Steven Can Plan
Currently viewing the tag: "driving"
WORD CHOICE
Biker versus bicyclist?
Person riding bike or bicyclist?
“Avid cyclist” or “bicycling enthusiast”? Are you really enthused about bicycling? How avid does one need to be so that others will consider him or her an “avid cyclist”?
What about driver versus motorist? Motorist can imply that it’s a person who enjoys motoring.
Or, car versus motorist?
Did the car hit you, or did a person driving a car hit you?
“The car stopped and talked to the guy. The car left-hooked my friend.” Do cars talk? Do cars operate by themselves?
Crash versus accident? (don’t have time to talk about this)
When you describe a bicycling riding, and you say they had to “SWERVE out of the way,” do you think that some people may interpret that as the bicyclist doing something they shouldn’t be doing? Maybe they were just swerving to avoid a pothole and crashed, or they swerved to avoid getting hit by someone driving a car when the cyclist disobeyed a red signal. A more objective phrase would be, “the bicyclist maneuvered to avoid hitting the pothole.” In that sense, I’ve made it seem like the bicyclist was riding assertively and in their best interest. Notice earlier how I said “disobeyed a red signal” instead of “blew a red light”?
POINT
When we open our dialogue in order to understand others and to be understand ourselves, language and word choice matters. Be specific, but more importantly be descriptive so that you’re not misunderstood.
Some have called Mayor Rahm Emanuel an “avid cyclist.” Does this photo of him make you think of yourself as someone who bicycles, or your peers?
Cross posted to Moving Design. Read more policy insights from Steven Vance.
Update June 12, 2011: Added a link to and excerpt from commentary by David Hembrow, a British blogger in the Netherlands.
How does a 3-way street work? Easy, just watch the video.
I like the term “aggressive yield” to describe the situation when a motorist does yield to pedestrians crossing the street, but in a way where they inch forward continually, slowly pushing, with a buffer or air, the people out of the way.
I really like the comment from Tuesday by Anthony Ball:
those red markers are just showing the limits of tolerable risk as established by years of system development. If the collision speeds were higher, those red circles would be far few – it’s simply a system finding its own point of stability.
If you really want to wreak havoc – try to control that system without corrective feedback (eg more rules, lights, controls, etc) and you’ll see the system kill people while it tries to find new stable relationships.
don’t forget that rules, signs, lights, etc have no direct impact on the system – they only work through the interpretation of the users.
What did David Hembrow have to say? David lives in the Netherlands and disagrees with the common sentiment that these conflicts are caused by selfish users.
I don’t see the behaviour at this junction as being about “bad habits”. What I see is simply a very badly designed junction which almost invites people to behave in the way that they do.
Dutch road junctions don’t look like and work like this – they are different for a reason: it removes the conflicts and improves safety. A long-standing theme of Dutch road design is the concept of Sustainable Safety. The concept is to remove conflict so that collisions are rare and the consequences of those which remain are relatively small. Roads are made self-explanatory so that bad behaviour is reduced and the way people behave is changed.
Reading this reminds me of the work of the students in George Aye’s class at SAIC, “Living in a Smart City.” The students attempted, through an intersection redesign, to reduce the stresses that lead to crashes.
Where are the 3-way streets in your city? Grand/Halsted/Milwaukee in Chicago comes to my mind easily. Also a lot of streets in the Loop. Oh yeah, and The Crotch, at Milwaukee/North/Damen.
Note: This post doesn’t have any analysis of the data or report, nor do I make any observations. I think it’s more significant to hear the ideas you have about what you see in the map or read in the data.
A lot of people wanted the Chicago bike crash and injury data overlaid with bike counts data.
In 2009, Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) placed automatic bike counting equipment at many locations around the city. It uses pneumatic tubes to count the number of bicyclists (excludes cars) at that point in the street – it counts ALL trips, and cannot distinguish between people going to work or going to school. This is dissimilar from Census data which asks respondents to indicate how they go to work.
Well, good news for you! CDOT today released the bike counts report from data collected in 2009 (just in time). There has been overwhelming response about the bike crash map I published – this shows how rabid the public is for information on their environments (just yesterday someone told me that they switched bike routes based on the crash frequency they noticed on their original route).
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The size of the blue dot indicates the bicycle mode share for that count location. Mode share calculated by adding bikes and cars and dividing by bikes.
Get the data
- View the map, at GeoCommons
- View the raw data, at Google Fusion Tables (filter data; export as CSV or KML files)
- Download the raw data as CSV (load into Microsoft Excel, OpenOffice, Apple Numbers)
- Read the report from CDOT (PDF)
A photo of the EcoCounter counting machine in action on Milwaukee Avenue (this was taken during testing phase, where CDOT compared automatic and manual counts to determine the machine’s accuracy).
