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St. Patrick's Day was yesterday and Portland celebrated by putting on the green. The first of a number of "Bike Boxes" was installed at SE Hawthorne Blvd. at 7th.
A Bike Box is simply a safe place for cyclists to wait at a red light, ahead of the vehicles, rather than beside them. Why this is so important it because it allows cyclists to avoid being victims of a "right hook," the slang expression for being hit by a vehicle turning right at an intersection. This is statistically the most prevalent type of bike/car crash in Puddletown.
Recently, two Portland cyclists fell victim to right hook accidents, Tracey Sparling and Brett Jarolimek. Both were legally in bike lanes when they were hit and killed by trucks turning right.
The outrage and sadness felt by cyclists and non-cyclists alike spurred the City of Portland to take quick action in an attempt to end the carnage. I snapped a few shots of the bike box in action yesterday on my way home from work. In the few moments I was there, it appeared that drivers and cyclists alike had figured out what to do. If you're a driver, it's pretty hard to miss the huge "STOP HERE" and thick white line placed before the box. The green coloring is not paint, but is rather a series of super-space-age thermoplastic tiles that are heat sealed to the asphalt. The tiles are impregnated with a crystalline substance to improve traction.
This is but the first of 14 bike boxes planned for targeted intersections around Portland. Bike boxes are one of a number of engineering measures being taken to improve safety and visibility for cyclists; there's more to come that you can read about HERE.
The city's research shows that about 60 percent of residents are "interested but concerned" when it comes to cycling. Grisly news coverage of dead cyclists doesn't do anything to alleviate those fears. In reality, cycling in Portland is getting safer by the year (see above link) . But perception is reality for many people, so they continue to not ride.
Something so visible as a screamin' green bike box makes a real statement to people that cycling is here to stay, it's going to continue to grow in popularity and the city is serious about making it safer. I applaud Portland for taking quick action after two very unfortunate incidents.
A couple of cyclists demonstrating how bikes go to the head of the line.
Cars stay put on red lights; bicycles are free to turn. Just as God ordained it!
An overview of the bike box in relation to the intersection.
Bike theft is rampant in Portland; stemming from a combination of drug addicts, plenty of bikes around, and scrap metal dealers that pay in cash, few if any questions asked.
So it's pretty common to see bikes still locked to racks with the wheels, seatposts or other easy to remove bits missing.
This one, however, seems to be in a league all its own. The headset was even pried out. All that's left is the bottom bracket and the crankarm. I'm surprised the chainrings haven't been removed by now. The frame will get hacksawed next, I predict. You might want to hurry and not let this bounty get away.
Some wag once said, "There are only two groups of people. Those who stereotype and those who don't."
One of the not-so-great outcomes of the explosive growth in cycling here in Portland has been a increasingly nasty public debate dividing us into two groups of people - cyclists and drivers.
Cyclists, so the stereotype goes, regularly flaunt the traffic laws. They run red lights and stop signs, ride on the wrong side of the road, don't use lights at night, and so on, all the while carrying on with a self-assured smugness that they are better than everyone else because they're not burning fossil fuels.
The Driver stereotype says that all people piloting a car - no, make that a Hummer H2 - are cell-phone yakking, Starbucks swilling, self-absorbed sacks of crap who care nothing about society and even less about those cyclists who are jamming up the streets.
Reality, of course, is that neither of these pigeonholes has very many people in them. As a cyclist, my experience with drivers - at least in Portland proper - is that most of them are very attentive and that the last thing they want to do is to hit a cyclist.
As a driver, I do my best to watch for cyclists. But I do admit to getting a bit pissy when I see cyclists doing some or all of the dumb stuff listed above.
I will fully admit that I've done dumb stuff behind both steering wheel and handlebars. Of course, making a mistake while driving carries a much greater potential for disaster than while riding. But screwing either one up can mean serious injury or death.
So, in an attempt to get me to focus better on how I both ride my bike and drive my car, I've set up a scoreboard of sorts in the space to the right. When I have a close call on my bike that is another driver's fault, that's a point in the "driver" category. But, when I screw up on my bike - rolling a stop sign is my main weakness - I'm gonna own that too. And finally, when I make a mistake in my car - god forbid - that goes on the scoreboard too.
We'll see how this goes for the next couple of months, especially when the weather gets nicer and I start riding to work more. It will be interesting to see which category gets the highest score. Tonight didn't get the other motorists off to a good start; I nearly got whacked by two different pickup truck drivers at the same intersection. They both failed to yield the intersection to me when they had a stop sign.
So, why not have a blog, I said to myself. 98 percent of the world's sentient beings seem to these days, so I may as well join the fun.
I'm mainly going to write about cycling, covering a wide range of topics such as racing and racing bikes. But I'll also venture into the areas of public policy, and how riding a bike could very well save our planet.
Now and then, I'll take the liberty to throw in some occasional posts on baseball and the New York Yankees in particular. And, whatever else enters my mind.
Thanks for reading.
