Bicycle Friendly Cities
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May/June 1999
Features
Bike Friendly Cities
by Lucinda Means
Undermining the Dunes
Auto Industry Greed is Destroying Our Most Scenic Treasures
Motor City Challenge
Ecology Center Demands Cleaner Cars from Auto Industry
by Jeff Gearhart and Charles Griffith
Columns
Great Lawns
A Great Lawn with No Toxic Chemicals, by Nancy Franklin
Great Lawns without Grass, by Bret Rappaport
Welfare for Waste
National Coalition Calls for End to Anti-Recycling Subsidies
Healthy Home and Garden
Growing Herbs in Your Backyard, by Mimi Mather
The Cranky Consumer
Toxic Waste "Recycling?" by Mary Beth Doyle
Capitol Watch
New from Lansing: PR for Toothless DEQ
At the Ecology Center
Reuben Chapman, Hospitals Pledge Mercury-Free, Help Wanted, Wish List
What Would It Take to Make Them in Michigan?
by Lucinda Means
Our state's population, including our children, is the most obese in the nation. Our roads are a bedlam of stressed-out SUV'ers going mano a mano with one another, rocketing over moonscape roads while brandishing car phones. Mini vans shuttle busily and dizzily with children immersed in play dates, lessons, games, mall crawling and, all too often, other sedentary activities. Ironically, families move further out into former farmland tracts in search of the better quality of life for their kids and render them prisoners of the farflung cul de sac. Sadly, these kids are more likely to be killed or injured in a car crash in the "safe" suburbs with all the requisite driving that entails than be the victim of street crime in the "old neighborhood". Their families drag behind, like the tail of a scorpion, the commercial development offering the goods and services these "pioneers" demand.
Unlike driving, bicycling improves quality of life for individuals and for their communities. Both are healthier, less stressed, and have more disposable income if bicycling is accorded its rightful place on the road. This means incorporating bicycling as a legitimate part of a rational, equitable transportation plan.
In many Michigan municipalities, if bicycling is considered at all it's viewed almost exclusively as a child safety problem. All too often a well-meaning city or town, rightfully horrified by the death or serious injury of a child cyclist, enacts a mandatory helmet law, always applicable only to children, and considers the problem solved. While well-intentioned, this step does nothing to encourage cycling as a legitimate mode of transportation or prevent bike crashes.
All over Michigan policy makers, traffic management professionals, law enforcement personnel and the general public don't yet grasp the reality that all kinds of people bicycle. All ages, all races, all incomes and for all kinds of reasons. Many adults cycle for transportation by choice or out of necessity. Approximately thirty percent of all adults in Michigan don't have access to a car. Rather than being recognized as legitimate road users, bicyclists are often lumped in together as either little kids with training wheels or as arrogant Lycra clad road warriors blowing stoplights in pace lines.
The League of Michigan Bicyclists is working hard to help Michigan move toward a better, more balanced transportation system. Various state and local government agencies, as well as private groups, are cooperating on numerous initiatives, but much remains to be done.
Education
Michigan desperately needs a K-12 bike safety curriculum with a pre-prepared Driver's Education module that is standard to all school systems and private sector providers. The LMB and many of its member clubs regularly do bike safety presentations in schools statewide. These talks are given by volunteers and use different approaches tailored for different age groups, starting in kindergarten. Unfortunately, with very few exceptions, no presentations happen in either the private or school-presented drivers education classes mandated by the state. This means that thousands of new drivers have no idea how to share the road with bicyclists or how to act when they themselves bicycle.
Education, for all road users, has to continue beyond high school. Under the auspices of the Michigan State Police, the Office of Highway Safety Planning (OHSP) has created the Two Wheeled and Special Vehicle Action Team. Over the last three years this Two Wheeled Action Team has become more supportive of bike safety programs that go beyond helmet programs. The Annual Traffic Safety Summit, sponsored by OHSP for crash prevention professionals, now regularly includes bicycle and pedestrian workshops. Even so, the funding available through the OHSP still tends to focus mostly on helmet programs and child safety education.
A "Continuing Education" program for both motorists and bicyclists would go beyond these programs and focus on sharing Michigan's roads. It could include changes to the "What Every Driver Should Know" manual and to drivers test questions, regular Public Service Announcements, articles in both motorist and bicyclist magazines in Michigan, and even utility bill inserts. It could include education programs for commercial drivers similar to the program by the Michigan Trucking Association "No Zone" program. The adoption of standard road signs relating to bicycle use would also help educate all road users.
The Effective Cycling curriculum developed by the League of American Bicyclists offers a model of continuing education for cyclists. (They are also working on a Motorist Education module). Occasional classes are held in various parts of Michigan, but the classes are privately funded and taught by volunteers with full time jobs and other demands on their time. Formal collaboration among the LMB, OHSP, Secretary of State, and Departments of Transportation and Education adopting the EC curriculum would save time, money and, most importantly, lives.
