Kathy:They still don't understand that bicyclists need to be on EVERY road, not just the ones they think we'll be riding on.

In contrast to this, the San Francisco County Transportation Authority has developed a smart-phone based application (available from iTunes Store), Cycle Tracks, that bicyclists can use to automatically upload their routes to Traffic Engineering servers for their analysis:

“CycleTracks uses the iPhone and Android’s GPS support to track users’ bicycle trip routes. Specify a purpose for each trip (commuting, shopping, exercise, etc.), tell the app when to start and stop recording the ride and, at the end, data representing the purpose, route, date and time are sent to the Transportation Authority’s servers.”

about Clairmont Drive, i live right around there and for one i have not seen one single bit of traffic caused by the bike lanes, and two the side streets DO NOT go the same place as Clairmont Drive. i don't know if that makes sense but basically that are where the bike lanes are there are no side streets you can take to bypass Clairmont Drive without going very far out of your way. thats why i was so excited to see the bike lane go in. that bike lane could not be in a more important spot for cyclists. it's worth fighting for. i will now ride it more just so that the neighborhood see's more bicycles on it even though it takes me out of my way.

beany:
That is fabulous news! The cops should also patrol once a week on bicycles in non-uniform. Ticketing all the naughty drivers will bring in tons of revenue for the city.

Better be careful, as people will start demanding that they nail the bike salmoning, red light running hipsters next.

Can't We All Just Get Along - a blog about how the presence of "bike subcultures" is divisive and counterproductive to creating a "mass bike movement": Don't miss the "us vs. them" examples - right on the money!

markphilips:SF increased the program to 9 Sundays for 2010. I plan to be there next year.

I am certainly going to try to make it to some of these next year - thanks for posting!

Njord Noatun:Can't We All Just Get Along - a blog about how the presence of "bike subcultures" is divisive and counterproductive to creating a "mass bike movement": Don't miss the "us vs. them" examples - right on the money!

I don't see how the PnP (Paint 'n Path) vs. vehicular cycling debate fits the us/them paradigm, the way, say, roadies vs. tri-athletes does.

To me, PnP vs. VC is a disagreement about which way to go. It's like a boat sitting in the Honolulu harbor with half of the crew wanting to go to Japan and the other half to California. You can agree to disagree all you want, but you still have to decide which direction to go. And maybe that means not going anywhere until that can be decided. Staying in Hawaii isn't as bad as dragging the half that favors California to Japan, or the half that favors Japan to California, is it?

The link to the example of the "Vehicular cyclists vs. fans of road infrastructure" blog provided in "Can't We All Just Get Along" article is broken, but here it is fixed:

http://austinontwowheels.org/2009/12/09/vehicular-cycling-versus-bike-lanes-why-they-are-both-right-both-wrong-and-why-bike-boulevards-matter/

Good comments, too.

il Pirati:The zealots often become the most vocal opponent of City cycling plans.

Good point, and a major reason why these discussions can be so divisive, and ultimately counterproductive.

The Moderators will be watching this thread for any signs of discussions getting out of line, whether in public posts or PMs. For now, "taking the lane" and related discussions are strictly verboten here. This will remain in effect until members prove that they can discuss the topic in a civil, non-confrontational, and professional manner and without personal attacks.

bikingbill:I know this sounds radical, but perhaps a compromise between the two groups (Vehicular Cyclists and Facilities Advocates) is possible.

I agree and think there is a lot of room for compromise.

The austintwowheels.org link that I cited above suggested a compromise. Others have suggested bicyclists should be able unite to oppose discriminatory laws like 21202 and 21208. With mandatory use eliminated, most VC advocates would not have as much, if any, objection to onroad segregation.

bikingbill:
One has to acknowledge that the bike lanes (except for some Hassidic 'Hoods in NYC) are not going to go away. So maybe cooperation on doing this right makes sense. Mainly:

Careful what you wish for... there is something to be said for bike lanes that are substandard... we're not legally required to use them! 21208 only requires use of bike lanes that have "been established on a roadway pursuant to Section 21207", and 21207(b) states that "Bicycle lanes established pursuant to this section shall be constructed in compliance with Section 891 of the Streets and Highways Code.".

