Hopefully I’m starting to sound very predictable with respect to tolerating motorized traffic on city streets - that would mean I’m being consistent.
My impression of electric cars invading the Bay Area?
Electric cars can kill you, too.
If there’s any data to suggest that electric cars are less efficient at terrorizing, injuring, and killing pedestrians and cyclists, [...]
We’re weak-willed. We’re scared. We’re cowards. We’re wimpy. We’re pathetic. We’re thin-skinned. We are so afraid of criticism from car people and others that we’ll settle for half-baked ideas and non-solutions.
I can’t say this is my entire impression of the bicycle advocacy movement over the past few months that I’ve been reading about it and [...]
Separate but Equal. It is how racists in America used to convince themselves that they were not, in fact, racists. White people over here, black people over there - all equal - OK?
No.
In the transportation world, things are a bit different — the only way for humans to be treated equal to cars on the [...]
That is my latest theory. Said another way, cities and towns and places would not suck as bad - they would not be so car-dominated - if women ran them.
I’ll admit that this one might be a bit out there, and at the end of the day, I just want more humane cities with fewer [...]
Upper West Side Streets Renaissance Campaign - the New York equivalent of our SFBC - has put forth a proposal for the Upper West Side of Manhattan. It’s interesting, but it’s important for us bike folks to provide a clear explanation of our intended changes, including very small soundbites that the major media runs on.
Take [...]
Over the past few weeks, as I’ve been reading through various bicycle and pedestrian and transportation blogs and studies and news articles, I kept seeing this description of certain people and locations as being ‘transit-dependent.’
What that means, as best I can tell, is that some folks don’t have realistic means to get from Point A [...]
I’ve seen those VTA trains but never actually ridden them. Level boarding makes it easier for lots of folks to ride, including bikers:
One should not underestimate the importance of level boarding, said Richard Swent of Palo Alto, the chairman of the VTA’s bicycle and pedestrian advisory committee.
“It not only helps people get on and off [...]
While cruising the net looking for BRT propaganda, I stumbled upon Damien Newton’s LA Streetblog post about some BRT meetings going on in Los Angeles. When I saw the picture included in the post - a shot of the Orange Line BRT bus - I thought, “Damn! That’s a nice bus!”
Alas, after poking around for [...]
The New York Times reports on mostly-pedestrian deaths, and I think there is lots of misinformation in the article.
First, some people don’t like that I don’t use the phrase ‘people killer’ or ‘death monster’ to describe cars and other motorized vehicles, but my occasional choice of description for these entities does bring to the fore [...]
Some streets are better to ride on than others. Sometimes that is by design - either the city decided to throw a bone to cyclists and paint some lines on the road, or advocates busted their butts for years to force the city to paint some lines on the road. Advanced civilizations have even been [...]
