Critical Mass in the dark

By way of reminding you that Critical Mass Durham’s December ride will take place next Thursday (5:35pm, meet at Major), I’ll share some artwork I received this week. But before I do, I want to remind everyone that this will be the first CM since daylight savings ended. So, darkness will fall on our ride. But that’s OK; bring lights! Bring more lights than you need. Light up your ride any way you can. I hear there are battery-powered strings of holiday lights you can pick up at local hardware/retail stores… hint, hint.

Onwards…

Mona Caron, an artist in San Francisco, has been riding in Critical Mass for years. Some of her artwork is inspired by the events, and like any strong cycle, her art work circles back and inspires others to ride. I had seen her art before she contacted me this week, sending along what may be her most famous CM-inspired piece.

Critical Mass, Mona Caron

You can dig more of her illustrations and murals on her website, MonaCaron.com. And if you’re looking, hey Mona. Have fun in São Paulo.

NY Times: Finding Liberté on Two Wheels

The NYTimes ran a nice point-of-view article by Eric Rayman this weekend about the success of Paris’ new Velib program. It begins –

MY plane landed at Charles de Gaulle airport. I took the RER train into Paris, dropped off my bag and, two hours after landing, I was riding a bicycle down the Boulevard Saint-Germain.

No, I’m not in training for the Tour de France and, no, I do not travel with a bicycle or for that matter any other sports paraphernalia. I was just participating in the latest craze that has swept Paris. I was on a Vélib.

Continue reading

I wonder how long it will take before Mayor Bloomberg makes nice with New York’s cycling community and see that a Velib-like program can help his congestion mitigation planning — even if it means a few city-owned bikes roll in Critical Mass. Bicycle libraries have been tried in the United States before, from Portland to Minneapolis to college campuses. Historically, they haven’t lasted long because of perennial problems with maintenance and theft. The success of the Velib program will ultimately rest on its longevity, but the technology on which it is based gives it a leg up over previous bike library programs.

Vive le Velib!

Why I am not a Democrat (or a Republican)

Phillip Barron
This piece ran as an op-ed in Sunday, November 25 Herald Sun

I spent the weekend before the election in Washington, D.C. being reminded of the passion for critique on which our country was founded. Standing in the rotunda of the Jefferson Memorial, it’s dizzying to read “I have sworn… eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.” I was a little disappointed when the first political campaign sign to catch my eye back in Durham read “Stith: Right-Wing Republican. Don’t Be Fooled.”

While the sign amused me — principally because I grew up in a place where self-identifying as a right-wing Republican is more likely the campaign than the anti-campaign — it bothered me the more I thought about it. The sign served only to distract voters from campaign issues by calling Stith a name — “Republican” is a bad word in Durham, haven’t you heard?

The last two hundred years of U.S. history are filled with progress — in technology, quality of life, and cross-cultural communication for starters. But in politics, all too often we’ve regressed from our philosophical beginnings and opted for name-calling.

Democrats might defend themselves in two ways. First, they might say Stith’s campaign was devoid of issues. He offered criticism with no solutions; he ran a campaign of distraction from the start. Granted, it’s tough to debate someone who isn’t clear where he stands. But we might begin by pointing out that a campaign strategy occluding both his party affiliation and recent position in a conservative think tank gives us a good reason to think he mistrusts transparency in government.

Or, they may offer a more childish defense: “he started it.” True, Stith launched a campaign of distraction early in the election, specifically trying to drum up fear of Durham’s growing immigrant community. The politics of fear is the worst sort of politics of distraction because it wants not only to disguise the real issues, but wants to displace them with visceral emotions and prejudice. While emotions and prejudice are natural parts of human psychology, we believe in a democracy that they must be tempered by reason.

And many of Durham’s politically active citizens, bloggers and even a write-in candidate called Stith out. They managed to do it in a much more nuanced way than the Democrats, focusing on how Durham’s immigrant population is full of people who… well, as the locally produced film Los Sueños de Angelica (Angelica’s Dreams) shows, full of people who share the same hopes and dreams as anyone else in the U.S.

So why did the Democrats, then, just result to name-calling? Did they not have enough faith in Durham’s citizenry to see through Stith’s deceit? Is the idea that critical thinking matters to politics mere shibboleth in the YouTube age?

I wish I could have tested my belief that campaign tactics designed to scare people into voting for you don’t work on an intelligent citizenry. A growing immigrant population — documented or undocumented — in Durham is a wonderful thing. A diversity of backgrounds, languages, and points of view makes a culturally rich place like Durham thrive. But it is hard to say whether we saw through Stith’s fear-mongering, or simply were ourselves scared of voting for a “Right-Wing Republican.”

The politics of fear and distraction play to the lowest common denominator; they play to the worst in us. Wouldn’t we rather cultivate a political climate where leaders speak to the best in us?

Part of the solution involves breaking the hegemony of the two party system. Political campaigns can stoop to the lowest levels as long as 1) nothing much separates Republicans from Democrats and 2) there are only two political parties racing through the streets to City Hall (or to the Capitol, or to the White House).

