| Contents | | From the Editor | Update on CAMPO's raiding
of bike funds | Freeway Blogger | Cost of driving
correction | Cross-promotion with
WizardOfOdds.com
. | | General | Bikers vs. Zombies | Car addiction a threat to
children | At-Fault drivers get off the
hook for killing peds | Triggering traffic
signals | Kyoto global warming treaty all
but dead | U.S. & SUV's: A deadly
combination | Cars slower than you
think | Honkies
. | | Regional | SPAIN: Naked
rides | TORONTO: Critical
Mass photos | AUSTIN: CAMPO's
raiding of bike funds
. | | Classifieds | Bikes for sale
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| | Drive
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Update on
CAMPO's raid on bike funds As usual, the big update on CAMPO's planned
raiding of Central Texas bike funds is at the
end of this newsletter, but here's a summary: - Bike & ped projects are indeed on the chopping
block. Staff's recommendation is to cut bike &
ped funding in half, killing off the Upper Boggy Creek
Bikeway and miles and miles of sidewalks, and instead
blow $4.1 million on FM 2769.
- The meeting where this gets decided one way or the
other is still set for Mon., Dec. 8th. If you live in
Central Texas and haven't yet let your legislators know
how you feel, please use
our handy form to do so. The ACA removed their form
because the public comment period was over, but we think
you should be able to talk to your legislators whenever
you want, so our form is still up.
 Freeway
blogger
In our
last issue we reported on anti-car and anti-war signs
being put up along California's freeways, which are
chronicled on NobodyDied.com.
(See example at right.) We neglected to mention another fine
site chronicling these signs: FreewayBlogger.com. Cost
of driving This is what I get for doing some of the
calculations in my head. In the
last issue we reported that investing the money saved by
not having a car at 8% from ages 25 to 67 would yield over a
million dollars. In fact, it would yield 2.3 million
dollars! (Okay, so inflation reduces that to
about $638,000 in today's dollars. It's still a hell of a
lot of money.) In this issue we'll look at how fast a car
actually goes after you convert money into time. Cross-Promotion
with the Wizard of Odds I'm doing a cross-promotion with my friend
Michael Shackleford, better known as the gambling expert the
Wizard of Odds. Some of you will be surprised that I have a
friend who's proud to profess his right-wing politics but
hey, I don't tell you how to choose your friends.
Anyway, I'm mentioning his newsletter in my newsletter, and
he's mentioning mine in his. The Wizard's News contains
gambling tips, exclusive online gaming offers, and news
about Vegas. It's a complement to the top-rated website
WizardOfOdds.com.
You can sign up
for The Wizard's News here. Bikers
vs. Zombies Cycle Messengers for World Domination
(CMWD) had
this to say about the zombie film 28 Days Later: - Apparently the lead character
in 28 Days Later is a bike messenger, before he wakes up
and finds that he's the last man on earth. Only having
seen the television ads, where the dude is wandering
along with a shopping bag, CMWD wants to ask: if you were
a messenger, and you were alone in the city, wouldn't
your first stop be the local bike shop, where you'd hook
up with a sweet-ass ride and just, you know, ride away
from the flesh-eating viral zombies?
Car addiction a threat
to children A website called TheAnti-Drug.com
parodies anti-drug materials by pointing out the addictive
nature of automobiles and their threat to human health,
especially where children are concerned. The feature
"Kids
and Cars: Not a harmless high" includes testimonials
such as these: - Car User Tells Kids It Will Destroy Your
Life
- I've been driving for 20 years. I wish I never
started. It destroys your body little by little. If
you're a kid and reading this, start learning how to live
car-free now, you'll thank me later.
-
- Teen Tells Parents All Types of Kids
Drive
- I'm not a parent but a 17 year old high school
student. I want to tell everyone that there is no one
certain group or clique that uses cars. My high school is
small (about 650 kids) and, no exaggeration here, the
majority of the students are "into" cars. It's not just
the "skaters", the "punks' or the "white trash", its
EVERYBODY. Almost all of the jocks drive, the prom queen,
the cheerleaders, and nobody pays any attention because
they think that only the "bad kids" drive. The preppy
rich kids with the good grades and perfect home lives are
no exception. Even the cops' kids drive. I know, I've
been in a car with the son of the chief of police. So if
you think your child is not the type to get sucked into
the dangerous car-culture by peer-pressure, you'd better
think again, because there is no certain type.
