Google Maps Bike There…for a safer, healthier, happier world. :-)

Are you a member of the Law & Order Brigade (L&OB)? Then you have a wonderful opportunity today!

It seems that the women of Saudi Arabia (that repressive, authoritarian, extremist, torturing state supported with billions of US taxpayer dollars — yet described in the US corporate media as ‘moderate’) are about to start breaking the law, en mass, just like stop sign-running cyclists here in the USA do every day — click the image to see the full video (Warning: NSFL&OB):

I, for one, can not stand for this. I plan to write my Congresscritter immediately and demand that they demand that the women of Saudi Arabia obey the law — the women of Saudi Arabia simply must not be allowed to drive, as it is against the law, and the law must not be broken. Further, if some women in Saudi Arabia do dare to drive, then I will implore my representative to implore the dictatorship government of Saudi Arabia to punish these outlaw women to the fullest extent of the law.

If you are with me, please leave a comment with your full name and email address so that the women drivers of Saudi Arabia will be able to thank you for your extreme magnanimity in making sure that they remained true to the ideals of modern authoritarianism — to unquestionably obey all laws, no matter how unjust, no matter the consequences (assuming we ever hear from them again).

Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter.

Tip: World Citybike email list.

I’m not sure why a Japanese game show-type thing happened around one of the stations (presumably to celebrate the 100 Millionth trip), but it’s pretty darn funny:

The PDF press release has a few more details, including this quote from the Paris transportation person:

As this milestone of 100 million trips illustrates, Vélib’ continues to go from strength to strength. In the 1st quarter of 2011, Vélib’ had over 5.5 million rentals, the best 3-month period since the scheme was launched. Vélib’ has proven to be an up-to-date, efficient, non-polluting means of transport, well suited to the mobility requirements of the wider public. As I frequently find myself repeating, Vélib’ is breaking new ground. It is a relatively new scheme that has never been rolled out on such a large scale before and it will inevitably require fine-tuning if we want to continue improving the quality of the service offered to the large numbers of its users. We will continue to work hard, building upon today’s celebrations to ensure the success of Vélib’ in the future.

Annick Lepetit, Deputy Mayor of Paris responsible for travel, transportation and public spaces.

More here.

It’ll be interesting to see what types of numbers will be possible as Paris and other cities gradually provide more safe and comfortable places to ride.

BIXI Toronto has launched. This is a really big deal.

I like the ‘human-powered transport is a human right’ argument as a good reason to support public bike-sharing systems, but the ‘relieves (auto) congestion‘ reason is solid, too, and will appeal to drivers as well. Of course, with gas prices, I think banging on the ‘gas prices!’ drum is a good idea — we need to allow people to get around under their own power, save some money, etc.

Toronto is a major city (somewhat unlike DC), it’s in North America (unlike Paris), and it’s English-speaking and culturally-similar to US cities (unlike Montreal). If located in the US, Toronto would be our 4th-largest city. It’s the 5th-largest sports market in North America, with several professional sports franchises. It’s a financial center, has at least one world class university, was home to Jane Jacobs for the second part of her life, has a transit system that wasn’t completely dismantled by General Motors, etc. Now, Toronto has bike-sharing (actually, it had a small system a few years back).

Reading through some of the opening press accounts, I found this interesting tidbit:

There are also wider concerns that there is not enough existing cycling infrastructure in Toronto to support the program. Bike lanes have yet to materialize in the numbers we were promised back in 2009, and major thoroughfares like Bloor Street remain potentially dangerous for cyclists.

The writer just takes it for granted that cyclists need to be able to ride the major thoroughfares of the city safely — not the minor ones, the major ones. I agree.

Not quite sure I’d have picked black as the color of the bikes — not an easy color to see. And don’t like the ads all over the bikes and stations. And I still want some bikes with child seats.

But, at least the Toronto bikes will stay on the street all year long — unlike in Montreal, where they take the bikes off the streets in winter. I really have no idea what drove that decision — it just seems weird to me.

As far as I know, Boston is the next significant US city on tap. Chicago is toying with the idea of bike-sharing – they have some promo stations set up. Miami is rolling along nicely (more) — and check out that basket! [Miami has almost the same flag as India. Now, if we could get bike-sharing to take off in India before motorization is completed there.] New York City is talking bike-share, but as far as I know it’s still just talk.

