Minnehaha Avenue

They repainted the bike lane stripes on Minnehaha Avenue. Bright shining white lines. It looks good.

Temper Tuesday

It’s Tuesday–that day that reminds you the week has only just begun, and yet the lazy weekend still lingers in your memory.  On that theme, I think I’ll leave Tuesday posts for things that make me mad.  Like Minnehaha Avenue.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love the bike lanes; I love the well-timed lights that always seem to be green for me.  It’s just that, well, couldn’t they have designed the north-south path south of the circle any better?   I take this route to Eagan every morning,  and I’m always torn about what to do.  On the one hand, the road narrows, and all of the angry commuters get even angrier  if I’m in front of them going my paltry 20 mph.  The speed limit is 25 after all, and we need to obey the speed limit.  Exacerbating their anger is the fact that I refuse to move into the drainage ditch on the side, which is just concrete blocks punctuated by wheel-eating sewer grills.  My other option is that beautiful bike path, just over to the side.  I know what their thinking: “Why the hell doesn’t he just  use that big bike path RIGHT THERE!”

And here’s my response: because I have to stop and cross the road THREE TIMES if I’m going to get from the circle to Fort Snelling on the bike path.  That’s three times having to stop, three times having to look both ways, three times having to hump it out of my saddle and get back up to speed.  And, frankly, I’d rather just keep going.  On the road.

Gas Prices

I am surprised that people are surprised that gas prices are what they are. The big news, of course, is that a gallon of gasoline now averages $4 a gallon. It was the front page story in the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times. What surprises me the most is when media outlets interview random people, and they blame the government and oil companies for their predicament. I wish the people would see the link between their own behavior–driving everywhere with nary a thought to the consequences of driving–and the mess we’re in now. Well, there are some people who’ve been thinking of this. In the end, the high cost of oil is going to be the only thing that will change people’s behavior. I just hope that change includes more people choosing to ride their bicycles and fewer politicians meddling with the market.

Always, Always Wear Your Helmet

Europeans ride through their bicycle utopias sans helmets. But even in one of our nation’s bike-friendliest cities, Madison, Wisconsin, you should still wear a helmet when you ride your bike, as this article attests. The truck ran over his head!

Remember that after any collision with a car, you should save your helmet as evidence but never use it again. Even with no visible sign of damage, hairline fractures may have occurred, compromising the structural integrity of the helmet. Request that the driver of the car pay for its replacement (provided the car driver is at fault). Even if you can’t get the driver to pay-up, the helmet manufacturer may offer you a credit towards the purchase of your next helmet. Just remember to keep your receipt in a handy, “in case I crash,” file.

In other news, this Friday is one of my favorite days of the year. It’s national Bike to Work Day! I will be leading a ride starting in the Corcoran neighborhood and ending at the north plaza of the Hennepin County Government Center in downtown Minneapolis. We will leave at 7:15 AM from the parking lot of Anishinabe Academy, affectionately known as the Midtown Farmer’s Market on Saturdays. This event is sponsored by the City of Minneapolis, though I am an unpaid volunteer.

My friend was featured in the Washington Post’s Express newspaper today in anticipation of this nationwide event. He has a better blog than I do.

Shut Up and Ride (at night)

I usually pull over to the side of the road if my cell phone rings and I’m riding my bicycle at the time. The Strib reports, however, that a Waite Park man was talking on his cell phone while riding his bicycle, at night, without a light, and that he ran into a car as a result. The man was ticketed for not having a light.

It’s strange to me that more people don’t invest in lights for their bicycles. The price has really come down since the days when I was a poor bike messenger. You can get a highly-effective, blinking LED light for between $20 – $30. On the cell phone issue, I’d like to see a hands-free law in Minneapolis, similar to Washington, DC’s. Of course, based what I saw when I lived there, that law is rarely enforced.

Windy Day

Yesterday was windy. Not a fun day to be on a bike. So my wife and I decided to do a time trial over near Eagan. And we decided to bike there. This meant crossing the Mendota Bridge. Transportation engineers were kind enough to think of a pedestrian walkway when they built the bridge. It’s a tiny, four-foot wide path on the northbound side of the bridge. Bikers and walkers use it to ply their way from Fort Snelling to Highway 13 and the Sibley Highway. It’s a very unpleasant stretch. It’s nice to see the river seemingly one thousand feet below you on one side, but on the other the onrushing cars going at 70 mph, separated from you only by a three-foot high concrete wall, can be rather unnerving.

Oh, and did I mention that you can’t hear jack?

So we’re coming back from the time trial, my wife in the lead, and there is a walker up ahead, going our way with his back to us. He has his hood on, either because it’s windy or because he’s protecting his ears from multi-decibel din of six lanes of traffic. Either way, he can’t hear jack, and so even when my wife yells three times that she’s passing, he doesn’t hear a word. Then, of course, he gets all mad when we pass because we’ve interrupted his traffic reverie by passing on our bikes, and he starts yelling “THANK YOU, THANK YOU!” in an angry, ironic tone, as if we’ve just shoved him over the bridge. Me, I’m too bonked to really care, and we roll on.

I won’t go on about how stupid it was to be wearing a hood and expect that you’ll hear an audible. The larger point is this: cars make bikers and walkers fight each other for the pathetically narrow strip of asphalt some traffic engineer decided was worth our lot.

And that’s really sad.

