Contradiction in the Missouri Driver's Manual

On a whim, I decided to flip through the Missouri Driver's Manual today and was surprised to find a contradiction between the instructions given to drivers and the instructions given to cyclists.

Page 61 (conveniently located right on the center staples of the physical version of the book) tells motorists, "When you are passing, give bicycles and mopeds a full lane width. Do not squeeze past these road users." Further down the page, the instructions given to cyclists are "When operating at less than the posted speed of traffic flow, generally ride as near to the right of the roadway as safe." It goes on to say, "You may have to move more toward the middle or left lane or roadway as appropriate: when the lane is too narrow to share with another vehicle."

Now, I have to ask myself, "Why are cyclists supposed to ride to the right of the lane if motorists aren't going to be passing us in that same lane? And what's this business about being appropriate to ride to the left if the lane is too narrow to share with another vehicle when that's precisely what other vehicles are supposed to avoid?

It's no wonder that Columbia can't figure out how to build a decent bike lane. The state guidelines on road usage that the city planners are building from are rather confused themselves.

Proposed Bike Trail

I was very pleased to see this article about a proposed bike path in the Tribune recently.  This seems like a very good use of the funding that we have received from the federal government.  

The proposed trail would be in a suburban area that is home to a large number of families.  It will connect these subdivisions to our second largest high school.  Offering students the chance to commute to school is an important part of laying the foundation for future bicycle commuters.  In order for children to experience the sense of self-sufficiency that a bicycle can offer, their parents must give them the freedom to get around by bicycle.  An essential component of that permission is the perceived safety of commuting by bicycle.

Some of the roads that this proposed bike path would connect are roads that have been previously reviewed in this blog, namely Providence and Grindstone Parkway.  As previously described, Providence is a large road with high speed limits, a terrible shoulder, and no bike lane.  Grindstone is a bit better.  It offers a decent bike lane, but probably has too high of a speed limit and too much traffic for parents to feel comfortable about allowing their children to ride on it.  As I understand it, this new bike path would offer commuters the opportunity to bypass Providence for at least two miles.  If it further connects to the MU Recreation Trail, as indicated, it could also provide a safe way for children to commute from the outskirts of town into the downtown area where they are most likely to hang out.

I have previously mentioned that I don't believe the recreational trail system to be a viable rout for bicycle commuters.  However, I hadn't considered that children and teens might use it as a commuting route.   There is an essential difference between young commuters and adults.  Quite simply, children and young adults are not as likely to be concerned about getting a bit dirty.  Furthermore, as this two mile stretch of trail is going to be paved, it is useful for adults as well, even if the rest of the trail system isn't.

I am glad to see the city investing in a project of this type.  It represents a realization that simply painting lines on the road isn't always enough to create a safe and viable method of bicycle commuting.  The proposed rain gardens also ensure that this will not only be a practical route for people to commute on, but an enjoyable one as well.  Expect to hear more about this project as it progresses.  In the meantime, I'll be looking forward to traversing the finished project. 

Columbia: 1, St. Louis: 0

Admittedly, the sole intention of this blog (thus far) is to disparage Columbia's bike lanes.  However, I must give credit where credit is due.

I went to St. Louis a few days ago for a baseball game.  The girlfriend and I decided that rather than deal with stadium traffic, we'd park at a bar I'm fond of about five miles from the stadium and ride to the game.  You see, I grew up in St. Louis and I was wanting to hit this bar after the game for pizza.  I had also been noticing on my last few visits that some bike lanes had been springing up around town. I was hoping that we would be lucky enough to stumble across a few so that I could review them.  I figured that heading into downtown, we would be bound to see at least one or two.

Well, I saw one.  It was a 15 to 20 foot long strip at an intersection that I didn't take a picture of because I would have needed to stop traffic in order to do so.  That's it.  One single bike lane on five miles of roads stretching from downtown to The Hill.

Oddly enough, we also didn't see many bike racks either.  In fact, the only one we saw was right outside the stadium and it was completely packed.  We cruised around looking for another one to no avail.  We even stopped to ask a police officer who laughed at the idea and told us, "This isn't a very bike friendly town.  The only place that they really put bike racks is in The Loop and U-City.  They don't put 'em downtown where they might be useful."  He kind of trailed off at the end, probably realizing that bike racks are, in fact, also very useful in the U-City area.  He went on to tell us that most of the bike trails and lanes were funded by the Parks & Rec department.  I found this to be a strong indicator that the City of St. Louis does not view bicycles as a viable form of transportation, but merely as a form of recreation. 

