Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Damned with Faint Praise: Virginia Ranks Tops in South for Bicycle Friendliness

—

by

James A. Bacon
in ,

colorado_bicycles

Virginia ranks 16th nationally in the just-published League of American Bicyclists’ “Bicycle Friendly States” ranking, and No. 1 in the South. The state of Washington took the top spot, with Colorado nailing down No. 2.

Colorado cycling has come on strong in recent years as the business community has mobilized around the goal of making the Centennial State the healthiest state in the country. Businesses understand the connection between a healthy population and a healthy workforce, and the link between a healthy workforce and lower medical insurance rates, lower rates of absenteeism and higher productivity. That cause has yet to go mainstream in Virginia, where business lobbies have expended their political capital in recent to increase taxes to pay for more transportation projects without insisting upon any more accountability or results in how that money is spent.

Virginia scored best for “policies and programs” (with a 4 out of 5) and worst in “infrastructure and funding” and “evaluation and planning.”  (See the Virginia state profile here.)

Among the ideas advanced to make Virginia more bicycle-friendly, the League suggested passing laws that protected cyclists on streets and roads, investing more money in bicycle infrastructure, and holding a state bicycle summit.

Bacon’s bottom line: Ranking first in the South ain’t much to be proud of folks. The leading states are lapping us. We can do better. Last time I checked, bicycle-friendly policies don’t violate property rights, they don’t undermine the Constitution and they don’t cost a lot of money. Why are putatively conservative Republicans so hostile? For the price of a single highway boondoggle (the $244 million Charlottesville Bypass, before cost overruns, for instance) we could make massive strides in building bicycle infrastructure throughout the state.
— JAB

Share this article

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

ADVERTISEMENT

(comments below)

Comments

11 responses to “Damned with Faint Praise: Virginia Ranks Tops in South for Bicycle Friendliness”

  1. Neil Haner Avatar
    Neil Haner

    I’m not sure how much of this can really be pinned on the GA. Two of the three action items you mention (pass laws and hold a summit) are window dressing solutions. Reasonable laws are already in place, and no one will pay attention to an annual summit.

    As for bicycle infrastructure, responsibility here lies more with localities than VDOT or the GA. Bicycle lanes are needed most on local roads, and in communities, leaving their inclusion up to local zoning boards and code enforcement officials. The parts of the state that do a better job of being bike-friendly are the ones whose City Councils or Boards of Supervisors put an emphasis on supporting the biking community.

    The one thing not mentioned, and unfortunately the hardest aspect to change, is driver culture… the willingness of the average driver to safely share the road. You can’t legislate that, they won’t pay attention to a “summit,” and you can’t build enough bike lanes to fully appease the stereotypical American driver entrenched in his/her “Roads are for cars!” mentality.

    This hits close to home… my wife is an avid cyclist, and a small part of me worries every time she goes out for a ride. Yes she’s legally entitled to her share of the road, but we all know how little that matters to so many drivers. And it only takes a few of those types of drivers…

  2. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    well.. ran into another damned fool on Spotsylvania’s rural roads this morning.

    had a line of cars stacked up behind him and I did not seem him until I topped a hill that hid him from view.

    there are roads where there are 3 foot of shoulder but guess where the bikers go? yep…they flock to the rural roads that have no shoulders…in this case, this guy was one mile from a road that has 20+ miles of wide shoulder – all the way to Lake Anna.

    I’d LOVE to see this rural road have a shoulder put on it for bikers but it has not happened in a long time because the costs to do so are not insignificant and the unpaved roads win out over the bike lanes – every time when it comes to money.

    the only way that rural road is going to get bike lanes is if VDOT decides to improve the road itself and then they’ll add bike lanes.

    In the meantime, I have to ask why bikers insist on putting themselves and others at risk by taking a bike on a rural road – with hills and curves – and no shoulders ? what’s the purpose in that when there are other places to bike?

