Habanero shows up curved stays

On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 15:02:04 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/18/2017 10:37 AM, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
As mentioned before, most bicycle lanes hereabouts have the bicyclist riding right in the door zone and or set the bicyclist up for the right hook at intersections becausethe bicyclist isd placed between the curb and the line of traffic.

I often wonder if bicyclists are even consulted during the design phase of bicycle lanes.

Two examples.

First, our local club got word (through my contacts with the local
metropolitan planning organization) that the city was trying for a grant
for a bike facility to connect the downtown to the metropolitan park
about a mile away. About a dozen club members attended the public
meeting and said "This design is nuts! Two way bikes on one side of the
road? On a sidewalk with pedestrians? Crazy problems at intersections?
Even though these quiet side streets are perfect for riding right now?
All you need to do is fix the potholes!" But the city submitted the
draft plans anyway, hoping to get the grant. So the people who are
actually likely to ride hope they don't get the grant - at least, unless
the design is changed completely.

Second: I attended two online seminars recently on the design of bike
facilities. (The third one is still coming up.) At the first, the
presenter mentioned the often-used categories of bicyclists: 1% "strong
and fearless" and 6% "enthused and confident" (IOW, those groups
actually ride); 60% "interested but concerned; and 33% "no way no how."
Then she mentioned the problem, from her viewpoint: If you have a
public meeting about a bike facility, the top 7% (i.e. those who
actually ride bikes) are the people who will come and speak. But they
want to appeal to the 60% who they think might some day ride a bike,
maybe. So the top 7% are kind of a problem.

Think about that. The people that actually know what they're doing and
actually do what is desired are a problem because they're actually
interested. Is there another field in which the ignorant get more
recognition than the experts?

I am probably being cynical (I call it rational) but in one of your
posts you mention the town trying to get a grant to build bike-ways.

But bring that a little closer to home and suppose that the town wants
to raise a bond issue - to be financed by a slight increase in local
taxes... What do you suppose the reaction would be?

Is the general population sufficiently interested in bicycle riding to
clap their hands joyously at a (lets say) 10% increase in local taxes?
10%, or a tithe, a mere pittance.

On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 16:48:35 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/18/2017 4:01 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-18 12:17, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/18/2017 10:26 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-17 18:52, Frank Krygowski wrote:

We were told bike lane stripes would get Americans out of cars and onto
bikes. That didn't happen.

Then we were told that _buffered_ bike lane stripes would get Americans
out of cars and onto bikes. That didn't happen either.

Then we were told that separate bike trails would get Americans out of
cars and onto bikes. That didn't happen either.

Now we're told that "protected" bike lanes will get Americans out of
cars and onto bikes. That's not going to happen either.


Wrong on all counts. Go to Manhattan and take a look. Or to Portland.
Or to ...

Joerg, have you ever been to Portland? My kid used to live in the
center of the city. I was there a lot.

Google images for "Portland traffic." You'll see photos of thousands
and thousands of cars. Look he
http://images.google.com/search?tbm=...rtland+Traffic

Yes, you see some people riding bikes. Some days and some weather
conditions on certain streets you can see quite a few of them. But for
every bike you see far more than 100 cars.


http://media.oregonlive.com/business...3993-large.jpg

Yes, as I said, some days and some weather conditions on certain
streets. And if you get a long lens on your camera and position
yourself just right on some streets, you can pretend that the bikes
outnumber the cars.

But for non-propaganda photos, google "portland traffic" as I did. Or
look at Google Earth's views. Or Streetview. Or just go visit. You'll
see bikes, but you'll see FAR more cars.

Using figures from the Census Bureau measured the percentage of
commuters who bike to work, as opposed to walking, taking public
transit, driving an automobile, boat, or some other means.

Excepting Davis CA no city in the U.S. exceeds 10% bicycle commuters.
Portland, Oregon, claims some 7.2% of the commuters use bicycles. The
last of the top 27 cities listed was Oakland CA with 3.7%

On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 19:11:21 -0700 (PDT), Sir Ridesalot
wrote:

On Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 8:33:15 PM UTC-4, Doug Landau wrote:
Snipped
LOL I read here 20 yrs ago that the best choice for touring is 27", because small towns won't have a bike shop and so no 700c, but they will have a hardware store with a crappy but usable 27x1-1/4.

So that was you sayin that

Times have changed. I too remember when a 700C tire was very hard to get. Now the most common size tires in small town shops seems to be 26" MTB tires. You might be able to get a 700C tire but you'll probably be looking at 38mm or wider for the hybrids sold there. At least that's my experience in Ontario Canada.

