Showing posts with label Commuting. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Commuting. Show all posts

24 May, 2010

Slow down urban traffic to 30 km/hr and let a new age begin!


I've been a cyclist on and off for 45 years and have spent time doing the standard cycling things like commuting and touring. In my current incarnation as a person who prefers to scoot or kick rather than peddle I have developed an idiosyncratic POV about pushing two wheels forward.

Despite my experience -- or maybe because of it -- I nonetheless think cycling is an activity thwart with dangers.

In an earlier post, the threat to life and limb of the current cycling boom in Australia was addressed. I've also discussed  here a few issues related to commuting by bike but like the Australian fear of snakes and sharks I nonetheless seem to have missed the nub of the angst.

As a scooter-er many of these road issues are resolved for me because I scoot as much on footpaths as I do on roads. Mounting and dismounting  kickbikes and scooters is as simple as stepping off. They are skateboards with wheels. so being on or off road is easy.

But  the notion of mixing it with God Traffic in full peak hour flow scares the beejeebers out of me.

Why? It's simple:
Paul Barclay, 10 March 2010, Australia Talks: ABC Radio National
As our cities become more congested and we are encouraged to reduce our carbon footprint, more Australians are riding bicycles. In Melbourne alone, the number of cyclists on the cities' roads has soared by up to 50 per cent during peak hour in the past year. But each year, on average, 35 cyclists are killed in Australia, and more than 2,500 are seriously injured on our roads. Many more incidents go unreported. Is enough being done to safely accommodate the growing number of cyclists on the roads?
No matter which way you try to slice it, car drivers do not see cyclists and even when they do, they come too close..and at very fast speeds..

While the option of developing cycle paths makes a lot of political, ecological and physiological sense, bicycle paths present a safety and transit  paradox :
...in cities without cycle paths the cyclist usually is the fastest form of transport. Any rational person wishing to make a journey would obviously choose a bicycle as the optimum mode of transport. Not only is the bicycle the most economically-viable mode of transport it is the quickest. Why then are not 99% of all journeys in cities on bikes? One obvious answer is the traffic. The bike might be quicker and cheaper, but one does have to be a bit brave to cycle in a city like New York. By building separate cycle paths you increase the feeling of safety, which means that more people dare to cycle--but segregating the cyclists reduces the amount of space a cyclist has to move on. This increases the actual distance needed to travel and therefor the door-to-door travel time. At the same time this allows the motorised traffic to travel faster by getting the "terrible" cyclists out of the way. Suddenly the time-pressed city dweller finds that the car is the fastest way to get there.
This paradox is much broader than that. The British geographer, John Whitelegg, has many sharp observations to his name that debunk  some core urban myths about time and transport motion. In one short essay, Time Pollution, he captures these contradictions in a pithy analog.
Although time-savings provide the principal economic justification for new road schemes, the expansion of the road network and the increase in traffic does not seem to have given people more free time. This is because pedestrian time is not evaluated, because cars are deceptively time-consuming, and because people tend to use what time savings they do gain to travel further.
In fact the research is brutally conclusive, as Whitelegg points out in an interview with ABC Radio :
John Whitelegg: I argue that it's very, very strong indeed, and that's on the basis of actual case studies, actual places where anyone can visit, anyone can have a look and by observation and by looking at the data, can actually inspect the evidence and arrive at their own view. And the starting point, I suppose, is that in Germany there are tens of thousands of what they call, in German, 'Tempo Dreizig', which just means it's a 30 kilometre per hour speed limit. And in those areas the Germans are quite meticulous in monitoring what happens. The rate of walking, the level of walking and cycling goes up dramatically in areas which are carefully speed-limited at that level. The city of Graz, in Austria, and moving out of Germany, has been totally 30 kilometre per hour for at least ten years and some of the highest levels of walking and cycling in Europe. And there's a lot of anecdotal evidence as well as scientific evidence that once people are convinced that the roads are safer, crossing the road is safer, getting on your bicycle and not doing the tango with a large lorry or truck is safer, the evidence is there that people will actually get on their bikes and walk a lot more than they will when they fear that they're actually going to be in conflict with heavy volumes of often aggressively driven - but certainly vehicles driven too fast. And they react accordingly and they switch from the car to walking and cycling.
So there are two phenomena here:
  1. More haste, less speed. (Latin: Festina lente.)
  2. Less speed is safer
...........for cyclists, walkers and drivers. 

