Stu Bykofsky: A modest proposal for bike/car coexistence
LAST MONDAY'S column - suggesting a long list of bicycle-compliance rules - jammed a stick into a bee hive. Bikers furiously buzzed around looking for my flesh, while the bike-abused public cheered me on.
LAST MONDAY'S column - suggesting a long list of bicycle-compliance rules - jammed a stick into a bee hive. Bikers furiously buzzed around looking for my flesh, while the bike-abused public cheered me on.
Bikers filled the air with flak about bad drivers, even bad pedestrians. True, but irrelevant. Someone else's bad behavior doesn't justify your own.
Endless volumes have been written about bad drivers - drunken drivers, reckless drivers, red-light runners and, lately, cell-phoning and texting drivers. The media haven't ignored bad drivers, and bikers aren't being singled out now.
Today, I will be constructive, if you give me a chance.
To summarize my view: Laws should be enforced on both motorists and bikers; the road should be shared, but not equally; many drivers are aggressive jerks; some bikers come off morally superior; bikes will never (short of a catastrophe) be a substantial method of commuting in America; a tiny 1.2 percent of local commuters use bikes now.
The city soon will report on the number of bikers using Pine and Spruce "bike-only" lanes in Center City - numbers provided by the Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia. Waiting time at lights will be provided by the Streets Department.
Since I am a heavy user of Pine and Spruce, I know how long it took to get across town when two lanes were open. The lights are staggered and, with luck, you didn't hit many. On the day the "bike-only" lanes opened, I drove east on Pine and then west on Spruce. I was stopped at about one in three lights I normally would sail through.
Why? Because if you have, say, 10 cars wanting to cross 11th at Pine, under the old system you would find two rows of five cars each. Now, you have one row of 10 cars and if a car at the head of the line needs to turn left, it must yield to pedestrians, which most cars do (although don't bet your life they all will).
That delay means that three or more cars will miss the light.
Big deal? To them, it might be. It adds to needless frustration, delay and road rage.
It also impacts taxi customers who pay more for the slower ride. (In often-quoted Bike Bureaucratese, the pilot program has a "calming" effect on traffic. "Comatose" is more like it.)
A traffic-engineered 25 mph speed limit (plus poor paving) "calms" traffic plenty.
Last Monday, after I proposed steps that included registering bikes (I believe Councilman Frank DiCicco when he says that he put forth that idea to begin a "conversation"), insurance for bikes and no more free parking, there was immediate biker pushback.
A lot of what I wanted, such as obeying rules of the road, is already law. I seriously suggested that enforcement go to the Philadelphia Parking Authority, because most of the bike aggravation occurs in Center City and the PPA has legions prowling the streets there. With strong enforcement of existing law - and I feel the same about gun laws - we don't need more laws or the heavier fines proposed by Councilman Jim Kenney (done to get the bikers' attention, I believe).
If I don't want to surrender whole car lanes to bikers, and they complain that the narrow "bike lanes" (as opposed to "bike-only" lanes) are unsafe, what to do?
A few cities have paved medians between car and bike lanes, but unless we get a ton of stimulus money to repave the whole city, we can't afford it.
My solution costs little and gives bikers protection on almost every street. It's a variation of what already exists in bike-friendly Portland, Ore.
Paint a 3-foot-wide bike lane along the curb and require cars to park outside it, three feet from the curb. The parked cars create a safe bike lane between themselves and the curb, protected from traffic, the only danger being quickly opened car doors.
On neighborhood streets with one travel lane and two "parking" lanes, my plan would narrow the travel lane, but not by much. It also would make travel lanes on streets with two driving lanes - such as Pine - a little tight, but it's doable.
Cars would have lanes for themselves, bikers would have a protected lane. The only cost is white paint.
It's not perfect, but we can think about this, or go back to the way things were before the mayor made an ill-advised move for equality between cars and bikes.
Bikers' tiny numbers do not merit that.
E-mail stubyko@phillynews.com or call 215-854-5977. For recent columns: