Tag Archives: Bicycles

Floyd, a Street Cyclists Can Call their Own

Design options for the Floyd Bicycle Boulevard include car diverters like this...

Design options for the Floyd Bicycle Boulevard include car diverters like this…

by James A. Bacon

The City of Richmond doesn’t have many tangible results to show for its bicycle-friendly policies so far. Painting white bicycle symbols on a few streets to designate sharrows — lanes where cars should be on the look-out for bicycles — contributes only marginally to making streets safer for cyclists. But the city soon could create a street corridor that prioritizes bicycles over cars.

City Council voted last month to ask the Commonwealth Transportation Board to approve the Floyd Avenue Bike Boulevard project to improve bicycle and pedestrian mobility on Floyd Avenue in the city’s Fan and Museum districts.

As described in Richmond Connects, the city’s strategic multimodal transportation plan, a bicycle boulevard is a low volume, low-speed street that is “redesigned with features to further reduce the speed and volume of traffic and give priority to bicycles.”

speed lumps like this...

…speed lumps like this…

The plan would convert Floyd to a bicycle boulevard for 27 blocks between Dooley Avenue and Laurel Street. The details remain to be seen. But traffic “diverters” could be installed at intersections to force local car traffic from Floyd onto other streets after a block or two. The diverters would be designed so that bicycles could ride through them. Another technique for slowing speeds might be to install speed lumps — like speed bumps but with cutouts for bicycles. Traffic islands at intersections are another option. Good signage and lane markings are critical.

“Residents and businesses would still retain access [to Floyd Avenue] but in some cases that access may be less direct than before the conversion,” states the transportation plan.

...and traffic signals like this.

…and traffic signals like this.

Floyd Avenue is  well suited for such a project. The mainly residential street has a low volume of automobile traffic at present, and is little used by commuters driving into and out of Richmond’s central business district. The bicycle boulevard would terminate at Virginia Commonwealth University, where it would plug into the bicycle-friendly VCU campus. Moreover, it would run 27 blocks through the Fan and Museum districts, two of the most densely settled  neighborhoods in Richmond, where cyclists can access a wide range of amenities.

The Richmond Metropolitan Planning Organization has recommended approval of $50,000 to pay for preliminary engineering. Assuming the scope and cost of the project stays on target, the MPO will recommend approval for the balance of the project cost, an additional $300,000. Eighty percent of the street makeover will be funded through the federal Transportation Alternative program; the city will pay the rest.

The Fan and Museum districts have a fair volume of bicycle traffic already, but streets are not designed to accommodate bicycles. Cyclists blowing through intersections are a frequent irritant to drivers. It is hoped that many cyclists will divert to the Floyd Bike Boulevard, where they will come into less conflict with cars.

Some residents of Floyd Avenue likely will complain that tilting the rules of the road in favor of bicycles and against cars will inconvenience them and diminish their property values. But the bother to motorists is marginal. And it is entirely possible that enhancing bicycle accessibility could bolster property values. This project will make an interesting experiment. I hope that city officials track property valuations over the next several years. Floyd Avenue could well prove to be the template for other bicycle boulevards.

What Virginians Can Learn from Bicycle Nirvana

Americans, it is commonly said, have had a love affair with the automobile. By the same token, it is fair to say that the Dutch have had a love affair with the bicycle. A 1938 newspaper article declared the bicycle to be “the most Dutch of all vehicles.” Some 32 years later, when some friends and I spent a summer bicycling through Europe, we found the Netherlands the easiest of all European countries to navigate. All major roads were paralleled by bicycle paths — it was nice not competing with automobiles for space on the road. But it is only since then that the Dutch have gotten truly serious about bicycles.

The Netherlands has proven that a transportation system that relies heavily upon bicycles is fully compatible with a modern, urban economy with a high standard of living. Between 2005 and 2007, Amsterdam residents took more trips by bicycle than by car. Nationally, almost 30% of Dutch commuters almost always travel by bike; another 40% sometimes commute by bike.

The 14-minute video above records what a delegation from several American cities experienced recently when touring the Netherlands to see first-hand how its cities are organized for bicycle transportation. It is remarkable to see how many Dutchmen ride bicycles — the streets of Groningen look like a never-ending bike festival.

