About a bike lane advisory committee

A current news story in Pittsburgh has Councilwoman Theresa Kail-Smith proposing a bike lane advisory committee to review any proposed new bike lanes in the city. Ignoring the rather obvious problem that her district is devoid of any bike infrastructure -- there's hardly a bike rack to be found, let alone a lane -- the bigger problem is that it adds a layer of red tape where none is necessary and the equivalent functions are already covered by other departments' responsibilities.

If we are going to spend political capital on bike lanes, whose purpose is to get more people on bikes, then let's tackle what really needs to be done.

I like the idea of an advisory committee. I just don’t think I’m the one who should be on it. Aside from the fact I am not a city resident, a more salient concern is that I’m not a fan of bike lanes. I would rather we tackle the larger problem of intolerant motorists, something the idea of bike lanes addresses by separating motorists and cyclists for much of the time, except for when they do have to interact, and then the unsolved problem becomes a real-time problem.

In short, rather than worry about bike lanes and how and where to put them and what they should look like, I would rather we focus on the 99.8% of the lane-miles in the city that do not now and likely will not ever have a bike lane, but can be expected to have bike-car interactions. We accomplish that by:

• Enforcing speed limits, particularly on streets cyclists should be able to use
• Prosecuting drivers who endanger cyclists
• Assisting cyclists with the knowledge necessary to video and report dangerous drivers
• Establishing laws, at the state level if necessary, for a bounty system to reward cyclists for bringing dangerous drivers to justice
• Educating law enforcement, magistrates, and others relevant to the justice system, to what the law truly means concerning best-practices cycling (so cyclists don’t get pulled over for taking the lane, as one example)
• Forcing state, county, and city planning and engineering entities to design streets that make it less possible for drivers to have a chance to mow down cyclists and pedestrians
• Getting road maintenance departments at municipal, county and state levels to address road surface hazards that endanger cyclists, such as diagonal rail crossings, longitudinal drain grates, unswept shoulders which cyclists are expected to use, etc.

Somehow, I do not think it is envisioned that a bike lane advisory committee would have the charter, let alone the teeth, to bring that about. But that is precisely what we need to get us to the next level of bicycle usage for routine transportation in both the city, and by extension, the metro area.

So, while I will not stand in the way of setting up such a committee within the city, I do not think its purpose is all that useful.

I cannot say it often or loudly enough: Make it possible for the average person to do anything other than drive.

Back to having an annual pass

As of 1 Jan 2017, I again own an annual bus pass. Starting in the mid-1990s, I opted to get an annual instead of monthlies to save money. At the time, you paid for 10 months yet got 12. It's a little less generous now, 11 gets you 12, but still a deal. If you're flush enough to cough up a grand-plus for a single transaction, do it.

The winner for me, though, was elimination of the second zone. I had previously gotten a two-zone annual, which cost over $1,600. With the one zone, that's about a $530 savings. I stopped with the Zone 2 annual when I realized that all my biking meant I was only using maybe $1,200 in real bus fare, so I pocketed that money. But I'm biking less, so need a cheaper, more reliable method of getting myself around. This is that method.

How great it would be for everyone to have an annual pass! What fare to pay and when to pay it become non-issues, as are the annoyance of having to either swap out paper passes or remembering to re-up the electronic one in time. Of course, it takes some self-discipline to set aside the cost of a monthly pass each month all year so that you have that grand-and-change for the annual purchase. Not everyone can do that, but every alternative costs more in the long run.

For me, having the pass is more a form of insurance against getting stuck. I generally don't go anyplace the bus can't get me home, so if the weather is too rotten, or some other reason makes the bike not an option, I can always get where I'm going.

If you don't use transit at all, taking the plunge to drop a stack of C-notes may seem bizarre, but consider your own alternatives. Cars cost money, big money, if you're using them, and even when you don't, they still have ongoing costs -- insurance, registration, inspection. Those latter items alone likely exceed the cost of an annual pass, never mind any actual operating costs.

