Lee Trampleasure's Blog

200 people can commute in:

Great poster from Seattle demonstrating the space it takes on a street to move 200 people in various modes.

Berkeley Traffic Circles – Share the Lane

No passing in circle

The traffic circles in Berkeley neighborhoods have created confusion for many car drivers. One of the difficulties is knowing how to interact with bicycles. The Bike Friendly Berkeley Coalition’s email chat list has been discussiong what signage could be placed at the circles to help drivers understand how the circles work. One of the main concerns is to let drivers understand that they cannot pass bicycles in the circles (there’s just not enough space). I developed the sign on the right as a draft sign to provide an image of what a sign could look like. Click on the image to see it larger.

And here’s a second version, including a pedestrian:

Traffic circle sign #2

It was interesting to discover that in the US, it seems that all pedestrian sign icons show the pedestrian walking from one side to the other. I found a pedestrian walking forward on a German sign.

I’m sure that if either of these gets selected by the city, professional graphic artists will modify them using standard images and font (mine approximate standards).

The 15th Annual Bike to Work Day is Thursday, May 14th, 2009

The San Francisco Bay Area’s 15th Annual Bike to Work Day will take place on Thursday, May 14, 2009. Bike to Work Day is the premier bicycling event taking place in all of Northern California with all nine Bay Area counties participating in the celebration. The event is just one day of many events taking place in May as part of National Bike Month.

Complete details here: http://btwd.bayareabikes.org/

“Day lighting” or “Peek a boo”: pedestrian safety at intersections

From Eric McCaughrin at East Bay Bicycle Coalition:

Another great clip from Streetfilms. This time, they show how removing parking spaces around intersections (“Daylighting”) can greatly increase visibility for pedestrians and cyclists. Even better: the reclaimed space can be used for low-cost bike parking.

In Berkeley and other Bay Area communities, similar kinds of treatment have been done with pedestrian bulb-outs. These bulb-outs are hideously expensive (particularly when there are drainage issues). Simply plopping bike racks in that space accomplishes the same thing, without the huge cost.

If the video doesn’t show up above, you can see it at StreetFilms website here:

www.streetfilms.org/archives/daylighting-make-your-crosswalks-safer/

Two hundred people can commute…but how would Lenin do it?

Great poster on the ferry. Be sure to click on the larger image to see all the details.

The options shown in the poster are: By car, by bus, by light rail, and by bike. Very descriptive.

Then, there’s Lenin in Seattle: A guy found this in the former Czechoslovakia, bought it for its artistic importance, and brought it to the US. You can buy it for $250,000 if you have a better place for it.

Bicycles in Paris

I’m on a nine-day trip to France with students from my school (the benefits of sharing my classroom with a French teacher!), and we spent the last couple days in Paris. Paris is doing some good things to get more folks on bikes, including rental bikes all over town:

Rental bikes similar to but easier than City Carshare. You buy a 30 Euro ticket for the year, then you go to one of the many stations around the city and wave your card over the lock on a bike. You then have it for 30 minutes for free. After 30 minutes, it’s about one Euro for each hour, but it seems like most folks have figured out that you just ride it for 25, then swap for another bike, and it stays free.

I can’t find a link to the city’s info on it (and most of us probably can’t read French anyway), but here’s an NPR story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14429468

Also, lots of nice bike routes, both on streets, off streets, and on streets but segregated for bikes and buses only.

I uploaded photos to my gallery at http://trampleasure.net/lee/gallery/main.php?g2_itemId=538
if you wants to look at them. I haven’t had the chance to add captions to most of them yet, but I hope to soon. (If you hit the “View Slideshow” link in the right menu, you can have them automatically rotate through at whatever pace and size you desire).

Bicycle maps on Google: Petition

A great group of folks (GoogleMapsBikeThere.org) have developed an online petition to request that Google add “Bike There” check box to Google Maps.

If you haven’t explored Google Maps recently, it’s worth checking out. One of their options for directions is “Avoid highways” which is halfway to a bike friendly mapping experience. Google has also added a “Take Public Transit” option, and they are adding more transit agencies as you read this.

One of the options being suggested is a “Shortest Bike Route” and “Most Bike Friendly” options. The second option would take you on bike routes whenever reasonable (they’d have to figure out some way of deciding how much longer is acceptable for the bike friendly route: 10%, 20%, etc.) .

Take a moment to sign the petition: www.petitiononline.com/bikether/

Remember, having bike friendly mapping software not only helps bicyclists, but also lessens the number of bikes on busy roads and sidewalks, as well as getting some cars off the road when people discover how easy it is to bike.