I recommend the video not with the thought that U.S. regions should aspire to the same levels of bicycle ridership as the Netherlands. After all Holland is flatter than the U.S., so cycling is easier. The country has fewer temperature extremes, so cycling is more pleasant. Netherlanders are well behaved and more inclined than many Americans to obey traffic laws, so cycling is safer. Perhaps most  important, Dutch settlement patterns are more compact, so riding to work isn’t like completing the Tour de France, as it would be, say, in the U.S. suburbs.

Rather, I recommend the video to show what is possible. In the U.S., only one to two percent of all commutes take place on bicycles. If the Dutch can push that figure higher than 30%, surely some U.S. regions — or, at least, the urban cores of some regions — can realistically aspire to a third that number. Imagine how a shift of that magnitude would clear the streets of congestion! Imagine how much more fit people would be!

One last thought inspired by a comment from one of the people quoted in the video: “Dollar for dollar, euro for euro, bicycle transportation is the best value there is.” That’s something for Virginians to consider as we decide how to unleash hundreds of millions of dollars in new transportation spending.

— JAB

No Excuses Left!

Bicycle power!

Bicycle power!

Now that Governor Bob McDonnell and the General Assembly have restructured transportation taxes away from a user-pays system to an everybody-pays system, they have (perhaps unwittingly) undermined the justification for short-changing funding for bicycle routes. Cycling advocates Tom Bowden and Champe Burnley drive home the point in a Times-Dispatch op-ed today.

Now our streets and roads will be paid for by everyone, through the sales tax and other general revenues. … With this change comes an obligation. Our streets and roads must be designed for the benefit of all legal users. No longer will pedestrians and cyclists have to endure the snide retorts of motorists that “Roads are for cars because cyclists don’t pay gas tax.” It was never really true in the first place, but now it’s laughable.

Our local streets and roads are for people and always have been. Most roads in Virginia existed long before automobiles, and now that we all pay for them, it’s time our planners and our government acknowledged this simple fact.”

I still believe in a user/beneficiary pays system for funding roads, bridges, highways and mass transit — and bicycles, too, if I could figure out a revenue stream for them. But now that we’ve butchered that principle and stuffed its various precepts and axioms into the incinerator, it’s time to follow through on the implications. Pedestrians and cyclists are taxpayers, too. They have every right to insist upon a share of the revenue stream to support projects that benefit them as well.

— JAB

Time to Get Real about Quality of Richmond’s Bicycle Infrastructure

bicycle_infrastructureThe Richmond region has a long way to go before it can truly be considered a bicycle-friendly town. The entire region has only 18.25 miles of paved bike lanes — “sharrow” lanes marked with bicycle icons don’t count — and those lanes are fragmented, unconnected to a broader network.

In 2015, hundreds of thousands of visitors are expected to descend upon the region for the World Road Cycling Championships, creating an “urgent need” for the region to upgrade its bicycle infrastructure.

That’s the appraisal of a new report by Sports Backers, the organization dedicated to transforming promoting an active lifestyle in the Richmond region. The report couched its findings in diplomatic language. I’m under no such obligation. Let me give it to you straight.

The region has 146 miles of dirt trails, but most are unpaved. A third of the total mileage is located in Pocahontas State Park on the region’s periphery, and none of the trails form a cohesive network. That’s not so bad if you’re a recreational mountain biker but the trails are pretty worthless if you’re relying upon bicycles to provide utilitarian transportation. The paved Virginia Capital Trail, which will link Richmond and Williamsburg, is another tremendous asset. But it, too, is free-standing, not part of a network.

The study details the fragmentation of the region’s bicycle assets: 164.2 total miles of bike trails split into 55 mostly unconnected segments.

Will Richmond be ready for the world bicycling championship?

Will Richmond be ready for the world bicycling championship?

“The lack of significant plans for more paved trails in the region will ultimately limit the use of bike infrastructure in the community,” the report states dryly. “Paved multi-purpose trails provide the ultimate level of safety and separation from motorized traffic that provides freedom to bikers as well as runners and walkers.”

The fragmentation might not be a long-term problem if there were a long-term, region-wide plan to tie the pieces into meaningful whole. But there is no plan. Not a single local government has a comprehensive plan for bicycling, the report notes. The City of Richmond is working on one — that’s about as good as it gets.

— JAB

Damned with Faint Praise: Virginia Ranks Tops in South for Bicycle Friendliness

colorado_bicyclesVirginia ranks 16th nationally in the just-published League of American Bicyclists’ “Bicycle Friendly States” ranking, and No. 1 in the South. The state of Washington took the top spot, with Colorado nailing down No. 2.