With Toronto coming online, it’ll provide some learning and political cover for bike-friendly New York City pols — not to mention some more protection for cyclists from angry cops, drivers, and wealthy people bent on keeping non-rich people down. Soon, it will probably be seen as grossly irresponsible to not have a bike-sharing system in your city. Mayors and councillors will have to explain why they’re foot-dragging on the expansion of bike infrastructure. Removing bike infrastructure will become very difficult-to-impossible — there will just be too many people crowding any existing infrastructure, and biking will enjoy much more popular and political support (naturally).

Well, we can hope.

With bike-sharing taking the world by storm, Google is looking prescient for their decision to invest in bike directions. I knew bike-sharing could work and probably would work, but I had no idea it would be so influential so quickly. Now, if we could only get Google bike directions on the iPhone (they are available on Google/Android-based phones). Ride The City’s iPhone app is $2.99 and includes Toronto. Google bike directions are available for Toronto — just not on the iPhone (yet?).

Congrats to our brothers and sisters in Toronto — living the bike lifestyle up there just got a bit easier today.

Toronto Launches Bike Share Program by NewsLook

More video here. Silent ad.

Rode into work today — won’t be doing that again for a while (ever?).

Admittedly, I have a low tolerance for suffering indignities, but this morning was just no fun. People who bike in America and other bike-hostile locales around the world are my heroes — they should be treated as such.

Black Like Me (wiki), of course, is the story of a white guy who, in the crazy-racist 1959 American South (not that the North was exempt), disguised himself as an African American/black guy and traveled around the South to see what the daily experience of being black was like. It was an eye-opening experience for author, John Howard Griffin, and for much of America.

Riding a bike is not the same thing as being African-American, of course, but both cyclists and African-Americans are often subjected to unjustified, random violence and threats of violence, and often are hated, just for being black or just for riding a bike. The lucky part for many cyclists, however, is that many of us can just hop off our bikes tonight and never pick them up again.

There is a great profile of John Howard Griffin in the Washington Post, written just four years ago, in 2007. There may be a lesson here for the cycling community:

Thus began Griffin’s six-week odyssey through the South, a journey that took him from New Orleans to Mississippi, Alabama and Georgia. In March of the next year Sepia published his story, and in 1961 an expanded version was published as a book, “Black Like Me.” The cumulative effect of the magazine story, the book and all the attendant publicity — Griffin was interviewed by the television journalists Dave Garroway and Mike Wallace and featured in Time magazine — was astonishing. The book became a bestseller. It awoke significant numbers of white Americans to truths about discrimination of which they had been unaware or had denied.

I was one of them. In 1961, I was 21 years old, newly graduated from Chapel Hill. I had written sympathetically about the emerging black protests for the student newspaper, but I was deeply ignorant about the truths of black life in America. That it took a white man to begin my awakening is, in hindsight, distressing, but Griffin’s story managed to put me in a black man’s shoes as nothing else had. (My first readings of James Baldwin’s essays were still a couple of years in the future.) “Black Like Me” had a transforming effect on me, as apparently it did on innumerable others. That it has remained in print for more than four decades is testimony to its continuing influence, in great measure because it is taught in high schools and colleges.

How do we get drivers to understand what it’s like to be a biker? Obviously, one answer is to build appropriate infrastructure so we can allow more ‘regular people’ to bike — not just thrill-seekers, or only young males, or the indigent, etc. But what else can we do?

Being terrorized on the road is such a common occurrence for cyclists that many of us just take it for granted. Most of the time it doesn’t even warrant a phone call to police because we are confident we won’t be taken seriously. Subjecting ourselves to violence and threatened violence is just something one signs up for if one decides to ride a bike in America, and in many parts of the world. It shouldn’t be this way. We could really use a ‘Black Like Me’ for cycling. Even a full accounting of the violence and threatened violence that cyclists experience on a single day could be very useful to help sensitive drivers to what it’s like out on the roads as a cyclist — to help build support for common standards of decency and new and better laws to protect cyclists.

I’ve wondered aloud about trying to get newspapers to run a ‘Ask A Cyclist!‘ column — because drivers are typically the most ignorant of road users, and cyclists are typically the most knowledgeable, and much of the harassment and violence drivers direct at cyclists is because drivers are ignorant of the law. “Get out of the middle of the road!” or “Get on the sidewalk!” are just two of the more-common battle cries. The ‘Ask A Cyclist’ column would be a take-off on the ¡Ask A Mexican! column. The wiki says this:

Every week, readers submit their questions based on Mexicans, including their customs, labor issues, and illegal immigration. Arellano responds to two queries a week in a politically incorrect manner often starting with the words “Dear Gabacho.”