The speed conundrum

This contradiction delights me as in choosing the scooter option my speed is lower (but my effort more) than peddling a bike. By default, maybe organically, I've come to an ab hoc  solution by taking myself off the road when I can because it's no good pretending that there aren't problems in traffic -- problems that will not go away; which will only grow as the number of riders  increase (which of course they are doing sharply)..

  • Slow down the other traffic with a blanket speed limit of 30kmh (20mph) in all urban areas. Other speeds can be allowed but as an exception. If there's no sign, it's 30kmh, simple as that.
  • The 30kmh rule has the side effect of reducing overall journey time by car, so it is important to actively focus on the travel time ratio for bikes over cars by reducing car access to places. It is enough to be able to reach every part of a city by car; it doesn't have to be easy or fast.
  • Remove on-street parking for cars; this is an incredible waste of urban space, and those car door are sharp.
  • Get rid of all the junk. Pavements, traffic signs, pedestrian crossings, traffic lights and everything else that has the function of regulating the interactions between road users. This forces people to look, think, and communicate with each other in traffic.
That car speed times are regulated down approaches the commute conundrum that , despite the cityscape  accommodation to upping speed thresholds,
Given the range of speeds listed above, it is unlikely that any major Australian city would have an average in-car speed of more than 40 km/h. None of the speeds quoted above include speeds in car parks, petrol stations, driveways, laneways and culs-de-sac, most of which feature in the normal driving patterns of city drivers [Effective Speeds: Car Costs are Slowing Us Down
by Paul J. Tranter]
.
This table summarizes generic  aspects of the  the conundrum (4 car models compared to bus and bike transport --  Source: Tranter):

05 April, 2010

AUDIO:On road cycling

With a dramatic increase in cycling, comes a plethora of new safety issues on the roads. Doctors, politicians, planners and cyclists agree it will mean changing the way we design, govern and use our roads. Reporter Diane Martin.


26 March, 2008

Dutch bicycle culture


From a press release published here on Derek Wall's blog that deals with bike culture in the Netherlands:
Quick Facts:
In Britain, under 2% of all journeys are made by bicycle. In the Netherlands the equivalent figure is around 30%.

In Britain, most journeys under 2 miles are made by car. In the Netherlands, more journeys under 5 miles are made by bicycle than by any other means.

In the Netherlands, older people are also mobile. Over 10% of cycle journeys are made by over 60s.

Virtually all Dutch school-children cycle to school.
The links below are well worth reviewing as there is a lot of information about the cultural promotion engaged with and some images of the Dutch bicycle infrastructure network:
QUOTE:

If often seems that the English speaking world does not understand how the Dutch have been so successful with their cycle promotion. Why is it that the Netherlands has a cycling rate which is so far ahead of the rest of the world, and growing ?

It is also quite often assumed that Dutch drivers must be far better behaved than those in the UK and other countries in order that cyclists can have such a good degree of safety. Or the reason is put down to the country being relatively flat. However, these things couldn't possibly explain why the Dutch cycle for 20x as many journeys as people in English speaking countries do.

It actually comes down to a single point. Generally when you cycle in the Netherlands you are not sharing space with cars. This makes cycling very pleasant and relaxed. It reduces conflict with motorists and it leads to much greater safety. What isn't necesarily so obvious to outside observers from locations with less advanced cycling infrastructure is that it also leads to cyclists having journeys which are more direct than those of motorists. As a result, cycling is a much more appealing form of transport.

Flatness doesn't necessarily help. It results in very strong headwinds. Also, the Netherlands can be very cold and wet in the winter. However, the convenience of cycling wins out over these problems.

For more sources on Dutch bicycling(and the source of the media release I referred to) and information about study tours go here.