Colorado cycling has come on strong in recent years as the business community has mobilized around the goal of making the Centennial State the healthiest state in the country. Businesses understand the connection between a healthy population and a healthy workforce, and the link between a healthy workforce and lower medical insurance rates, lower rates of absenteeism and higher productivity. That cause has yet to go mainstream in Virginia, where business lobbies have expended their political capital in recent to increase taxes to pay for more transportation projects without insisting upon any more accountability or results in how that money is spent.

Virginia scored best for “policies and programs” (with a 4 out of 5) and worst in “infrastructure and funding” and “evaluation and planning.”  (See the Virginia state profile here.)

Among the ideas advanced to make Virginia more bicycle-friendly, the League suggested passing laws that protected cyclists on streets and roads, investing more money in bicycle infrastructure, and holding a state bicycle summit.

Bacon’s bottom line: Ranking first in the South ain’t much to be proud of folks. The leading states are lapping us. We can do better. Last time I checked, bicycle-friendly policies don’t violate property rights, they don’t undermine the Constitution and they don’t cost a lot of money. Why are putatively conservative Republicans so hostile? For the price of a single highway boondoggle (the $244 million Charlottesville Bypass, before cost overruns, for instance) we could make massive strides in building bicycle infrastructure throughout the state.
— JAB

Dealing with “Dead Bikes”

What can happen when you leave your bike leaning against a tree too long.

It’s one thing to say you want to create a bicycle-friendly community, it’s quite another to pull it off. In the abstract, it sounds pretty easy. The devil is in the details.

A case in point: Richmond City Council is pondering an ordinance to authorize police to attach a bicycle, motorcycle or moped to a city-owned tree, post, sign or other property after 72 consecutive hours if they are inoperable, or after 10 days if they are abandoned.

This is the kind of thing that comes up when more people use — and abuse — bicycles. In a column today, Times-Dispatch columnist Michael Paul Williams recalls an incident from two years ago in which two guys were visiting a friend and secured their bikes to a no-parking sign. A bit later, the discovered a police officer digging up the sign and threatening to confiscate their bikes. Writes Williams: “The episode embodied the city’s uneasy coexistence with bicycles.”

In the most recent case, however, City Council appears to be responding to a real problem — the “dead bike” issue. It’s a fact: People leave inoperable bikes tethered to trees and city property, taking up public space and creating an eyesore. “They are blight,” Williams quotes City Council member Parker C. Angelasto as saying.

I’m a big proponent of cyclist’s rights. But rights come with responsibilities, and cyclists need to be good citizens. Their rights don’t extend to chaining their bicycles to city property for days or weeks on end. The ordinance sounds reasonable to me.

— JAB

Bicycles and Economic Development

by James A. Bacon

Richmond is gaining traction as a bicycle-friendly region but it is a slow and arduous process. Public and private investment in biking infrastructure remain limited, almost non-existent outside the City of Richmond. It is commonly said among cycling enthusiasts that if you build the biking amenities, the cyclists will come.  The challenge is persuading government, business and civic decision makers to put money into bicycle amenities at a time when resources are scarce and public needs are many.

The selling proposition for bicycle infrastructure varies from region to region. In California, for instance, green gets the green. Any amenity that reduces automobile traffic and carbon-dioxide emissions moves up the list of priorities. Other than a few enclaves like Arlington and Charlottesville, however, saving the planet from the scourge of global warming doesn’t elicit much enthusiasm in Virginia. In the Old Dominion, people tend to get more stoked about jobs and wealth creation. If you want more bike lanes, parking spaces for bikes, bike-friendly traffic laws and the like, make the link to economic development.

With those thoughts in mind, Bacon’s Rebellion hosted an idea jam at Acorn Sign Graphics last night, attended by a dozen or so cycling activists. Our goal was to bolster the connection between bicycles and economic development. Several themes emerged from the conversation.

Cycling stimulates tourism. As the 50-mile Virginia Capital Trail between Richmond and Williamsburg nears completion, cycling advocates contend that the trail will be an amenity that will draw visitors to the Richmond region. Many look to the example of the Virginia Creeper Trail near Abingdon and biking trails in other states, which have given rise to clusters of outfitters and restaurants. The traffic isn’t exactly in the same league as Las Vegas or Disney World, but bike trails do generate stays at hotels, B&Bs and nearby attractions.

