johnnycomelately » Bike

This Road Will Never End

Zac — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 00:22:22 +0000

Like Mike Waters (River Phoenix) in My Own Private Idaho, I am a connoisseur of roads. Whether on foot, by bike or on transit, I love to wander through neighborhoods, observing how the character of a city changes from street to street.

I don’t mean to be daft, but the worst part of traveling on or around roads are the cars. One has to be vigilant to share the roads with traffic, but outside of personal safety there are environmental effects like the heat island effect, runoff and noise which shape the experience of a city-goer. More than perhaps we’re willing to acknowledge, cars have a tremendous impact on our enjoyment of city life. Walking across the Golden Gate Bridge these days can feel more like walking across the tarmac at SFO.

The automobile remains a dominant part of daily life for most in this country: for commuting, for errands, for travel. Some are rumored to even drive to the gym, get on a bike and spin. But with news that gas is – gasp! – officially expensive in this country (or rather, just not as cheap as it was) folks are finally searching for alternatives. What first appears as a crisis may prove to be the forefront of a momentous shift in thinking.

I attended a meeting last Tuesday of Fix Masonic which included a presentation of the City’s Better Streets Plan. Masonic Ave is a North-South thoroughfare which exemplifies both the failure of traditional urban street design and the great potential for its transformation with progressive vision. The Better Streets Plan is just such a vision for the future of the City’s pedestrian landscape: safer, slower streets with clear crossings, public parks and seating spaces, permeable landscape, and extensive greening.

Here’s an example of the way the Better Streets guidelines can improve a typical residential street:

If we can entice (even initially coerce) people out of their cars and into a pedestrian and bike-friendly environment that is vibrant, safe and inviting, maybe we can shift the concept of a street – and thus a neighborhood or even a city – away from a transit corridor and towards a healthier, more versatile, more livable public space.

It’s hard for me to imagine the double-decker embarcadero freeway where there’s now a great plaza, but I think the transformation illustrates what can happen when you develop streetscapes with people in mind and not automobiles. Octavia Boulevard is not, in my mind, an out-and-out success but it does demonstrate the kind of urban planning foresight this city needs to create better pedestrian environments.

Check out:

Plant*SF – permeable landscaping as sustainable urban infrastructural practice and beautification effort
Better Streets – add your comments to the draft at upcoming events

Living Just Enough For The City

Zac — Sat, 22 Sep 2007 06:15:48 +0000

There are times when the life of an urban dweller can touch on the woesome.

A weekend walk through Hayes Valley, Civic Center, Russian Hill and elsewhere turned into an ambush of bodily humours, the nose giving me information the head wishes to forget.

Later in the week, a driver ran into me on my bike. It was more of a lovetap – one that I guess I could have avoided if I heeded the advice of a witness waiting at the bus stop and “stayed the hell off the road”.

Of course, every day is a golden day for a MUNI story, but this week felt mired in the same slow crawl of a city bus. Recently, a report stated that by shifting roadway priority to MUNI’s streetcars and buses on just 10 corridors, 3 out of 4 riders (out of a daily 600,000+) would see a speedier commute.

But to do this, you have to change the way the average person sees the city street.

It’s not a freeway…

It’s a fantastic walkway and a thriving marketplace for local foods.

It’s not an offramp…

It’s a neighborhood.

It’s not a parking space…

It’s a PARK(ing) space

It can be done. Convincing people of the value of the land in an urban landscape may be as slow-going as MUNI, but a paradigm shift is possible.

The Ultimate Arrogance

Zac — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 18:25:30 +0000

Biking home from work a couple weeks ago, a couple of guys in an Oldsmobile with a ‘God Bless America’ sticker ran me off the road. They both got out of their car near a busy intersection and one ran towards me shouting ‘Get a car, you homo!’

There seems to be something about driving that can turn reasonable people into impatient, even obnoxious jerks. I definitely notice the tendency in myself on the rare occasions I’m behind the wheel. For a small group of individuals though, driving appears to trigger sociopathic tendencies. I’ve been run off the road many times. I’ve had trash thrown at me. A mom revved her car behind me while her young kids flipped me off from the back seat. I’ve even been head-butted – ok that was as a pedestrian.

A column on Monday reported that an angry swarm of Critical Mass bikers attacked a minivan while children were screaming away inside. No journalistic inquiry into the provocation. No eyewitness commentary. Just the driver’s account of a vicious mob acting inhumanely. Maybe it’s my own experience, or just say, common sense, but I was quite skeptical of this scenario. Over the last couple days a broader picture has emerged and the details are not surprising to me. A reporter at the Bay Guardian was present at the incident and gives his account

A driver gets angry and impatient after getting stuck in Critical Mass and tries to drive through the crowd (which is stupid, illegal, and dangerous). To prevent injuries, the standard practice in such cases is for riders to place themselves and their bikes in front of the car. She hits said bicyclist (sure, maybe not hard enough to produce an injury, as you pointed out, but contact is contact) and then keeps driving forward. The rest of the bicyclists urge her to just stop driving, please, which she refuses to do because at this point she’s agitated and indignant. They pound on her windows, pleading with her to stop driving into a crowd of hundreds of bicyclists with her deadly object. Pretty soon, a bicyclist loses it and smashes her window

And here’s a television interview with some women who also witnessed the incident.

This kind of reportage and the actions of this driver and many others stem from the same asinine, but thoroughly ingrained idea: a car has the absolute right of way on the road. Bicyclists and pedestrians in America make up a fraction of those on the road but suffer 11 to 36 times higher fatalities than car occupants. And yet there remains this perception by some that, if anything it’s the drivers that have it tough on our city streets.

Hooey.

People are so bent on getting from point A to B as fast as possible they neglect the repercussions of their behavior like unsafe streets, riled up commuters, and pollution. The automobile has been a major negative force in public health, climate change, and urban planning, not to mention sucking away the funding and infrastructure for decent public transit and high speed rail. Now is not the time to crack down on “rogue” bikers, but a time to push for education and real policy for improving the safety and health of everyone. A city with more bikes, more pedestrians and for chrissake, a better MUNI, is something I think most of us can agree is a positive thing.

The title of this post, by the way, is from ex-mayor Willie Brown, who shook his Italian-tailored cuff at the prerogative of bikers taking part in Critical Mass.