Tag Archives: Bicycles

Bike lanes in Arlington County are not a parks & recreation sideshow — they create transportation options, reduce traffic congestion and promote healthy lifestyles.

by James A. Bacon

The Arlington County Board takes bicycling very seriously. Every month, one or more members attend a planning staff update on the county’s bicycle program. They dig into the details. How many bike-share stations has the county installed in the last month? How many bicycle lanes have been striped?

You don’t see that kind of high-level attention devoted to bicycle issues in many localities around the country. It helps that four of Arlington’s board members, including himself, are active cyclists, says Vice Chairman Walter Tejada. Board members also have a competitive streak. Arlington County received Virginia’s only “silver” ranking from the League of American Bicyclists’ 2012 listing of bicycle-friendly states and communities. But that wasn’t good enough. “We have a little chip on our shoulder,” says Tejada. “We want to be gold.”

Walter Tejada

The commitment to cycling runs deeper than winning kudos, however. It dovetails with the county’s Fit Arlington campaign to promote public health. And it is integral to the county’s plan to develop “complete streets” that accommodate pedestrians, bicycles and mass transit as well as cars. A top county priority is to reduce the number of cars on local roads, ameliorate congestion and improve livability. More bikes on the road means fewer cars.

Bicycling for every-day transportation, not just recreation, has great untapped potential in Arlington, says Dennis Leech, county director of transportation. Bicycles’ share of trips is relatively low, around one or two percent. “Over the past two or three years, there has been a real push to raise awareness, with the intent of getting that bicycle travel share up to five to ten percent.”

Across much of Virginia, bicycles are seen as transportation frivolity, simply not to be taken seriously. The federal government may require the state to spend money on bicycle trails but hardly anyone rides them, the thinking goes. Siphoning away money from roads to serve a tiny percentage of Sunday riders or spandex-clad racing nuts doesn’t make sense. The indifference of elected officials is reinforced by an outright hostility among some motorists who regard bike riders as pests taking up road space, clogging traffic and creating safety hazards.

But the bicycling movement is gaining momentum elsewhere in the Old Dominion, most notably Richmond, Roanoke and college towns like Charlottesville, Blacksburg and Harrisonburg. Cities and urbanized counties contemplating bike-friendly policies have a lot to learn from Arlington, which has ridden farther down the bicycle trail than other Virginia localities.

Some key lessons from the Arlington experience:

• Build a network. If you want to create a bicycle-friendly community, you have to go “all in.” A biking path here and a bike lane there don’t add up to anything useful. Just as motorists need a network of roads to drive between home, work and shopping, cyclists require a network of lanes to reach a wide range of locations.

• Support the biking culture. Cyclists need racks to park their bikes. They need lockers and showers to make themselves presentable for work. Communities need to educate citizens about bikes as a transportation option and promote safe cycling.

• Understand the payback. While cyclists don’t pay user fees like gasoline taxes, they do create economic value. Localities that are rich in travel choices enjoy higher property values than those where travel is limited to automobiles. Higher property values translate into higher property tax revenues. Moreover, by taking cars off roads, bicycle-friendly policies can reduce or defer spending on auto-oriented infrastructure from roads to parking spaces.

Read more.

If anyone is still skeptical that bicycling will continue to gain transportation market share, consider the new bicycle designs that appeal to every conceivable demographic. The latest case in point: Japan’s Bridgestone, known for its automobile tires, has sold 300,000 of the bicycles (displayed at right) that cater to moms with tots.

The electric bike, with a 37-mile range, is designed for a parent to haul two kids around town. The baby seats are designed to protect the rug rats in the case of accidents, and the front seat can be converted into a basket. A low center of gravity and a wide stand prevent the bike from tipping over. The price point: between $875 to $1,775, depending upon the model. (For details, see the post on the Atlantic Cities blog.)

Bicycle stores in Richmond sell bikes made for recreational use — racing, mountain biking or for kids. But the Europeans and Japanese have been incredibly creative in manufacturing bicycles for practical, utility travel. It’s just a matter of time before that revolution in bicycle design comes to the United States. Municipalities that prepare for that change by investing in bicycle-friendly infrastructure will be regarded as more attractive places to live than their bike-hostile peers.

— JAB

An interesting view about bicycle safety has long prevailed among traffic engineers: Cyclists are better off in the long run learning to ride in traffic with automobiles than having their own dedicated bike lanes. This counter-intuitive idea can be traced back to a certain John Forester, popularizer of “vehicular cycling,” who argued that bikers should learn to behave like drivers, writes Emily Badger in the Atlantic Cities blog.

Now comes research by Kay Teschke, a professor at the University of British Columbia, who identified injured cyclists admitted to emergency rooms in Vancouver and Toronto and tracked down where they had their accidents. It turns out that cycle tracks (bike lanes buffered from traffic) had one ninth the accident incidence of driving in major street traffic. Local streets had lower risks, while higher risks were associated with streetcar tracks, downhill grades and construction projects. (See the study abstract.)