But yes, of course, a standard bike lane is generally less of a problem than a substandard one. A few years ago when they were repaving and restriping Torrey Pines Rd up the hill out of La Jolla up to UCSD, and I noticed that the hash marks they put in designating where the bike lane stripe would go would result in a substandard (narrow) bike lane, complained, and they came back and redid it.

1. Going to a dashed line before an intersection and running the lane to the LEFT of a Right-Turn lane.

In San Diego and most of California that is already the case. The dashing seems to have no practical difference over the solid stripe (cyclists going straight mostly stay in it, motorists turning right mostly stay out of it).

While bike lanes to the left of a right-turn lane are certainly less problematic than those to the right of, the same problem exists with bike lanes to the right of right-or-straight lanes (which exist at almost every intersection that does not have a dedicated right turn lane). This is probably the single biggest problem with bike lanes - that it sets up bicyclists for right hooks, but it also encourages bicyclists to ride too far right as they approach intersections (that don't have right only lanes), which makes them more vulnerable there to right and left cross types of crashes. Some say that most cyclists ride too far right even on streets with no bike lanes, so you can't blame the bike lane for poor positioning, but there is no denying that an official marking clearly suggests that bicyclists are supposed to ride there, and it makes it much more difficult to get everyone (motorists, police, as well as bicyclists) to understand that bicyclists are often better off moving further left in those situations, well outside of the space demarcated by the bike lane stripe (solid or dashed).

bikingbill:
2. Keeping the lane away from the door zone.

Sounds good, but very few places have the roadway width for a 4-5' wide door zone buffer in addition to a 4-5' wide bike lane, on both sides of the road. Having said that, it sounds like they might have been able to do that on Clairemont Drive, but the other problem is that there is no standard for this. The buffer, if marked by paint, ends up being a "traffic island" which is technically illegal to drive (or ride) on, so motorists can't even legally park there. The other choices are to create an 8-10' wide bike lane (which is wide enough to invite motorists to drive in it), or a 12' wide parking lane. The latter idea might be best since motorists are still required to park within 18" of the curb regardless of the width of the parking lane. But, again, this option is not viable on most streets due to lack of space.

bikingbill:
3. Standards for width etc..

As an example of bike lanes done right, I would pick Irvine, CA (yes IRVINE) where the lanes are really LANES. 6' or more on width and away from the door zone.

There are standards already.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/hdm/pdf/english/chp1000.pdf

Are you suggesting getting the standards changed/improved? That's very difficult to do. The standard for sharrows, for example, allows for a minimum placement that is right in the door zone.

Serge:
There are standards already.

http://www.dot.ca.gov/hq/oppd/hdm/pdf/english/chp1000.pdf

Are you suggesting getting the standards changed/improved? That's very difficult to do. The standard for sharrows, for example, allows for a minimum placement that is right in the door zone.

The standards you listed (thank you) have been completely ignored on La Costa Ave (Carlsbad) and Highway 101 in Solana Beach.

Here is a Google Map over the Berkeley bike network (existing boulevards in blue; proposed boulevards in red).

And some random photos:

Berkeley has the gridded street layout, commonly found in urban design prior to the mid-20th century, that lends itself particularly well for bike boulevard type of solutions. Many sections of San Diego have the same layout, including Uptown, Downtown, Beaches, National City, Chula Vista, Imperial Beach and Coronado.

Motorists would only experience minimal disruption, if any, if streets such as Utah and Monroe (as examples of north-south and east-west bike arteries) were reconfigured into bike boulevards.

This is my favorite thread on SDBikeCommuter.com

In fact, I wrote a blog entry dedicated to it and to what I've called SD's new bike blog community. In Bic Control's (pronounced like 'mic control') Best of 2009 entry, I explain why it is that the new bike blog community (which includes SD Bike Commuter) is the Best Bicycle Advocacy Development of 2009.

This forum, and particularly this thread, have functioned as highly purposeful platforms for forward-thinking constructive advocacy discussion.

Keep it up everyone.