Cheers

Somewhere I read something from some guy that was blundering around
somewhere in the mountains of S. America having ridden his bicycle to
get there. He mentioned that 26" tires were available almost
everywhere he'd been.

On 2017-04-18 20:04, John B Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:49:40 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-04-18 08:08, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 10:46:18 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
Snipped
That's what you have in Europe a lot, bad bike path designs. In the US
they are mostly better but incomplete, you have two miles of bike path
or lane because some grant mandated that, followed by ... nothing. Then
some people react like Frank, saying that bike paths in general are
"nonsense". If all engineers thought that way most inventions would have
never happened and we'd be living like the Flintstones.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Wait a minute! You've been praising the European type bicycle infrastructure for ages here on RBT and now you're saying that a lot of it is bad? Is that the same "a lot" as "a lot of bicyclists in the US wil use new bicycle lanes" if only they are built?

Cheers


Hmm, seems like Thailand has changed a lot and is becoming like the US :-(

The Thai people I met during my life were very versed in repairing
stuff. There is a knock coming from the engine? Let's take it apart and
check.


I wasn't arguing that no Thais could fix things. Rather that the great
bulk of the Thais who could, for instance, afford a car couldn't fix
it, nor do they have any interest in learning how to fix it. If you
met Thais that could re-build an engine then you met the "lower
classes" who actually worked with their hands. Who are, I'd reckon,
becoming somewhat scarce.


Not so much "lower class" but older generation. The people who could
still get it done.


For example, of my wife's immediate family, Starting with her father
and his two brothers, say a hundred people, some of whom are very
rich, some are collage professors, some are middle class and some are
poor as church mice, I doubt that a single one could fix anything
mechanical.


That is strange. My ancestors were middle class yet they could all
repair stuff, including many of the women. When there is an issue with
our watering system in the yard my wife often doesn't mention it to me.
Instead, I see her heading out the back door with a tool box.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

On Monday, April 17, 2017 at 12:01:30 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-17 11:41, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/16/2017 10:52 AM, Joerg wrote:
Yet only the Netherlands and Denmark kept a high cycling mode share
and some cities there even explanded on it. They had cars just like
the Germans but left them parked a lot. Because they built out the
bike infrastructure.

What do you say about places like Stevenage and Milton Keynes that built
the bike infrastructure but never saw any significant use of bikes?


That has been explained ad nauseam in various articles such as this one:

https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpres...milton-keynes/

The most important thing about roads is that it is necessary to have side roads that will go the same place as freeways. It may be a bit longer but they roads should have strictly enforced speed limits. In the East Bay we have Niles Canyon. This is a narrow 2 lane road with relatively long sections where bicycles have no shoulder at all. They also have 2 narrow bridges and at least one narrow railroad overpass. The speed limit? 50 mph and not enforced at all so that the traffic moves a minimum of 60 mph and often up to 80 mph.

Rather than bicycle paths where you cannot put them the speed limit in this canyon should have been no more than 40 mph as is shown by common car accidents with cars glancing off of the cliff-side and going into the river. And it should be STRICTLY enforced. Even the CHP drive through this canyon well over the limit rather than ticketing speeders.

When riding up to Sacramento on back-roads well away from the freeway system you will find drivers doing well over freeway speed limits on these tiny little roads.

Enforcing speed limits would do far more to reduce fatalities than putting HUGE amounts of money into bicycle paths which would no doubt parallel freeways making cyclists gag on carbon monoxide.

On 4/18/2017 11:04 PM, John B Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 14:02:49 -0400, Frank Krygowski
wrote:

On 4/17/2017 11:29 PM, John B Slocomb wrote:

I'm not sure whether increasing the cost of fuel actually has a long
term effect on vehicle use. After all, how else could one get to work?
Walk? That would be construed as cruel and unusual punishment in
California, wouldn't it? Against the constitution or something.

I've been amazed that fuel prices seem to have an immediate effect on
vehicle purchases. That is, if the price of gas drops for a month or
two, the sales of big pickup trucks and big SUVs jumps up. If the price
of gas rises for a month or two, truck and SUV sales drop and compact
car sales jump. Seems for many people, there's no such thing as
thinking in the long term.

I was actually thinking of gasoline prices when I was a young lad
versus gasoline prices today and comparing auto ownership. Twenty
cents a gallon when I graduated high school versus (what is it?) $2.50
a gallon today.There were perhaps two families in the little town I
grew up in with more than one auto. Today the average is 1.9 auto's
per family.

I think any comparison of gas prices over a long time period should be
done with inflation-adjusted dollars. And no offense, but I think it's
been a "long time period" since both of us were young lads!

