I got some wonderful stuff this Christmas that I’m not going to brag about. It’s enough to say I like it. I hope you got stuff that makes you feel the same way, that you got wonderful stuff that you like. Now the stuff I didn’t get, I still have to fight with cars for space on the streets, and the bike infrastructure I’m getting here in the Beautiful Suburbs of Hell is ridiculous, sharrows and a couple of miles of 3 foot lanes next to the curbs, with promised off-street bike paths that don’t exist yet. The AASHTO standard is for 3 feet when there is no curb outside of the bike lane, I think that when there is a curb the standard goes up 18 inches to 4.5 feet, same as the NACTO standard, but less than the Dutch standard of 2 meters which comes to 6.6 feet. I like the parts of the bike route that were marked with sharrows better as I get a whole lane, which because there is on-street parking allowed means I have to ride about 2 feet from the inside lane marker to stay out of the door zone where there are cars parked in the street. The parts of the bike route that have the bike lanes have never had on-street parking. The three foot lanes with the curb have my bike sticking out of the lane most of the time as I avoid the trash and debris that accumulates in bike lanes. That accumulation of debris is the reason why the NACTO standard calls for a minimum of 4.5 feet for bike lanes as curbs catch debris and bounce it back into the lane causing a unrideable zone about 18 inches wide. With a 4.5 foot lane you still have about a foot of “wobble room” before your bike hangs outside the lane, with a 3 foot lane getting more than a couple inches of clearance from the inevitable debris has your bike hanging out of the lane and into the “car” lane.
The only link so far today is an update on the hit-and-run of a cyclist in Canuckistan. Man charged after cyclist struck, killed in Winnipeg Apparently the drunk didn’t get very far after hitting the cyclist before high-centering his car on the curb on the wrong side of the road. There isn’t much you can do about drunks except be ready to dodge them when they come up behind you or in other words, use the hit-from-behind protocols to avoid…
(Later) The only other link to show up in the Feed today has nothing on the mode of the wreck, as a Japanese cyclist is killed on a bike tour in Russia. Japanese cyclist killed near northern Russia Why anyone would this late December was a good time to tour Murmansk and surrounds on a bicycle I’ll never know, unless they were preparing for a ride to the South Pole.
OK it is now past the time that the last report of the day should have been in the folder, and no report. So what you see is all I got today.
Billed @$0.02, Opus
Witch on a Bicycle 