LAB Reform

American bicycle facility advocates typically believe they can achieve the same bicycling safety and modal share as the Netherlands by blindly imitating Dutch facility designs. They assume the facility is what makes the difference when in reality it’s a complex set of physical and cultural differences that lead to both the greater safety and the higher bicycling modal share. Continue reading →

Andy Cline has some thoughtful questions in his article Please Be Careful. Here’s some excepts:

Please be careful what you ask for; please re-think asking for more bicycle lanes.

Four inches of paint cannot think for you. Four inches of paint is an illusion of safety, not real safety.

Driving your bicycle as as normal part of traffic is already safe.

What is the purpose of a bicycle lane? As far as I am aware there are two:

1) To keep you from using the road that is rightfully yours. Car drivers use the road by privilege after receiving permission from the state (driver’s license and license plate for the car). Bicyclists use the road by right. No permission is necessary. And no bicycle registration fees are necessary because our bicycles do no harm to the road. Our bicycles also do not kill 35+ thousand people per year. Lanes are an effective way to keep you shunted to the side so that car drivers can ignore you.

2) To encourage more people to ride bicycles. Notice the interesting contradiction between these two reasons. Some bicycle advocates want more lanes because they want more people to ride bicycles. Some novices like bicycle lanes because they have yet to learn how to effectively and safely drive their bicycles in traffic. A big problem arises, however, when lanes are painted that are actually more dangerous than the road — door-zone lanes for example.

The full article has a link to an interesting video Why You Should Avoid the Door Zone.

Standard safety practice requires warning about hazards that cannot be eliminated. One of the greatest hazards of cycling in the city is a suddenly-opened car door.

Doors can poise a hazard for pedestrians too. In the top photo at right, the black/yellow stripe on the floor warns of the danger area from a suddenly-opening door. The stripe tells people walking there to stay out of the door zone.

The door zone is a bigger hazard for cyclists because of their greater speed and the risk of falling under the wheels of passing traffic. So why do bike lanes lead cyclists into danger instead of warning them away? See the middle photo (from “Bicycle Friendly” Washington, DC).

These hazards can have deadly consequences, as shown at bottom. Dana Laird, a Tufts University graduate student was riding in a door-zone bike lane heading to a Boston Red Sox game when someone opened a car door. She was knocked under the rear wheels of a passing bus and killed.

While motorists should be more careful opening car doors, cyclists can reduce their dooring risk to ZERO simply by riding at least 5-6 feet from parked cars. This kind of “accident” is 100% preventable. Luring cyclists into danger is simply inexcusable.

For some safer ways to promote bicycling, see Best Practices of Cycling Advocacy.

We recently took our tandem to Durango, CO to escape the thick smoke of the Wallow, AZ wildfire. I like the Durango area and have tossed a bike in the car on our trips there.

Durango is a Silver-level bicycle friendly community. Lots of people are biking there. It did seem quite accomodating. Our hotel, the lovely Rochester, even had a fleet of cruisers that could be signed out.

But why, I kept asking, are some of its quiet, wide city streets striped with door zone bike lanes? There is often plenty of room to “share the road”. Why consign cyclists to the door zone in a bicycle-friendly community? Some of those bike lanes were absolutely unnecessary and if anything, took away from Durango’s bicyclist-friendliness.

More here, on my own site.

http://labikes.blogspot.com/2011/06/durango-co-door-zone-bike-lanes.html

For lunch today I stopped at the local “Scottish Cuisine” fast food restaurant for a sandwich to take home. I wheeled my touring bike up to the order station, wondering whether the vehicle detector would pick up my wheels. It did. Continue reading →

My LAB membership expired recently. I did not renew because I am reluctant to send the League any more money, knowing it would be used to harm the interests of responsible cyclists. I also prefer to belong to organizations that I can be proud of. Continue reading →

I was once conversing with a person who was annoyed with my cataloging the known dangers of various bicycle facilities. He fumed, “You only want people to ride a bike if they ride like you do.” And then he stormed off before I could respond. Continue reading →

Interestingly, the three LAB-Reform candidates obtained almost as many signatures (411) as LAB collected votes (560) for its highly restricted “election”. Congratulations to Diane Albert (current President, Bicycle Coalition of New Mexico), at any rate. She signed our petition and endorsed the petition drive on the BCNM web site.

From a League email:

From: League of American Bicyclists
Date: Thu, 27 Jan 2011 09:35:23 -0700
Subject: The League Headset _ Vol. 1, Issue 2

Board Election Results

The polls closed a few days ago; the preferential voting calculations have been made; candidates have been notified…and the results are in. Diane Albert, Alison Hill Graves and Steve Durrant join incumbents Harry Brull and Hans van Naerssen  on the League’s board. Thanks to all seven of the candidates who ran for the open positions. We will officially announce the results in Monday’s American Bicyclist e-newsletter update, and we’ll post the voting numbers and explanation of the voting system on the website. A total of 560 members cast their votes – a small percentage, for sure, but a 30 percent increase over prior elections.

Some FAQ’s inconveniently left off the League’s list. Disclaimer: these are my comments. The League HQ had nothing to do with them.

Were members meaningfully consulted on the expansion of the Board to 15 members, or the change from regional to entirely at-large members, i.e., was this governance change subject to ratification by members?

No.

Will the at-large change affect your representation on the Board?

Well, we went from having one Board member responsible for a region of the country to no board members being responsible for any particular part of the country. Is that an improvement? We shall see.

Do members really elect a controlling majority of the Board?

You elect 53% of the Board. The Board chooses the rest. Oh, and the Board gets to choose the candidates who you get to vote for.

How are candidates for the board selected?

There is a list of qualifications that prospective Board members address in their application. These applications are reviewed by a Board nominating committee. You do not get to see the application via the League. The criteria are actually quite good. But we don’t really tell you what happened during the Nominating Committee deliberations, who all of the applicants were, or how we arrived at the rankings and decided who passed muster and who did not. We tell you, the membership, whom you can choose between. Trust us. We are your League government.

Is there still a petition process for those not selected who still wish to run?

Yes. One has to, without any help from your friends in the League leadership, obtain 5% of League members signatures on a petition. Try it. Its fun. A suggestion:  Any Board-approved candidates, prior to being put on the ballot, are required to themselves obtain 5% of member signatures to ensure the Membership approves those running for the Board. They can receive no help from the League in obtaining these.

How will the new voting system work?

Only as well as the lead-up to the election worked in ensuring a fair election.

Questions? Comments?

Email your League Board members and tell them what you think.

President Andy Clarke <andy@bikeleague.org>

Board Chair Hans van Naerssen <hans@bikeleague.org>

Here is hoping for a stronger, but MEMBER CENTERED, League.

This is more bad news for the League of American Bicyclists. I’m sorry Bill will resign at the end of his current term and and has withdrawn from the elections. His letter, of which I’ve only snipped some short excerpts below, is at the LAB Reform page, linked here and below. Go read it. Continue reading →