Better Bike Lanes…Really?
I just read a post on Fast Company about Los Angeles-based designer Joseph Prichard’s proposed Better Bikeways. In a nutshell, Josh believes better signage will accomplish two things: encourage others to bike more often and make bike lanes safer.
Whoa, whoa, whoa. Josh must be one of the “early adopters” who traded in his mountain bike for a cool fixie. You know, the guy who suddenly thinks he’s a road warrior living the crazy life of a New York City bike messenger because he flip-flopped the hub on his older brothers 1980 Nishiki and started wearing Gore-Tex capris. The kind who’s been riding his bike for a whole 4 months and is now one of the thousand or so entitled single-speed cyclists who demands respect while commuting to his graphic design job in Venice.
But I digress.
Let’s talk about the first goal, encouraging others to bike more often. I don’t know about you, but a well designed traffic sign isn’t enough to encourage me to start riding my bike to work. I raced bikes competitively for a short period of time and my brother is a highly accomplished triathlete who logs hundreds of miles per week on his bike. If you want people to change their routine and use a bike instead of a car, the major barriers needs to be addressed…safety and urban sprawl.
Knowing how far it is to a bike shop is irrelevant for 95% of people who cycle on a regular basis. Chances are, if you cycle more than once per week you already know where these shops are located. You also have a pretty good idea how far your end point is thanks to “new” web tools like MapQuest and Google Maps. Not to mention for about $20 I can install a computer on my handlebars that displays this info in real time. The whole bus-schedule/bike route-map idea is useless as well. It’s more suited for the eco-tourist who’s opted to rent a bike for two weeks instead of a red Sebring Convertible from Enterprise–yeah, good luck with that. The truth is, someone who cycles the same route to work on a daily basis will find these signs useless.
Now let’s talk about safety. How do these signs make current bike lanes safer? Uh, they don’t. Sorry Josh, but if you haven’t noticed already the only people more entitled than a mob of hipster cyclists are soccer moms in Escalades. Call them what you will, but the average driver (especially in Southern California) could give two shits about your purple signs. In fact, some of my friends openly admit to running down cyclists or pinching them between parked cars. As appalling is it may sound, it’s the truth. Not a day went by when I didn’t encounter at least one “close call” with a motorist and it had nothing to do with lack of road signage. At first, it pissed me off but as I became more experienced I came to understand that it’s driver apathy and an assortment of in-car distractions that make riding so dangerous. Cars rule the road–they always will–and the only way to make bike lanes safer is to take them off the road.
This will probably never happen here in LA or in San Francisco or New York or Boston. Our cities were not built to accommodate the masses efficiently and the cost to build such a system would be astronomical. To be honest, I don’t know what the answer is. I wrote a business plan years ago for a system that inserted RFID chips into cycling shoes. The chip frequency would trigger flashing lights embedded into the road and as the cyclist traveled through designated, high traffic areas the lights would flash alerting nearby motorists. The signal could also trigger alert chimes inside cars equipped with the right software. Talk about expensive. Plus, I could just imagine one of my buddies hearing that alert in his new BMW and taking aim.
I don’t mean to sound hard or cynical or rip Josh’s idea, but I’ve just experienced too much frustration and anger from riding the roads in Southern California. I’m all for cycling to work but until it becomes less of a death wish I’ll gladly drive.
Changing behavior is the mark of truly good design. Personally, I don’t believe this system (or my system for that matter) will do it. Maybe I should just move to Amsterdam where bike and car seem to coexist fairly well? Maybe I’ve just becoming too frustrated with drivers in Southern California? Maybe this would make a good thesis for grad school?
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