Tag: Bicycling

Bike businesses that keep me pedaling: Lloyd Cycles (2 of 4)

May 2, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Four part series of Midwest bike-related businesses that keep me and my bike rolling without hassle.

When the two seat stays became disconnected from the seat tube, I brought my bicycle to my local shop and asked for help.

I’m pretty sure at this time I had no idea what anyone could do about it, nor did I know that Owen Lloyd, the co-owner of Blue City Cycles, could fix it himself. He transported the bike to the Lloyd Cycles “shop” at Bubbly Dynamics (actually a shared space with shared equipment, 1048 W 37th Street). It was fixed by cutting off the existing seat stay cap, removing the seat stay cap still attached to the seat lug, inserting a brand new seat stay cap, and brazing this onto the seat lug.

Thank goodness it all worked out. I didn’t have to hunt down a new frame, or transfer my components onto another bike. Three days later and I was rolling on a slightly more durable bicycle.

Here’s what it looked like broken.

Here’s what it looks like fixed. A fixed fixie!

A Lloyd Cycles bike for sale at Boulevard Bikes, 2535 North Kedzie Blvd.

More in this series

  1. UV Metal Arts – Read it here
  2. Lloyd Cycles - You’re reading it!
  3. Kozie Prery – coming soon, and with a contest!
  4. Planet Bike – coming soon

Just how many taxi vs. bicycle crashes are there? A Google Refine story

April 26, 2011 / / 0 Comments

On this Chicagoist story about how IDOT will now collect data on doorings (instead of ignoring that crash type as they preferred), I opened the story photo entitled “Cabbie takes down another” by Moe Martinez. His photo caption reads, “you see it alot … thankfully this guy seemed to be relatively ok … coherent and what not.”

I wanted to know just how often “we” see taxi drivers crashing with people riding bicycles. You can’t filter by vehicle type in either mine or Derek’s bike crash maps, but you can via the Fusion Table.

I decided to get the answer via Google Refine and make a screencast to show you just how quick and powerful a tool it is.

It’s dead simple:

  1. Load a CSV of the data into Google Refine.
  2. Click on the VEH1_SPECL column’s down arrow, then Facet>Text Facet.
  3. In the facet box, sorted alphabetically, find “TAXI/FORE HIRE.”
  4. The number of rows that apply is listed: 353.
  5. Divide 353 by the total number of rows, 4931, multiply by 100, and you get your percentage.

Taxi drivers are involved in just 7.2% of bicycle crashes in Chicago in 2007-2009.

The majority of crashes, at 66%, involve people driving “PERSONAL” vehicles. And 80% of those crashes are with a passenger vehicle that’s not a van, minivan, SUV, truck, or bus (so probably a sedan or coupe). Let’s look at more data.

How many taxis are there and how many personal vehicles are there? Are taxicabs involved in a disproportionately higher number of crashes?

About 781,023 people drive to work, either alone or with someone else, in Chicago (data from 2005-2009 5-year American Community Survey). 1,063,047 households have 1,218,594+ vehicles available in Chicago. Let’s assume the 7,000 taxicabs in Chicago are not counted as a “vehicle available.”* That’s 1,225,594 “personal” vehicles. If all were on the road at the same time, only 0.57% of them would be taxicabs. But they’re not on the road at the same time. So let’s take that number of people who drive to work and add 7,000 vehicles to it. So of those 788,023 “vehicles” now on the road, just 0.88% of them are taxicabs.

So it does seem that taxicabs are involved in a disproportionate number of crashes when compared to their presence on the streets. However, taxicabs are most likely driven more more miles and for more time than personal vehicles thus making their exposure to people bicycling greater than drivers of other vehicles. (A majority of “personal” trips are very short.)

New data coming soon

I can’t wait to get the 2010 crash data. Here’s why: In 2007, students in a taxi driver training course at Harold Washington College received some education about sharing the road with bicyclists:

A pilot “Share The Road” education module was launched at the taxi training school at Harold Washington College. It includes a 25-30 minute lecture, with discussion. After the pilot, the class will be required for all people training to drive taxis in Chicago. In the future, bicycle questions will be included on the exams required to become taxi drivers. June 2007 MBAC meeting minutes (PDF).

The number of crashes between taxi drivers and people riding bikes jumped from 2007 to 2008, but declined heavily between 2008 and 2009. More data will show us a clearer trend that may lend insight into the impact of the “Share The Road” education module.

*Notes

The question (PDF) on the American Community Survey asks, “How many automobiles, vans, and trucks of one-ton capacity or less are kept at home for use by members of this household?” This may or may not include taxicabs stored at home.

I don’t know how many taxicabs there are in Chicago, but the Chicago Sun-Times reported there are approximately 7,000.

Initial intersection crash analysis for Milwaukee Avenue

April 25, 2011 / / 0 Comments
Slightly upgraded Chicago Crash Browser

This screenshot from the Chicago Crash Browser map shows the location of bike-car collisions at Ogden/Milwaukee, an intersection that exemplifies the yellow trap problem the city hasn’t remedied.