All of this was in spite of the fact that we saw signs indicating that St. Louis is a bike friendly town. Wherever we saw these signs, we saw sharrows as well.  These sharrows were all fairly well placed within the roadway, but were all on roads where they weren't really necessary.  They were on narrow, crowded streets with cars parked along both sides and a light but steady stream of traffic. These are the type of streets where a cyclist doesn't need sharrows, we simply ride where we can.  We just don't need the extra guidance.  Motorists don't need them either since traffic isn't moving quickly and there's enough going on that they have to pay careful attention to everything.






So Columbia's bicycle transit system might have shortcomings, but so far it appears to be far superior to St. Louis in bicycle friendliness, even though Columbia is a third the size of St. Louis (taking into account only St. Louis's population within city limits).  Our efforts might be falling short, at least we're making a real, concerted effort.

Sharrows

Dear reader, allow me to introduce you to the sharrow:

Sharrow, meet our readers.  Readers, meet the sharrow.

Shared Lane Markings, more commonly called "sharrows", are one way that Columbia has tried to make motorists more aware of cyclists.  The one pictured above is an outstanding example of a well-placed sharrow.  If you read the linked Wikipedia article (and for those of you who didn't), the purpose of sharrows are to:

• Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in a shared lane with on-street parallel parking in order to reduce the chance of a bicyclist’s impacting the open door of a parked vehicle;
• Assist bicyclists with lateral positioning in lanes that are too narrow for a motor vehicle and a bicycle to travel side by side within the same traffic lane;
• Alert road users of the lateral location bicyclists are likely to occupy within the traveled way;
• Encourage safe passing of bicyclists by motorists; and
• Reduce the incidence of wrong-way bicycling.

When I first saw these popping up (not literally) on the streets of Columbia, I thought they were kind of dumb.  As a friend of mine put it, "What's the point of those things?  I just drive right over them."  I initially thought that they were simply a more visible version of a bike route sign.  However, after doing a bit of homework, I think I rather like them.  That is, of course, when they're installed correctly.  Columbia has many sharrows, some are in perfect locations and others are not.  As the focus of this blog is to chronicle failures, we'll naturally be reviewing the ones that are less than perfect.

Grindstone Pkwy between Providence Rd and Hwy 63

I thought I would start the actual reviews with what I think is the best bike lane in town. This bike lane isn't perfect, but it's really not bad. Here are a few photos that I took while headed east on the road:

As you can see, there is a sign indicating that the bike lane is for bicycles only.  It is wide, free of debris, lacking potholes or drainage grates, and those seams are too tight to get even the skinniest of bike tires stuck in.  All of these are excellent qualities for a bike lane to have.

It also has signs indicating that motorists making right turns must yield to bicycles.















The westbound bike lane is comparable to this one.

Really, the only problem with this lane is its location.


View Grindstone Pkwy Bike Lane in a larger map

First, I'd like to apologize for the quality of the map.  I couldn't figure out how to make it automatically display at a closer zoom.  I'm also not sure why the line along Grindstone isn't syncing up to the road.  It looks right on the original.  Maybe I'll figure be able to solve both those problems for future entries.  In the meantime, I think you can figure out which road the bike lane is on.  Go ahead and take a second to zoom in and view the whole thing in all its splendor.

The square near the top is central Columbia, where most bicycle commuting happens.  This area includes not only downtown, but three universities, two hospitals, loads of student housing neighborhoods, and more businesses than I can count.  Furthermore, it's relatively flat which is incredibly conducive to the average bicycle commuter.  Anyone living outside of this area is likely to commute into central Columbia at least four days per week, often more.

The line along the bottom is the bicycle lane currently under discussion.  It's approximately two miles long.  In that two miles, there are precisely two roads that connect it directly to central Columbia:  Providence and Rock Quarry.

Rock Quarry is a narrow, windy, and hilly road that I didn't even bother to take pictures of.  Just imagine a two lane with no shoulder, trees on both sides and visibility of less than 30 feet at any point.  Now you have it.  It's quite beautiful, but also quite dangerous to travel along by any means other than an automobile.  This being the case, anyone wishing to get from the Grindstone area to central Columbia (or vice versa) by bicycle is likely to take Providence.

Providence is a massive road with a large shoulder.  It is four lanes wide, has a speed limit of 55mph, and is heavily trafficked at all hours of the day.

This is the southward view standing just south of Stadium Blvd, or just outside of downtown Columbia.  This is the road that you must travel to get between Grindstone Pkwy and central Columbia.

