DENVER | Transportation Thread

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by Wizened Variations

IMO public planners should get off their **s and seriously consider the following scenario:

You do realize that public planners are, by and large, low-to-mid-level public servants who earn a fairly nominal salary. And they'll be the first to be dumped from the payroll when the governance/transportation apocalypse hits.

It seems to me, if your predictions are accurate, most planners would be better served doing nothing today, and offering their expertise in urban navigation to the private sector later. You know, suburban militias, wealthy patrons, taxi/combi cartels, leaders of neighborhood "groups" - anybody who can pay by the hour (in bags of rice). I also suggest we stockpile spare parts. The bicycle maintenance cartel could be a real player in 2030 Lakewood.

In all seriousness, if that were to come to pass - unattainable fuel and thousands upon thousands of bicycles on the road - we'd deal with it the exact same way other countries do. Transportation chaos. But really, we'd be starting from a position of strength - at least our roads are paved to start with, and most of them are huge. Swarms of bicycles, private cars, buses, mini-buses, etc. certainly can co-exist on the same roads, without bike lanes, even. We just prefer not to that in our orderly, safe, wealthy society. If all that order goes out the window, we'd probably have more transportation options than we have today, not fewer. They just won't be as tidy.

Oh, and at $17/gallon, local opposition to a 7-11 in Cherry Hills Village probably goes away. Okay, well, maybe not in Cherry Hills Village. But I have no doubt the fine folks of Highlands Ranch will welcome Tra's Mini Mart with open arms.

Point is, I've lived in places with per capita GDP literally one-tenth of ours today. It's not great, but it's not the end of the world either. Life goes on. We've got a long ways to fall before life becomes truly untenable. I think I'll worry about 8-bike-laning Federal when that day comes.

Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. - JFK

[wong21fr]

^Hey, I've lived in places with a GDP per capita that is 1% of ours today.

At that level, transportation infrastructure really isn't great, but it still exists and is put to great use.

I do relish the idea of a suburban militia: provided I can acquire the artillery needed to take it down. Imagine the tower of skulls that compound would produce!

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

^Hey, I've lived in places with a GDP per capita that is 1% of ours today.

At that level, transportation infrastructure really isn't great, but it still exists and is put to great use.

I do relish the idea of a suburban militia: provided I can acquire the artillery needed to take it down. Imagine the tower of skulls that compound would produce!

How high is your current tower of skulls? Inquiring minds want to know!

Aaron (Glowrock)

[Pizzuti]

Originally Posted by awholeparade

Ummm....it's incredibly dangerous for cyclists?! Sorry, but whoever taught you about how bikes should be ridden with traffic....well, they didn't know what they were talking about. The only time it's dangerous for a car to pass a cyclist is when the driver of that car is being unreasonably impatient and decides to do something dangerous.

I'm really struggling to figure out how you got what you think I said from what I said.

Yes, it is dangerous! You can look up statistics on this anywhere you want: per mile ridden, a bicyclist is about 10 times as likely to die in an accident as an automobile driver. The majority of those deaths are due to hitting or being hit by cars. The number hovers around 700 deaths and 40,000 injuries - that's 40,000 injuries significant enough to warrant report - per year.

Admittedly, I have not found statistics on where, specifically, those deaths occur, such as passing vs. intersections vs parking lots or something. But without any such data I am confident guessing that it occurs specifically when moving bicycles come in close proximity to moving cars. In other words, when bicyclists are riding among cars, in the road, as traffic, being passed by cars etc.

When you say "the only time it's dangerous for a car to pass a cyclist is when the driver of that car is being unreasonably impatient..." I don't know why you would remove the circumstance of the driver being at fault from your calculation of danger.

Yes it is dangerous when bicyclists ride in the traffic lane. That is why I think that bicyclists should not be considered vehicles, I think they should be considered intermediate between pedestrian and cars. I think this is intuitive but also supported by the statistics.

I also think that when my parents taught me to ride my bike in the gutter rather than in a busy traffic lane as a kid, they knew what they were saying and were being pretty damn logical. I would teach the same to my kid.

I still hate when bicyclists are in the traffic lane and cars are backing up. Forgive me if it seems selfish to not want to take others' lives into my hands on a regular basis.

[Wizened Variations]

Originally Posted by wong21fr

^Hey, I've lived in places with a GDP per capita that is 1% of ours today.