Sum total, next to a bicycle, the most cost-effective form of transportation is the annual pass. $1,072.50 of your hard-earned money, and you can go just about anywhere transit can take you.

UPMC-induced traffic, and a modest proposal for funding transit

As one of the area's largest employers, UPMC is also one of the area's largest generators of traffic. In employees alone, over 50,000 people travel to jobs daily. In people traveling to receive medical and related services, I do not have figures readily available, but an easy assumption is to triple that figure. Some use transit, but tens of thousands drive.

It is not unreasonable to think that 200,000 of the cars on Pittsburgh roads on any given day are related in some way to UPMC business. If someone has better numbers, let's see them.

Being able to provide the capacity for those employees and customers to choose to or are required to drive is a large part of the overhead of state, county, city, and municipal road departments. At the same time, Port Authority has a hard time making ends meet, and its mid-day service, when people need to travel to appointments, is often the thinnest in places where service remains at all, following major cuts in 1993, 2002, 2007 and 2011.Nearly everyone working evening or night shifts needs to drive, since evening service is minimal, and 24-hour service ended almost 20 years ago.

If UPMC sees fit to pay the salaries of its people to pay the $10,000 per year per car cost of providing their own, private transportation fleets, it seems reasonable to ask it to pay $1,000 apiece for those 50,000 people, to help fund the transit system fully. A solid, stable income would allow Port Authority to put in place the Transit Development Plan devised in 2009, at the service level that, at the time, we decided we needed. It never did get done, because the last of the TDP service changes took place in the same March 2011 service pick that cut 15% of the routes.

Port Authority's funding issues always stem from Harrisburg not wanting to pick up the nearly 70% of local operating costs. Getting fifty million from UPMC, along with comparable amounts from other big players, would do just that. Continuing the thought, if all these health plans from UPMC included a complimentary annual bus pass, that would help assure that anyone covered under the plan would be able to travel to an appointment without the hassle of driving, or the cost of parking.

UPMC spends millions on advertising and promotion. If that money was instead put into transit fare, then the plans would sell themselves, and we would have a more sustainable funding source to run the transit system we already decided we are supposed to have.

Coffeeneuring 2016, a summary

A recap, for those unfamiliar with the term: coffeeneuring is a seven-week series of bike rides ostensibly to get a cup of coffee. The term derives from the term randonneuring, taking long bike rides, sometimes very long, dozens or hundreds of miles. Coffeeneuring is intended to be fun, to get you out on the bike, exploring different places, and takes place as the weather is starting to get colder.

A blog post on the topic a few months ago mentioned that the hobby was particularly popular in Pittsburgh, and I'm proud to say that I've participated most years. On that post, I made the comment that it would be a fun project to try to hit seven wholly different destinations in the region. It would be too easy to hit seven coffee shops where it's easy to get to them, such as on or near a flat river trail, but a different game entirely to spread them out. Our hills and the terrain in general are famously difficult to traverse, so let's use that to our advantage, shall we?

My goal, as played out and achieved, went like this:

• Week #1: South up a hill. I climbed Josephine Street in the South Side and explored Mount Oliver, before heading out Brownsville Road into the neighborhood of Carrick. I saw few cyclists in this part of town, not surprising as this area is all hills.


• Week #2: North Side, near the river where it's flat. I met up with an old friend who works as a barista in one of the local chains, Crazy Mocha, and caught up on what's new and doing with her.


• Week #3: Between the rivers. I had been in a crash only a couple days earlier and still quite sore, so kept it simple, another Crazy Mocha that's the café in the main branch of Carnegie Library, just prior to the observance of a ghost bike placement (first anniversary thereof) just a few yards away.