An important part of education is promoting helmet use for adults and children. The family group out riding with the kids wearing helmets and the adults wearing baseball hats and golf visors is too familiar a sight. Bicyclist injuries and fatalities need to be recognized as a public health issue that affects everyone in the community. The state and individual communities should cooperate on a statewide helmet usage promotion and educate all cyclists, not just children, about helmet use without resorting to helmet laws.
As the most frequent kind of media attention cycling garners is either coverage of a recreational event or of a horrific crash, the public and the media need to regularly hear that bikes belong on the road. We need to send pro-bicycle Letters to Editor and opinion pieces to the print media, if for no other reason than to offer counterpoint to curmudgeonly letters demanding that bikes be relegated to sidewalks. Articles about all aspects of bicycling -- tourism, health and fitness, commuting and traffic reduction -- should also be presented to the print media. They need to hear about the more than 250 bike shops in Michigan, the hundreds of special events (many of which raise money for charity) and the millions of dollars poured into Michigan's economy by homegrown and imported velo-tourists every year.
Engineering
Proponents of bicycling and other alternative modes need to publicly and persistently ask that bike facilities -- paved shoulders, wide right lanes, striped on-road bike lanes, off-road bike paths, well-designed bike racks -- be included in all local, county and cross-county transportation projects. In order for cycling to assume its rightful place in the transportation mix, the shifts in transportation planning and design to include bicycling have to become standardized across the state. In the last few years MDOT and several Metropolitan Planning Organizations have become increasingly sensitive to and functionally supportive of bicycle transportation planning, but the effort is piecemeal rather than part of a concerted, comprehensive plan.
The Federal Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act of 1991 (ISTEA), re-authorized last year as the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA 21), mandates that every state that receives federal transportation funding must have a Non-Motorized Transportation Coordinator. Michigan's Department of Transportation Non-Motorized Transportation program is staffed by one full time professional, Mike Eberlein, and one half-time professional, Cindy Krupp. In contrast the Road and Bridge program has 2,500 staffers and the public transit program has 200.
Recently MDOT reorganized its regions so that the state has 25 Transportation Service Centers (TSC) to give communities a local MDOT contact familiar with the area. According to Eberlein, the challenge is to continue MDOT's efforts to educate local TSC staffers and headquarters staff about bike and pedestrian transportation needs. "There are broader ramifications to the highway and road transportation decisions we make. Even resurfacing or widening roads has a ripple effect on communities' well-being, " said Eberlein.
State and local road engineering professionals are hearing and heeding the concerns of bicyclists and pedestrians. In Fiscal Year 1999, MDOT has set aside $100,000 for training its own staff and those of communities in Michigan on the best practices for Non-Motorized Transportation (NMT) engineering and planning. MDOT and Metropolitan Planning organizations such as SEMCOG, Lansing's Tri-County Regional Planning Commision, Grand Traverse and Grand Valley have brought in national experts on NMT programs, traffic calming and livable communities. In the last two years, Dan Burden and colleagues from Liveable Communities, Inc, a Florida non-profit, have trained dozens of transportation professionals across Michigan in good bike and pedestrian design practices and programs. Dr. Alex Sorton of Northwestern University's Traffic Institute taught Michigan engineers bike/ped practices. Walter Kulash, hosted by MDOT, led charrettes on neo-traditional design in Frankenmuth.
National organizations such as the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials are working on bicycle transportation planning and practices manuals - another resource Michigan communities can use as they engineer bike-friendly streets.
Enforcement
The essence of the enforcement message has to be Equal Rights and Equal Responsibilities for all road users, or it is doomed to fail. The LMB's "Same Roads, Same Rights, Same Rules" promotion campaign strongly voices the responsibilities of cyclists, as well as their rights.
Many law enforcement professionals do not readily grasp the need for requiring both cyclists and motorists to use the roads safely. Many police officers are pressed for time and buried by paperwork and ignore transgressions of the vehicle code by and against cyclists and concentrate on "real crimes." All too often in a car-bicycle crash they automatically assume the cyclist was at fault and will point blank refuse to ticket the motorist. Also, when a municipality builds infrastructure for bicycles, it must require appropriate use, including sweeping, maintenance and ticketing cars parked in the way.
Encouragement
There are 40 local bike clubs in the state, providing incentives, group activities, peer pressure and support, educational materials and presentations as well as numerous club rides for all levels of cyclists. Some also provide group riding skills training, mentoring or "Bike Buddy" programs and racing teams for junior and senior cyclists. The LMB encourages cycling by printing and distributing 50,000 bike Event Poster Calendars annually.