Our favorite bit was the commercial "Okay" about how drug
money funds terrorists, cleverly edited to be about how oil
money funds terrorists. (see
MPG commercial)
At-fault
drivers get off the hook for killing cyclists &
pedestrians
One thing that got me into anti-car
activism was the 1996 case in which bicyclist Tom Churchill
was killed by a drunk driver. The driver got no fine or jail
time, and not even a traffic ticket for his crime. I came to
find out that this case wasn't unusual -- motorists are less
likely to suffer a penalty if they kill a pedestrian or
cyclist instead of another motorist. I started keeping track
of some of these cases, documenting them on BicycleAustin.info
and reporting about them on the radio program I hosted at
the time. I got flack for saying that the lack of justice
for cyclists was a civil rights issue, and more than one
person thought I was going "too far" by seeing persecution
wherever I looked. But the truth is that the injustice is
there whether we admit it or not. I'm simply one of the
people who's pointing it out. And I believe more firmly than
ever that when your killer is less likely to be penalized
because group you belong to (e.g., blacks, gays, or
pedestrians & bicyclists), that's exactly what a
civil rights issue is. When the driver who ran a red light and
killed cyclist Ben Clough in Austin didn't even get a ticket
for her crime, more than one cyclist here opined that the
best way to avoid getting a ticket for running a red light
was to kill a cyclist while you're doing so. The thing is,
it's not just happening here. A new
study by the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition in
California claims that three out of four at
fault drivers were never even cited for hitting and
killing pedestrians. (The study also showed that 22% of
fatal pedestrian crashes involved hit and run drivers. It's
sobering to look around and think that 22% of the people you
see around you wouldn't even stop if they hit you.) Similar
story in New York: RightOfWay.org
reports that drivers are at fault in 70% of cyclist deaths
and 92% of pedestrian deaths there. And 74% of them didn't
even get a traffic ticket. (Incidentally, Right of Way also
reports that in over 90% of pedestrian fatalities the driver
is male. So much for the stereotype about incompetent female
drivers.) The fact that injustice is widespread isn't
surprising. I explore the reasons for this in my Why
no justice? article, but the main reason is simple
enough: The cultural bias against non-drivers, conscious or
subconscious, is all it takes to keep the various actors in
the criminal justice system from aggressively prosecuting
our killers. I gave up aggressively researching
injustice cases years ago because it took too much time and
frankly I wasn't seeing that it was making any difference.
Maybe I made a few more people aware of the problem, but the
problem was still there. These days I usually update the
No Justice?
section of the website only when someone forwards a case to
me that's already fairly well documented in other media.
Seeing this research by the East and West Coast groups
validates the message I've been preaching, but it puts me in
a conflicted position: On the one hand I'd like to feel good
that my claims about cycling injustice have been
substantiated credib ly
by others. But can I feel good knowing that the existence of
injustice is very real and widespread? So what to do? I don't have any easy
answers, but I have a suggestion for where to start: The
next time a cyclist or pedestrian is killed by an at-fault
motorist in your community, do something about it.
There are many things you can do, limited only by your
creativity. In St. Louis, people are painting entire
bicycles solid white and leaving them at locations where
cyclists have been killed by cars.
(website)
This doesn't bring back the dead, and it doesn't
guarantee that the motorist faces justice, but it's a bold
interjection into a culture that turns a blind eye to the
carnage caused by cars. We can't open the nation's eyes
about this overnight, but we can open them one person at a
time.
Triggering
traffic signals
In a previous issue we reported on one rider's attempts
to use magnets to trigger traffic light sensors. In response
we got this message from an engineer who designs traffic
light sensors: - I read your article on
triggering traffic signals with a bicycle and would like
to tell you a few facts about vehicle detectors as I am a
designer of these units. Firstly, magnets have no effect
at all on loop detectors (unless of course the magnet is
so big that it acts more like a big mass of metal.) If
you want to trigger the traffic lights with 100%
certainty, simply get off the bike and lay the front
wheel of the cycle flat over the loop towards one corner
for a second or two. The rim of a cycle wheel acts
like a big short circuited turn of wire and used in this
way will produce a bigger signal than most automobiles
do. The reason for this is that you can place your wheel
flat on the ground so that it is about 10 x closer to the
loop than most automobiles can reach. -- Graham Lill,
Dept. of Infrastructure, Energy, & Resources,
Tasmania
R.I.P
for the Kyoto treaty Remember the Kyoto
treaty to curb greenhouse gases to end global warming? Well,
thank the U.S. for effectively killing it. While 120
countries ratified the treaty, it can take effect only when
approved by enough countries to account for 55% of 1990
emissions. Without Russia (17.4%) or the United States
(36.1%), where the Bush administration rejected the treaty,
the deal is sunk. No one has to point out the irony about the
countries most responsible for global warming being the ones
who won't help clean up the mess.
