Category: Active Transportation

Yet another criminal

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I was assaulted by a vehicle driver today on J Street. Assault includes intent to harm with a deadly weapon, which is a motor vehicle, and does not require actual battery. Having learned my lesson from the last incident, I got the license number and vehicle description right. I did not get enough of a driver ID to press charges, but it will at least go on their record.

The details:
3VFM067 CA
White Toyota 4-runner, not new
White male young
J St eastbound at 10th St
Occurred about 6:25pm, 2012-05-29

A white Toyota 4-runner driven by a young white male attempted to intimidate me off the roadway by using his vehicle as a weapon. The driver gunned their engine at me for a block, and then passed within 3 inches, I felt the mirror touch my arm. I was traveling in the rightmost lane at about 20 mph. There is no bike lane in this area, and the lane is not wide enough to share. The other two eastbound travel lanes were open, at a time of light traffic, so the driver could have easily passed but chose to intimidate me. I caught up to the person and asked why he would use his vehicle to kill another person, and he flipped me off. Another vehicle immediately following did the same thing, passing too closely, so I suspect the two drivers were traveling together.

Incident 12-146316
Responding officer R. Cabrera, Sacramento Police Department

Bike Score

Dan Allison1 Comment
Bike Score for Minneapolis, with “heat map”

Walk Score/Bike Score offers an assessment of the bikeability of any location. It is available in any browser at https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works. The Redfin app shows walk score, bike score and transit score for each listing (scroll way down). Walk Score is based on the distance to the places people want to go, such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, schools, parks, libraries, bookstores, fitness locations, drug stores, hardware stores, and clothing & music.

The next stage from the folks at Walk Score, Bike Score, is now available, for a select 10 cities. There aren’t any big surprises, Minneapolis, San Francisco, and Madison are at the top.

Sacramento is not on the list of 10. If you’d like to see it there, you can go to the Bike Score page and tweet a vote for it. Please do!

Walk Score also recently released Transit Score, where Sacramento is listed, as 22 out of the 25 largest cities with accessible transit data, at a score of 32. Both the Bike Score and Transit Score are created at a city-wide level, unlike the address-specific Walk Score. So these rankings are just first steps, but nevertheless interesting and useful.

You may have seen articles in the media recently about the high correlation between walkability and housing prices, with walkable communities in high demand and unworkable suburbs in the doldrums. This is good news for all of us. Walk Score was in fact designed as a tool for helping people find real estate and apartments in places that fit their desired lifestyle. As the correlation between walkable, bikeable, transit-dense communities and livability becomes more clear, resources (societal and personal) will be shifted away from the suburbs to urban areas.

Bike to School Day

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

Mariemont Elementary, full bike racks on Bike to School Day

Today, May 9, is the first official Bike to School Day (BTSD).

Mariemont ES in San Juan USD had 78 bicyclists, all wearing helmets.

I’ll be posting more local information as it becomes available, but here are some national posts to get started.

League of American Bicyclists blog: Happy Bike to School Day

Fastlane blog (US Department of Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood): First-ever National Bike to School Day gets kids on two wheels–safely

Utility pole in the bike lane

Dan Allison1 Comment

Note: I have moved this post here from my personal blog, since it fits better here, and it is the post that got me started on this blog.

The photos are of a bike lane with a utility pole in the middle of it. This is Fair Oaks Blvd westbound, just west of New York Ave, in the Carmichael area of Sacramento County. The first photo is from a distance, showing the clear bike lane markings. The second photo is closer, showing the pole dead (yes, DEAD) center in the bike lane.

I can think of a million irate things I’d like to say about this situation, but perhaps I’ll restrain myself and let the photos speak for themselves. I will say that, though this is the most egregious bike facility hazard I’ve seen in Sacramento County, it is far from the only.