  3. reed fawell III Avatar
    reed fawell III

    “For the price of a single highway boondoggle (the $244 million Charlottesville Bypass, before cost overruns, for instance) we could make massive strides in building bicycle infrastructure throughout the state.”

    Excellent observation.

  4. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    Neil has it right. It’s up to the locality. VDOT is pretty compliant on local requests for bike lanes.

    it boils down to how much allocation money is available to the locality – AND how they choose to spend it and invariably in the vast majority of counties – there is little tolerance for spending it on bike facilities.

    Hell.. I WANT to ride my bike on the roads – and I have actually done so but it’s damn dangerous on many rural roads. To the point of being fool-hardy.

    I think Va and VDOT are cowardly in not admitting that some roads need signs that say “Not safe for bike use” instead of this totally unrealistic premise that all roads are “okay” for bikes.

    How many of us have put our bike on a road because we have the “right” but from a safety perspective, it was dumb, dumb, dumb?

    I’m one. I’ve done it but I do recognize how dumb it was. I’d never do something THAT dumb in a car… never… but on a bike – I’d ride a road with cars passing me with inches to spare…

    I’m as frustrated as anyone but I’m not going to become a martyr for the “cause”.

  5. Darrell Avatar
    Darrell

    In most places there are a million miles of sidewalks that are rarely used. If the goal was to ride a bike from Point A to Point B, there ya go. But that’s not what many bikers really want is it? Noo! They are more out for control than convenience. Much like the one I saw going into mental meltdown because a couple of cars parked in a bike lane in front of a yard sale. He was very lucky he didn’t get his azz kicked by everyone including granny.

  6. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    well..not supposed to be riding bikes on sidewalks Darrell. I’m actually pretty sympathetic to the frustration of the biking community – the folks who want to be able to use a bike to get from A to B as a form of transportation rather than just riding for recreation.

    but I fear the actions related to advocacy might be more counter-productive than actually winning over support.

    If I support the efforts to expand bike facilities and I myself get weirded out when encountering a biker on a narrow country road – I know there are others who were not supportive to start with – reacting even more negatively and actually showing up at hearings to oppose using funds for bike facilities – as has happened where I live where opponents showed up in numbers to oppose even efforts to put bike trail on top of buried pipes in water/sewer corridors..and power line rights-of-ways.

    those corridors would seemingly be good places to actually put routes that actually did go somewhere since water/sewer/electricity go where development is as well as more or less in some kind of spoke/wheel landscape configurations.

    but here locally – the proposal to add to the existing easement language – additional language to support the easement for bike public use also – met with stiff opposition on two fronts – NIMBY types who did not want “outsiders” biking through or near their cul-de-saced subdivisions where their kids played and taxpayers who did not want their taxes used for bike facilities that they felt were recreational amenities not real transportation.

    the most promising trail was an old rail right-of-way converted to a water/sewer corridor that went 20 miles from the country directly to the Fredericksburg VRE commuter rail station.

    The hearing turn-out was 50-50 and the even proponents were concerned about the potential use of Eminent Domain to obtain privately-owned connecting sections and the advocates themselves took the position that they did not support the use of ED. Without those connecting sections, the proposal was effectively dead and the BOS passed on it.

    My feeling is that in order to go forward – you need stronger support and more important – support from people who are not currently bikers but seen the merit in build bike transportation facilities. People MIGHT support one or two takings to get connections, but they’re not going to
    support the routine use of it in dozens of cases…

    In fact, we now have ED issues involving regular roads where the newly-elected Conservative board frowns on the use of ED in general.

    Having visited several state recreational bike trails such as the Creeper and Guest River Trail and several others that also use old rail corridors – all of them encountered opposition on similar grounds as what happened to us locally.

    Some succeeded, some did not.

    I respect the biking community’s belief about the need for biking facilities but we I feel there has to be have more public support and a need to address the things that undermine public support.