See
https://inflationdata.com/articles/w...16-768x558.jpg


--
- Frank Krygowski

On Monday, April 17, 2017 at 7:09:44 PM UTC-7, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/17/2017 3:46 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-17 11:46, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/17/2017 10:35 AM, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-17 01:28, John B Slocomb wrote:

Funny. Monday is my wife's "shopping day" and we usually visit several
very large stores. The first place that sells a very broad range of
stuff from fresh chicken to PVC plumbing pipe had bicycle rim brake
pads. The second place was Tesco Lotus (ask a Brit about Tesco) and
they had rim brake pads and finally a sort of copy-cat of Tesco named
"Big C" and Lo! They had brake pads also. By the way, the first place
had your cheap Thai made tires for 129 baht each, about $3.76 at
today's exchange rate.


Ah, in Thailand. That's a very different place compared to here.

Copenhagen and Amsterdam are also very different places compared to
here. Yet you claim their bike facilities are what we need, and you
pretend the other differences (density, auto-related costs, mass transit
availability, etc. etc.) are unimportant.


No, I said that we can increase the mode share if we copy some of their
ideas. That fact has been proven time and again, in the US. See
Manhattan, see Folsom, see Portland, et cetera.

I do not subscribe to your philosophy of throwing in the towel just
because we can't reach two-digit mode share numbers like Europeans can.


A place where people still service their own vehicles like they did
here in the good old days. I suspect the key reason why you can hardly
find brake pads in stores other than (some) bike shops is that most
people in the US would buy a new $199 bicycle at the department store
and ride it maybe five miles, realize that now all sorts of muscles
ache, and then it sits in the garage until some yard sale 10 years
later. Servicing such a bike? Not gonna happen.

Yet you like to pretend that if a bike path is built nearby, those same
people will stop using their car.


Some of them will. I don't pretend. I know.

The question is, how much in infrastructure investment is a human life
worth? I don't just mean the guy that didn't get smashed by a car from
behind but mostly the reduction in serious or life-threatening medical
conditions that result from sedentary lifestyles and obesity.

Eventually this develops into a snowball. I personally talked to people
who bought a home in Folsom and the main reason not to look anywhere
else was the bike path system. Usually older people who abhor having to
mix in with automotive traffic and want to be able to cycle from their
homes to town without having to worry about cars. In Folsom they can. In
neighboring communities they cannot. Many if not most of those are what
we call "Bay Area transplants". People who had high-paying tech jobs in
the Silicon Valley, retired, wanted to get the heck out of there and
sold their $1M+ home down there to buy a $350-500k home here. Such
people with substantial disposable income and lots of windfall cash from
selling their old home are highly desired as new residents in towns and
cities up here. The best thing that can happen is that they cycle to
some fancy restaurant every other night, as many of them do.

As with the article whitewashing the failed Milton Keynes plan, you
justify your mission by saying some tiny increase in mode share
justifies huge expense. You say "some" will ride. You say "many" ride
to fancy restaurants every other night because of bike trails. But you
don't quantify.

You're perilously close to the argument that claims "Well, if ONE life
can be saved, any expense is worth it!"

Frank, most of us here are not traffo-phobic as Joerg is. He's entitled to his opinion without being continually harassed about it.

If you are going to correct him try to be positive and not negative please. After all, despite his opinions he probably rides more than the rest of us.

On Monday, April 17, 2017 at 8:29:42 PM UTC-7, John B Slocomb wrote:
On Mon, 17 Apr 2017 10:56:48 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

On Monday, April 17, 2017 at 1:28:23 AM UTC-7, John B Slocomb wrote:
On Sun, 16 Apr 2017 12:42:48 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-04-16 12:33, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Saturday, April 15, 2017 at 11:33:43 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
Snipped
Been to a department store lately? You'd be hard pressed to find rim
brake shoes in there.
Snipped

Up here I can go into any department store and buy brake pads for cantilever, road or V-brakes.


During my last visit to the Walmart in Placerville about two month ago I
looked and saw ... nada, zip, zilch. Our Sears doesn't even carry
bicycle parts anymore.

Funny. Monday is my wife's "shopping day" and we usually visit several
very large stores. The first place that sells a very broad range of
stuff from fresh chicken to PVC plumbing pipe had bicycle rim brake
pads. The second place was Tesco Lotus (ask a Brit about Tesco) and
they had rim brake pads and finally a sort of copy-cat of Tesco named
"Big C" and Lo! They had brake pads also. By the way, the first place
had your cheap Thai made tires for 129 baht each, about $3.76 at
today's exchange rate.

