Bicycle Scofflaws.

This is a pretty good article written by Mia Birk (a well known bicycle advocate up in Portland) for the Portland Tribune. It addresses some of the age old arguments that always seem to pop up when discussing the whole bike verses car debate. Read on!

Law-breaking cyclists: the answer

Running red lights fuels backlash against fellow bicyclists

By Mia Birk

Pamplin Media Group, Sep 15, 2011

Christopher Onstott / Pamplin Media Group 

A Portland cyclist makes the turn from Broadway onto North Williams Avenue, where a bike-specific signal alerts riders when it is safe to cross through traffic.

He raises his hand, politely at first. He’s impossible to ignore, the only person in the crowded room wearing a safety vest. He then stands and begins a tirade.

“You keep talking about adding all these bikeways and stuff, and you never talk about cyclists doing whatever the hell they want, all the time, disobeying the law, and the police don’t do a damn thing about it. And they just go all over the place, running the lights and you can’t see them at night because they don’t have any lights. Where is the enforcement?”

Sigh.

I’ve heard this question/lecture a thousand times, not only at public meetings but in casual conversation, practically every week for more than 20 years. For many drivers, the image of cyclists as scofflaws is etched in their brains.

It’s a problem of our own making, a combination of auto-centric infrastructure, attitudes, laws and the reality that many of us who bicycle flow like water as we travel, blithely ignoring traffic signals and public perception.

This is how I behaved in my early 20s, when I was getting around Washington, D.C., then a pretty hostile place for people on bikes, with little bikeway infrastructure. Why? I was young and ignorant; no one had taught me any differently. It felt like the laws didn’t apply.

Truth be told, almost none of us have been taught a thing about bike safety or ingrained with societal expectations about behavior on bikes. (Kudos to Portland’s Safe Routes to School program, which is teaching a whole generation of kids the rules of the road!)

Many come to bicycling through sports, where speed and momentum are valued, and they fail to adjust their behavior to the bicycle as a form of transportation.

You can see all around you, hear beautifully, stop on a dime, all the while delighting in the childlike joy of riding, adrenaline pumping, legs propelling. Stop? Heck no. Not unless you absolutely have to.

It was when I became the city of Portland’s bicycle coordinator in 1993 that I came to understand that bad behavior has harmful impacts beyond personal risk. Every time a person in a car saw a person on a bike blow a red light, it made my already challenging job a little bit harder.

Mr. Safety Vest is not some wacko crank. He’s your neighbor, boss, blogger, decision maker, or business owner being asked to accept people on bikes as legitimate users of our transportation system.

So I shaped up. No more red-light running and a smile and wave at every motorist who showed me the slightest shred of courtesy. I noticed that my mindfully good behavior and attitude attracted courtesy from the motoring crowd in return.

In my role with the city, I learned that red-light running was in many cases a necessity, because people on bikes often could not trigger the signal to get a green. We started tuning the signals and marking where cyclists need to stand. This, along with bike lanes and other infrastructure improvements, helped send a message to people on bikes: “Yes, you are welcome. We are evolving our transportation system to reflect your needs.”

In this, we have just begun. Many stop signs should be converted to or supplemented with yield signs and markings specific to cyclists, for example. We need more green bike boxes to reduce right-turn conflicts at intersections and a robust network of low-stress, comfortable, convenient bikeways.

A number of signalization techniques will help as well. These include bike-specific traffic signals, quicker response times for bike- and pedestrian-activated signals, coordinated signal timing, a few seconds of “pre-green” time to allow people on bikes to mount, and bike-specific traffic signals. All these are common in bicycle-friendly European cities.

Take the bike signal at the east end of the Steel Bridge, which connects the Eastbank Esplanade to the Rose Quarter. After the signal was installed, the percentage of people on bikes disregarding the signal dropped from 66 percent to 13 percent. Nice! An education campaign to help people understand how to activate the signal might very well take care of the rest.

To be sure, more Portlanders on bikes stop for signals than in the past. Visitors and new residents often are stunned by our level of compliance relative to more autocentric cities. And yes, we still have a long way to go.

Do you drive a car? If yes, please join me in this pledge:

I pledge to drive at or below the speed limit; refrain from texting, dialing or fiddling with my cell phone; avoid using neighborhood streets as cut-throughs; fully stop at stop signs; use my mirrors; and remember that people on bikes might well be my friends, neighbors, colleagues, and relatives.

Do you ride a bike to work, friends’ houses, stores, school or simply for the pleasure of moving your body in the fresh summer air? If yes, please join me in this pledge:

I pledge to use bike lights at night, stop and stay stopped at each and every red light, yield to pedestrians in crosswalks, be predictable and wave and smile at any driver who shows me the slightest shred of courtesy.

Since 1999, I’ve been working nationwide and beyond to create more bicycle-friendly communities. No matter where I go, the lesson is the same: if we treat people on bikes as legitimate users of the transportation system with appropriate infrastructure, behavior improves. Upgrading infrastructure is the city’s job. The rest, shaping up our own behavior, is up to us.

Mia Birk is the author of "Joyride: Pedaling Toward a Healthier Planet."