    I equate this to my paddling experiences where access to a river may or may not be public but it never hurts to ask permission. We’ve lost a number of river access places because some folks went there without asking permission and mouthed off at the owners who then promptly closed the access.

    we also had a local mountain biking trail on private property that the owner also allowed hunting on in season and posted signs to that effect and the bikers showed up anyhow and called police to report what they represented as illegal activities. Turns out it was not only legal but they pissed off the owner who then closed it to bikers.

    you cannot engage the public, property owners and taxpayers in this way and expect to get them on your side.

    In my view, the biking community needs to court the general public, property owners and taxpayers to actually show up at the hearings, identified as not bikers but taxpayers and property owners who support the concept of bike transportation facilities.

    the tenor of the discussion needs to move more towards general public support and away from strident advocacy – in my view of course and I realize bikers who frequent these pages on when Jim blogs about biking may not agree… so just my 2 cents worth for whatever it is worth and it may be worth nothing to bike advocates….

  7. Darrell Avatar
    Darrell

    Well see, sidewalks are legal unless the officials say they aren’t. I understand that some sidewalks have entirely too many pedestrians. But the vast majority are free and clear and have been a total waste of money to build them. There is no reason they couldn’t be set up in a shared condition for bicycle commuting. Make one side of the street for bikes, the other for walkers. In fact we have a shared sidewalk here in Tidewater that runs several miles and you rarely see a bicycle on it. Because we don’t have bike commuters. Which is one reason the Light Rail gurus ignore calls for a new bike trail on LRT ROW.

    The issue of this topic is whether we are going to make bicycle commuting a viable alternative. Before spending millions of non-existent dollars building lanes, the public rightly feels there should be a need for those lanes. We can start to build that need easiest by using existing facilities that aren’t living up to their expectations rather than grand schemes which include eminent domain. Sidewalks are here now.

    Sometimes I believe we need fewer engineers in this country. And more painters.

    http://i1.wp.com/thisbigcity.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/Photo_1.jpg?fit=620%2C9999

    http://www.sevengreyblog.com/wp-content/uploads/berlinsidewalk.jpg

  8. accurate Avatar
    accurate

    In Texas (we’re a BIG state) things are pretty spread out, so to realistically expect that you could use the roads on a bike is merely a death wish. The roads down here are MADE for cars and we drive and drive and drive. That said, my little sub-division works just fine for folks who wish to use a bike for recreation, the majority of the roads (except for the main one going into the subdivision) are nicely paved, slow, made for recreation – but the thought of using a bike as an actual form of transportation down here? So the heat got to you, eh? Which does bring up the point that relying on a bike during the summer (May through September) down here would just cause you to suffer a heat stroke and become car fodder.

    However, up in Portland – ugh, I had WAY too much in the way of the biking community. They had ‘bike lanes’ formed out the existing streets, which meant cramming a normal street down to an almost impossible width for cars. There was the constant (and reasonable) complaint by motorists that the bikers didn’t pay a dime for any of these “improvments”, which weren’t exactly viewed as improvements by motorists. No, the cry went up that adults bikers needed to be licensed and insured the same as motorists are. The bikers would blow by stop signs, were rude (superiority complex) in traffic. Yeah, I’ve had my fill of bikers.

  9. salz Avatar
    salz

    A few facts:

    Cycling is not as unsafe as several of you believe. Annually, about one cyclist dies on a bicycle per every 57 car riders who die in their vehicles. Still, the “fear” is real and does indeed stop many would-be cycle commuters.

    The most successful cycling cities around the world DO NOT have separated bike trails. Amsterdam, of course, doesn’t even have bike lanes and everyone — including walkers — use the same space. Copenhagen opened its first bike trail (separated from cars) in 2009 yet has almost 50 percent of commuters arriving on two-wheels and, hence, is full of such beautiful people that travel writer Bill Bryson says, “You could cast a Pepsi commercial in 20 seconds on any Copenhagen Street.”

    The safety research is clear. For greater safety, get more people cycling and then drivers wake up that they must “Share the Road”…and do.