The fact that Teschke was able to identify 2,335 injured cyclists at just five hospitals over a mere 18-month period suggests that cycling is a pretty hazardous activity. That said, it’s also clear that creating dedicated infrastructure for bicycles will make biking safer and more popular, especially among those who don’t fall into the daredevil, 18- to 25-year-old male demographic.

Bacon’s bottom line: Creating dedicated bicycle infrastructure need not be prohibitively expensive. Room for bicycles often can be carved out of existing streets. I have often heard it said that Virginia Department of Transportation regulations massively over-engineer Virginia streets and roads. That could turn out to be a blessing in disguise. Those excess widths may make it possible to carve out space for dedicated bike routes without harming vehicular traffic.

That sounds like something the Commonwealth Transportation Board should take a look at. I’m not holding my breath. While bicycles constitute one percent or more of Virginia commutes, even with our impoverished biking infrastructure, they get just about zero consideration in CTB deliberations. Maybe we need to organize a bike-in. It would be cool if a couple dozens cyclists showed up — with bicycles, helmets and spandex — at the next CTB meeting.

— JAB

No lack of bicycles in the Bacon household -- 1.7 bikes per person. But there's nowhere in Henrico County to ride them. Provide connectivity between subdivisions and there would be.

by James A. Bacon

Last week Richmond Times-Dispatch Publisher Tom Silvestri asked in a commentary what plans local governments had to make their communities more bicycle friendly. The City of Richmond and County of Henrico responded. Here’s the bottom line: By the year 2015 Richmond plans to have 140 miles of dedicated bike lanes and “sharrows” (bike lanes sharing streets with cars). Henrico County will have only 16 miles of “multi-use trails paralleling major roadways,” of which 15 miles will consist of Henrico’s portion of the Virginia Capital Trail linking Richmond and Williamsburg, a statewide initiative. Otherwise, the county will have one mile on North Gayton Road.

I am embarrassed for my home county, which otherwise tends to be a desirable place to live. When Chesterfield County is more progressive on the subject of bike lanes than we are, that’s quite an indictment.

It would oversimplify grotesquely to attribute Henrico’s inhospitality toward  self-propelled transportation simply to retrograde thinking. Peruse the comments in response to Henrico’s 2025 Comprehensive Plan and you’ll find many Henrico residents demanding more attention be paid to the bicycling alternative. “The County is too far behind in the development of bicycle paths and bike lanes,” said one George Talley in a fairly typical response. “Bicycling needs to be considered as a mode of transportation as an alternative to motor vehicles.”

However, there is no organized constituency in Henrico County for bicycles because very few Henricans (or whatever we call ourselves) use bicycles for utility travel, which includes commuting and running errands. The reason seldom use bicycles for utility travel is that Henrico’s development pattern of segregated and low-density land uses pushes destinations far apart. Thus, it would be impractical than in Richmond to choose bicycle travel as a means of conveyance even if bike paths ran along every major road.

Functionally, bikes and bicycle trails are regarded in Henrico as a form of “recreation,” hence a lower priority in the competition for county investment than “transportation.” If Henrico plowed significant dollars into building traditional bicycle trails, there are legitimate reasons to question whether people would use them for utility trips. The return on dollar invested would be terrible.

The county already has dozens (perhaps hundreds) of miles of mostly empty sidewalks. Judging by their attire, the only people who use them are recreational walkers. Why would bicycle trails be any different? In dire fiscal times, we cannot afford the luxury of building bike trails that no one uses.

Contrast the situation in Henrico with the City of Richmond. Virginia Commonwealth University, situated just on the edge of downtown, estimates that there are 14,000 bikers on campus, according to Richmond BizSense. In recognition of the widespread bicycle use, VCU is spending $100,000 on a bike-maintenance and education building, which it will call the RamBikes stand. The service will include a program in which students can check out a bike for a day just like they would a library book.

Richmond land use patterns are compact. Travelers can reach for more destinations within the same amount of biking time than they could in Henrico. Urban streets have much lower speed limits, making it less intimidating to ride in the city. Moreover, bikable streets in the city create a functional network. Building a few miles of scattered, unconnected bike trails in Henrico county would not create a viable transportation alternative. Perhaps most important, those 14,000 VCU students represent a large and coherent constituency for pro-bicycle policies in the city, for which there is no counterpart in the county.

Bacon’s brilliant solution. Henrico County does have one advantage over the city: untold miles of lightly traveled subdivision roads and streets. Subdivision streets are broad and mostly empty — ideal for bicycle travel. The problem is, they go nowhere. Due to Henrico’s penchant for developing sub divisions in disconnected pods, a cyclist could not travel far without hitting a heavily traveled and bicycle-hostile arterial road. (Try riding on Patterson Ave. with cars whooshing by at 45 to 50 m.p.h. I have tried it once. I won’t again!)

A possible solution is to connect pod subdivisions with bicycle rights of way. Expenditures would be minimal — acquisition of perhaps 10-foot-wide right-of-way across a single piece of property (most likely between two pieces of property), and construction of a short path linking subdivision streets. Suburbanites like their cul de sacs because they prevent cars from cutting through, creating a danger for children. It’s hard to imagine that bicycles would inspire the same objection.

