Monday update

Happy Monday, all. I hope you had a wonderful wonderful.

I griped a little about scofflaw cyclists last week. Today, I’ll turn the tables and tell you about my short bike ride to the bank.

There are three stop lights in the six tenths of a mile from my home to the bank. As I biked to the bank to get cash from the ATM, I saw these moving violations in that 0.6 miles:

  • We have one of those radar trailers on the street that shows how fast you’re going. It consistently showed 40 to 50 MPH the entire time I saw it as a stream of traffic flowed past. The speed limit: 35 MPH. It briefly flashed 16 MPH when I was directly in front of the trailer before it jumped back up to 45.
  • Three cars speeding through a red light. I’m not talking about the light turning red while they cruised through a stale yellow — me and everybody else on my street had the green when these other drivers ran the light. The number of red running cyclists I saw over the whole weekend: zero.
  • There was the lady in the white Accord who darted out from a blind side street directly into my path.
  • At every single intersection, I saw drivers who failed to signal their turns.

Scofflaw cyclists are a common theme among those who propose bike registration and licensing, I suppose because registration works so well in regulating motorist behavior.


Monday Bicycle News


Caltrain Palo Alto

Many people gripe about the poor service and bad attitudes they see at local bicycle shops, so it’s a surprise to see bike shops held up as an example of good retailing practices. Book sellers attending the American Booksellers Association meeting in Washington DC visited Revolution Cycles to see how they do business.

Bike history: Bicycling and bike paths in Portland Oregon a century ago.

A politician in Hyderabad, India protests rising gas prices with a bicycle ride. Just like politicians around the rest of the world, these protesters blame the incumbent government on high gas prices and demand lower taxes to offset increased fuel prices. I’m sure we’ll see interesting fireworks in the US Congress this year on this same issue.

Steve Magas the Ohio Bike Lawyer: Three criminal trials of motorists who killed cyclists set for February 2011.

Aerodynamic Drag Chart for Human Powered Mobility.

Kinda funny, in a toe-MAY-toe/toe-MAH-toe kind of way: I usually see ‘linear parks’ as an almost insulting description of bike paths that are poorly connected and have no real destinations besides maybe a parking lot at either end. The Trailsnet blog, however, sings high praises for linear parks, noting how rail trails in particular can be used to expand and connect parks for exercise, recreation, and even commuting.

Roaring Mouse Cycles in San Francisco moved last week.

Copenhagenize: Early Road Rage and the birth of car culture.

5 Comments

  1. Rail-trails are generally more practical as transportation than other linear parks because they were originally built for transportation, connecting towns with trains.

  2. Rail-trails are generally more practical as transportation than other linear parks because they were originally built for transportation, connecting towns with trains.

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