At that level, transportation infrastructure really isn't great, but it still exists and is put to great use.

I do relish the idea of a suburban militia: provided I can acquire the artillery needed to take it down. Imagine the tower of skulls that compound would produce!

"A long time ago in a galaxy far away" I lived in countries- which at that time- were far poorer per capita than the US- 5%-40%. I also lived in the US, in Denver, when the 1980s Oil Boom crashed, and, saw declines that are comparable to what metro Denver (but not the entire Nation at the time) has experienced.

I learned a VERY important truth out of seeing both poverty outside the US and living through a local decline in per capita income: A poor nation with a raising standard of living is a far more pleasant place to be than a richer nation with a declining standard of living. If a country goes from $1000 to $4000 per capita income in constant dollars in ten or twenty years, the people are optimistic, local and federal governments are happy with increased revenues, children attend school with the prospect of better employment than their parents experienced, buildings are built higher, etc.On the other hand if a nation is to change from a per capita income of $25,000 per year down to $15,000 in constant dollars over ten years, people are afraid, local and federal governments have to cut programs as well as raise taxes, buildings are not built, etc.

So, the issues, IMO, about what the US needs to do with public transportation, bicycle and motor bicycle usage, etc., are going to have to be made in an environment where the revenue stream is constantly declining. This would mean that with the passage of time, that the quality of urban design, etc., has to go up steadily while expenditures drop.

This puts a huge premium on planning for the future with available ROW for steel rail, good zoning, well thought out traffic analysis, securing public transportation vehicles ahead of the demand curve, etc., purely on a cost basis.

[Cirrus]

The gutter is not the safest place to ride, for two big reasons:

1. Riding in the gutter encourages drivers to pass without changing lanes. The safest place for them to pass is in a different lane, so the safest place to ride is in the middle of the lane, where cars will not be encouraged to try and pass without shifting over. If you are on a road with multiple lanes, you should be in the middle of the right-most lane.

2. Riding in the gutter puts you at very high risk for what is by far the most common car/bike collision, which happens at intersections where a car wants to turn right but the bike wants to go straight. If you are riding in the gutter straight through an intersection and a car comes along in the right lane with the intention of turning right, the car will be in a position to cut smack into you unless the driver is aware enough to specifically look for a bike in the gutter. On the other hand, if you're in the middle of the lane the car will see you before getting into the right lane, and therefore it will never be in position to turn right into oncoming bikes.

Riding in the gutter is a bad idea because in so doing you are essentially trying to create a new lane for yourself where one does not actually exist, which creates a situation where real lanes that are designed to be the farthest to the right are actually functioning as middle lanes. You are creating new conflicts that the street is not design to handle, and which drivers are not trained to watch for.

[SnyderBock]

Pretty annoying to be driving and end up behind a bike going 5mph in a 45mph speed limit, with no passing lane to get around them.

[bunt_q]

It's only annoying for lesser men. It's your civic duty to be patient for the greater good. Cars are evil. And besides, if the cyclist can take 20 minutes to get there, why should your 3 minute delay take precedence. Earth hater.

[glowrock]

Originally Posted by SnyderBock

Pretty annoying to be driving and end up behind a bike going 5mph in a 45mph speed limit, with no passing lane to get around them.

Remember, this is of no consequence to those who think that bicyclists should have all the advantages of a motor vehicle AND all of the advantages of a pedestrian with none of the disadvantages of either.

Aaron (Glowrock)

[dmintz]

Pretty annoying to be driving and end up behind a bike going 5mph in a 45mph speed limit, with no passing lane to get around them.

If you want to drive 45 mph unimpeded by traffic, bikes and pedestrians, move to aurora. that kind of driving has no place in an urban environment like denver.

Originally Posted by glowrock

Remember, this is of no consequence to those who think that bicyclists should have all the advantages of a motor vehicle AND all of the advantages of a pedestrian with none of the disadvantages of either.

nice straw man. who exactly is taking this position? most bike advocates are pushing for bike lanes and cycle tracks separated from traffic so we won't have to get in the way of your commute. but if you refuse to give up street space to dedicated bike facilities you can't complain when we ride in the street and slow you down.

it amazes me the regressive sentiment in a forum supposedly dedicated to urban development. car-centric development has done so much damage to our downtown over the past 60 years, but posters here are still using "anti-car" as a slur.