If I had a sense of humor or could write, I’d try to do it myself. Any takers?

Update: Impeccable timing: some teens wanted to provide me a good example of unjustified violence against bikers.

I’m going to continue to pick on New York City as long as they continue to put their citizens in danger. The latest indictment against The City (pdf) comes from ‘The Bicycle Scholar’, John Pucher, in his latest study of cycling — comparing 9 major US metros:

New York is a special case. Not only is New York by far the largest of the case study cities, but it has the most mixed record on cycling policies and accomplishments. Although cycling has almost doubled in New York City since 1990, it lags far behind the other case study cities in almost every respect. It has the lowest bike share of commuters, the highest cyclist fatality and injury rate, and the lowest rate of cycling by women, children, and seniors. New York has built the most bikeways since 2000 and has been especially innovative in its use of cycle tracks, buffered bike lanes, bike traffic signals, bike boxes, and sharrowed streets. Yet New York has almost completely failed in the important areas of bike-transit integration and cyclist rights and falls far short on bike parking and cycling training. Moreover, the refusal of New York’s police to protect bike lanes from blockage by motor vehicles has compromised cyclist safety. New York has much to learn from the other case study cities, which have implemented a far more comprehensive, integrated package of mutually reinforcing policies to promote cycling.

The items I bolded are all closely linked — if you provide no training/education and enforcement of cyclist rights, and allow/condone the actions of a violent, anti-cyclist police force, you will end up with high numbers of fatalities and injuries. It’s not rocket science.

And all of the anti-cyclist policy of New York City is true even before they officially launch into their new hate campaign against cyclists. And this is not just JSK and the NYC DOT carrying out this campaign — it has the blessing of Paul Steely White and Transportation Alternatives. If I’m a cyclist in New York City right now, I’m on the phone with TA, DOT, and the Mayor, and I’m saying, “Are you trying to get me killed?”

New York is important to cycling — it is the largest city in America, it’s huge on the national and international cultural stage, America is still the car capital of the world, etc. If we can manage to turn the tide in New York City, anything is possible.

But it’s not all bad in New York City — Bill Cunningham New York, the film — is out. Check out the trailer, below:

Bill is the bike-riding NYC-based fashion photographer who really gave NYC Ciclovia a lift when he started covering some of the scenes of NYC’s events, dubbed Summer Streets.

Here are some of the superlatives Bill used to describe the 3rd summer streets event in The City:

• really special
• a total New York happening
• the most extraordinary thing you ever saw
• success like you’ve never known
• everyone was out
• a triumph for bikes
• i never saw such a contraption in my life — it was terrific (about a 20-ft long bike)
• all we can hope is they repeat it next summer
• you can’t imagine what it was like — it was like the day after a blizzard, but a blizzard of bikes — if it happens again, get your rollerskates, get your inline skates, whatever you have on wheels, and get it out on Park Avenue.

Of course, every day in every city on every street, bridge, and tunnel throughout the world should be ciclovia — free to travel by bike without fear of being harassed, terrorized, or killed by marauding drivers. Who will be the next world city to take ciclovia to the next level, and do World Car-Free Day in a big way?

Hat tip: Washcycle.

If you’re going to do a bike-sharing system, you might as well do it right. I noticed a bunch of bike-sharing systems provide real baskets (Hangzhou), and some just provide a weird type of rack that seems designed to make people lose things (Washington, DC).

Here’s a shot of a typical Hangzhou bike — with a real basket:

And here’s one of a typical DC bike — with a fake ‘basket’:

Cabi bike 'baskets

At least some of the bike-share bikes in Hangzhou have child seats — here’s a younger child being carried:

And here’s an older child being carried:

Hopefully the major bike-sharing providers are also thinking about adding other niceties like coffee/drink cup holders, etc.

Hat tip: @BikeToWorkBook.

