With winter finally seeming to have been beaten, it’s time to take this blog out of its seasonal (albeit never planned) hibernation.

There’s been a lot of attention paid in the past few weeks to a pilot project that would see the city create a segregated cycling route through centretown on a trial basis. The Sun was the first to report on it on March 15th (though doesn’t have most of the details exactly right and is pretty slanted against), Centretown News followed up on the 26th (their details are right, but they managed to get some names wrong), and the Citizen has something published today. Note all stories talk about different events: the Sun followed the original presentation to the Roads and Cycling Advisory Committee (full disclosure: I’m chair of RCAC. I  write here as an individual), the latter follow Councillor Holmes’ stepping in to propose the creation of a different consultation mechanism.

I think that there’s lots to be optimistic about in this. Given that this will be a bit of a first for Ottawa (at least in the core). My impression, at least based on what RCAC was told, was that the plan was to begin meeting with other community and business groups. What is being proposed here is to make the consultation process more formal. That might slow things down a bit, but I’m not sure that we would have seen any changes this cycling season in any case. It’s more important that we do what is needed to make sure that everyone is comfortable with the process and is able to contribute as much as is possible: it’ll produce a better result, and it will help avoid infighting amongst various road users/business groups/residents.

Now, in The Citizen Holmes’ suggests that downtown was listed as an option, but the cycling plan calls for considerations of larger east-west routes, which is true. I think that the idea of a downtown route for the pilot has more to do with it being an area where there is a good concentration of places to go, local residents, and people commuting in. There’s also already a lot of bicycles. That’s a good mix for a first project, and is probably different than if it were farther from the core.

City officials have asked police to begin cracking down on both cyclists and motorists. Police have said they are planning a cycling safety blitz for next month.

Talk about blaming the victim. The five cyclists who were hit were doing everything right and (allegedly) were injured because the car entered their lane and hit them. Even in the case of the man who was injured in Gatineau, who was not wearing a helmet, it still doesn’t make the accident his fault.  The simple fact remains, the vast majority of cycling injuries (as I’m sure many readers can attest) occur because drivers simply don’t think about cyclists, they turn right in front of us, open their doors as we are ridding by or fail to give us the 3m space the law grants us.

Cracking down on cyclists who don’t have a bell or ride through a red light isn’t going to solve this problem. If the city were to take a similar approach to drunk driving, they would have a blitz to ensure everyone wears a seat belt. That would be insane and people would rightly be up in arms about it yet this slides by as two lines at the end of a news report. This isn’t to say that safe cycling programs are a waste of time but seriously, crack down on the thousands of cars each day who fail to follow traffic laws just as you would crack down on people who drive under the influence. That just makes sense so why can’t the city see it?

It is easy to say this was a random act which could not be predicted but I think what this really demonstrates is in order to make cities safer for cycling the municipal government can’t just paint some bike lanes on a road, call it a cycling plan and then sit back. In order to make cycling truly safe, other vehicles have to respect cyclists for the vehicles they are under the law. This necessarily means a shift in how drivers think when they are behind the wheel of a car. It means checking for cyclists as well as cars when they open doors, turn right and fly down the road at night. I believe that both the provincial and municipal government has a role to play in changing the driving culture of their particular city and province. While a previous commenter pointed out that thousands of cyclists co-exist with cars without problems every day, these events clearly show we are a long way from where we need to be.

Finally though, how do you do this:

“He angled into the lane, brushed up against the female cyclist, hit the other four — who are the ones who are in bad shape — and then carried on out,” he said.

Then just keep on driving? He is charged with five counts of failing to stop at the scene of a collision causing bodily harm but in my mind this should be on par with attempted murder. He had no idea if any of the people he hit were alive when he left the scene. His intentions were exactly the same regardless of the condition of the victims, the law should treat them the same not be subject to whether all of the victims survive.