[dmintz]

bike share done right- http://www.streetsblog.org/2011/09/14/sa...are-program-thats-big-enough-to-succeed/

Addressing a plaza full of reporters at Madison Square this afternoon, Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan announced that the city is entering the next phase of its initiative to launch a public bike system stretching from the Upper West Side to Bedford Stuyvesant. The system will be run by Alta Bike Share and consist of about 600 stations with 10,000 bicycles, creating a network of comparable size and density to bike-share systems in cities like London and Paris.

Station density is perhaps the single greatest key to success in a modern bike-share system. The less searching you have to do for a station, and the closer you are to your destination when you dock your bike, the better. As Minneapolis Mayor R.T. Rybak told Streetfilms earlier this year, the underlying principle is “go big or go home.” With this announcement, NYC DOT and Alta have clearly signaled that they are going big. Once bike-share launches, it will change the way New Yorkers get around the city, extending the range of the transit system and adding point-to-point convenience for short trips.

[Cirrus]

Hold on a minute here. While you're complaining about being annoyed at going a few miles per hour slower, I'm talking about people's lives. I'm talking about things that can and do kill people. This particular issue is not about rights, or who's a hypocrite, or what's good urbanism. It is about lives. If you're not willing to put aside the antagonism of the driver/cyclist culture war when lives are on the line then quite frankly I question your morality as a person. Really.

That very necessary castigation aside, I agree that it is unreasonable to expect bikes and cars to mix in traffic except on low traffic streets, which is exactly why we should all be supporting a lot of good separated bike infrastructure. The next time you're stuck behind a cyclist who is just trying to use the road without getting killed, don't curse the cyclist for riding safely, curse the city for not providing a better place for them to ride.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by dmintz

nice straw man. who exactly is taking this position? most bike advocates are pushing for bike lanes and cycle tracks separated from traffic so we won't have to get in the way of your commute. but if you refuse to give up street space to dedicated bike facilities you can't complain when we ride in the street and slow you down.

it amazes me the regressive sentiment in a forum supposedly dedicated to urban development. car-centric development has done so much damage to our downtown over the past 60 years, but posters here are still using "anti-car" as a slur.

I am starting to think of the whole bicycling movement as a straw man. Maybe it's because the last five years or so have been so slow that we're all thinking small - no money for big projects and no private sector development to speak of. Maybe urbanism has come to be synonymous with environmentalism - the green movement hijacks the pro-urban movement, which unfortunately has many benefits that go beyond just being more green than the alternative.

Whatever the case, when I look around, it seems to me that cycling has displaced a lot of other issues in the urbanism conversation. There's only so much the public can pay attention to, and cycling seems to have bullied its way to the front. And frankly, I'm not sure the pro-city benefit of bicycling is worth what we're giving up.

We should do a query of, say, Westword articles over the last 5 years. Or some other mainstream, but urban, community news source. Or maybe there's another way... but it sure seems we are discussing cycling a lot, and not just on here. More than transit for sure. And don't give Fastracks excuses - that's a different scale of transit project and barely addresses Denver's needs. If Denver residents are not concerned with transit improvements because they expect Fastracks to take care of it, well, maybe that's something folks like us, who know otherwise, should also be discussing.

Parking requirements? The new zoning code? Streetscape/ped improvements? Regional planning? Alternative development forms (Stapleton is still bigger than anything else going on in Denver - maybe we should still be paying attention to it)? Water? Things going on in other parts of the metro? (what's going on in Weld and Douglas counties will have more of an impact on what happens to Denver over the next two decades than any bike sharing program - maybe we should pay attention to that too?)

Any of a dozen other urbanism issues that I can think of that are playing second fiddle to cycling these days. Granted, a lot of those issues aren't particularly exciting. But really, neither is cycling, and other issues are more important. You know how folks say now that the health care debate was a distraction at a time the President should have been focusing on the much bigger issue, the economy? That's how I feel about cycling, and the impact it is having on the public dialogue in Denver.

I am a strong supporter of pretty much everything related to urbanism... I didn't go to planning school for nothing. But I can't get on board with this two-wheeled transport fascination taking over Denver. It's not a regressive sentiment at all. It's a sentiment that it's a waste of time. Or at least, while a good thing, not necessarily the thing.