In addition to the Virginia Capital Trail, Richmond MORE and other groups are working to build the existing network of trails along the James River in downtown Richmond into a 40-mile trail network of mountain bike trails. Winning an International Mountain Bicycling Association (IMBA) desgination as a “ride center” will entice mountain bikers to drive four hours or more to stay “just to ride our trails,” says Greg Rollins, president of the volunteer organization.

Cycling trails and property values. Insofar as people regard cycling trails, bike-ped paths and bicycle lanes as desirable amenities, bicycle infrastructure enhances property values. Once upon a time, people paid a premium to live on a golf course, observed Jay Paul, an entrepreneur who has recently rolled out a line of cycling insurance. Today, he suggested people are more likely to pay a premium to live on a bike trail or bike-friendly street.

Investing in bicycle infrastructure can generate a payback for local governments in the form of higher property assessments and stronger tax revenue.

Cycling, place making and livability. Communities across the country are paying increasing attention to the art of “place making,” creating the kinds of places where people like to gather and interact. Great places, which locals cherish and out-of-towners come to visit, have many common elements, including a mix of residential, commercial and retail uses, walkable streets, cool public areas and, increasingly, bicycle access.

An abundance of great places makes a region a fun place to live — and more economically competitive. In the knowledge economy, a relatively small segment of the population — call them knowledge workers, the creative class, whatever you will — contribute disproportionately to wealth creation. A region’s ability to compete depends as much upon its ability to attract these young, educated and often-entrepreneurial workers as it does upon recruiting corporate investment. Indeed, corporations increasingly tend to locate in regions where they can access workers with valuable skill sets.

Young professionals and entrepreneurs are gravitating to Richmond’s urban core not just to work and play but to live. Far fewer own cars than did the previous generation, preferring to rely for mobility upon walking, biking and mass transit. Many won’t consider living anywhere but a walkable, bikable community.

Recruiting these young, foot-loose workers, said Jack Berry, executive director of Venture Richmond, requires “creating an image of a city and community that young people are attracted to. Right now, we’re seen as lagging cool places” like Portland and Boulder, he said. Cycling is a big part of the attraction.

Champe Burnley, president of the Virginia Bicycling Federation, put it another way: “If you want to recruit talent, you don’t do it by taking people to the country club and buying them a martini.” You need to show young people the fun things there are to do.

Fixing Broken Streams and Broken Dreams

The Bellemeade Walkable Watershed project aims to reclaim a damaged creek, create a route for kids to walk to school, and boost community spirit in a gritty, inner-city Richmond neighborhood.

by James A. Bacon

Bob Argabright got involved with Richmond city schools nine years ago when he volunteered to help two young students learn to read. It wasn’t long before he discovered that the challenges faced by inner city kids run far deeper than a difficulty with letters and words. As he delved deeper into their lives and their surroundings, his volunteer activity became a full-time vocation. Today, the retired paper industry executive is such a fixture at Oak Grove-Bellemeade Elementary School that children wave to him in the hall, call him by name and even run up to give him a hug.

“I think it’s totally unfair for a child to be born in the 23229 zip code and be set for life while a child born in 23224 has a low probability of success,” says Argabright. “Ninety percent of our kids say they want to be a rap star, an NFL football player or a beautician. We’re trying to show them other paths. … We’re teaching these children to dream.”

As unlikely as it might sound, Argabright is hoping that a few children might conceive the ambition of becoming an architect or an environmental engineer.

Making that connection would have been unlikely a year ago, when the students at Oak Grove-Bellemeade were attending the old Bellemeade Elementary School, an aged and decrepit school building that screamed urban blight. But this month they moved into a new, LEED-standard school building next door that is fresh, clean and airy. Every section of the school bears a name associated with the James River — the river bed, forest floor, forest canopy, and the like — to serve as inspiration for teaching about nature. Moreover, the city is moving forward with a project to restore the severely eroded creek behind the school with the aim of creating a community resource and a focus for environmental education.

The Bellemeade Walkable Watershed is a triumph of public-private collaboration, says Michelle Virts, deputy director of utilities. “It’s a great opportunity for the city to stretch our dollars.” The project is funded largely through a $187,000 National Fish & Wildlife grant to restore the creek, and a $60,000 Environmental Protection Agency grant to build a watershed coalition, but the city is chipping in land, public works money and staff time, while not-for-profits like the James River Association and the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay are providing volunteers for clean-up and money for tree planting.

Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the walkable watershed is how the community is leveraging a single project to advance multiple goals: stream restoration, environmental education, a community garden and a network of sidewalks and trails. By making it possible for hundreds of kids, many of whom live in housing projects, to walk or bicycle to school instead of ride the bus, the project, it is hoped, will ward off the obesity that plagues Richmond’s inner city.

Many educators, public officials and not-for-profits have contributed to the project. But Argabright is the thread tying the efforts together. “Bob is extremely active in the neighborhood,” says Virts. “He makes things happen.”

“Bob Argabright is totally on fire about this thing,” says Champe Burnley, president of the Virginia Bicycling Federation, who recalls meeting with him more than half a year ago. Argabright was thinking ahead to when the new route opens for children to walk and bike to school. How many poor kids own bicycles? Not many. Even back then, he was working the angles to rustle up some used bikes. He now has 300 (only some of which, he regrets, are suitable for children) sitting in a warehouse in anticipation of the day when they can be used.

Argabright is not one to claim credit. He sings the praises of everyone involved in the project, from Oak Grove-Bellemeade’s principle Jannie Laursen to Lara Kling with the Blue Sky Fund, which has raised $275,000 to fund outdoor nature programs for inner city schools, including Oak Grove-Bellemeade. He depicts his contribution mainly as showing up at community events, pushing to get things done and building a web of contacts linking corporate leaders with City Hall and neighborhood volunteers and activists. Says he: “What I’m doing is networking, doing what I’ve done my whole career.”

Re-greening Richmond

Two developments were key to making the project happen. One was construction of the Oak Grove-Bellemeade School, which opened its doors this year. Children from the old Bellemeade School, located right next door, moved in right away. Students from Oak Grove will transfer next school year. The 90,000-square-foot facility is state-of-the-art. But it’s one thing to teach a subject like science in the abstract to inner-school children who have seldom ventured outside their concrete-and-asphalt domain, and quite another to teach them in a natural environment. More.

An Ignorant Vote on a Good Bicycle Bill

Bicycle parking at a Bogota, Colombia, transit station.

What’s with General Assembly Republicans? They’re willing to raise taxes to fund automobile and mass-transit projects but they’re not willing to support a bill that would make bicycling safer without costing the state a dime. The House version of a bill submitted by Sen. Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax, was defeated yesterday in a tie vote in the House Transportation Committee.

The bill, which would have required drivers and passengers to wait for a reasonable opportunity to open vehicle doors adjacent to moving traffic, was just too much for Republicans to swallow. Of the seven delegates voting for the bill, only one was Republican, while of the seven voting against, six were. Tie votes prevented the bill from passing, thus killing it.

It’s a small bill, hardly as consequential as the legislative proposals restructuring gasoline and sales taxes to raise billions of dollars for new transportation construction projects. But, symbolically, it speaks just as loud. By their actions, Republicans appear to embrace the traffic engineering mentality that the purpose of roads is to move vehicles as rapidly and efficiently as possible, even if it means sacrificing the idea of “complete streets” in which cars share roads with pedestrians and bicycles.

It is ironic that Republicans are comfortable with the idea of increasing funding for mass transit, as seen in their support of Governor Bob McDonnell’s transportation funding package, while refusing to support a measure that would help make mass transit economically viable. Successful transit requires several elements: One is mixed-use development; rail stations should serve a mix of residential, commercial and amenities. A second is higher density; the more people who live and work within a quarter mile of light and heavy rail stations, the more who are willing to walk to the station. A third is a walkable-bikable street environment. Bicycles increase transit ridership by making a station accessible from distances greater than a quarter mile. And unlike cars, they take up only a tiny amount of parking space.

Bottom line: If we want Virginians to ride the mass transit assets we plan to spend billions of dollars on, we need to make streets more hospitable to pedestrians and bicyclists.

Astoundingly, Republicans are willing to throw millions of dollars at mass transit without any understanding of the urban context it takes to make transit successful. It is this kind of nitwittery that makes it so difficult to vote for them. They are saved at the ballot box only by the foolishness of Democrats. God save us all.

