Fido Foto Friday - The Dual Purpose Bike Racks
Editor's note: After all the fanfare from the latest bike corral installation, Robert Leone sends in this writeup to warn of the downside that comes from having dedicated bike parking racks - the interlopers that are dog owners. But with some creative thinking, Leone suspects the dog owners could become allies of the two-wheeled crowd.
----
In the long struggle for bicycle facilities, an often forgotten element is bike parking. As much as half the paved area of a given public road is devoted to cars that aren't even running. Massive investments in striping, lanes, and space that landlords can't rent are required for commercial and residential developments. Meanwhile, little attention is paid to bike parking. Regular readers of BikeSD.org will know local cycling advocates, and San Diego City Council Members, throw press conferences when an on street bike corral that can hold about a dozen bikes, or about as many cars as the rest of that side of that street on that block, is installed.
With some creativity, San Diego County's riding community could gain new and powerful allies in militating for bike parking -- those who walk their dogs.
San Diegans' love for their canine pets, domestic animals, fur children, what have you, is demonstrated by the recent burgeoning of off-leash dog play areas seen in almost every new and redeveloped San Diego City Park. These animal recreational facility advocates have a reputation for single-minded focus and persistence that is the envy of Race Across America riders. However, our region's retail merchants (and their landlords) seem far behind the curve when it comes to dog parking. The parallels with bicycle parking are obvious.
Of course, some observant merchants have been forward thinking by supplying tie downs, snap hooks, cleats, water bowls and other accommodations for the four-footed companions of the folks with the wallets. A few local entrepreneurs have gone into business supplying hooks for leash holding.
However, the selling point for bike racks in the shopping centers should be their dual purpose. Take it from someone who's had to chase after a loose terrier mix running lose in the street a couple months back: Routine and secure bicycle parking is routine and secure dog parking.
If you don't have good bike parking, you get this situation instead, where the bike is loosely locked to any old inconvenient railing with little furry security systems ready to tear out an innocent photographer's throat.
The dual purpose, even if unintended, of bicycle parking can gain facilities advocates some surprising, and surprisingly powerful allies.
Foto Friday – Dealing with Upcoming Conflict Points Through Paint
For today's edition of Foto Friday we're going to highlight intersections.
Below is a video showing how intersections in The Netherlands have been reconfigured to ensure that all modes can get through intersections safely and with ease.
In our country however, we haven't quite advanced the thinking to a stage when we can actually think about allocating our transportation dollars in a truly equitable manner. So in the meantime, advocates have to settle for inadequate solutions that can be implemented quickly.
For now, the way one turns left is by merging into the vehicle's travel lane as depicted by the diagram below. The diagram also indicates that we have a long way to go in our graphic design skills as well as redesigning our transportation network.
But the current method can be made a little easier for drivers by warning them to expect bicyclists merging into their lane. Such a solution is currently being implemented in San Francisco. The photo below was sent in by our traveling bicycle reporter, Hans Wangbichler.
Wangbichler writes,
I love this because it warns the car drivers, and not the bicycle riders (bikes have the right of way), and this obviously isn't a new way of thinking, due to how worn the markings are. Markings like this make a statement that bicycles aren't an accepted form of recreation, but considered a viable means of transportation.
Foto Friday - Inexpensive Design Solutions with Big Visual Impact
I often get many emails with specific examples on how other cities and regions around the country and world are designing solutions that ensure that traffic moves efficiently in a system that treats bicycle riders with dignity.I thought Fridays would be a good day to highlight some of these design solutions in order to give you an idea on how we can begin to visualize what San Diego could look like in the future.
One of the big problems in San Diego is the freeway-style ramps that have been designed to allow maximum efficiency to motor vehicles at the cost of bicycle, pedestrian and other vulnerable user's lives. For example, trying to ride on Friars Road with the multiple on-ramps and off-ramps can feel humiliating given how little consideration has been made for the non-motorized populace. But the sort of changes needed to be made in order to transform our transportation network can come in a variety of different ways and the example below is an example of how paint can make a visually arresting difference.
This is what Stevens Creek Boulevard at I-280 in San Jose used to look like from aerial perspective.
Below is a street level view of how this on-ramp section used to look like.
While Hans Wangbichler was up in San Jose, he sent in the photo below of how paint can clearly demarcate where a rider should be expected. The paint also visually indicates to drivers to expect a rider riding across the on-ramp to continue on Stevens Creek Boulevard and the bright green color is arresting enough to alert drivers.
Design solutions such as the working implementation above are an example of what is presented in the NACTO Urban Bikeway Guide. This treatment could be implemented on Pershing Drive where it crosses the ramp for I-5 and many other places around San Diego. This is the sort of solutions that San Diego should be working to implement in order to ensure that all residents can move around in a manner that is not simply efficient, but respectful of their choice.