    The National Surface Transportation and Revenue Study of a few years ago noted that America annually subsidizes driving at a $144 billion rate and spends $39.5 billion on transit subsidizes. Bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure? Not enough even to count.

    In President Obama’s original “stimulus funding,” he — allegedly a green president — put $28 billion extra into roadways, $8 billion into transit and less than $400 million into bike-ped. That’s on top of the annual 80 percent of all federal transportation dollars going to roads.

    I’m both a bicyclist and a driver, taking many, many more trips by cycle, yet of course going farther total distance in my dozen-year-old Prius. Until we, as a nation, realize that there are other ways to get from Point A to Point B and actually “think” about them before we habitually jump behind the steering wheel, we will continue to emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases and create $1.9 trillion tons of C02 equivalent annually; we will continue to send our sons and daughters to fight in wars connected with oil; we will continue to be the fattest people in history; we will continue to spend millions and billions of dollars we don’t have building more and more roadways which, the data now shows, damages the lungs and brains of kids living, or going to school, nearby.

    As humans, we have the ability to think, we just rarely use it in America when the subject is transportation.

  10. salz Avatar
    salz

    A few facts:

    Cycling is not as unsafe as several of you believe. Annually, about one cyclist dies on a bicycle per every 57 car riders who die in their vehicles. Still, the “fear” is real and does indeed stop many would-be cycle commuters.

    The most successful cycling cities around the world DO NOT have separated bike trails. Amsterdam, of course, doesn’t even have bike lanes and everyone — including walkers — use the same space. Copenhagen opened its first bike trail (separated from cars) in 2009 yet has almost 50 percent of commuters arriving on two-wheels and, hence, is full of such beautiful people that travel writer Bill Bryson says, “You could cast a Pepsi commercial in 20 seconds on any Copenhagen Street.”

    The safety research is clear. For greater safety, get more people cycling and then drivers wake up that they must “Share the Road”…and do.

    The National Surface Transportation and Revenue Study of a few years ago noted that America annually subsidizes driving at a $144 billion rate and spends $39.5 billion on transit subsidizes. Bicycle-pedestrian infrastructure? Not enough even to count.

    In President Obama’s original “stimulus funding,” he — allegedly a green president — put $28 billion extra into roadways, $8 billion into transit and less than $400 million into bike-ped. That’s on top of the annual 80 percent of all federal transportation dollars going to roads.

    I’m both a bicyclist and a driver, taking many, many more trips by cycle, yet of course going farther total distance in my dozen-year-old Prius. Until we, as a nation, realize that there are other ways to get from Point A to Point B and actually “think” about them before we habitually jump behind the steering wheel, we will continue to emit massive amounts of greenhouse gases and create $1.9 trillion tons of C02 equivalent annually; we will continue to send our sons and daughters to fight in wars connected with oil; we will continue to be the fattest people in history; we will continue to spend millions and billions of dollars we don’t have building more and more roadways which, the data now shows, damages the lungs and brains of kids living, or going to school, nearby.

    As humans, we have the ability to think, we just rarely use it in America when the subject is transportation.

  11. larryg Avatar
    larryg

    I respect Salz view and I agree it’s a cultural and educational dilemma.

    But to win – you want the public with you – not annoyed with you.

    It could be that I’m whistling Dixie on this and the “nice” path has been tried and failed.. and now we’re on to – what sometimes feels like strident advocacy – and I think it HURTS to tie it with other advocacy’s like pollution… just keep it simple – bike transportation.

    Again, I don’t blame the bikers. The roads are full of idiots and dunderheads who don’t know the meaning of “sharing” the road with each other much less bikes.

    I see more and more people playing with their phones, weaving their cars, sitting traffic signals, oblivious to the green, …straying over divide lines, and in general driving so seriously distracted they don’t see other cars much less bikes.

    Europe is Europe. I don’t think we are or will ever be.

Leave a Reply

Read More