— JAB

Wealth-Destroying Streets

Dan Burden

Dan Burden, executive director of the Walkable and Livable Communities Institute, looks like an aging hippie — long white hair, a broomstick of a moustache, a twinkle in his eye — and, for all I know, he is one. But his presentation Friday at the New Partners for Smarter Growth focused on wealth creation. No, he wasn’t touting stocks, gold or collateralized debt obligations. He was arguing that public investment in streets and roads can either destroy the value of nearby property or increase it. To his way of thinking, it makes more sense to build streets and roads that enhance property values.

“It’s amazing how many times we have butchered a city and spent millions of dollars to do that butchering,” said Burden, who conducts “walking audits” used to determine how pedestrian friendly a communities streets are. “We can no longer afford to make changes that subtract from the value of land. Our improvements must add value to land.”

The traffic engineers who design streets seem to determined to make them as wide and fast as they possibly can, all for the purpose of moving automobiles more efficiently. But roads that move cars efficiently at high speeds are not what homeowners want in front of their houses. As a rule, the faster the speed, the lower the property value. Said Burden: “Streets that reduce speed produce high property values.”

Bacon’s bottom line: In Virginia the major factor driving transportation investment is congestion mitigation. (Economic development is an important secondary factor but it is limited mainly to mega-projects.) Traffic accidents, injuries and fatalities cost the economy roughly three times as much as congestion yet safety-related investments are minimal. The impact of transportation investments on property values is not a factor at all.

Streetscapes that accommodate pedestrians and bicycles often are seen as a wasteful expenditure that could be put to better use by adding more lane-miles of road. But such reasoning does not take into account the impact of walkable, bikable street design on property values.

Virginia has no formal methodology for calculating the costs and benefits of different potential investments. It is entirely possible that investments in roads and streets are destroying millions of dollars in property values every year and we don’t even know it.

— JAB

New Rules of the Road: Following Too Closely

Here’s another bill I like: HB 1950. Introduced by Alfonso Lopez, D-Arlington, this bill brings bikes under the protection of the no-tailgating law by deleting one word from existing legislation: “The driver of a motor vehicle shall not follow another motor vehicle, trailer, or semitrailer more closely than is reasonable and prudent…”

In this case, shorter clearly is better.

— JAB

All Hail the Creeper Trail

The Virginia Creeper Trail is arguably the most beloved bicycle trail in Virginia. But it wasn’t always so. As Bill Lohmann reminds us in the Times-Dispatch, many landowners along the trail, which was built upon an abandoned railroad bed, opposed its development in the 1980s. Writes Lohmann:

One group filed a lawsuit. Others placed logs and hay bales across the trail and locked public gates. One farmer put a bull in a field next to the trail and posted a sign warning, “Cross at your own risk.”

By the mid-1990s, when the trail had opened and the world hadn’t come to an end, Lohmann says, a survey of property owners showed that 75% approved of it. That number might well be higher today. Many who live on the trail enjoy it as a recreational amenity. The community as a whole in Abingdon and Washington County certainly loves the trail, which has become a significant visitor attraction and revenue generator.

Tastes are changing. People place a higher value on cycling amenities than they did in the past. Bicycle access increases property values. Higher property values makes people happy.

— JAB

Retaking Roads from Cars

Graphic credit: NC Coalition for Bicycle Driving

Speaking of bicycles… Sen. Chap Peterson, D-Fairfax, has introduced SB736, which would forbid drivers and passengers to open car doors on the side adjacent to moving traffic “until is is reasonably safe to do so.” Violators would be fined by up to $100.

On his Ox Road South blog, Peterson defends the bill as a safety measure in an era in which the number of cyclists is on the increase. He writes:

As bike lanes become more prevalent in our urban areas, “dooring” has become a major threat to cyclists. It’s a threat because there is no way to prevent accidents and serious injuries.

A “dooring” occurs when a bicyclist is legally traveling down a bike lane or a roadway (not a sidewalk). A driver’s side door way is thrown open, causing a collision and sending the bicyclist flying over the handle bars. Permanent injuries or even death can occur from an accident that might otherwise appear innocuous.

Right now, the driver is not at fault. They are permitted to open the car door at their discretion. There is no law to find them negligent of causing the injury.

My bill would change that by shifting the responsibility to drivers to open their doors safely — and otherwise keep them closed — when there is oncoming traffic.

Changes like this are necessary to create a bike-friendly culture in Virginia that elevates bicycles to a legitimate transportation alternative.