You are looking down a large hill that leads to another, equally large hill heading upward.  (This picture was taken with my cameraphone and doesn't come close to doing them justice.)  Each of these hills is about 3/4 of a mile long.  Climbing them from either direction is no joke.  Frankly, these hills may be virtually impossible to climb for anyone but the most dedicated commuter.

As if that weren't bad enough, the shoulders are in wretched shape.

This picture was taken facing northward in the valley between the aforementioned hills.  I am only including the one picture, but this is what the shoulder looks like on average for the entirety of this road along both sides.  Sure, some sections are better, but some are worse.  This means that not only is it difficult to climb these hills, but a cyclist must also exercise extreme caution descending the hills.  It's a no-win situation when traveling this road.














There's basically no reason for anyone to ever ride along Grindstone.  There's nothing out there but shopping centers.  Sure, people live out that way and could conceivably ride from their house to the store, but again, this is something that only the most dedicated commuter would consider.  Unfortunately, there's no way that a dedicated bicycle commuter would move out there in the first place.  A dedicated bicycle commuter will choose his or her residence with that mode of transportation in mind and there's simply no way that anyone with that consideration in mind would move to this area.  This is probably why I've never seen anyone riding a bike in these lanes.

Fantastic Timing!

I think that the gods have smiled on this blog.  One of our local newspapers posted this article today:  GetAbout Columbia trail projects delayed, but progressing.

The story itself isn't that interesting, but note the neat little interactive map under "MoreStory".  (Yes, it's all one word like that.  I'm not too sure about their editors.)  You can also just click here if you're lazy and want to cut to the chase.

This fancy little drawing makes it look like CoMo is super bike friendly, doesn't it?  Well, since they've provided an interactive, let's make this an interactive blog.  Follow the directions below.  

1. Open that map in a new window or tab.
2. Click where it says "hide info icons".  They're just messy and in the way.  
3. Let's only deal with the Existing Systems since we don't actually know which of the Planned Systems will be approved.  We also don't actually know which will be successful if and when they're finished.  Let's just remove them all for clarity's sake.  Click on each of the items under "Planned Systems", that will get the job done.
4. The existing bike trails in Columbia are magnificent recreational trails.  Unfortunately, they're made of crushed limestone.  If you try to commute on them, your nice work clothes get covered in a fine, white dust.  Basically, they're useless for anything beyond recreation.  Click on "Trail" to remove them from the map. 
5. You'll notice by now that our map is looking pretty sparse.  Still, we have few striped bike lanes (I'm not sure what an unstriped bike lane looks like) around town.  Pause for a second and note how many of those are barely two miles long and how sparsely they are spread as a whole.  

This is the reality of Columbia's bicycle transportation system.  Sort of.  The reason I say "sort of" is simple: most of those bike lanes are mostly useless.  We'll talk about why that is in the future.

Next time on Failed Bike Lanes:  What makes a bike lane fail?

Stay tuned!

Goals

I've been commuting primarily by bicycle for over ten years and let me tell you, cyclists living in Columbia, MO are pretty dang lucky. Granted, it's no Davis, CA, but it sure isn't bad.

Despite living smack in the middle of the Midwest, a region that is generally hostile toward cyclists, Columbia is well known among its populace as generally being a bike-friendly town. Our recently retired mayor, who was a huge advocate of non-motorized transportation, remained in office for 15 years and was often seen cycling to and from work. During that time, he actively campaigned to encourage non-motorized transportation in Columbia.

Furthermore, in 2005 we received a $21.5 million grant from the federal government to explore how we could make our community more cycling friendly. The stated purpose of this grant is to "demonstrate the extent to which bicycling and walking can carry a significant part of the transportation load, and represent a major portion of the transportation solution, within selected communities." Columbia's specific application of this grant was to attempt to make the city safer for, and more appealing to, those wishing to employ non-motorized transportation; basically an "if you build it, they will come" approach.

You have probably guessed from the title of this blog that I haven't found much of the application of this grant to have been very successful, specifically the applications to bicycle commuting. My goal for the remainder of this blog is to show what the shortcomings have been so that, hopefully, others won't make the same mistakes in the future. That's not to say that I think that the purpose stated by the grant writers hasn't been proven (in fact, I think Columbia residents had proved this before the city received the grant), rather that Columbia has been unsuccessful in creating a safer and more appealing environment for bicycle commuters, and in many ways has actually made the city less safe for us.