How to use this map:
- Find a blue dot (count location) in an area you’re interested in.
- Zoom into that blue dot.
- Click on the blue dot to get the number of bikes counted there.
- Then observe the number of purple dots (crashes) near that count location.
What do you see that’s interesting?
What else is coming?
Now let’s hope the Active Transportation Alliance and the Chicago Park District release their Lakefront Trail counts from summer 2010. CDOT may have conducted bicycle counts in 2010 as well – I hope we don’t have to wait as long for that data.
I hope to have a tutorial on how to use GeoCommons coming soon. You should bug me about it if I don’t post it within one week.
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Photos of Chicago bike commuters by Joshua Koonce.
Bicyclist versus person riding a bike? Which is the better term?
I first came across this “transportation user identification” debate on Human Transit:
Is there anything wrong with calling a group of people “transit users” or “riders”? Is there anything wrong with calling yourself such a thing?
[...]
Reducing mode choice categories to nouns – cyclists, motorists, riders, etc – is potentially divisive. These categories seem to give us the clarity we need to do any thinking at all, but clinging to them can blind us of all the ways that two cyclists can be different…
Who is this person?
Travis said on my Facebook wall:
We are all just people using various forms of transportation. Sometimes I use feet, but I am not a pedestrian. Sometimes I bike, but I am not a cyclist. Sometimes I drive, but I am not a motorist. I am a person. Why must we compartmentalize and deal in absolutes? It causes Us-Them situations.
Is this a scofflaw motorist or a person illegally driving on light rail tracks? Photo by Richard Masoner.
About two weeks ago I started changing the way I identify people in my writing and in my photo descriptions. You’ll now read “people riding bikes to the grocery store” instead of “bike shoppers” or “person in a car” instead of motorist.”
About Steven Can Plan
I started this blog in 2007 as the writing assignment for an introductory urban planning class at UIC. It's about cities (mainly Chicago), GIS oftentimes, and transportation (mainly bicycling). Learn more about me, Steven Vance. I also write for Streetsblog Chicago.
Steven Can Plan is hosted on Dreamhost.
Chicago Bike Map App
The Chicago Bike Map app is a bike and street map stored entirely in your iOS device – no data connection required. The map is designed to look much like the City of Chicago's official printed and online bike map. The app works on iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.
- Download from the iTunes Store
- Demo the app online
- On iOS, search for "chicago bike map" in the App Store app
Highly Recommended Bike Products
Brooks B67 leather sprung saddle
So far my longest trip was 40 miles on this saddle. It molds to your butt like Birkenstock sandals mold to your feet. The springs make the bike ride a little more comfortable and more fun (weird, because you bounce up and down on them). It also looks gorgeous. Comes in 3 colors - I got black.
Planet Bike SuperFlash taillight
The best value taillight. It has three red LEDs that alternate and provide extreme brightness. I have two of these.
So far I haven't had a flat with this tire. I've used Continental Gatorskin and Panaracer T-Serv, both of which have had flats (same Chicago streets). The Gatorskin has less tread than both, and wears to a slick surface faster.
Books
Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell
Instant City: Life and Death in Karachi by Steve Inskeep
I reviewed this book that the publisher sent to me.
Making Maps: A Visual Guide to Map Design for GIS by John Krygier PhD, Denis Wood PhD
If you are going to make a map, whether it be hand drawn or digital, you should really give this book a read. Then read it every time you make a map. It will help make sure your maps are laid out sensibly, in a way that others can easily read, and that it doesn't include fluff or unnecessary data.
Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do (and What It Says About Us) by Tom Vanderbilt
As someone who doesn't like driving, but believes that cars can be efficient in moving groups of people and goods, this is my favorite book.
Sustainable Transportation Planning: Tools for Creating Vibrant, Healthy, and Resilient Communities (Wiley Series in Sustainable Design) by Jeffrey Tumlin
I was sent a review copy. I'm really excited to open it up and start reading because I've been disappointed with textbooks in the past that don't focus on bicycle and pedestrian planning.
Dummy
What was going through this driver’s head (do they have a brain?) when, as soon as the light turned green, they peeled away from the stop bar, turning the wrong way down a one-way street?
Were there not enough indicators that this is a one-way street against their direction? There were arrows, a “no left [...]
What was going through this driver’s head (do they have a brain?) when, as soon as the light turned green, they peeled away from the stop bar, turning the wrong way down a one-way street?
Were there not enough indicators that this is a one-way street against their direction? There were arrows, a “no left turn” sign, a stop bar the full width of the street, a DO NOT ENTER sign, and a “one way” sign.
Or is the driver entitled to do whatever they want?