Update: I emailed a few folks involved with Hubway, Boston’s bike share system-to-be, including Alta Bicycle Share (who will be running the system), Bixi (whose bikes will be used), Nicole Freedman (Boston’s bike point-person), Eric Bourassa (from the Boston-area Metro Area Planning Council), and a couple of other folks — and to their credit, almost everyone has gotten back to me already. I heard that the bikes a) won’t have child seats, but that b) ‘people would be contacted’, and that c) ‘there are liability issues’.

Well, life is filled with ‘liability issues’ — the question is, what do you have against parents? What do you have against single moms and single dads? What do you have against some of the most cash-strapped people in our society? Are these bikes toys, or are we trying to allow people to actually live without being dependent on motorized transport, either private automobile or public motorized transport? We know that if we want bikes to become a real option for a majority of people, then we have to cater to everyone — everyone everyone, not just ‘everyone who is childless’.

And, anyone that was around for the early days of this petition knows that ‘liability issues’ was one of the main reasons cited by haters as to why “Google would never do this” — well, we know what happened with that.

Sydney has a ‘bike library’ — The Watershed Bike Library — to help parents get their kids and cargo around town — same concept. If it’s good enough for Sydneysiders, it’s good enough for Bostonites.

Update: The Bixi bikes have those pseudo-baskets with bungee cords because regular baskets “end up full of trash”. OK, no system is perfect, but we should definitely consider at least experimenting with some baskets, maybe even making them semi-transparent. Maybe each Bixi station should have built-in trash cans, complete with recycling, and a community billboard.

Update: Bixi bike ‘baskets’ useless.

So says a New Yorker cyclist who rode while in Amsterdam:

To be sure, cyclists in Amsterdam routinely ignore traffic signals, just like in New York. And pity the pedestrian who wanders on to the wrong side of the line between the sidewalk and the bike lane, which is often worn away to a shadow.

The Law & Order Brigade^TM — the folks who routinely carp at cyclists for not stopping at stop signs and red lights (and presumably also disapprove of the behavior of the millions of curfew-breaking citizens in the Middle East — outlaws!) — and even some cycling ‘advocates’ (not me, of course) often suggest that cyclists in good cycling cities/countries, like Amsterdam/The Netherlands and Copenhagen/Denmark, always obey traffic signals. I always thought that people would behave normally all around the world, and that stupid, unjust laws would be ignored by almost everyone. Maybe my instincts were correct all along?

We know that smart, just laws are often ignored by drivers every day — they often seem to go out of their way to break the speed limit on every single road they travel every single day — regardless of the death and destruction and misery these outlaw drivers rain down on innocents every day. You’d think cycling ‘advocates’ and livable streets heroes would have something to say to dangerously destructive and murderous drivers — but then you’d be wrong — at least, if we’re talking about New York City.

The takeaway? Support the modified Idaho Stop — cyclists should not have to stop at Stop signs or red lights unless someone else has the right of way — simple. Traffic control signals were created by drivers for drivers — they simply don’t apply to pedestrians or cyclists. Walkers and bikers need to do what we need to do to stay alive, we know that disobeying stupid traffic signals can make us safer, and pedestrians and cyclists will never ever obey the laws of the land while they continue to make no sense — and this argument, of course, extends to all road users, and all citizens and residents of this and every country on the face of the earth. Criminalizing safe, normal, everyday behavior has always been a losing proposition — unless your goal is to “marginalize and discard” some segment of the population — and we don’t need that kind of sick, twisted policy in the transportation world. So write your local advocacy group and ask the question — “Where are we on the modified Idaho Stop? I’m tired of getting honked at and cussed at and stared down and harassed for trying to stay alive and engaging in normal, safe, everyday behavior.”

Update: Good title — Charge of the Red Light Brigade.

I’ve gone on about this before, as have many others, but an article in the Long Beach (LA) Post about their new (somewhat flawed) cycletrack actually talked about perceived safety vs. actual safety — I don’t ever recall seeing it in a mainstream news piece before:

People are more likely to use bicycles as a primary mode of transportation when cycle tracks are available because they offer cyclists both a perceived and real sense of safety, researchers said. The study found that the chief obstacle to bicycling, especially for women, children and seniors, is the perceived danger of vehicular traffic, which the study suggests is a real threat based on corroboration by bike riders surveyed by the study’s research team.