I still think of cycling as a niche... a good one, but one that seems to have lost sight of its place in the greater urbanism discussion. Cycling is a very small piece of urbanism, one that should be accommodated, clearly, in balance with everything else the city needs, including autos... But cycling is not the end-all and be-all of urbanism. Nor is the automobile necessarily the enemy of all urbanism. At least, it's not going away, so if that's the position of the cycling crowd, you're doing more harm to productive discussions of urbanism than good. It's a big picture issue, it requires big-picture thinking.

To draw another political comparison... take a spectrum of environmentalists, ranging from IPCC climate scientists, to Greenpeacers harassing oil ships, to wackos burning down ski lodges at Vail. The cycling dialogue on here seems closest to the "harass an oil tanker, tie myself to a tree" mentality.

And it sort of bothers me that the approval of Sterling Ranch down south gets three posts, but talk of a bike lane on 15th can sustain a thread for weeks. That's just insane. Back in the early 2000s, we could actually discuss mandatory state level planning, UGBs, etc. with a straight face. Now we discuss traffic counts at 20th & Central. That's some serious small ball we're playing.

EDIT: Granted, this is the transportation thread... but still... another example, say, finishing the beltway? Alive and well again, probably going to happen. Hardly a mention in Denver. As if, somehow, it doesn't affect the city?

[bobg]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

I am starting to think of the whole bicycling movement as a straw man. Maybe it's because the last five years or so have been so slow that we're all thinking small - no money for big projects and no private sector development to speak of. Maybe urbanism has come to be synonymous with environmentalism - the green movement hijacks the pro-urban movement, which unfortunately has many benefits that go beyond just being more green than the alternative.

Whatever the case, when I look around, it seems to me that cycling has displaced a lot of other issues in the urbanism conversation. There's only so much the public can pay attention to, and cycling seems to have bullied its way to the front. And frankly, I'm not sure the pro-city benefit of bicycling is worth what we're giving up.

We should do a query of, say, Westword articles over the last 5 years. Or some other mainstream, but urban, community news source. Or maybe there's another way... but it sure seems we are discussing cycling a lot, and not just on here. More than transit for sure. And don't give Fastracks excuses - that's a different scale of transit project and barely addresses Denver's needs. If Denver residents are not concerned with transit improvements because they expect Fastracks to take care of it, well, maybe that's something folks like us, who know otherwise, should also be discussing.

Parking requirements? The new zoning code? Streetscape/ped improvements? Regional planning? Alternative development forms (Stapleton is still bigger than anything else going on in Denver - maybe we should still be paying attention to it)? Water? Things going on in other parts of the metro? (what's going on in Weld and Douglas counties will have more of an impact on what happens to Denver over the next two decades than any bike sharing program - maybe we should pay attention to that too?)

Any of a dozen other urbanism issues that I can think of that are playing second fiddle to cycling these days. Granted, a lot of those issues aren't particularly exciting. But really, neither is cycling, and other issues are more important. You know how folks say now that the health care debate was a distraction at a time the President should have been focusing on the much bigger issue, the economy? That's how I feel about cycling, and the impact it is having on the public dialogue in Denver.

I am a strong supporter of pretty much everything related to urbanism... I didn't go to planning school for nothing. But I can't get on board with this two-wheeled transport fascination taking over Denver. It's not a regressive sentiment at all. It's a sentiment that it's a waste of time. Or at least, while a good thing, not necessarily the thing.

I still think of cycling as a niche... a good one, but one that seems to have lost sight of its place in the greater urbanism discussion. Cycling is a very small piece of urbanism, one that should be accommodated, clearly, in balance with everything else the city needs, including autos... But cycling is not the end-all and be-all of urbanism. Nor is the automobile necessarily the enemy of all urbanism. At least, it's not going away, so if that's the position of the cycling crowd, you're doing more harm to productive discussions of urbanism than good. It's a big picture issue, it requires big-picture thinking.

To draw another political comparison... take a spectrum of environmentalists, ranging from IPCC climate scientists, to Greenpeacers harassing oil ships, to wackos burning down ski lodges at Vail. The cycling dialogue on here seems closest to the "harass an oil tanker, tie myself to a tree" mentality.

And it sort of bothers me that the approval of Sterling Ranch down south gets three posts, but talk of a bike lane on 15th can sustain a thread for weeks. That's just insane. Back in the early 2000s, we could actually discuss mandatory state level planning, UGBs, etc. with a straight face. Now we discuss traffic counts at 20th & Central. That's some serious small ball we're playing.

