The video is commentary of a typical day at a Whole Foods parking lot next to the Cherry Creek Mall here in Denver.

Where else could this happen but in a culture where car is king?

Here’s the final product:

Let’s look at the above picture a moment. Bannock St is one way, heading south. It has been redone with a nice bike lane heading south with the rest of traffic. The cycle track is contra-flow, goes against the rest of traffic. Of interest, is the pedestrian queue at the crosswalk where the cycle track makes that curve.

Unfortunately, here is a great example of Denver half-assing the project:

What do you notice? The cycle track abruptly ends in the opposite direction on a one-way street. There are two problems here:

1. There’s no directions for cyclists to go from here. They have have the choice of riding on sidewalks and crosswalks or turning off onto the busy Colfax Avenue.
2. Going with number one, it is mostly illegal to ride a bicycle on the sidewalk in Denver.

Seeing as both Bannock St and 14th St are one way in the opposite direction of the track, cyclists have little choice but to go one Colfax Ave. Now here’s the thing, there is another cycle track if you want to go East on Colfax. It is however nothing more than a narrow sidewalk for two directions of cycle traffic. Despite the signange prohibiting peds, they’ll still use it. (It doesn’t help a bus stop is right along the track.)

Overall, I applaud the city of Denver for trying something newish. In my opinion, it has a lot of work to do. The cycle track could be a great addition – if it ended in a useful manner and provided cyclists some safe direction to go from there.

A few ideas:

1. Make B-Cycle a year round thing. I was disappointed when they closed B-Cycle for winter hibernation. While I can sort of understand the reasoning, its utility is severely diminished when it gets closed for a few months out of the year. Then, I get an email today that they delayed its reopening by two weeks.
2. Saturate the city with kiosks, expand beyond Denver. This should go without saying. B-Cycle should have a thousand kiosks in the Denver area with ten thousand bicycles. For now, I’ll settle for some more outside of the core of Denver.
3. Kiosks that actually work. I was extremely frustrated last year with some of the touch screens. They didn’t work, became unresponsive, and few times, the station two blocks from my house hadn’t woken up yet. I was unable to retrieve a bike.
4. Bells on the bike that the hammers don’t break off of.
5. Cheap prices, similar to Dublin’s bike share. Did you know, that for only ten euro (about fourteen U.S. Dollars), you can get a year long subscription? Much better than B-Cycles sixty-five dollar cost.

Really, I’m being very critical of B-Cycle. It is a great system. I would be entirely happy with it if I could get a bike throughout the entire year.

It serves as an important arterial, with two of RTD’s busiest bus lines running down it (the 15, 16 and respective Ltds). It is also often considered a blight on our fine city. Many sections of Colfax are run down with crime and poverty. The local communities have tried many things in an attempt at urban renewal with mixed results.

I’m not saying this is going to be a panacea for all of Colfax’s problems, but what if, an easy fix were to take away the car traffic and make a 22.6 mile bike lane along Colfax? It could easily become a heavily bike trafficked corridor with safe and easy access to much of Denver’s neighborhoods.

My idea, would be to run a bike lane from where Colfax meets US6 near its west end in Golden to the intersection of Colfax and Tower Rd near its east end in Aurora.

22.6 miles of bike lane

Now of course there would have to be significant re-engineering of Colfax and traffic lanes removed in many sections. Particularly at the viaduct of I-25 and the train tracks. It also gets rather narrow as it passes through the old sections of Capitol Hill.

I’m not saying this would be easy by any stretch of the imagination. I do believe, however, it is possible and would love to see some municipalities start this initiative.

Where am I at now? I have a decent, well-paying job doing tech support. It’s enjoyable.

I still ride my bike, though as of late I have not had a whole lot of time.

More posts to come as I do have some fun ideas for biking in Denver.

Read the Denver Post article about gubernatorial candidate Maes:

Maes said in a later interview that he once thought the mayor’s efforts to promote cycling and other environmental initiatives were harmless and well-meaning. Now he realizes “that’s exactly the attitude they want you to have.”