25 March, 2008

The 2 mile challenge

This is a reproduction of the two mile arc from my place of abode in the northern suburbs of Brisbane. It's taken from the great service available here.

Click on the map to get an enlarged view in separate window/tab.

Two miles is so very American but for those challenged by the concept, 2 miles equals 3.21868 kilometres. To walk the radius --assuming you are walking in a straight line -- would take 40 minutes ( Walking at 3mph average walking pace -- ie: taking 20 minutes to walk one mile.)

Nonetheless, this arc in the main comprises a good part of my daily life: where I live, shop, visit the doctors, where my kids went to school, where I recreate, and interact with what is crudely referred to as my local community.

While the arc may take 40 minutes to walk it would take much less by bicycle -- or by kickbike -- I guess I can kick the radius on my kickbike at 10-15kmh (a casual cruise speed)which suggests I can reach the perimeter in one quarter the time it takes to walk it: 8-10 minutes. Given the terrain and the cross streets in this locale I think that's a bit too generous as a norm, so I think 15-20 minutes is a more realistic estimate of the time travel required. But I at least halve the travel time compared to walking.

The point being that most of these journeys are bike-able. I would have a cartage problem -- but I have discussed that before and related how I deploy the kickbike as a mule. When I do a 'big shop' I get the groceries home delivered.

I also 'bike it' to the local rail head so in a sense I could replicate the same travel arc at the other end of any train journey (eg: to the Brisbane CBD or to the beach at Sandgate) and enjoy the same arc of access.

I guess the lesson here is that if you chomp up your travel grid into manageable bits (which also reflects by default your transit lifestyle anyway ) --and envisage it as territory you can master-- there's an inbuilt logic in bike usage and bike reliance. Rather than amorphous and scatter gun, your potential cycling journeys make geographical and time usage sense.

If you were to compare a bike journey within the arc with a car journey over the same distance you'd find that there wouldn't be that much between the options in regard to time if you have to factor in car start up then parking at the other end. There would indeed be a large margin of difference between riding and walking the 2 miles but potentially the bike could travel the distance faster than a car if the access pathways were there --such as a dedicated bike track.

Maybe 5+ minutes of a car journey is taken up with:
getting into the vehicle + putting on the seat belts + inserting the keys into the ignition + backing out of the driveway + finding a park at the other end + undoing the set belts and getting out...
so the sort of optional advantage that the car may seem to possess is not a certainty.

So there is indeed a challenge!

18 March, 2008

How drivers 'see' bicyclists

Vehicular bicycling VERSUS Pedestrian Cycling

I'm researching the topic of "vehicular bicycling which is usually counterposed to "Pedestrian Cycling".
An alternative to vehicular cycling is pedestrian bicycling, or bicycling according to the pedestrian rules of the road. Pedestrian bicycling often means riding on sidewalks, pedestrian crossings, and other pedestrian facilities.
This topic is discussed in some stimulative detail in Robert Hurst's book --The Art of Urban Cycling.

I think the kickbike lends itself to pedestrian bicycling such that the term has to be redefined and dragged out of the shadows. The way it's pitched, vehicular cycling is located as an aggressive form of bicycling assertion that pitches the bike as bona fide vehicles.

But the kickbike has such an easy time of it moving from pavement to road that I think it should not be constrained by the attitude,protocols and what seems to be the rigid biases associated with the vehicular cycling attitude. It also doesn't have the capacity to match traffic flow all the time so it is a bit beyond us kickbikers to be pitched on par with a family sedan.

So there's an ideological issue here that has tantalizing ramifications in the era of the bike path and the local mall.

The question isn't so much how much can cars and bikes share the road but how well bikes can get on with pedestrians.

The scooter or kickbike's advantage is that it is an easy mount /easy dismount journey with a limited and, I guess, easily altered momentum. It's not a constant journey with a steady momentum.

Because we are closer to the ground where the pedestrian foot falls --and we push off the ground as walkers do -- we can mix it with our pedestrian kin more easily than a mounted bicyclist....