(more
in the NY Times
article) U.S.
& SUV's: A deadly combination A recent reports
shows that SUV's are deadlier to child pedestrians by about
18%. Does this really surprise anyone?
(source: NTSA)
And when ranking the safest places to drive among
industrialized countries, the U.S. has been steady slipping
and is now in ninth place. (Common
Dreams) Cars
slower than you think In the
last issue we reported on how much money you could have
by investing the money you would have spent on a car.
($2.3 million if you invest your savings at 8% from
ages 25 to 67). We also showed how if you convert money into
time, the typical American spends three months each year
just to pay for the car. Drive to work, work to drive. Another way to convert money into time is
to figure out the average speed of a car after accounting
for the time needed to earn money to pay for it. The average
speed for an urban auto is 25.6 mph (source).
Based on a 7-mile one-way commute, that takes 137 hours a
year. Once we add in the 517 hours required to pay for the
car, we have 654 hours total, which brings our average speed
down to 5.35 mph -- slower than a bicycle. By the way, we know our source for the
average speed of urban autos is weak, though the 25.6mph
does seem about right, maybe even generous. If anyone has a
better source, we'd love to see it. Honkies From Amy's
Alphabet of Grievances: - H-Horns. Horns are for emergencies. Horns are
not for expressing how pissed off you are. When I run the
world, car buyers will have to make a deposit on their
horns, which will buy them what ought to be an
acceptable, lifetime supply of honks. (Residual honks
would transfer to the driver's next car.) If they run
out, they'll have to go through a grueling application
process to get another batch. They'll have to document
how they used their honks - that they were truly
necessary. If they can't, they'll have to pay a big pile
of money and take an annoying class.
SPAIN:
More naked
cyclists In an earlier issue we reported on the mass
of crazy Spanish bicyclists who took the streets stark
raving naked in broad daylight. Here's another
site covering the phenomenon. TORONTO, CANADA:
Excellent Critical
Mass photos As the webmaster for a directory of Critical
Mass websites around the globe (CriticalMassRides.info)
I've seen plenty of sites offering CM pics, and most of them
are fairly uninspiring. But these photos from Toronto made
me as excited as a little girl: Toronto
CM pics. AUSTIN:
Update on CAMPO's
raiding of bike/ped funds CAMPO, the regional mobility authority
(RMA) for Central Texas, has been planning to raid some of
what little funding is set aside for bike/ped projects and
spend it on amenities for cars instead. They'll make their
decision at the Monday, Dec. 8th meeting, at the Thompson
Conference Center at UT (26th & Red River). Meeting
starts at 5:45pm but it'll be a while for them to get to
this item, #4 on the agenda. Recently CAMPO posted
a PDF document on their website detailing exactly how
they intend to steal the bike funds. You've gotta hand it to
them, at least they're doing this in broad daylight. Here's
our summary of their proposal. In the table below, the green rows show
projects that will likely be funded no matter what. The gray
rows are the bike/ped projects on the chopping block, and
the red row is the roadway project they want to spend the
money on instead. Type | Project | Cost | Roadway | S. Congress, from Williamson Creek to Eberhart
Ln. | $6,550,000 | Roadway | S. Congress, from Eberhart Ln. to Boggy
Creek | $8,200,000 | Multiple | Loop 82/Post Rd. Int/Sig/BP Improvements | $390,000 | Traffic Signals | RM 620 (183 to Parmer) | $93,473 | Intersection Improvement | S. Congress/Stassney | $222,300 | Intersection Improvement | Stassney/I-35 | $288,500 | Intersection Improvement | Lakeline/Pecan Park | $141,600 | ITS | I-35 Williamson (FM 3406 to Travis Co.) | $3,330,000 | ITS | I-35 Travis (Loop 275 to Hays Co.) | $3,774,000 | Sidewalks | I-35 (Braker to Ben White) | $1,253,500 | Sidewalks | Loop 1 (Stratford to 360) | $621,000 | Sidewalks | Loop 1 (Parmer to 2222) | $868,250 | Sidewalks | Airport Blvd. (Bolm to 183) | $103,500 | Bike/Ped | S. Lamar Bike/Ped barrier removal | $800,000 | Bike/Ped | Upper Boggy Creek Bikeway | $1,943,600 | Sidewalks | Ed Bluestein (290 to 71) | $1,857,250 | Sidewalks | 290 (Joe Tanner to S. Congress) | $575,000 | Sidewalks | Airport Blvd. (Bolm to 183) | $575,000 | Roadway | FM 2769 from north of 620 to 620 | $4,100,000 |
The first thing you might notice is that
bike/ped raiding or no, there's a fair amount of bike/ped
project funding here. But that's deceptive, because this
table covers only one source of CAMPO funds. When we
consider all of CAMPO funds, bike/ped projects get less than
1% of total funding, according to an estimate by UTC
commissioner Mike Dahmus. The next thing to notice is that CAMPO
doesn't have to cut all the bike/ped projects to build their
road. They're trying to cut $4,950,850 of bike/ped projects
to build a $4,100,000 roadway. But there's plenty of money
to build one of two sidewalk projects slated to be cut and
still build their roadway anyway. Do they want to cut the
extra sidewalk project out of spite? So what is this "Upper Boggy Creek Bikeway"
they want to cut? Oh, nothing much, just a path that would
run alongside the railroad tracks from around 12th St. in
East Austin all the way up to Airport & Lamar!