Most of the time I’ve talked about that here, I’ve used the term ‘subjective safety’ — used by David Hembrow. And I feel like it’s a fact that we advocate-types can use to be reminded of every so often — like, maybe once a day. It’s THE NUMBER ONE REASON that people don’t bike. It’s already safe to bike, statistically speaking (except for Orange County, maybe, which seems to be on some type of mass murder spree against cyclists at the moment) — but it doesn’t feel safe to bike — we’ve gotta change that.

We just got done talking about rechanneled roads and how, even though they may make that first step towards offering a very little bit of perceived safety, they often don’t go nearly far enough. This is why I prefer to use the terminology ‘allowing‘ people to bike instead of ‘luring’ or ‘cajoling’ or ‘enticing’ people to bike — none of those are really necessary — instead, we just have to offer a very basic sense of safety — once we do that, it is likely that actual safety will begin getting better on its own, if only through safety in numbers.

Bravo to the author of the article for linking to the actual Harvard study, by Anne Lusk. I’ve seen too many occurrences (even recently) of studies that have been twisted out of sorts, unintentionally or otherwise, by reporters, so I like to be able to go to the primary sources. Anne Lusk answered a couple of my questions back in the day, so bravo to her, too. Anne is an adviser to the Bicycle City project/idea — not to be confused with the film, Bicycle City.

Presumably this new Long Beach cycletrack is the work, at least in part, of Charlie Gandy — the guy who helped deliver us the innovative (though, less-effective-than-I’d-hoped) green-sharrowed lane in Belmont Shores (Long Beach). Here’s Gandy in a Streetfilm:

I’ll be heading down to Long Beach in a few days to take in some Frosted cupcakes, along that 2nd Street corridor in Belmont Shores, and I’ll be stopping by to check out this new cycletrack, too. And since the shop co-owner of that Utopia restaurant gave cyclists props, and is gonna roll out Long Beach’s first bike corral, I’m gonna roll in there, too. And I’ll stop by Sipology, too. Hoping to see some bikes while out at the LA Times Festival of Books, too. Busy schedule!

And, who knows — maybe I’ll even run into Octavio.

Incidentally, the green sharrows along 2nd Street are good-ish and interesting and possibly nice, but they’re not enough — we need a full-on cycletrack. There are a number of ways to do it, and we’re severely constrained by the presence of one of the most disastrous anti-patterns known to urban design — the raised median. So we can either 1) scrap the car parking along 2nd, or 2) convert one of the general purpose travel lanes into a cycletrack (flipping it with the parking lane for that extra perceived safety), or 3) tear out the median and rechannel the road to provide for cycletracks. I say option 2) is the best, most direct, quickest, least expensive, least disruptive to residents and businesses and commuters, and the median, which is at least planted with various types of greenery, can stay.

Update: Down in Point 3) below, I referred to what would typically be described as a “4-to-3 road diet” as a “4-to-5 rechanneling” — but now I want to be more explicit in saying that this is another behavior we should change. This is a separate matter from potentially choosing a new term for ‘road diet’ — we should at least be accurate when we describe what a road rechanneling/diet is. If a particular road rechanneling/diet goes from 4 general purpose lanes to 3 general purpose lanes plus 2 bike lanes, then we should refer to this as a ‘4-to-5 rechanneling‘ or ‘4-to-5 road diet‘ — not a ‘4-to-3 rechanneling‘ or ‘4-to-3 road diet‘. We are going from 4 lanes to 5 lanes — so it’s a 4-to-5 conversion — simple. When the discussion gets detailed, we can talk about what types of lanes are being used and why, but it’s a 4-to-5 conversion. Also, when evidence comes in that we have increased the capacity and throughput of the road, it will make sense, because it’s common sense that expanding the capacity of a road could lead to increased use of the road (noting, as bike/transportation nerds that we are, that there are exceptions to this rule — but they are exceptions). This is just one more example of where being honest and accurate will make our lives much easier.
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Thanks to all who participated. There were lots of good suggestions.

The winner: Rechanneled road.

My personal preference is to use the easiest-to-spell-and-pronounce terms available to us — so I’d prefer we go with rechannel/rechanneling/rechanneled as opposed to rechannelize/rechannelizing/rechannelized(/rechannelization).

Most of these ‘rechannel’-related terms do not appear in any official dictionary, which is fine, but just wanted to note it.

The appropriate tenses don’t necessarily all need to be available — for instance, we probably typically don’t say, “We road dieted that road” — we say, “We gave that road a (road) diet.”