   

Vigilante drivers

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

I’ve been thinking about a post on vigilante drivers even before starting this blog, but my experience yesterday means this is the topic for today.

vigilante: any person who takes the law into his or her hands, as by avenging a crime

Yesterday afternoon is was riding home from Howe Avenue Elementary School, there to provide lessons in pedestrian safety. Southbound on Howe Ave, there are no bike lanes, but there are three traffic lanes and traffic was light. As I rode in the middle of the right-most lane, 11 or 12 feet wide, not wide enough to share with a motor vehicle, vehicles changed lanes to pass, in a smooth flow of traffic, and I had gone quite some distance with no issues. One vehicle behind me decided to do otherwise. The driver started honking and yelling, and when I did not move out of the lane, accelerated hard past me, coming close enough that I felt some part of the vehicle brush my sleeve. It is hard to say whether she intended to kill me or to intimidate me, but in either case she was acting as what I call a vigilante driver. These are people who are sure that it is illegal for you to be riding your bike on the road, and since no law enforcement is present, decide to take the law into their own hands and become judge, jury and executioner, using their vehicle to carry out the punishment. Read More »

Aggressive midtown drivers

Dan Allison2 Comments

I’ve only lived in midtown a while, but from the first it was clear to me that here was a walker and bicyclist paradise, at least in comparison to where I’d lived before, Carson City, and where I work, Citrus Heights. It still seems a bicyclist paradise to me, but I’m seeing the dark side for pedestrians. This may be a recent development, or perhaps I’ve just become more aware of the reality. Though I bike more than I walk, I’m certainly a pedestrian too, and there are a large number of pedestrians in midtown.

Many drivers in midtown are aggressive towards pedestrians. At times I think this is mostly commuters who live elsewhere and just work here, but at times I’m sure it includes the people who live here as well. Driver behavior I see on a daily basis:

  • Speeding: drivers exceed the posted speed limit, especially on the one-way streets
  • Failure to yield: drivers do not yield to pedestrians in marked and unmarked crosswalks; this is a violation of the law
  • Failure to stop: drivers do not stop in additional lanes when one driver has stopped; this is a violation of the law
  • Aggressiveness: drivers do not yield to pedestrians waiting to use marked and unmarked crosswalks; this is a violation of human decency

Read More »

Car free

Dan AllisonLeave a comment

my Volkswagen Golf, under snow - I biked this day

I’ve been car free since August 2011, when I finalized my move from Carson City to Sacramento. I have been trimming down use of my car, driving less each year. This was not an insignificant accomplishment, given that in the not too distant past I regularly drove 25,000 mile per year, but the final year it was down to about 3,500. I never brought my car over from Carson City, instead loaning it to a friend who used it sometimes, and I used it sometimes when I was in Carson City and needed to transport things for work, or to the Goodwill as I was also gradually getting rid of many of my possessions. And I eventually gave it to her. I think fondly of my car, as it was cute and reliable and got me where I needed to go, but I don’t miss driving it.

I had been thinking about becoming car free for a long time, and wondering what it would be like. The questions, the raised eyebrows, of my friends and acquaintances made me think it might be a big deal, but in the end it turned out to be pretty much a non-event. All it took was a commitment to planning out my life better and not using the car as a crutch for lack of planning or forethought. It just isn’t part of my life anymore, and unless people ask me about it or I write a blog post on it, I don’t think about it.

Read More »

Walk Score

Dan Allison2 Comments

Walk Score offers an assessment of the walkability of any location. It is available in any browser at https://www.redfin.com/how-walk-score-works. The Redfin app shows walk score, bike score and transit score for each listing (scroll way down). Walk Score is based on the distance to the places people want to go, such as grocery stores, restaurants, coffee shops, bars, movie theaters, schools, parks, libraries, bookstores, fitness locations, drug stores, hardware stores, and clothing & music.

I live at O St and 16 St in mid-town Sacramento P and 12th in downtown Sacramento, which has a WalkScore of 85, very walkable, shown at right. The R St and 16th St corridors, which have higher scores, are easy walking distance. The Neighborhood section of the app offers Walk Score, Transit Score, and Bike Score, but for the entire neighborhood of downtown, not for specific address.

The browser interface offers more information, for both specific addresses and general areas such as Sacramento. The graphic below is only part of the web page. Note that the results from the app and the web site are not the same, and I don’t know why, but they are similar enough that it should not make a big difference.

The exact algorithm that weights these amenities is not public, but you can get an idea by selecting the Street Smarts Walk Score option. Having six grocery stores within 0.6 miles, eight restaurants within 0.2 miles, and eight coffee shops within 0.3 miles supports my score. One critical item not on the list is farmers’ markets, which I would weight very highly, though the seasonal nature of most farmers’ markets might be a challenge. The closest one to me is two blocks away, but it only runs May through September. It is only 1.4 miles to the year-round farmers’ market at 8th St and W St. Some performance theatres show up in the movie theaters category, but some of them do not, so I’d make that a separate category since plays are such an important part of my life.

Read More »