Rode to work today... I had to stop somewhere a little bit past downtown on Howell St. I think I've mentioned this before last year, but riding through downtown going north is a real struggle because there are no bike lanes. I usually take 4th Ave. from the International District and hang on the right side until James St. or so--that's when the bus stops start and you have to watch out for cars turning right--where I switch to the left side. That's not safe either because you're essentially sharing the lane with car traffic and you never know if someone seated in the passenger seat of a car parked to the left will open the door and your face will end up looking like a pancake.
Now, the mayor recently revealed the
Seattle Bicycle Master Plan, which will create new bike lanes and shared roadways throughout the city. I looked very closely at it, and I noticed that large chunks of downtown roads will be
"sharrows". I think that's a great plan and as long as there are plenty of pavement and post signs, motorists will be more aware that those are
shared lanes. I was surprised to learn
the huge amount of money ($240 million) going into this project. Hopefully this will make Seattle the best city in the country for commuting. Still, we'll never catch up with Amsterdam, Beijing, or Copenhagen:
Wall Street Journal (
click here for full article)
Building a Better Bike Lane
Bike-friendly cities in Europe are launching a new attack on car culture. Can the U.S. catch up?
By NANCY KEATES May 4, 2007; Page W1
COPENHAGEN -- No one wears bike helmets here. They're afraid they'll mess up their hair. "I have a big head and I would look silly," Mayor Klaus Bondam says.
People bike while pregnant, carrying two cups of coffee, smoking, eating bananas. At the airport, there are parking spaces for bikes. In the emergency room at Frederiksberg Hospital on weekends, half the biking accidents are from people riding drunk. Doctors say the drunk riders tend to run into poles.
Flat, compact and temperate, the Netherlands and Denmark have long been havens for bikers. In Amsterdam, 40% of commuters get to work by bike. In Copenhagen, more than a third of workers pedal to their offices. But as concern about global warming intensifies -- the European Union is already under emissions caps and tougher restrictions are expected -- the two cities are leading a fresh assault on car culture. A major thrust is a host of aggressive new measures designed to shift bike commuting into higher gear, including increased prison time for bike thieves and the construction of new parking facilities that can hold up to 10,000 bikes....
By the way, with respect to Beijing, while there are many more commuters there, it seems that their fate is becoming worse as car traffic increases--
see this interesting article.
Total:
16.9mi Bike Ride[Backdated on 05/18/2007]