• Week #4: A distant diagonal. Allegheny County is roughly round, with rivers going off on three diagonals, NW, NE and SE. I rented one of the city's HealthyRide bike-share bikes and rode southeast, out the GAP trail to McKeesport, some 17 miles each way, taking a side trip into Duquesne. The side trip was a little unsettling. While I was tying up the bike at a possible destination, three teenage girls started questioning me about the bike and why I was there. They assumed that I'd stolen the bike, and were incredulous that I'd biked from downtown. Every answer I gave prompted ever more probing, to the point where I started to feel unsafe, and so left. Even at that, I didn't get out of town before being asked by a motorist what sort of bike I was on. Needless to say, here was another town where I didn't see a single other cyclist. Rather disheartening, in fact. They'd never heard of the bike-share system, and couldn't believe people use bikes as transportation. If this was part of the point of coffeeneuring, to get out into the environment we live in and learn about it, it succeeded. I eventually got coffee and dinner in McKeesport, the next town on the trail.


• Week #5: Northern suburbs. I live north, so needed a destination I was not already familiar with. Because of time, I didn't get started until late afternoon, so opted to replicate my son's commute by bike to his job at a local Panera. I ran video of the trip there and showed it to him later. Apparently I made a wrong turn and ended up in weeds taller than I was, which he found hilarious. Oh well, sense of adventure and all that.


• Week #6: West. The western part of the city, and its suburbs, are very difficult, even dangerous, to get to. There are only a couple of ways to do it, none of them safe or pleasant. I rode a sidewalk along the one major street, West Carson, where a cyclist was killed only days after the road was reopened after a three-year construction project.


• Week #7: South, near the river where it's flat. Actually on a Tuesday, since I knew the coming weekend was overbooked. I took in my last trip at a local coffeehouse, Big Dog. I was also looking for a particular church building, part of a game we play in Pittsburgh called Tag-o-Rama. Figure out where someone has taken a picture of their bike -- in this case, in front of an unnamed church -- post the photo, then go somewhere else to take a pic of your bike in some spot that someone else has to figure out where is. So this trip was part of that game, and a reason to go exploring that part of town. I didn't find the tag, but did find some great coffee.

For a couple of these rides, I made use of alternative starting locations and ways of getting there, or home. Three of them, I used the HealthyRide rentals, starting downtown. Two others, I used the bus to get me home afterward because of the amount of stuff I was carrying. Our company moved to a new location during the ride series, and I took the opportunity of being downtown to take bagsful of stuff from my old desk home, rather than try to pack it. For me, much of the difficulty of coffeeneuring is the 10-mile trip each way just to get anywhere that isn't north, and then that again getting back home, probably in the dark. Getting hit within a mile of my house commuting home one night didn't help.

Still, each of these rides was eye opening, getting me to experience new parts of town, or known parts in new ways. And isn't that the point?

Being passed unsafely

Some people should not have driving licenses. A license indicates you have knowledge of the rules of the road, and apply them in the second-by-second navigation of the roadways such that you can get where you are going safely. If you cannot or will not do that, you should have no such license.

Tuesday, 22 Nov 2016, again I did not die at the hands of an idiot motorist, nor did another totally innocent motorist who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. I was returning home from work, and used the bus to get 90% of the way home. It takes less than four minutes from exiting the bus to standing inside my house. The 0.9-mile trip on Perrymont should be simple, just a short climb then a half-mile downhill. Should. But often isn’t.

There are two blind crests going west off of McKnight, the first at the top of the aforementioned climb, the second a bit later before the big descent. It was at that second one Tuesday night that someone passed me, at speed, at the very top of that crest, and very nearly hit an oncoming car head-on. They were both going 35+, and missed each other by less than 50 feet.

Front video. The incident occurs just after :50, or 20:04:58 on my camera's clock (which was an hour fast).

Rear video. The car at :25 is fine. It's the second one, at :50.

You can see in the rear video that the guy made no attempt to slow down. He just saw me in the lane, changed lanes, passed, and pulled back in. Which would have been fine if there hadn’t been oncoming traffic he could not possibly see.

