interstate Highways
  
• Construction and repair of rideable shoulders on US and State Routes, which permit a cyclist to ride safely four feet to the right of high speed automotive and truck traffic
  
• Installation of cyclist request buttons at automatic traffic lights
  

How much money? I'd say $10/person/year, or $6b total for the personal transport allocation.

Note that this same account system can be used for Regional Transport and Transit projects as well ... once the account is set up, it can have sub-accounts for a variety of programs. If petroleum conserving and petroleum independent transit and transport is included in the system, that would be an additional allocation, which could soak up a substantially larger quantity.