A fascinating article appeared on The Infrastructurist this weekend which argues that by removing highways, the cities of Seoul, San Fransico and Portland actually reduced traffic. This seems counterintuitive but according to the Braess Paradox, as more roads are built, each driver tries to optimize their own route resulting in greater congestion. If this still sounds like abstract mathmatics read about it on wikipedia. When this idea is coupled with the induced demand phenomenon or Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams syndrome the effect of additional highway construction because dubious.

“It’s a virtuous cycle,” says Dr Julie Hatfield. “The likelihood that an individual cyclist will be struck by a motorist falls with increasing rate of bicycling in a community. And the safer cycling is perceived to be, the more people are prepared to cycle.”

The researchers say studies in several countries have shown the incidence of motorists colliding with cyclists or pedestrians actually declines as more people ride or walk. The reason, they say, is simple — the more cyclists motorists see, the more aware they are of cyclists in general and more safely they drive. Rising cycling rates mean motorists are more likely to be cyclists, and therefore be more conscious of, and sympathetic towards, cyclists.

The findings run counter to conventional thinking, which holds that more cyclists means more chances for collisions. While the numbers do increase in absolute terms, a city that doubles its cycling numbers can expect a one-third drop in the per-cyclist frequency of a crash.

Those original predictions still fit with these conclusions, of course, since they were referring to absolute accident numbers, but it’s very encouraging to know that any individual cyclist’s odds of collision go down as ridership goes up.

Unfortunately for Ottawa, off-road pedestrian paths haven’t been incorporated into the dataset yet – so walking directions will ignore the entire NCC path system. Hopefully, they’ll be incorporated in the future. For those curious about the time estimates Google Maps serves up, apparently is 3 miles / 5.1km per hour – so adjust according to your own speed.

Hopefully OCtranspo gets back to him with a useful response.

Another cyclist, apparently, did. They passed me, just as I started to move after the light turned, and hopped up onto the sidewalk. They then slowed down, just long enough to sternly admonish the driver, telling him that “this space is reserved for bicycles.” They then continued on their way.

The driver yelled back, incredulously, “I’m loading a wheelchair!”

Let’s repeat that, bolded for effect: a wheelchair.

Needless to say, I was equally incredulous.

And pissed off.

Cyclists should rightly complain when there are cars or trucks parked or stopped in bike lanes, and such vehicles should be ticketed or towed, as appropriate. MyBikeLane.com dedicates itself to tracking such actions. But the one exception that everyone should be able to agree on is Paratranspo vehicles, where it would likely be more dangerous for all involved for them to stop on the opposite side of the street than it would be for me to dart around the bus. Bike lanes are supposed to make cyclists safer (or at least feel safer), and it is beyond reason that we should create situations where other people are put into harm, especially in light of physical limitations that they may face.

Moreover, even if you don’t accept that, this is not a fight cyclists will win, and therefor is one we shouldn’t take on. Let’s take on Fedex. Let’s take on Canada Post. Heck, you can even take on the police, if that is your desire. But you will hurt the cause far more in picking a fight with Paratranspo than you could possibly gain in precluding them from occasionally stopping in bike lanes.

So, I want to say “sorry” to that driver. I doubt he’ll ever read this, and I’m sure I have no actual responsibility or need to do so. But I’m sorry that some asshole suggested that in some way you were improper in doing your job, which just happens to be providing people access to the mobility, and the associated freedom and independence, that we cyclists are always preaching about.

And to the person that caused this whole fuss: Thanks for helping the cause, douchebag. I’m sure that the driver will now forget the half-dozen other cyclists that passed him at that same time, and probably the hundreds he saw through the rest of the day, and just will remember your one reactionary comment. It’s a great test to see how 6 seconds of thoughtlessness can colour a person’s view, and everyone he talks to, of our sort of commuter for a long time to come.

The real question, left unanswered in the CBC article, is how on earth the cyclist got caught in the snow blower in the first place. I understand the vision of the snowblower driver is probably limited, but presumably he could see far enough ahead to see the cyclist well in advance; these things are also pretty loud and slow, and so it’s curious how the cyclist didn’t hear it coming or was moving slow enough to get caught in the blades.

None the less: I’ll be glad when the snow is gone.

-Mike