(more on the
bikeway) Seriously, this would provide an incredible,
safe route across town, linking the east side with the west
side, and would be one of the most important bike projects
ever built in Austin. If they don't cut it, that is. I'm starting
to think that maybe we should appeal to CAMPO using a
different message. "You hate all those bicyclists on the
road, and who can blame you? Obviously they're not real
Americans. So why don't you build this piddling bikeway for
them, so when they use it there will be fewer of those pesky
cyclists on our roads?" Let's talk about the roadway projects. The
"ITS" stands for "Intelligent Transportation Systems" and
includes such thing as loop detectors for triggering traffic
signals, traffic light synchronization, and signs that
indicate if there's an incident up ahead or a detour due to
construction. Okay, we're not gonna complain about that.
What we are gonna complain about is the $4.1 million they
want to spend on FM 2769 instead of bike/ped projects. The
plan here is to turn a two-lane undivided road into a
four-lane divided road -- all 3/4-mile of it. That's right,
3/4-mile of roadway compared to miles and miles of sidewalks
and bikeways. There are some other interesting things in
that PDF
file about the planned funding raid. First. they printed
the name of the 160+ people who sent in the email form
asking for bike/ped funding to be saved. Whoo-hoo! Bet you
didn't know that the fact that you spoke out would be a part
of the public record, and available on the web no less. (I
didn't.) I also note that CAMPO listed the person's email
address instead of their name, presumably when a person
didn't give their name. Bad move, because spambots will now
lift those addresses from CAMPO's file and add them to junk
mailing lists. Interestingly, my own name didn't make the
list of commenters. I wonder if only a few of us got snipped
or whether a bunch of us didn't make it. Finally, all four
letters that CAMPO received on the subject were printed in
the packet. Maybe next time we do a campaign we should send
letters by postal mail instead.... In our
last issue we said that Karen Sonleiter was the only
legislator to respond to our request that CAMPO not raid
bike/ped funds. In fact, Sonleiter was the only one to
respond by email, but state Senator Gonzalo Barrientos
responded by postal mail, saying, "As I am a long-time
advocate of a multimodal approach to transportation, I
intend to support continued allocation of 15 percent of STP
MM money for bike/ped." And as long as we're quoting people, here's
another sample comment that a reader sent to CAMPO with our
form: - I'm one of those pesky
bicyclists who wants to use the bike to actually carry
out work and to get back and forth to work. I make an
effort to run errands on the bike, even hauling a trailer
to pick up groceries and the like. When I have lots of
time, I even commute back and forth to San Marcos, where
I work. As congestion builds and roads continue to lack
shoulders these trips become more questionable in terms
of safety. I'm 58, so I'm pretty good at making my way.
However, the ideal would be not only bike lanes, but bike
paths. I visit other cities that have commuter-friendly
bike paths. Some of them seem to facilitate helping
people get somewhere. Bikes can't make a major
contribution to traffic reduction if the planners only
consider them as forms of toys for adults, riding only
for recreation and health. Since some funding is supposed
to be for bikes, why don't we get it? Instead of just
keeping Austin weird, let's also keep it
liveable.
If you live in Central Texas and haven't yet let your
legislators know how you feel, please use
our handy form to do so. The ACA removed their form
because the public comment period was over, but we think you
should be able to talk to your legislators whenever you
want, so our form is still up.
back
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