EDIT: Granted, this is the transportation thread... but still... another example, say, finishing the beltway? Alive and well again, probably going to happen. Hardly a mention in Denver. As if, somehow, it doesn't affect the city?

I know I am new to this forum and am interjecting in a debate that I haven't been a part of but in a true multimodal city shouldn't all forms of transportation be a niche?

If the goal is to be multimodal shouldn't forms of transportation such as the bicycle that have been de-emphasized for a century receive greater emphasis until they have a greater commuter share/utilization?

Or am I missing the point where you do not think we should be a multimodal city? Or do you not think bicycles should be one of those modes? I do not think you do think those things but it seems like every time I browse this forum I see you take anti-cycling stances.

To me cycling is not about being environmental but it is about being practical. When going short distances that are too far to walk and you are not carrying that much it's just more practical to bike than to drive. Cars have accelerated depreciation with more utilization, gas costs money, in an urban setting parking can cost money and in that same setting parking can be hard to find. Why not replace the auto-trips that have a negligible time difference (or in the case of most of downtown Denver are faster) with a bike? In these economic times why shouldn't we be advocating for people to make these practical decisions?

[Cirrus]

Interesting argument. I think it's natural that cycling should engender a lot of debate for a couple of reasons.

1. Bikes are still controversial. Not everyone is sold on them, or against them. For the most part we all staked out our positions on roads, transit, smart growth, and the like about 10 years ago, and we've spent the last decade flipping those topics over every way imaginable. Bikes are a new topic, with new things to be said about them. This is true both for here on the forum and in other, larger planning circles.

2. Related to #1, but a little bit different: Bikes are just now becoming mainstream enough to talk about in this manner, because it is only recently that our cities have returned to an urban-enough condition for bikes to start to become practical tools for regular people again. More and more people are biking, not because bikes are eco or cool, but simply because they are increasingly the most convenient and fastest way to make many trips*. In this way, the urbanist discussion of bikes today is a little bit like the civil rights discussion of gay marriage - it's a big topic because for the first time it is mainstream enough to bring up.

In regards to your point about biking being a niche activity, well, that's really only true in so much as urbanism in general is niche. We give so much page space to biking for the same reason we give a lot to the prospect of a downtown Target but don't talk about the latest tenants in Park Meadows. The more urban your location, the more mainstream bikes will be, because there is a direct relationship between the practicality of biking and the difficulty of driving (and parking). I don't spend enough time in Denver these days to really know for Denver, but you couldn't stand on the corner closest to my house at rush hour and call biking a niche activity with a straight face. On a nice day there are as many bikes as cars.


* I wonder if maybe this is the part that some people can't wrap their heads around. Biking really is much faster and easier than driving for a lot of trips, depending on the neighborhood. I could literally bike several miles in the time it would take me just to find a parking spot in my neighborhood on a typical evening.

[The Dirt]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Granted, this is the transportation thread... but still... another example, say, finishing the beltway? Alive and well again, probably going to happen. Hardly a mention in Denver. As if, somehow, it doesn't affect the city?

I was surprised that it didn't get any play on here either. I was more surprised that there isn't a giant uproar about this in Boulder and Superior. The area currently has some great hiking (and cycling) paths, as well as spectacular high plains views of downtown. I'm rather shocked that this got the green light.

[Pizzuti]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

The gutter is not the safest place to ride, for two big reasons:

1. Riding in the gutter encourages drivers to pass without changing lanes. The safest place for them to pass is in a different lane, so the safest place to ride is in the middle of the lane, where cars will not be encouraged to try and pass without shifting over. If you are on a road with multiple lanes, you should be in the middle of the right-most lane.

2. Riding in the gutter puts you at very high risk for what is by far the most common car/bike collision, which happens at intersections where a car wants to turn right but the bike wants to go straight. If you are riding in the gutter straight through an intersection and a car comes along in the right lane with the intention of turning right, the car will be in a position to cut smack into you unless the driver is aware enough to specifically look for a bike in the gutter. On the other hand, if you're in the middle of the lane the car will see you before getting into the right lane, and therefore it will never be in position to turn right into oncoming bikes.