— JAB

Beware Drug Peddlers on Pedals

by James A. Bacon

It is hard for me to imagine, but not everybody is thrilled about the idea of having a bicycle trail run near their home. D. Gareth Embrose Jr., of eastern Henrico County, says he would rather have a road cut through his property than the Virginia Capital Trail bicycle trail. At least a road would benefit the public, he says. Bicycles are an entirely different matter.

“They’re going to take from the little man to give to a special interest group — the bicyclers,” he told the Times-Dispatch. “I’m the one who will have to deal with vandalism and trash and people screaming and cursing all night.”

The 52-mile bicycle path between Richmond and Williamsburg, scheduled for completion in 2014, will run parallel to historic Route 5 and the James River. The Virginia Department of Transportation routed the path near Embrose’s house to connect with existing trails in nearby Dorey Park and Four Mile Creek Park. Embrose is concerned that the trail will open an entrance to his property from the park. raising the specter of drug dealers using the park entrance as a rendezvous.

I doubt there’s anything that anyone could say to allay Embrose’s fears, although they do seem exaggerated. Drug dealers using bicycles as a preferred means of conveyance in rural Henrico County? It sounded like a stretch to me.

But that’s before I Googled “drug dealers bicycles.” Imagine what I found! A SeeClickFix report from Hazel Park, Michigan, runs as follows:

While in my front yard last week, two black men turned the corner, heading west on Milton, a skinny middle aged white male on a bicycle came from the west direction. They met up in the middle of the street and the man on the bike handed a package to the 2 black men, who walked back the way they came (in the middle of the street), they then disappeared, (must have had a vehicle waiting) the man on the bike headed north on Ford. Drug deal right there in front of me. Also I have seen a hooker walking the area.

Other articles around the world reveal that drug dealers steal bikes, they use children to deliver cocaine on bikes, and they flee police on bikes. OMG!

OK, out of the hundreds of thousands of small-time drug dealers in the country, a handful of them ride bicycles. My hunch is that they’re a miniscule minority. Really, if you want to project an image as a bad-ass, wearing spandex and strapping on a goofy-looking bicycle helmet really doesn’t help your cause! Let’s focus instead on the impact of bicycle paths upon property values. Many people see bike trails as an amenity.

According a 2009 report by the League of American Bicycles:

A study of home values near the Monon Trail in Indianapolis, Ind. measured the impact of the trail on property values. Given two identical houses, with the same number of square feet, bathrooms, bedrooms, and comparable garages and porches – one within a half mile of the Monon Trail and another further away – the home closer to the Monon Trail would sell for an average of 11 percent more.

The irony is that that the more bike trails are used, the less likely they are to attract the criminal element. Hoodlums and vandals go where no one else is around. Moreover, I have yet to hear of an instance of roving packs of predatory bicyclists, or of burglars making off with a big-screen TV on a bicycle.

Unfortunately, many Virginians think like Embrose does. The pro-bicycle lobby has a lot of irrational fear to overcome. If bike trails attracted disreputable elements, however, I doubt that property values would rise. If Virginia’s pro-cycling movement can document that bike trails increase property values rather than diminish them, we will convert Embrose’s neighbors, even if, as I suspect, we never convince Embrose himself.

Making the Public-Health Case for Bicycles

Last month Bacon’s Rebellion hosted an “idea jam” on the topic of bicycles and public health. Our goal was to build a case for making the Richmond region more bicycle-friendly in terms that fiscally conservative political, business and civic leaders would find compelling. We decided to focus on two topics: public health and economic development.

The resulting white paper, unforgettably entitled, “The Return on Bicycle Investment: Public Health,” focuses on… cycling’s public health benefits. We make several points. First, credible studies have demonstrated that regular exercise on bicycles reduces obesity and the incidence of diabetes and heart disease. Second, the fitness gains outweigh the perceived risk of accident and injury on bicycles, which diminish in any case the bicycling culture takes hold. Third, biking is one way that inner city residents can break out of their “food deserts” and access sources of healthy fresh food. And fourth, the cost of building a usable bicycle network need not be expensive if we maintain a long-term commitment.

Kudos to Champe Burnley, president of the Virginia Bicycle Federation, and Tom Bowden, chairman of Bike Virginia, for helping organize the event, as well as to the dozen intrepid souls who contributed an evening of their lives to the cause. Also, many thanks to Acorn Sign Graphics for hosting the discussion.

The document is short and sweet. Read it and pass it along to anyone in a position of authority or influence.

— JAB