On Sun, 15 Aug 2004 12:56:47 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

In my own experience with American Greens, they oppose anything that
THEY don't do, while demanding outrageous privileges from government.
Example: $4 million to have a bicycle lane across the Dumbarton Bridge
in San Francisco Bay. Maybe three people a week use it.

Iowa City spent a hundred thousand dollars (or more) installing "bicycle
lifts" on the front of all city buses. These contraptions allow the bus
driver to stop, get out, and "easily" load a bicycle onto a rack mounted on
the front of the bus.

Mistake number one. Almost any serious bicyclist is not going to let
some buss driver with or without training load their bicycle. You
don't play around with bikes of this class just like you don't walk up
and pick up some musicians axe. (Guitar)

Today's bicyclists do not ride the old bikes we were so fond of while
growing up. Today's bicyclist rides a bike that cost as much as a
nice, but small used car.

Joyce and I are both over 60, yet at least once a week she rides 20
miles one way to another town for lunch with friends. She just
returned from a trip that went from South of Muskegon MI to Mackinaw
City. In past years she'd ride from the "Straights" across the upper
peninsula all the way past Green Bay to Manitowoc (sp?) WI in the same
week I was at Oshkosh.

It sounds as if the system you are talking about was designed by non
bicyclists, or at least people who know little of alternate
transportation.. IOW they had the wrong people doing the work. As
was mentioned in another answer the bicyclist is the one who loads the
bike. You don't let some one else play with your toys when they cost
that much.

Moving to alternate forms of transportation is a complex issue.

First, we don't have the alternate forms because we don't have
provisions for them such as racks on the buss, bike lanes, rail
trails...etc... but when you put in provisions for those alternate
forms of transportation they are not used because the alternate forms
have not developed due to the lack of provisions to support them.
(bike lanes, rail trails, traffic education among others)


The Greens insisted that this would encourage the use of public
transportation (which has been a financial catastrophe here -- we could
literally buy each rider a car for less tax money), and rammed the issue
through our sheepish city council.

Think positive. These are the attitudes that have prevented the
alternate forms in the first place and continue to discourage them It
all takes time. If you develop a rail trail (replace abandoned rail
roads with bike, or non motorized trails) and they may not see much
use at first, but once available the use will develop.

We built a paved rail trail from Midland to Clare Michigan. It's a
bit over 30 miles long. http://www.lmb.org/pmrt/ (go to the map)
Photos along the trail are also on the site.

At first people fought the tail and the "bikers". They feared it would
raise crime in the areas where it was going to go through. Now that
the tail is in, there are restaurants along the trail that cater to
the riders as well as the general public. Several bike shops have been
built. Instead of trouble it is building business. We have people
riding 15 to 30 miles for Saturday or Sunday lunch and then back. In
town (Midland) hundreds use the trail every day for hiking, biking,
and roller blading. The first 4 or 5 miles are one busy stretch. I
believe that part is 12 feet wide. We are getting ready to add
another 7 miles of trail out to the Chippewa Nature Center.


As most of us knew all along, they (like the buses) are rarely used --
thankfully. Each time they ARE used, the bus -- which, of course, must stop
at curbside, blocking the traffic lane -- sits for up to 5 minutes while the
poor driver wrestles the bike onto the rack.

Again, poor design. It should only take seconds to load the bike. We
can load both our bikes onto the car carrier in less than a minute and
they weren't designed for speed loading.

First you have to build the infrastructure as the bicyclists aren't
going to be there until it is in place. You'd be surprised just how
fast a properly designed system will develop use.

If the rest of the alternative system is designed as the buss system,
it will not develop.

Ten years ago Joyce and I flew to Florida. We took our road bikes. One
look at the roads and we decided we were not going to ride in that
state. There were no shoulders and no provisions for riding bikes and
with the elderly drivers and narrow roads you needed a death wish to
take a short ride.
..
They tell me Texas was even worse. Today both Texas and Florida are
rated among the top states for alternative transportation.

If you really want to see a city designed to handle cars, pedestrians,
and bicycles, go to Boulder Colorado. Every major street has wide
bike lanes and they are well used. They have a tremendous system.
I've heard there are now cities that are much better.


I often wonder how much gas those 25 cars idling behind the bus are "saving"
thanks to the Greens.

Again as in Florida the faulty design of the system is causing the
delay.


But, of course, we're the idiots for letting them control the agenda...

The problem is the idiots controlling the agenda didn't understand
what was needed and built an expensive answer that wasn't an answer,
but rather more of another problem.

It's not the Greens, but those who seek alternate forms of
transportation. Getting the extremists in the planning is as bad or
worse than getting those who know noting about alternate forms of
transportation.

Any city, or county that decides to go ahead with alternate forms of
transportation will gain in the long run if the program is properly
implemented. They will just create a lot of animosity if the system
is not properly designed and run. Even the implementation of a
properly designed system will be a painful growing experience.
It takes time to design, it takes time to implement, and it takes time
for the user base to develop.

If we had the bridge across the river, just down the road, I'd be
riding my bike to the airport. It'd be just over 5 miles. As it is
now, it's nearly 11 miles and 5 of those are on a very bad stretch of
highway. So to get around that you have to ride another 5 miles making
the trip 15 instead of the possible 5.

Hell, for a slightly exorbitant price I know of a couple people who
might be willing to serve as consultants. For that matter I could
probably find a lot more who have substantial experience in the field.

Just go to the site listed above and follow the links. Another good
one is the Michigan State university site
http://www.prr.msu.edu/trails/

Another is a pdf put out by the state of Michigan for land use
development http://www.michigan.gov/documents/Strader2_85237_7.pdf
You might find others by going to www.mi.gov

This is a complicated issue due to the need to interface different
forms of transportation with different needs, drastically differing
speeds, and differing mind sets that are some times a bit on the
incompatible side.

Good luck,

Roger Halstead (K8RI & ARRL life member)
(N833R, S# CD-2 Worlds oldest Debonair)
www.rogerhalstead.com