I suspect there may still be another term out there that is even better than ‘rechanneled,’ (‘road boost’ wins my heart for runner-up) but from all my reading, I believe that this term, ‘rechannel’, is better than ‘road diet’ because it will lead to better outcomes, because it will help us think more clearly about the purposes/end goals of this process of (re)creating new/better streets. Using this term will help us sell the vision easier/better — in part because it will be a more correct and descriptive term for a more correct vision, and it will avoid much of the negative stereotyping around the word ‘diet’.

So, bravo to Rich for the suggestion (don’t spend your $50 all in one place!), and the Seattle Department of Transportation (SDOT) for putting this term out there.

A couple of notes as briefly as I can manage:

1) SDOT has said that, when doing these rechanneling projects, they are mostly interested in increasing the safety of these various streets, and that installing bike lanes, and thus allowing a few people to ride bikes on these streets, is only of secondary importance to them. That doesn’t fly with me. Safety is great — really — but allowing people to make a living, to go to school, to visit the doctor’s office, to go grocery shopping — this stuff is even greater, and it has to take priority over ‘safety’. All of our roads/bridges/tunnels must, at a minimum, be made accessible to pedestrians and cyclists, including and especially the major roads/bridges/tunnels — which means they must at least feel safe — after that we can worry about perfecting our safety record.

2) Further to this point, the roads which are deemed to be ‘candidates’ for rechannelizing are, among others, those with 4 or more general (auto) travel lanes, and 15,000-20,000+ ADT (Average Daily Traffic). This, to me, is obviously insane. To me, any and every road which does not allow safe, direct, comfortable, convenient, dignified travel by walkers and bikers is a mandatory candidate for fixing, if not necessarily rechanneling. So, for instance, we can imagine a neighborhood-type street that does not really have room for separate bike lanes and/or cycletracks, so it may not be a good candidate for rechanneling, but it can still be a great candidate for fixing/traffic-calming/allowing for safe and dignified walk and bike access and/or recreation space/etc. So, using ADT as some sort of criteria for whether or not a road should be made walk- and bike-accessible and safe is nonsensical — every road needs to be made walk- and bike-accessible and safe, in that priority order, before allowing any motorized transport to travel on that road. Obviously, this means we shouldn’t talk about how to optimize motorized throughput or how to avoid detrimentally impacting motorized throughput before we’ve even made a road walk- and bike-accessible. After we’ve made a road accessible/safe/etc. for human-powered transport, then we can talk about how many private cars we can jam into and through the remaining space in some specified amount of time. [I'm planning separate posts on why pushing bikes off to side/small/slow roads is a failed strategy, and why human powered transport, including cycling, is a human right.]

3) David Hembrow’s comment is well-taken — a typical 4-lane-to-5-lane rechanneling (4 general purpose lanes to 2 bikes lanes + 2 general purpose lanes + 1 general purpose turning lane) does not do enough to provide people with the subjective safety (the feeling of safety) they will need to bike on this street. Your town may decide that it is only politically-feasible to do a 4-to-5 rechanneling, but we should at least be brave enough to propose a 4-to-4 rechanneling (4 general purpose lanes to 2 general purpose lanes + 2 buffered bike lanes/cycletracks). Be sure to read this post from David’s blog to read about more-appropriate bike infrastructure standards. Ideally, all cities in the US and around the world would know, in no uncertain terms, exactly the type of infrastructure required on every type of street. Each city can decide if it wants to provide Netherlands-level cycling infrastructure on that road, but there should not be any confusion about what the appropriate infrastructure should be. For the US, the NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide is useful, if not quite as aggressive as we’d like it to be. They are moving in the right direction by, for instance, suggesting that regular bike lanes are not good enough for roads that have car travel speeds of 35+ MPH. It’s a start. And it’s good that this manual is online. The Holy Grail of bike manuals — CROW’s Design Manual for Bicycle Traffic — is not — we need to change that. Making this manual available online could be the greatest gift the Dutch have ever given to the world — perhaps eclipsing even windmills, tulips, total football, Heineken, and cannabis. Well, they should just put the manual online.