I travel on and off the road all the time as my routes comprise the road AND the pavement. But I live in a city in which it is legal to ride the footpaths. Nonetheless I have excellent control even among a crowd of walkers and will simply join them if the foot traffic becomes too heavy.

I had thought about this a lot and today very few bicylclists embrace the message in this image


as kosher travel mode. But that's how I shop on my scooter when I'm loaded up with groceries.

So my kickbike is also my pram.

And when I mix it with the four wheelers I do so when it suits my journey but that journey can include using elevators, portage up stairs, gutter jumping, walking beside my kickbike,holding onto my kickbike in a train carriage while seated, kicking along major road, using a bike path (while navigating around sunbaking snakes), sharing a pavement with schoolkids...

So it's a melange of means to get from 'a' to 'b' and I don't endorse the rigid concepts embraced by the "vehicular bicycling" adherents. In fact I think our cities should be designed for bikes rather than simply forcing bicyclists to share the roads...if they dare.

09 March, 2008

Bicycle (and tram) transport as a preferred option to car travel.

by Dave Riley

I wrote here yesterday a little homily on buses versus trams. Trams are special transport creatures with a hell of a lot going for them

A tram, tramcar, trolley, trolley car, or streetcar is a railborne vehicle, lighter than a train, designed for the transport of passengers (and/or, very occasionally, freight) within, close to, or between villages, towns and/or cities, primarily on streets.
They do tick a lot of boxes. The major objection people throw at trams is that they "hold up traffic". The good people, at the Melbourne based Public Transport Users Association nonetheless have an answer for that furphy with a snappy quote from a political conservative:
The basic traffic problem is moving people, or goods, and not, as commonly and erroneously supposed, moving vehicles.... [A] traffic count taken by the Town and Country Planning Board in 1947 showed that in the heaviest half-hour of the peak Swanston Street trams carried 5,472 southbound passengers over Princes Bridge on one track, while in the same half-hour two lanes of motor cars and taxis carried 727 people, including the drivers.... It is therefore apparent that public transport is by far the most economical user of street space when considered in relation to the number of passengers for which it caters.
---Major-General Robert Risson, Journal of the Institute of Transport (Australian section), August 1955.
What blasphemy is this! Consider the sort of thinking logic that Risson is asking us to embrace; then follow that in your imagination as to what it would mean if applied as a standard suburb by suburb template.

It's not so strange.

When I was growing up in suburban Highett the closest railway station was Sandringham which was the end of the rail line --and still is. It's a 30 minute train journey from the Melbourne CBD. But that public transport network had been extended to Black Rock and Beaumaris via a tram line which ran from Sandringham station to Beaumaris.

Of course that tram line was pulled up or asphalted over and buses were bought in to replace it, even though they traversed the exact same route. So by the time I required school journeys, I had to travel by bus.

So trams are cool.

Bicycle transit

Bill Brandt
Great Britain (England) 20th century
Coal-searcher Going Home to Jarrow, c. 1937


That's' perhaps not my final word on trams. I do love em so and living in Brisbane is akin to being exiled because the trams are extinct here.

So I make do with the generally abysmal public transport system -- mainly bus engineered -- here in South East Queensland.

I had the good sense to locate myself within five minutes of a railway station where two train lines converge so we draw on the timetable of both feeder lines. If the impulse takes me, I can access the city by catching an express.

And I can do that with my bicycle. (Actually I push a scooter, but let's not split hairs and instead let's refer to "bicycle" as a generic two wheeled human powered vehicle. )

CityTrain isn't kind to bicycles because it limits commuter access and bans them from from peak hour/primary flow travel which in effect sabotages the core logic of bicycles as a commuter option.

The hostility to bicycle travel among petrol headers is amazingly strident. For instance, the Cycling Promotion Fund refers to the current debate in Victoria about new regulations for cyclists as another example of "an us and them argument."