For a  very modest price, Henrico could connect ten or twelve subdivisions per year in most compactly settled areas of the county (bordering the city, for the most part) and start creating a bicycle network for a fraction of the cost of building parallel bike paths or re-engineering existing roads as sharrows. As a practical matter, destinations would remain distant and scattered. But at least they would be connected, and some destinations would be within cycling distance. The price tag would be so low that there would be little to lose. It’s worth a try.

Bike lane on Lombardy Street in Richmond. Photo credit: Urban Richmond.

Having given wall-to-wall coverage of the bicycling fatality of Lanie Kruszewski (see “Richmond’s First Bicycle Martyr“), the Richmond Times-Dispatch has ratcheted up to top gear on its coverage of bicycle issues. Publisher Thomas Silvestri has been plugging bicycle-friendly policies in the weekend op-ed pages for some time, and now even the newsroom is treating it as a serious issue.

It’s about time, considering that 2.2% of all commuting trips — purportedly the highest percentage in the state — occur on bicycles, often under hostile riding conditions. The most visible project is the Virginia Capital Trail running along the James River and linking Richmond with Williamsburg. While that undoubtedly will become a great recreational resource, it won’t alter the transportation picture. The real change will come from making streets and roads hospitable to utility travel — people using bikes instead of cars to ride to work or run errands.

We are seeing the opening salvos in what will become a long-running conflict to redefine the rights of bikers on streets and roads. There will be two main fronts: cultural and infrastructure. As the Kruszewski tragedy made painfully clear, bikes and vehicle drivers have to get accustomed to sharing the road.

Local governments also need to build a network of safe bike trails and bike lanes. The real action is taking place in the City of Richmond. The city, which created a commission to study cycling mobility, is expanding shared-lane markings on city streets following pilot implementations on Meadow, Harrison and Leigh streets. One route would run north-south along U.S. Bike Route 1, while an east-west route would run from the University of Richmond through the Fan, skirting downtown and ending at the Henrico County line on the east.

According to the T-D article, other regional initiatives include:

•  Chesterfield County is looking at connecting county parks with a bicycle and pedestrian trail, and they are planning to add bicycle lanes to some roads when they are widened are improved.
• Henrico County, once described as the most bicycle-hostile county in the United States, is adding a lane for bicycles and pedestrians to parts of the North Gayton Road extension.
• The University of Richmond is considering making a 1,500-foot abandoned road more accessible to bicycles.

It’s great to see bits and pieces of bicycle infrastructure emerge. But we won’t reach critical mass until the pieces connect, creating a network of bicycle-friendly lanes and paths that where people can travel safely without fear of becoming the next Lanie Kruszewski. It will be the task of a generation to create that network. If you’d asked me a year ago, I would have called it a fool’s errand. But the movement seems to be gaining serious momentum.

— JAB

Lanie Kruszewski

by James A. Bacon

Authorities recorded 92 fatal bicycle accidents in Virginia between 2004 and 2011, but it wasn’t until Lanie Kruszewski died in a hit-and-run a week ago that bicyclists displayed what could be construed as a political consciousness. For the first time in my memory, large numbers of cyclists are getting assertive, insisting upon the right to ride safely on Virginia’s streets and roads.

Riding home from work around 10:30 p.m., the 24-year-old Kruszewski was struck near the Huguenot Bridge on River Road. She was wearing appropriate night-riding reflectors and lights at the time. Roughly 100 friends and cycling enthusiasts gathered last night to ride through the City of Richmond in her honor.

“Lanie was doing everything right,” Steve Carter-Lovejoy, who also commutes to and from work along River Road, told the Times-Dispatch. “When you’re doing it right, you should be able to expect that people see you and drive appropriately.”

The event in Kruszewski’s honor was not overtly political. But the banding together of cyclists to protest a needless fatality is essentially a political act. The number of cyclists in the region seems to be increasing exponentially. A decade ago, it was rare to see one on River Road, a narrow road with no shoulders that should be every cyclist’s worst nightmare. Today, you see one or more almost every day. Cyclists are a more common sight in the City of Richmond, where the streets are far safer.

Tom Bowden, chairman of Bike Virginia (and recently profiled on this blog) told the Times-Dispatch that he hopes the General Assembly will pass a law to require motorists at least three feet of clearance when passing cyclists. He plans to call it Lanie’s Law.

Virginians have lived so long in an auto-centric society, in which streets have been designed for the movement of automobiles, that it’s hard to imagine any other way of doing things. But there once was a time, in the 19th century, when bicycles and pedestrians predominated. The width of streets, the number and width of lanes, the presence of bike lanes, rights of way, crosswalks, the curvature of street corners, driving rules and regulations and dozens of other features embedded in zoning codes and state law reflect the victory of automobile drivers over cars, pedestrians and bicycles over the years.

But as cyclists grow in numbers, they are demanding more respect. They are developing a group consciousness. Mark my words, Kruszewski’s death marks a turning point in that endless tug of war between bikes and cars.