The three premier non-motorized advocacy groups-- the LMB, the Michigan Mountain Biking Association and the Michigan Chapter of Rails to Trails -- are working together to win legitimacy for cyclists. Dwain Abramowski, Executive Director of MMBA, said recently, "It sends a very powerful message when the directors of the three state bike groups walk into a meeting together, with a common agenda and common goals. " "We're all after the same thing, access and equity for our constituents," he adds. The three organizations' members and volunteers continue to prove that they are willing to work hard on projects that benefit them and their communities across Michigan. MMBA's various chapters volunteers do hundreds of hours of trail work annually as well as local community service projects.
Nancy Krupiarz, State Director of Rails to Trails Conservancy (RTC) in Michigan, commented that the everyday person won't always understand that bikes are a means of transportation unless and until he or she can see a network of roads and trails we can use. According to Krupiarz, transportation decisions are strictly driven by the road building lobbyists. "Big bucks pays for the laws laying down more roads and not considering bikes," she said.
Krupiarz further stated that uncontrolled development and sprawl make it harder for bicyclists. The ambitious Southeastern Michigan Greenways project upon which RTC is embarking will try to link together the remaining open spaces that part of Michigan still has to help make those communities more livable.
Linkage and common ground were recurring themes in Krupiarz' comments. "People need to be able to easily get to urban green spaces without having to put their bikes on a car and drive to it because there's no connected bike network. She pointed out that if public places are closer together it would be much easier to link public transit and bikes together. It's timely to note that the Lansing area bus system, CATA, is within a few weeks of outfitting its entire fleet of 85-90 buses with front loading bike racks that hold two bikes. Additionally, CATA will be installing bike lockers with space for 12 bikes in three locations. Ann Arbor is also planning to likewise equip its bus fleet.
In conclusion, much is being done by public and private groups but lots more still remains to be done. Public funding sources for bike and pedestrian projects need be identified and earmarked appropriately. Public/private partnerships need to continue and focus on all aspects of bicycling, promotion, facility design and construction, fair enforcement of the vehicle code, and lastly, education.
Move Over! Some Cherished Myths about Cycling are Dangerous to Bicyclists
by Lucinda Means
MYTH: Bicycles must always stay to the right.
REALITY: Traffic experts recognize that in many situations bicycles should not ride to the far right. Many states' vehicle codes specifically list conditions under which bicycles should move into the traffic lane and ride with other traffic. They include: lane too narrow to safely share with a car; to avoid debris, glass, potholes, rough pavement or parked cars; to operate correctly as a vehicle at intersections; and when passing or turning.
MYTH: Bikes belong on the sidewalk.
REALITY: Sidewalks are dangerous for bicyclists. Most motor vehicle crashes occur at intersections, and sidewalk riding turns every driveway into intersection. Drivers are scanning the roadway, not the sidewalk, for other vehicles. Neither motorists nor sidewalk-riding bicyclists can stop in time to avert a crash.
MYTH: Bicyclists break laws. They don't deserve respect.
REALITY: Car drivers break laws too, yet are not held responsible for the behavior of other drivers. All road users are responsible for their own behavior and for sharing the road safely. All road users deserve courtesy and respect from other road users.
MYTH: Bicycling with traffic is dangerous and stupid.
REALITY: If all road users, motorists and bicyclists alike, share the road safely and obey traffic laws, the danger is much decreased. If roads are properly designed for all modes, everyone will be safer.
MYTH: Bicyclists have to be elite, young athletes with unobtanium frames and expensive accessories.
REALITY: Cyclists range from small children to octogenarians with everything from $10 yardsale bikes to $4,000 custom bikes. Most cyclists are just plain folks who ride for pleasure, for fitness, for socializing and for transportation.
MYTH: Riding a bicycle is easy, you just get on and go, right?
REALITY: Much of what people have learned about bicycling from their parents, police and schools is both wrong and dangerous. Safe bike riding practices have to be taught, transportation in general is more complicated than it used to be.
MYTH: Cars can pass bicycles anytime.
REALITY: When the lane is too narrow, motorists should wait until the next lane is clear and accord a bicyclist all the rights of any other slow-moving vehicle. The safest way for everyone is to slow and let other cars pass, merge left to pass the bicycle leaving at least three feet between the car and the bicycle.
MYTH: Car drivers pay taxes, bicyclists don't.
REALITY: At $20 million to $40 million per mile of highway, vehicle and gas taxes don't even begin to cover highway costs. Then add local streets, mostly paid for from local property, income and sales taxes. Overall the U.S. DOT estimates that every car gets at least a $2,000 to $4,000 subsidy each year from other taxpayers.
MYTH: Roads are for cars.
REALITY: Roads are for transportation as they have been for thousands of years. Pedestrians, farm tractors, animal drawn vehicles, motorcycles are all entitled to share the road. Bicyclists have same rights and responsibilities as motorists.
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