Riding in the gutter is a bad idea because in so doing you are essentially trying to create a new lane for yourself where one does not actually exist, which creates a situation where real lanes that are designed to be the farthest to the right are actually functioning as middle lanes. You are creating new conflicts that the street is not design to handle, and which drivers are not trained to watch for.

But when there is a bike lane, the gutter (or to the right of the rightmost traffic lane) is exactly where it is ... so is that unsafe?

To your first point: on this very thread, I saw that laws for distance when passing a bicyclists range from somewhere between incredibly vague, to 2-3 feet, and do not require a driver to get into the other lane. 2-3 feet seems disturbingly close to me, apparently to you too, so that's why I suggested they ride in the gutter where that's not an issue.

To your second point: Drivers turning right face the same situation with the cyclist as they would with a pedestrian.

If you are a driver and a cyclist is in the gutter 30 feet ahead and 5 feet to the right while you are approaching, the cyclist is basically in front of you. It's hard for me to imagine how a driver would not see the cyclist, "trained" or not.

Ok lets say it's an uncommon situation and the cyclist is fast and you are driving only 20mph in traffic or something, so that the cyclist is traveling even with you. Well, then, the cyclist would pull ahead while you are slowing down to make your right turn, and again, the driver can clearly see the cyclist with the same ability the driver would have in seeing a pedestrian just after beginning a right turn.

Nobody should be turning right too fast stop if necessary. And drivers are turning right without even the briefest glance to see who, besides another car, is around them, it would mean crossing the street when the light is green is completely unsafe for cyclists and pedestrians alike.

The only difference I can imagine between a bike and a pedestrian is this: a cyclist travels faster than a pedestrian, so could "sneak up" from behind on a driver who is stopped, while a pedestrian wold approach more slowly giving the driver a couple seconds longer to notice him/her. But if the car is at a complete stop before turning right, it is because the light is red.

The cyclist should not be running a red light then.

One final situation: a red light has just turned green, or it is a stop sign, where both the driver and the cyclist could begin to move at the same time. Again, that's just about the same situation as when it is a pedestrian there, who is also beginning to move at that time; a pedestrian can easily get a step or two into the first traffic lane within the amount of time car makes a right turn, so has the exact same theoretical risk as a cyclist. And since the bicyclist is exactly in the same place regarding the driver's field or vision that a pedestrian would be in (in fact the cyclist would be between the driver and the pedestrian), again I don't see how it's any harder to see a cyclist.

To your third paragraph, regarding the conceptual issue of what drivers are "trained" for and what roads are "designed" to handle: the road is not designed to handle cyclists, period. That is the problem. We are trying to find ways to make room for cyclists on roads that are not designed for them, which I think is good and appropriate to do, but in itself the design issue doesn't mean anything to me.

As for driver "training" ... I don't think anyone over the age of, say, 18, is still affected by "training" they may have had in drivers' ed school, and what they operate on while driving is not training but experience, knowledge of the laws, signs, instinct and habit. So if bikes are riding in the gutter, that is what gets drivers in the habit of seeing bicyclists, and you can post signage or advertise the law to suit. It's the same way drivers are expected to see pedestrians.

Do you have any links to stats on this? Because conceptually, I am not following the safety issue.

[bunt_q]

Originally Posted by The Dirt

I was surprised that it didn't get any play on here either. I was more surprised that there isn't a giant uproar about this in Boulder and Superior.

I never thought the day would come when Golden... Golden... is left to stand alone fighting this highway. But you're right, hardly a peep.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

I don't spend enough time in Denver these days to really know for Denver, but you couldn't stand on the corner closest to my house at rush hour and call biking a niche activity with a straight face. On a nice day there are as many bikes as cars.

I don't think we're there yet. When I see folks (age...I don't know, say 25+) riding in suits, or at least khakis or jeans, then I'll say we're there. It's still mostly a well-toned bike shorts crowd. B-cycle is helping there, though. That, I think, picks up the "this is the most convenient mode" crowd, and can cater to them best in the long run.

Originally Posted by bobg

If the goal is to be multimodal shouldn't forms of transportation such as the bicycle that have been de-emphasized for a century receive greater emphasis until they have a greater commuter share/utilization?

Or am I missing the point where you do not think we should be a multimodal city? Or do you not think bicycles should be one of those modes? I do not think you do think those things but it seems like every time I browse this forum I see you take anti-cycling stances.