It's easy enough to figure out what he was thinking. It's a sense of entitlement, a belief that one should and must proceed at least at the speed limit, without ever needing to be delayed for anything. Absent any other traffic, motorized or not, this driver would be going 40 or better, on a road posted 35. I've lived in my house over 25 years. This is simply how people drive, not just here, but everywhere.

But you cannot. If you see an obstruction in the road, be it a cyclist, a garbage can that fell over, a disabled motorist -- whatever -- and cannot see the way clear ahead, you slow down, or stop if necessary, until you can see the way clear. If you will not do this, you should not have a license to drive.

This has nothing to do with a cyclist's right to use the road or where in the lane I happened to be at that moment. This is all on the motorist. The motorist passed me at the very top of a blind hill. Had I been a mere 15 yards farther along, that would have been either a full head-on crash, hood ornament to hood ornament, or an immediate swerve back into his lane, taking out the softer target -- me -- similar to how he might have been trying to avoid a raccoon.

What else could I have done? Even if I had been stopped on the shoulder, he would have moved over the center line at the top of the grade, still colliding head-on but headlight to headlight. So, no, it's not on me to move over or do anything differently. It's for that motorist to lose the sense of entitlement that says, "I shall not be delayed even the slightest."

PA plate ZFY-8649, pickup truck, could not tell make, model or year.

2016 Coffeeneuring #6 - West

Six hours later than I wanted to get out the door, but here I am in Stowe Twp, adjacent to McKees Rocks, a western trolley suburb. I am seated in 1905 Eatery, a really nice restaurant that's beyond my budget, big time, but it's about the only choice in town that isn't leaning against the wall of a convenience store. I got here right at opening time, 4pm. The featured entrée is a crab cakes special at $28.95. I'm hoping to get out of here for $15. I did look around for alternatives, but there really weren't any. Morning and lunch, there were other choices, but not late afternoon on a Sunday.

On a positive note, though there's not a bike rack in sight, this town is straight out of the 1950s. I found a parking meter solidly rooted in the concrete sidewalk and just as solidly bolted together. Back in the days when a nickel bought something and quarters were serious revenue for a small town, this old meter is the best thing to lock a bike to, and anywhere else, they're becoming as rare as getting a Buffalo nickel in change.

Nothing like a solid old parking meter that still takes nickels to lock a bike to. pic.twitter.com/nWB1ta8atP

— Stuart Strickland (@bus15237) November 13, 2016

I was their first customer of the night, so they hadn't even put a pot of coffee on yet. Talk about fresh! That, and the little pitcher of creamer contained real half & half. Dinner itself ended up being this yummy eggplant appetizer.

Wow, that's an appetizer? At least I won't leave here hungry! #coffeeneuring #6 pic.twitter.com/mXulZMXiYc

— Stuart Strickland (@bus15237) November 13, 2016

For the trip over here, I chose to go outbound on West Carson Street. For those unaware, this road is a death trap for cyclists. PennDOT rebuilt this road down to bare dirt, a three year project that wrapped up only three months ago. The cycling community objected strenuously to the rebuild design, but they ignored all that and built it their way without substantive deviation from the original plan. Sure enough, only nine days into the road's opening, there was a fatal cycling crash. My plan today was to travel the same way as the cyclist who died, to see if I could discern anything. I ran front and rear video but will comment on that separately. All that matters here is that I used the sidewalk, not the street, to get out here.

The sidewalk is rideable from the West End Bridge to Stanhope Street on the McKees Rocks border, but as with any sidewalk, there are pedestrians, it's too narrow for two bikes to pass side by side easily, knotweed blocks half the available space, and sight lines at the few intersections are almost non-existent. This will not scale, if any significant increase in bike traffic happens. This was a gorgeous Sunday afternoon in mid-autumn, but I didn't see a single bicycle between WEB & MR. Any guesses why not? Thanks for nothing, PennDOT.