Having grown up in the San Francisco/Bay area, I was amazed to hear that San Francisco has such a small and 'organized' critical mass. This is a city that I knew for throwing protest over anything.. After all, the lead singer for the Dead Kennedy's ran for mayor and actually forced a run off election waaay back when. I spent a week there recently, on foot. If we took the bike friendliness of Portland and the car-centric ideal of San Diego, and smashed them into one: you'd get San Francisco. Their bike Coalition is about as broad as it gets; there are bike racks all over the city, especially down town ~ just a lot of open access to everything bike wise. I don't want to delve to much into the sharrow/bike driving topic, but there seems to be a huge amount of share the road idea going on;

And what was even more cool: people seemed to simply co-exist:

I even saw a bus WAITING FOR A CYCLIST... something I rarely see in San Diego. Two other cool things that I would like to see in San Diego: A permanently closed section of street, painted and laid out to help people practice riding in traffic. It was painted with stop signs, multiple lanes, turn lanes, bike lanes, sharrows, nearly all basic traffic situations, but closed off permanently for cars. It was even signed in a way that made it seem open:

^^^^ now that's funny stuff!

How BOGOTA beat cars

SPACE BIKES


See Page 15 of CarBusters online magazine

There's an anti-cycling hate fan page on Facebook, that's getting a lot of membership

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Theres-a-perfectly-good-path-right-next-to-the-road-you-stupid-cyclist/190080667052

It's got nearly 35,000 fans at the moment, though a fair amount of people who've joined it are apparently cyclists trying to argue with the idiots, which tends to not be a useful endeavor.

There's a group trying to get it removed as well:

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=235515394023

22 Weird & Somewhat Useful Bicycle Facts for Staying Green on 2 Wheels - The more we know about bikes, the more we can love them.

Think you can go a track stand?

8. The slow cycling record was set by Tsugunobu Mitsuishi of Japan in 1965 when he stayed stationary for 5 hours, 25 minutes.

11. There are roughly one billion bicycles in the world (about twice as many as motor vehicles).

Bicycles use 2% as much energy as cars per passenger-kilometer, and cost less than 3% as much to purchase.

Funny quote I saw:

"Inside every car is a person trying to get out!"

William:Not exactly about bikes, but something from the LAPD: "driving is not a right"

http://la.streetsblog.org/2010/01/08/lapd-completes-sting-on-unsafe-drivers-in-south-los-angeles/

Driving a car is not a right, but driving a bike is!

Bob Mionske covers this in his latest column:

Bob Mionske:The roads are common spaces, and their use is an ancient right for all -- except motorists. The state allows them to use the roads, and far too often that revocable privilege is misinterpreted by motorists as having some sort of superior right to the road. More often cyclists are endangered by drivers who are simply too distracted, or otherwise too careless, to even notice the cyclist whose life they have just endangered. And just as cyclists notice -- and remember -- the occasional dangerous motorist, it is the occasional rude cyclist that motorists notice and remember. It is these minority of bad actors on the road that lead to much of the resentment toward each other.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oew-mionske12-2010jan12,0,394431.story

i really like this quote from the "cyclist are drivers!" page

Dan Gutierrez
"I've been dealing with CM up close and personal for over a decade in LA and Long Beach. I know what the participants say, but this in no way excuses blatantly socially disruptive, non-driver behavior. Or to put it another way; you first have to act like a driver, to be treated as a driver! CM is a form of group non-driver behavior for the purpose ... See Moreof disrupting individual drivers. I've even had the immensely infuriating experience of being blocked by corkers when in a queue on a side street when a criminal mass went by. There is no excuse for cyclists who through their socially disruptive behavior impede the travel of cyclists acting as drivers."

Serge:
We need a video like that for San Diego. Where, on what "challenging" streets, would you want video shot? What else?

Anywhere on Torrey Pines Rd, and particularly riding westwards in the area Prospect [/shudder].

Not that any sane person would be willing to risk his life riding here, mind you, even if it were for a few seconds of YouTube fame...

Serge:What else?

The first things that sprung to mind were already named.