4) There are good and bad ways to talk about why you want to rechannel a road — this is not the way I would do it. We need to concentrate on some of the myriad major benefits that are going to be delivered when we add new bike infrastructure — namely, saving people some serious bank, and providing them with some control over their lives and a sense of empowerment and ultimately, helping them regain their dignity — stealing it away from the corporate-government interests that took it away in the first place by forcing everyone into a car or bus. I would say something like this:

“Look — we have to allow people to get around on their own — it’s a human right, and it’s just not right to make people have to go out and buy a car just so they can get to work. And it’s not right to force them to wait for and sit on a cramped and uncomfortable bus and have to spend their hard-earned money just to spend some quality time with a bunch of creeps and crazy people. We have to allow people to get around under their own power, and we have to make it safe and dignified for them to do so, which means we have to give them plenty of big, wide bike lanes and cycletracks, separated from fast-moving cars and trucks and buses, because if it doesn’t feel safe to ride then nobody is going to ride, and we have to allow them to walk and ride on the major roads, because these people have places to go, things to do, people to see — they work and live and laugh and love and cry and have children and parents and loved ones just like you and me and everyone else. And we’d have to allow them to get around under their own power even if gas wasn’t 8 Zillion dollars a gallon.”

Enough wordiness.

I’ve made a ginormo-table with some of my thoughts on the terms we received. Obviously, this entire post and all related opinions are just my own, so feel free to form your own opinions and tell me how wrong I am — as well as add any more terms you may have dreamt up, read about, etc.