For most of that distance, there would be plenty of space to add a bike lane, using the suggestions we originally gave them at a December 2011 design meeting. Another thing they should do is use an existing abandoned railroad bridge to get cyclists across West Carson, as part of a larger project to provide a bike route from Rocks into downtown. Instead, they plan to tear down the bridge, even though it's in nobody's way, has plenty of height clearance, and is not in danger of collapse. Again, short-sightedness on PennDOT's part, and precious little else, is behind this logic.

I did keep the final bill to sub-$15, with tip, my upper limit for coffeeneuring runs.

For the trip back, I considered taking the bus, but thought it would be interesting to try the horrid road at night, with cameras rolling. Turned out to be no worse than I am used to dealing with on any other road. I did not take the sidewalk, but used the road itself. Traffic was light, and everyone who passed me gave me the required four feet of space. This is a single 14-foot lane, with a 10-foot center lane that is really a second outbound lane that is totally unnecessary for most of its length. Fourteen feet is wholly unnecessary for a 35 mph road, but it does make it at least possible for light traffic to get by without difficulty. I rode this the entire distance from McKees Rocks to the entrance to the South Side Trail by 1600 West Carson.

From there, I rode Smithfield Street through the city, to 9th Street, to East Street, to Perrysville Avenue, then up Perry Highway to home. Most of this was uneventful, except for the last 100 yards of Perry before the turn onto my street. Only then, literally within sight of my house, I get nearly sideswiped by a white Cadillac whose driver had trouble figuring out how to get into an empty passing lane.

Thus concludes six of my seven coffeeneuring runs around Pittsburgh. Only one left, the South Side Flats.

2016 Coffeeneuring #5 - Northern suburbs

If the Oakland Carnegie Library was my ace, this was playing my next highest card. I live north of the city, so the challenge was to bike to someplace new, or in a new way, north of the city, but not the North Shore, and far enough from the house to qualify.

My choice was the McCandless Panera, if only to replicate my son's commute. He works at this very restaurant (though not the day I went there), and commutes by bike, but I had never traveled there via his route.

The first 3/4 mile is identical to my trip to the bus in the morning, but he makes a left into the nursing home, where he cuts through a parking lot, a fence, and a yard, then down a steep hill, into the parking lot for a new bit of suburban sprawl -- a parking lot for a hotel, a gym, and a restaurant. I almost did this without error, but did not see and so overshot the mowed path, and ended up bushwhacking my way through 30 feet of tall weeds.

Normally I would prefer to avoid national chain restaurants, but I also know how the business works, so the best way I knew to keep my son employed was to give the place some business. Plus, I needed dinner anyway, and it was getting late. I wanted to ride earlier, but the To Do list at home took priority, and further had to hook up my lights to Bike #2. The whole point of having Bike #2 operable is so he or I can hop on it on a moment's notice to make this exact trip. Coffeeneuring simply made the drill a more enjoyable chore.

I don't know where he ties up his bike, but I could not find a single rack in the entire set of restaurants in that little sprawlplaza. The only post that I could fit the U-lock around was a temporary sign I could pick up which weighed less than the bike. I will not lock to trees. I ended up wedging it between a bush and the wall of the building.

[Update: New photo] In my rush to get out the door, I forgot the cell phone. Here is one pic of my meal, a still from my helmet cam.

I also managed to get a video of the ride (here), and this pic of the receipt. The chili and sandwich were decent.

From Saturday night, my #Coffeeneuring trip to the McCandless Panera. pic.twitter.com/5QfKnetI12

— Stuart Strickland (@bus15237) November 8, 2016

The trip back was uneventful, the biggest concern being that it was now dark. I somehow found my way back up the path through the grass to the nursing home, then it was the usual 3/4 mile on Perrymont I already know pretty well. All told, round trip was about five miles, barely enough to qualify, but certainly with a good deal of exploration and experimentation under my belt.

Only two more rides to go in my Pittsburgh series -- level south-of-the-rivers, and west of town.