Originally Posted by Cirrus

1. Bikes are still controversial. Not everyone is sold on them, or against them. For the most part we all staked out our positions on roads, transit, smart growth, and the like about 10 years ago, and we've spent the last decade flipping those topics over every way imaginable. Bikes are a new topic, with new things to be said about them. This is true both for here on the forum and in other, larger planning circles.

Welcome bob, if I didn't welcome you before.

I think bob's post reinforces exactly what I was saying. I don't disagree with Cirrus' explanation of why bicycles dominate the discussion at all. But bob wrote an entire post about multimodal cities without mentioning the word transit. Not once. Multimodal in bob's post means a very narrow spectrum from bicycles (good) to cars (bad). But bob's not to blame, because like I mentioned before, that's the discussion I hear everywhere - that is how today's public discussion is framed.

Which I think is peculiar for a couple of reasons. First off, no matter what rational people knew to be true, transit has always had a hard enough time winning the modal argument when it's framed as a war against cars. Why are cyclists even going there?

And secondly, Denver is still a high-density low-density city. A city of neighborhoods, a city of streetcar suburbs, etc. Bicycling is good for many trips, yes. But Denver's most central neighborhoods are still not a huge portion of the city's population. There is a huge gap between what bicycles can serve, and what we should need cars for. A huge gap between what Fastracks does and what bicycles can do.

The vast majority of Denver's population lives in neighborhoods that are probably still too far for most cyclists, but too close to be auto-dependent in a good multi-modal city. It is foolish of us to ignore that. Cherry Creek is an obvious example. I think that's too far for most casual cyclists. So should we relegate Cherry Creek to forever be an auto destination?

Cirrus: I just discovered the DC circulators. http://www.dccirculator.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27&Itemid=11 (exciting to me, but we can discuss that separately!)

I have no idea how successful they are. But why on god's green earth do we not have something like this in Denver? Or, why are we not talking about this. I'd trade 1,000 Bannock cycle tracks for this. Okay, maybe 100.

I am all for a multimodal city. I am not for a war on cars. And I do not think bicycles are so vital that they should push out everything else. Let's not forget, next week between Monday and about Thursday lunchtime, there will be as many bus boardings in the Colfax corridor as an entire year's worth of b-cycle riders. Maybe Colfax isn't the best example because we're actually working on that one... but there is a ton of room for improvement in transit in Denver proper. And I think, with Denver's relatively low density built environment, there is at least as much potential for transit as for bicycles, if not more.

Why are cyclists (our pro-urbanism crusaders) not fighting that fight, too? Please tell me it's not because of Fastracks. And please tell me it's not because transit needs and bicycle needs conflict, although there is probably some truth to that. I feel that if half the energy currently being put into bicycles went into other modes, we might be discussing some sort of circulator plan today (or the holy grail, streetcars).

Bicycles or cars is a very narrow, uncreative way of looking at urban transport. I do wonder if that dichotomy is destined to be more engrained in Denver than in other U.S. cities. I think it jives well with the western pro-independence streak, at least conceptually...the one that's long been used to attack transit. We love our cars.. blah blah. Well, now we can love our bikes too. They're green, they require mountain man leg muscles (or at least benefit from them), they look good on a Subaru, and they can take us wherever we want to go. I'm half joking in this last paragraph, although I do think bicycling is appealing, conceptually, for those reasons as much as for their (undisputed by me) practical benefits as a urban transport mode that works well for some trips.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by Pizzuti

But when there is a bike lane, the gutter (or to the right of the rightmost traffic lane) is exactly where it is ... so is that unsafe?

Ideally bike lanes should shift over to the left prior to the intersection like so, in order to avoid this problem. However there is not usually room to do that. The real benefit of bike lanes at intersections is that they provide visual markings that remind drivers to watch for bikes. For example, as a driver it is impossible to turn right at this intersection without looking directly at a big cyclist graphic painted onto the road. The more visual reminders to drivers the better, which is why many cities have started adding things like green paint to intersection markings.

Basically, the key to safely riding a bike on city streets is that you want to be a visible as possible to cars, so that drivers don't forget you're there and don't accidentally run into you. Bike lanes add tremendously to visibility, and so are worth some trade-offs in other areas.

Originally Posted by Pizzuti

2-3 feet seems disturbingly close to me, apparently to you too, so that's why I suggested they ride in the gutter where that's not an issue.