List of the most crash-prone intersections on Milwaukee Avenue in Chicago. Using data from 2007-2009, when reported to the Chicago Police Department. Dooring data not included on the bike crash map. I used QGIS to draw a 50-feet buffer around the point where the intersection center lines meet.

Intersecting street (class 4*) Bike crashes
Chicago Avenue (see Ogden below) 12 (17)
California Avenue 9
Halsted Street & Grand Avenue 7
Damen Avenue & North Avenue 6
Western Avenue 6
Ogden Avenue (see Chicago above) 5 (17)
Ashland Avenue 5
Diversey Avenue 5
Fullerton Avenue 5
Elston Avenue 5
Augusta Boulevard (not class 4) 5

Combine the six-way (with center triangle) intersection of Ogden, Milwaukee, Chicago, and you see 17 crashes. Add the 6 just outside the 50-feet buffer and you get 23 crashes. Compare this to the six-way (without center triangle) at Halsted, Milwaukee, Grand, where there’s only 7 crashes.

What about the two intersections causes such a difference in crashes? Let’s look at some data:

Ogden, Milwaukee, Chicago Halsted, Milwaukee, Grand
Automobile traffic Approx 58,000 cars per day Approx 50,000 cars per day.
Bicycle traffic Not counted, but probably fewer than 3,100 bikes More than 3,100 bikes per day*
Bus traffic Two bus routes Three bus routes
Intersection style Island; three signal cycles No island; one signal cycle

*Notes

Traffic counts are assumed estimates. Counts are taken on a single day, either Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday. Bike counts at Halsted/Milwaukee/Grand were actually taken on Milwaukee several hundred feet northwest of the intersection so DO NOT include people biking on Halsted or Grand! This means that more than 3,100 people are biking through the intersection each day.

Intersection style tells us which kind of six-way intersection it is. At island styles you’ll find a concrete traffic island separating the three streets. You’ll also find three signal cycles because there are actually three intersections instead of one, making it a 12-way intersection. Also at these intersections you’ll see confusing instructional signage like, “OBEY YOUR SIGNAL ONLY” and “ONCOMING TRAFFIC HAS LONGER GREEN.”

These intersections are more likely to have a “yellow trap” – Ogden/Milwaukee definitely has this problem. The yellow trap occurs at that intersections when northbound, left-turning motorists (from Milwaukee to Ogden) get a red light but they still need to vacate the intersection. Thinking that oncoming traffic has a red light but are just being jerks and blowing the red light (when in fact they still have a green for 5-10 more seconds) they turn and sometimes hit the southbound traffic. The City of Chicago acknowledged this problem, for bicyclists especially, in summer 2013 but as of November 2014 the issue remains.

Here’s a more lengthy description of one of the problems here as well as an extremely simple solution: install a left-turn arrow for northbound Milwaukee Avenue. The entire intersection is within Alderman Burnett’s Ward 27.

Source and method

I can’t yet tell you how I obtained this data or created the map. I’m still working out the specifics in my procedures log. It involved some manual work at the end because in the resulting table that counted the number of crashes per intersection, every intersection was repeated, but the street names were in opposite columns.

Crash data from the Illinois Department of Transportation. Street data from the City of Chicago. Intersection data created with fTools in QGIS. To save time in this initial analysis, I only considered Milwaukee Avenue intersections with streets in the City of Chicago centerline file with a labeled CLASS of 1, 2, or 3.

You may have heard me on the radio this morning in Chicago

April 21, 2011 / / 0 Comments

Here’s the audio clip of my interview with WGN 720 AM producer Rob Hart about biking in Chicago and the bike crash map I made. It aired this morning – I had no idea until someone left me a comment on a Flickr photo that they heard me.

Listen now: Steven Vance on biking and bike crashes in Chicago on WGN.mp3 (will play in your browser).

I am too nervous to listen to this. I’m sure I said something wrong or misspoke.

Biking in Chicago is fun and you should do it. You don’t need special gear or equipment and you can buy a cheap bike at Working Bikes in Pilsen, at 2434 S Western Avenue.

Transcript

[ding, ding]

A little bell may be what comes to mind when you think of riding your bike, but the reality is more like this.

[sounds of traffic]

A busy street full of cars, trucks, and buses. With drivers who are looking at something else.

Me: There’s a lot of driveways. A lot of drivers are making right and left turns and if you ride too close to the curb they will probably not see you, so you have to ride sometimes outside the bike lane if you want to be noticed.

Steven Vance ditched his car 5 years ago. He rides his bike all over the city and he says sometimes it’s a white knuckled experience.

Me: It can be. It does take a little bit of resolve. Sometimes your nerves will get frayed, but I think the benefit outweighs the cost.

After a newspaper [Bay Citizen] in San Francisco mapped out bike crashes on its website, Vance decided to plot bike crashes in the Chicago area on his.

Me: I saw that, and I thought, “You know what, I think I can do that.” I asked the Illinois Department of Transportation for the data and they promptly sent it over and I, as quickly as possible, put it online.

The diagonal streets are the worst, he found, and that includes Milwaukee Avenue.

Me: You could find Milwaukee just by the number of dots representing the crashes. You didn’t need a label to say that this was Milwaukee Avenue. You could tell simply by the string, the constant string of dots.