You 'mericans must have very limited shopping facilities.

John, you ain't seen nothing yet. After Moonbeam Brown is done with doubling the gas tax (after he SAID he's only going to use about half of it to repair the roads) when the last two times he increased the tax to repair the roads he didn't spend one red cent doing so, the suckers are all lining up and saying "Yeah, we need the roads repaired."

I'm not sure whether increasing the cost of fuel actually has a long
term effect on vehicle use. After all, how else could one get to work?
Walk? That would be construed as cruel and unusual punishment in
California, wouldn't it? Against the constitution or something.

The average commute in the bay area is now 30 miles one way. Hardly something that most cyclists are going to attempt - 100 kilometers per day is nothing to sneeze at for most.

On 4/19/2017 10:41 AM, wrote:
On Monday, April 17, 2017 at 12:01:30 PM UTC-7, Joerg wrote:
On 2017-04-17 11:41, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 4/16/2017 10:52 AM, Joerg wrote:
Yet only the Netherlands and Denmark kept a high cycling mode share
and some cities there even explanded on it. They had cars just like
the Germans but left them parked a lot. Because they built out the
bike infrastructure.

What do you say about places like Stevenage and Milton Keynes that built
the bike infrastructure but never saw any significant use of bikes?


That has been explained ad nauseam in various articles such as this one:

https://aseasyasridingabike.wordpres...milton-keynes/

The most important thing about roads is that it is necessary to have side roads that will go the same place as freeways. It may be a bit longer but they roads should have strictly enforced speed limits. In the East Bay we have Niles Canyon. This is a narrow 2 lane road with relatively long sections where bicycles have no shoulder at all. They also have 2 narrow bridges and at least one narrow railroad overpass. The speed limit? 50 mph and not enforced at all so that the traffic moves a minimum of 60 mph and often up to 80 mph.

Rather than bicycle paths where you cannot put them the speed limit in this canyon should have been no more than 40 mph as is shown by common car accidents with cars glancing off of the cliff-side and going into the river. And it should be STRICTLY enforced. Even the CHP drive through this canyon well over the limit rather than ticketing speeders.

When riding up to Sacramento on back-roads well away from the freeway system you will find drivers doing well over freeway speed limits on these tiny little roads.

Enforcing speed limits would do far more to reduce fatalities than putting HUGE amounts of money into bicycle paths which would no doubt parallel freeways making cyclists gag on carbon monoxide.


If you seek a legal solution, just require all motor
vehicles to stay on private property. Safety! Think of the
children!

--
Andrew Muzi
www.yellowjersey.org/
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On 4/18/2017 11:04 PM, John B Slocomb wrote:
On Tue, 18 Apr 2017 09:49:40 -0700, Joerg
wrote:

On 2017-04-18 08:08, Sir Ridesalot wrote:
On Tuesday, April 18, 2017 at 10:46:18 AM UTC-4, Joerg wrote:
Snipped
That's what you have in Europe a lot, bad bike path designs. In the US
they are mostly better but incomplete, you have two miles of bike path
or lane because some grant mandated that, followed by ... nothing. Then
some people react like Frank, saying that bike paths in general are
"nonsense". If all engineers thought that way most inventions would have
never happened and we'd be living like the Flintstones.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Wait a minute! You've been praising the European type bicycle infrastructure for ages here on RBT and now you're saying that a lot of it is bad? Is that the same "a lot" as "a lot of bicyclists in the US wil use new bicycle lanes" if only they are built?

Cheers


Hmm, seems like Thailand has changed a lot and is becoming like the US :-(

The Thai people I met during my life were very versed in repairing
stuff. There is a knock coming from the engine? Let's take it apart and
check.


I wasn't arguing that no Thais could fix things. Rather that the great
bulk of the Thais who could, for instance, afford a car couldn't fix
it, nor do they have any interest in learning how to fix it. If you
met Thais that could re-build an engine then you met the "lower
classes" who actually worked with their hands. Who are, I'd reckon,
becoming somewhat scarce.

For example, of my wife's immediate family, Starting with her father
and his two brothers, say a hundred people, some of whom are very
rich, some are collage professors, some are middle class and some are
poor as church mice, I doubt that a single one could fix anything
mechanical.

That's extremely common among people I know. I described the PhD
electrical engineer I worked with who needed me to adjust his bicycle
brakes. Our previous next door neighbor had a guide roller come loose
on his garage door, so I bolted it back in place for him; his adult son
called me "a mechanical genius."

I wonder if skill in repairing things has three prerequisites: Decent
spacial perception, curiosity about how things work, and a period of low
income.

--
- Frank Krygowski