But imagine an election where Libertarians, Republicans, Democrats, Socialists, Greens, and others formed temporary coalitions, voting blocs, and other strategic partnerships. With more political parties in the mix, we would be less likely to see the traffic jams and catastrophic collisions we see when there are only two political vehicles racing down Main St. Traffic naturally calms when a critical mass of buses, bicycles, trucks, and cars all share the road — elections, too, could be exercises in cooperation rather than competition.

It is still true that civil society is built on civil dialogue, right?

This op-ed originally ran in Op-EdNews.com and The Herald Sun.

southern gothic

commute into work on November morning, originally uploaded by nicomachus.

taken the same morning as “spotlight”

spotlight

commute into work one November morning, originally uploaded by nicomachus.

 

bike morning

bike-morning.png

The Outspokin’ Cyclist: Cyclists don’t like concrete islands

Phillip Barron
The Herald Sun

Willetha Barnette, of Durham, rode her bike in traffic for the first time on October 4th. Encouraged by her friend Cynthia Ferebee to join the Critical Mass ride, a monthly group bike ride through the streets of Durham, Barnette said that she enjoyed the freedom to ride on the streets in safe numbers, but that she would not feel comfortable riding alone.

As the group made its way down Anderson St, Barnette said, “it’s uncomfortable. Drivers don’t seem to be used to sharing the road. They seem annoyed, frustrated that we (cyclists) aren’t going as fast as they are. That’s the way it feels to me.” Afterwards, she said it felt “dangerous” to ride down Anderson St., even with new traffic calming measures in place.

Barnette is referring to a series of concrete islands that the City of Durham installed along the hills and curves of Anderson St this summer. The islands were installed in an effort to slow speedy traffic. Anderson St is a wide street, but is lined with houses and parks. It connects Duke University’s west campus with the Lakewood community and Chapel Hill St and is a major traffic artery for daily commuters.

However, since the concrete islands, or “neckdowns” as they are often called, were installed they have raised the ire of many cyclists.

The sentiment of a string of emails to the durhambikeandped listserv in July is, “why did the City put concrete barriers in the bike lane?” While Anderson St doesn’t have designated bike lanes, there are stripes marking the outer limit of the lane which are several feet from the curb and narrow the lanes of traffic significantly. Many cyclists interpret the wide space of pavement between that white line and the curb as a bike lane, feeling that riding in that space and out of the flow of automobile traffic is the safest place to ride.

But mix in artificially placed concrete islands every few hundred feet, and Anderson St. now feels like an obstacle course. When approaching one of the islands, cyclists have the choice of either entering the lane of traffic or navigating a 2 ft wide gap between the island and the curb.

Lawrence Trost, in a letter to the Herald Sun editor dated July 25th, said “the problem with the neck-downs is that because of overhanging tree branches, uneven pavement and debris between the barrier and the curb, a cyclist can’t safely ride on the inside of the barrier. Instead, they force a cyclist to weave unpredictably from the shoulder to the center of the lane each time they pass a barrier.”

Riding predictably and in the lane of traffic is the safest way for cyclists to ride on city streets, but Anderson Street’s “steep hills will prevent most cyclists from taking the lane the entire length of Anderson for fear of being rear-ended,” says Trost.

From a driver’s perspective, the islands are equally confusing. Alexis Richardson, a teacher at Hillside High School, encountered the islands for the first time at night.

“I was taken completely by surprise when I turned on to Anderson Street and I saw some obstruction in the road to my right,” Richardson said. “I squinted and it registered that there was something there, but I had no idea what it was.” When she later learned they were designed to be traffic calming devices, Richardson “was appalled because they seem downright dangerous. I have perfect vision, and I could hardly tell what they were.”

Dale McKeel, Durham’s Bicycle and Pedestrian Coordinator, says that “a contractor will be planting landscaping in the neckdown islands this fall” to improve their visibility. He also noted that a consultant will be evaluating the neckdowns, after which the City will decide whether the remove them or how to improve their compatibility with bicyclists.

Feel free to share your thoughts on the concrete islands or other cyclist-unfriendly traffic calming measures with Dale McKeel in the City’s Transportation office at dale.mckeel@durhamnc.gov or 560-4366.

Two great articles in today’s news

Associated Press
Nov 5, 2007 : 7:17 am ET

South Korea Promotes Bicycles to Ease Traffic

SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea is turning to an old-fashioned solution for dealing with its always-clogged roads: encouraging people to ride bicycles.

The Herald-Sun editorial: Welcome accord on new bike path
Nov 5, 2007

We plead guilty to supporting bike lanes, bike trails and pedestrian paths and sidewalks. Read more

Air and Space, and bikes

The Wright brothers, before inventing aviation, were bike mechanics. I got a glimpse of two of their creations this weekend in the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Wright brothers bicycle

A Rare Wright Bicycle
Only five bicycles manufactured by the Wright brothers are known to exist. This one, a model they called the St. Clair, was built in 1898. Less expensive than the Van Cleve, the St. Clair sold for $42.50. Lent by The Henry Fund, Dearborn, Mich.