Name	Usage	Explanation and Disucssion
Road diet	It’s gonna get a road diet. It underwent a road diet. It got a road diet. We’re gonna road diet that road.	Simple, but bad in every other conceivable way
Rechanneled road	It’s gonna be rechanneled. It’s gonna be rechannelized. We’re gonna rechannel it. The road underwent rechannelization. The road was rechanneled, and now it actually allows a few of the hard-core types to bike on it, which is not enough, but it’s a start.	Bigger word, but makes a lot of sense — it actually makes a lot more sense, intuitively, than the term ‘road diet’, which brings to mind only the narrowing of a road (with the expected traffic congestion increases/delays/headaches/misery) — we’re not necessarily decreasing the size/width of the road, nor are we increasing it — we’re just redoing how the space of the street is apportioned/allocated between pedestrians, bicycles, and motorbikes/cars/trucks/buses/trains. The term is somewhat worrisome in that it’s actually an old road engineering term that they used to (I’m guessing) divert slower traffic off of the main roads onto secondary/slower roads — a disaster that we do not want to repeat. The term ‘rechanneled’ seems to be a bit simpler, and we should consider adopting it in place of ‘rechannelized,’ but we probably need an English major to help us figure out if this is something we might want to do. We can create a word and word combinations if we want to, just the way the term/phrase ‘road diet’ was. This is your winner!
Induced congestion	it’s gonna get the induced congestion/traffic treatment	This is what many drivers think when they hear ‘road diet’, too.
Road binge	It’s gonna get road binged	Opposite of road ‘diet’ — but doesn’t necessarily make sense for similar reasons.
Traffic-calming	That street is getting some traffic-calming treatments.	Not the worst, but not the best.
Complete street	We’re gonna complete that street.	Sounds nerdy. And most complete streets, at least in America, are anything but. Generally-speaking, biking has been left out of the Complete Streets world. A Complete Street is a street where you can drive as fast as you want without delay, where there is a sidewalk on at least one side of the street, and hard-core bikers could theoretically decide to bike if they are in that S&M stage of their lives.
Road widening	The road-widening project will help car traffic drive faster and smoother (for a while).	Road widenings still do happen, so this could be confusing, but it’s probably going to continue to happen less and less as fewer rich people and corporations pay taxes.
Road narrowing	Road ‘X’ is going to be narrowed (because, presumably, the bike-hippies running the DOT want to deliver you pain on a daily basis).	Just not helpful.
Fixing the street	We’re gonna fix that street. It’s being fixed.	There’s a lot of logic to this, in that it lends itself to a very quick, easy-to-understand explanation of the situation — some particular road is broken in any number of ways, and one of those problems is that it most likely effectively prevents anyone from biking on it — so it’s going to be fixed, because it has to be fixed. It has to be fixed because bikers need direct routes from Point A to Point B.
Road re-purposing	We’re going to re-purpose that road.	Not the worst — just sounds a bit radical — like we’re going to re-purpose that massive highway into a river.
Road re-design	The road is going to be redesigned.	Not bad at all. Not bad at all. Seems to call to mind ‘intersection redesign’, but it could potentially work. We’re going to redesign the road so that it accommodates bicycles. Simple. Easy to understand. There’s a lot of power in that. If ‘rechannel’ is too geeky, one could say ‘redesign to allow bikes bikes to use the road’. Oh, they’re gonna add bike lanes? Yes. Oh, that’s nice. Yes — yes, it is.
Street safening	It’s gonna go under some street-safening.	Sounds a bit corny/quirky in an endearing way — kind of like the word embiggen. And focuses on safety, which is a good thing, but not necessarily good enough, in my opinion. So, if you think about, what is the best, most effective way to rain danger and death and destruction and despair and misery upon any city or town? Easy — just build a highway through it. And what is the best way to rain safety and health and prosperity and happiness and satisfaction upon any city or town? Easy — just build a bikeway through it. Bicycles will remain a or the main civilizing force in cities and towns across the globe for the foreseeable future, so we need a term that more closely addresses the fact that by tearing up a street and rebuilding/repainting it, we’re going to allow bicycles on that street, thus bringing the myriad benefits of cycling.
Road to health	It’s going to be a road to health, instead of a road to death.	Nice sentiment, but avoids the ‘traffic’ concern of our most vocal/powerful critics. Drivers/DOT just want to ram people through town as fast as possible so they can plop down on their couches with a lap full of cheesy poofs in time for a big night of American Idol. Health is not their main concern — and I think many/most(?) folks have given up hope of being healthy — it’s just too impossible in modern America. Some biking infrastructure could possibly change their mind, so we need a term that more closely talks about allowing people to bike.
Right of way for all	The street will be redone so that it provides a right of way for all.	Not bad.
Road conversion	It underwent a road conversion. That roads gonna be converted into a road that allows bikes, is safer for everyone, is quieter, nicer, better for business, etc.	Not too bad, but doesn’t really say anything about how the road is being converted, or what the nature of the conversion is.
Road Smorgasbord	We’re gonna make that road into a road smorgasbord. We’re going to smorgasbord that road. It got the smorgasbord treatment — now everyone can use it.	Not crazy about it — kind of sounds like ‘mess’ or ‘spaghetti’ (aka, a traffic nightmare, like a spaghetti junction).
–Full-use roadway –Multi-use road –All-mode road –Full-access roadway –Accessible street –Cooperative roadway –Viable roadway –Fully-functional roadway –Efficient roadway –Dynamic roadway –Perfect roadway	(I got a little lazy, here.)	These are all good and interesting terms — I particularly like the ‘Full-’ terms — like, “Road ‘X’ is going to get the ‘Y’ treatment so it can become a full-use roadway.” The term ‘full,’ to me, implies efficiency and health of a particular tool/system — a big ROI — a near-perfect ROI.
Road Enrichment	It’s going to get the road enrichment treatment.	This one is not bad.
Road Boost	It’s getting a road boost. We’re going to boost the productive value of the road (by allowing bikes, etc.).	Interesting — very interesting. Good. Definitely has a positive connotation — as if we’re really moving towards the highest/best use of the roadway space. This one absolutely deserves more attention. This is my personal favorite runner-up.
Road Bonus		Interesting.
Capacity efficient roads.		Not bad.
Road streamlining		Not bad, but has some of the same connotation as ‘road diet’.
Road splurge		Opposite of ‘road diet’. Don’t dig it.

Three months ago I wrote about the cowardly and depraved campaign against cyclists being authorized by NYC’s Department of Transportation — a department headed by none other than Janette Sadik-Khan, the (former) Queen of Livable Streets here in America.

Finally, someone ‘respectable’ has been able to state the obvious in a more mainstream outlet — someone by the name of Doug Gordon at New York Streetsblog.

I’ve seen the continued reports of New York City cyclists being harassed and terrorized by motorists and police officers all over that city — these publicly-expressed sentiments, more-commonly expressed by might-makes-right, violence-prone motorists, are already working — they are creating an even more extreme environment of lawlessness and impunity — for all who care to attack cyclists. New York City already has a long history of lawlessly harassing, assaulting, and arresting law-abiding cyclists — do we really need to have ‘advocates’ work so hard to encourage it?

Here’s something to keep in mind as this Campaign of Terror is fully rolled out in New York City: If JSK even dared to mutter the sentiment that drivers should not act like jerks, she would be forced to resign before the end of the next business day.