Down Low Glow

A friend just sent me a link to a cool product from Fossil Fuel. It’s a neon light that you attach to your frame for night riding. It comes in different colors and casts a fuzzy glow on the street around you. The creator claims it’s more effective than having blinky lights on, though I wonder if the location of the light (the down tube) doesn’t make it difficult for some motorists to see. I may try the Down Low Glow the next time I have $99 burning a hole in pocket, but in the meantime, I’m going to trust my red blinky Cat-Eyes and blinding headlight when I ride at night.

Proposed Gas Tax: You Decide

The Minneapolis Star Tribune’s front page headline contains the alarmist assertion that the “State’s gasoline tax could double–and then some” over the next 10 years. This is due to provisions in a transportation funding bill being voted upon in the MN Senate today that would raise the gasoline tax by 10 cents a gallon. The current MN gas tax is 20 cents a gallon, and it’s been that way since 1988.

Now, quick math tells me that 10 cents is not double of 20 cents; it’s actually half. Why is the Strib crying wolf? Because this tax contains the remarkable provision that the level of the tax will be tied to inflation. The Strib is technically correct. They did some basic math to show that a yearly inflation rate of 3 percent on 30 cents could mean paying 39 cents per gallon in 2018.

Adjusting the tax every two years to reflect inflation seems reasonable to me. It’s not as if the costs of building roads and bridges and other transportation infrastructure remain fixed. Nor do people’s incomes, which also adjust with inflation. Those rise according to inflation, and so too should the gas tax. Over the past 19 years, Minnesotans have actually gotten–and will continue to get even if this bill is passed–a gas tax that has not risen to match inflation. The Bureau of Labor Statistic’s inflation calculator tells me that the same 20 cent gas tax in 1988 should have risen to 34 cents by 2007 in order to keep up with inflation.

Another thing that the Strib doesn’t mention is that the bill specifically states that legislators have the authority to overrule a raise in taxes, presumably in case the cost of gasoline is at some astronomical level in the future. Here is the actual text of the part of the bill that talks about inflation:

9.11 Sec. 3. [296A.081] ANNUAL ADJUSTMENT.
9.12 (a) On April 1, 2009, and each April 1 thereafter, the commissioner of revenue
9.13 shall recompute and publish the rate of each fuel tax provided for in sections 296A.07,
9.14 subdivision 3, and 296A.08, subdivision 2. The new rate for each such tax must be
9.15 calculated by multiplying the rate in effect at the time of the calculation by an amount
9.16 obtained under paragraph (b). The new rate must be rounded to the nearest 0.1 cent and is
9.17 effective on June 1 of each year.
9.18 (b) Divide the annual average United States Consumer Price Index for all urban
9.19 consumers, United States city average, as determined by the United States Department of
9.20 Labor for the previous year by that annual average for the year before the previous year.
9.21 (c) By a majority vote, the legislature may suspend the annual adjustment for any
9.22 particular year or years.
9.23 EFFECTIVE DATE.This section is effective April 1, 2009.

You can read more of bill S.F. No. 5 on your own.

I think that raising the state gas tax is a good thing. It hasn’t been raised since 1988, and this and other measures need to be implemented to discourage people from driving their cars. The reality is that it helps reflect the actual costs of driving a car rather than subsidizing them. Money needs to instead be put into projects that encourage different modes of transit–walking, running, bicycling, rail, even magnetic levitation. I also think that the Strib needs a basic lesson in the time value of money.

Scallywags: Bicycles and Sustainable Development

Today for the first time I noticed a bike shop right next to the Seward Co-op. At first I thought it was some sort of bike swap, as what clued me in were the words, “Bike Sale,” scrawled in paint on a bare board outside the door. I ventured in, and it wasn’t really a bike shop. There were about five or six reclaimed single speeds in varying degrees of functionality scattered about the place. A man with a long, busy beard warmly greeted me. A black-clad woman also came out from behind a wall to say hi.

The bike shop is called Scallywags. The bearded man told me that the shop partners with Project Rwanda to send mechanics to work in Rwanda to help people who depend on bikes for their livelihood to keep their machines maintained. Sustainable development through bicycle mechanics–if only they had that program when I was in the Peace Corps.

Bike Station: Forward Without Recommendation

The Public Works and Transportation Committee gave the proposed Bike Station a stay of execution this morning when it voted to “Forward without Recommendation” the proposal to the next full city council meeting. Given that the station is still $212,000 over budget, the station’s last hope is that council members can, between now and the next meeting, rally their neighborhood organizations to foot some of the bill. This may prove a hard sell. They will need to demonstrate how the Bike Station would benefit a neighborhood such as, say, Lowry Hill East, which is a few miles removed from the proposed site but still is a stakeholder in all things Greenway.

One of the more interesting pieces to come out of the committee’s discussion was the city engineer’s definition of “cost effectiveness.” Part of the rationale behind the staff recommendation to axe the Bike Station was that it wouldn’t be “cost effective.” Their definition of cost effective? Well, it’s a common sense kind of thing, the city engineer responded, but in the case of the Bike Station, it will only serve 50 – 200 people, and capital costs of $1 million to serve that many people make little sense. Councilor Schiff pressed him on this. How did he come up with this estimate? Oh, that estimate came from the fact that the maximum occupancy rate of the Bike Station would be 200. So apparently their estimate of usage focuses on a snapshot at any given time, as opposed to what I would consider to be a normal timeframe of one day. Call me crazy. I wouldn’t call the city engineer crazy, as he then admitted that the Greenway itself sees usage of some 1400 riders per day in the summer. But only 200 would stop at the Bike Station and all at the same time?