The point is that riding in the gutter actually encourages cars to drive CLOSER to you, because they feel like they can pass without shifting over to another lane. If you're in the gutter and a car comes along hugging the right side of the right lane, it might only be a foot or two away. On the other hand, if you ride in the middle of the travel lane then cars are much more likely to give you a full lane of clearance, resulting in more like 5 or 6 feet of clearance.

The other issue, of course, is that if there's on-street parking then you can't ride in the gutter, and you're likely to be doored if you ride too close to the parked cars on their left.

Originally Posted by Pizzuti

To your second point: Drivers turning right face the same situation with the cyclist as they would with a pedestrian.

I'm not making this stuff up you know. This problem is called the "overtaking right hook" and is very common. Google it if you want. A cyclist was killed 4 blocks from my house from this not too long ago.

I personally have been hit on a bike by a car that was trying to parallel park and didn't think to look for bikes before pulling over into the parking lane, right in front of me. Luckily it wasn't moving very fast.

I'll try to dig up some sources/statistics when I'm back at work.

[Cirrus]

Originally Posted by bunt_q

When I see folks riding in suits, or at least khakis or jeans, then I'll say we're there. It's still mostly a well-toned bike shorts crowd.

Very good metric. And a pretty well regarded one, actually. The other good metric is female riders - the closer your cycling population is to an even gender split, the more likely you are to be in an area where cycling is considered practical transportation rather than sport.

Originally Posted by bunt_q

I don't disagree with Cirrus' explanation of why bicycles dominate the discussion at all. But bob wrote an entire post about multimodal cities without mentioning the word transit... I do not think bicycles are so vital that they should push out everything else.

I don't disagree that we should be talking about a whole gamut of stuff, but I'm not sure I agree that bikes are really crowding anything else out. Why shouldn't bob write a post without mentioning transit when it's already established that we're talking about bikes on this page? The real test would be whether or not he would mention transit if you asked him to list all the things we should be doing.

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Why are cyclists not fighting that fight, too? Please tell me it's not because of Fastracks. And please tell me it's not because transit needs and bicycle needs conflict

They are! Go to streetsblog.net, the central repository for multimodal urbanism nationwide. On any given day you'll see plenty about bikes, but also plenty about transit and policy. Or how about something closer to home; go to DenverUrbanism.com and look at the list of categories with the number of posts referencing that issue. There are 14 posts about bikes, and about 110 posts about other things. Bikes are one of the most used individual tags, but there are lot of tags.

The only subculture I'm aware of that regularly pits bikes against transit is the lycra wearing set, and I don't care what they think because they will definitely always be a tiny niche.

Originally Posted by bunt_q

Let's not forget, next week between Monday and about Thursday lunchtime, there will be as many bus boardings in the Colfax corridor as an entire year's worth of b-cycle...

I doubt that. What's Colfax bus ridership? About 15,000 / day, I would guess? B-cycle is probably less than 10% of that, but it's not as low as you suggest. I'm sure there are plenty of bus lines in the city that have daily ridership about comparable to b-cycle, which makes sense, since the cost of the system is about the same as a small bus line (and much less than the cost of the Colfax line). We talk about it more because it's new and highly visible, but it won't be new forever, and it's not eating up an oversized chunk of our financial resources.

The money is an important point we have so far not discussed. Bike infrastructure, including bikesharing, is cheap cheap cheap. So we can put out a lot of new, very visible bike stuff all over the city without impacting the budget very much. $1 million would buy us 2 buses, maybe 3 if we got a good deal and didn't want particularly nice buses. It's a pocket change purchase that happens many times every year and nobody notices. On the other hand, $1 million would buy you 25 bikesharing stations, which would be a highly visible capital improvement that everyone downtown would notice. Same amount of money, but which one are people going to talk about more?

If we're still talking about bikes as much in 10 years then you will have a point. But right now it's a new and different thing, so it's natural that we should talk about it a lot. I certainly do not think we should put a moratorium on new ideas.

But hey, let's talk about the Colfax streetcar. Going anywhere? Is there money for it to go anywhere?

Oh, and the DC Circulator system is basically comparable to the Go Boulder buses. 10 minute headways instead of 15 minutes, and all branded the same, but it's the same basic idea. And they did it before we did.