In a response in the March 7th edition of The Age, Ron Moodie tries to recover the high ground:
It is worth looking at northern European countries for practical inspiration. In the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Finland and Denmark — much colder countries than Australia — over 10% of local trips (the level goes up to 27% in the Netherlands) are made by bicycle, compared with 1% in Australia. Several decades ago, these countries decided to put pedestrians, cyclists and public transport users at the top of the priority list rather than car drivers. This helps develop more walkable, more cycle-able and more liveable cities. They invest in extensive networks of protected lanes for cyclists, they have reduced traffic speed significantly in residential neighbourhoods (72% of Berlin's roads are 30km/h or less). These countries provide safe, secure and extensive bicycle parking, encourage carrying bicycles on trains and buses, and they have car-free zones and special bike streets in the central parts of their cities. In other words, they make healthy and environmentally friendly choices — easy choices.
I guess my major interest here is to consider how much of a transport option the humble bicycle is.

During 2007 more bicycles were purchased in Australia than were motor cars. National sales topped 1.4million and bikes outsold cars for the 8th consecutive year. So you'd think that maybe something very green is afoot. But while bikes are back in vogue they are tending to be harnessed as relaxation and exercise tools -- something you'd transport to the local park on your car roof rack before riding.

When you actually get out there and experience the raw bicycle transit lifestyle on our roads you may start to wonder where the other few million bikes are. Then you are sure to realize that the road and traffic conditions bicyclists are asked to survive are not conducive to peddle power commuting.Obviously with those sales figures the country is awash with cogs and chains and peddles and such, but usage is being handicapped by god traffic.

The problem is that unless the traffic monster is aggressively dealt with there isn't much of a future for bikes on roads. But bicycle travel can be promoted as a cornerstone of the sort of urban environment we should foster. If it's fit for bicycles then it's fit for all of us. Bikes can be a threshold of the planned urban ecology we may think we need. And whether people decide to get on their bikes or not flows from that.

Promoting bicycle travel as a transport means -- such as for a standard commute -- is handicapped by its hippie connotations as though, that's' only for eccentrics like me. The same brutal logic has to come into play and people will only switch to riding their bikes if there are tangible and logical reasons to do so and the constraints are lifted.
One such constraint is the enforced wearing of helmets. People will not use bikes to commute if they have to wear a helmet to their place of business.It ruins your hair for one thing. Helmets demand crew cuts.But to travel in traffic without a helmet is placing the noggin at risk.Or is it? Research relating the efficay of helmets in preventing death and injury is not conclusive at all. However, after helmets were made compulsory, there was a fall in head injuries to cyclists of around 40%.
In effect, the main constraint on bicycle travel is fear of death or injury. But let's get real about this. In 2002, 46 cyclists died on Australian roads. compared to 295 pedestrians out of ....(at carnage levels) a total of 1731 deaths across the national road network. As John Pucher from Rutgers University, has concluded, cyclist and pedestrian fatality rates are much lower in countries and cities where cycling and walking account for a high rate of total trips.

While I don't make light of the tension involved in running the left margin of a road between parked cars on one side and a semi trailer bearing down on your right shoulder -- I'm saying that bike travel is a viable transport option even today under current traffic anarchy conditions.

It also seems to me that current research on obesity and transport usage suggests that the humble bike has a lot going for it as the axis of any campaign against obesity and Type II Diabetes.



So when not getting on a tram -- you know that perhaps there is a bicycle seat with your name on it.

18 February, 2008

Ciclovia: Bogotá, Colombia



Ciclovia: Bogotá, Colombia
Every Sunday and holiday, every week, the City of Bogotá, Colombia closes down over 70 miles of roadways to cars and let people bike, walk, talk, exercise, picnic, sunbathe, I could go on and on. Just watch the video, it’s amazing.

03 February, 2008

40 % of urban travel is within 2 miles of your front door

Forty percent of all urban travel is 2 miles (3.21868 kilometres) or less. Cliff Bar -- a sort of energy food bar -- wants you to ride your bike instead of taking the car. Find out more and take the challenge at

http://2milechallenge.com/home.html

You gotta enter your home address and check your operating neighbourhood radius.

Then have a thionk about your standard travel options.