Some ideas:

Fern/30th North from Veloculture all the way up to University or maybe even Madison? Lots of single lane each way with parallel parked cars in there.
Southbound Pacific Highway between Laurel and Hawthorn
Northbound India Street/San Diego Avenue between Laurel and Old Town
Southbound Pacific Highway from Leucadia Blvd to Cardiff -- if you do it on a heavy traffic weekend, there will often be cars parked in the bike lane (illegally) along the beach in Cardiff.

Njord Noatun:

jay: riding from La Jolla Shores to that little shopping center on Torrey Pines where Rimel's Rotisserie is.

You certainly got the brunt of it, then!

I am certainly not overly scared of riding in traffic, but I get off my bike and walk the sidewalk between Coastal Walk and Prospect. (I know that Serge takes the lane here and expect him to chime in soon!).

From there I go up to Virginia Way or down Prospect/Park Row.

When I rode that stretch a couple weeks earlier, not riding alone, we rode on the sidewalk. This time I was alone and thus felt freer to take risks, plus there were people walking on the sidewalk, which is really narrow there. So I cowboy'd up and took the lane, riding my solid 7mph up the hill.

In retrospect, the sidewalk, either ride or walk, would have been safer for me. On the other hand, I did have the right to use the road there, even at 7 (ok, 6) mph, and I hate giving up my right to the commons just because other people are employing internal combustion engines to dominate them.

Really it was kind of a losing situation for everyone. Like Global Thermonuclear War. The only way to win is to make it so people never have to drive.

jay:

Njord Noatun:

jay: riding from La Jolla Shores to that little shopping center on Torrey Pines where Rimel's Rotisserie is.

You certainly got the brunt of it, then!

I am certainly not overly scared of riding in traffic, but I get off my bike and walk the sidewalk between Coastal Walk and Prospect. (I know that Serge takes the lane here and expect him to chime in soon!).

From there I go up to Virginia Way or down Prospect/Park Row.

When I rode that stretch a couple weeks earlier, not riding alone, we rode on the sidewalk. This time I was alone and thus felt freer to take risks, plus there were people walking on the sidewalk, which is really narrow there. So I cowboy'd up and took the lane, riding my solid 7mph up the hill.

In retrospect, the sidewalk, either ride or walk, would have been safer for me. On the other hand, I did have the right to use the road there, even at 7 (ok, 6) mph, and I hate giving up my right to the commons just because other people are employing internal combustion engines to dominate them.

Really it was kind of a losing situation for everyone. Like Global Thermonuclear War. The only way to win is to make it so people never have to drive.

So, the bike lane ends at Coast. What works for me (like I said, for 8 years without incident):

1) Before I get to the end of the bike lane, I look back over my left shoulder to see what traffic is doing. My goal is to gain control of the rightmost lane before I cross Coast. If there is a gap, I go ahead and move left right away, even before the bike lane ends (legally, I'm approaching a place where a right turn is authorized, onto Coast, so I'm covered by one of the exceptions in 21208). If there is no gap and no one is yielding simply due to my look back I initiate negotiation (using a clear left arm turn signal), but this is rarely necessary. Usually I can continue out of the bike lane and ease leftward into the lane.

2) Soon after crossing Coast the right side opens up to create the narrow uphill right turn lane. That's for me about halfway up the hill, give or take given the speed and volume of traffic. If the light is red at Prospect traffic might be stopped and backed up most if not all the way to Coast. Or it might be green and the lane wide open with 35-40+ mph traffic. All this must be taken into account. But, like I said, I usually go up in the center of the right turn only lane about half way up the hill, sometimes further, before I merge left.

3) It's tempting to ride the stripe between the right turn lane and the adjacent lane, but this rarely works out well. It's much better to clearly move into the rightmost through traffic lane. If traffic in that lane is stopped, I sometimes continue up in the right turn lane until I find a space to squeeze into behind the first or second car stopped at the light.

4) After crossing Prospect I usually use the bus pullout section to allow 1-3 cars to pass, but then I look back and signal and move (if there is a gap or once someone yields) into a clear lane controlling position. At this point I usually repeat to get into the left lane and then the left turn lane to turn left on Exchange, but to continue on down the hill I just stay in my lane controlling position all the way.

Watch that video I posted above of driving a bike in Orlando for an idea of where you need to ride in narrow lanes that are comparable to those on this section of Torrey Pines Rd.