“This is bigger than it looks like on the surface, and it could threaten our personal freedoms,” Maes said.

He added: “These aren’t just warm, fuzzy ideas from the mayor. These are very specific strategies that are dictated to us by this United Nations program that mayors have signed on to.”

Which one of you weren’t following our rules of secrecy?

As an aside, I kinda have to wonder how more people riding bicycles reduces personal freedoms… that was never in our secret liberal UN agenda.

From an article in the Denver Daily, the DDP spokeswoman says

“We still feel that bicyclists on the mall, when you combine the pedestrians and all the RTD shuttles, that that’s not a good equation,” she said. “And I think Sunday’s accident illustrates that even though Sunday is a very low traffic day…we need to look at Sundays and our bike policy on the 16th Street Mall.”

Let’s keep in mind the following that comes from the cited Denver Post article above:

The driver has been ticketed for careless driving resulting in serious bodily injury, said John White, a Denver Police Department spokesman.

Some further details from an article on 9News’ website:

RTD Spokesman Scott Reed says the bus driver honked at the cyclist, but instead the noise startled him. Reed says a witness told RTD the cyclist then slammed on his brakes and flew over his handlebars and the bus driver ran over his right leg.

This is clearly the shuttle driver’s fault. The shuttle driver not only could have avoided the accident by hitting his brakes first, before honking his horn. Also, the shuttle driver was even cited by the police for careless driving.

How does this make sense? Instead of taking time to properly train the shuttle drivers, making sure that they drive safely and not carelessly, they’re just going to get rid of cyclists? What if the cyclist was a pedestrian instead? Would the DDP turn around and ban pedestrians as well?

This is a perfect example of the “sacred bull in society’s china shop.”

Instead of focusing on the real problem, the shuttle buses that are potentially deadly machinery, we focus on restricting the road users who are most vulnerable. This is very often the case with road safety campaigns. Ridiculous.

The issue recently came up in Colorado with HB 1147, which in its original revision would have mandated anyone under 18 to wear a helmet while operating a non-motorized wheeled conveyance. A few people were shocked (such as @AndyMan1) when I called it a win for Colorado that the mandatory helmet law portion of the bill was cut out. After all, isn’t keeping brains inside the skull a good thing?

The original version of HB 1147 was quite interesting. First, it mandated that anyone under 18 operating a non-motorized wheeled transportation device (such as a bicycle, a skateboard or inline skates) wear a helmet. This is a rather big departure from the typical under 16 mandate. The other interesting part was the nature of the punishment for violating the fancy mandate. The punishment is a law enforcement officer would stop you and hand you an information pamphlet about why you really should be wearing a helmet, then send you on your merry, helmet-less way.

Before I go into why that’s a bad idea, you need to know that there are some disturbing trends in places where mandatory helmet laws are in effect. Here’s an excerpt from a working draft of a study which looks into this (this isn’t the only study out there, just the first one that came to my mind):

“Over 20 states have adopted laws requiring youths to wear a helmet when riding a bicycle. We confirm previous research indicating that these laws reduced fatalities and increased helmet use, but we also show that the laws significantly reduced youth bicycling.”

I’ve emboldened the last part for emphasis. We’re talking about curbing childhood obesity, right? Isn’t riding a bicycle a good thing? Wouldn’t having children riding bicycles reduce the childhood obesity rate? (I know, its all conjecture)

I know what you’re thinking, “but its unsafe to ride a bike without a helmet.” Unsafe, relative to what? Relative to walking without a helmet? Relative to riding in a car without a helmet? Are you sure?

There’s been a few tries at comparing relative risk amongst activities. Each time, the results are quite clear. Per hour of exposure, cycling is no more dangerous than driving or riding in a passenger car. (See this and this) So, if we want to mandate helmets for children riding bikes, why don’t we mandate for children riding in cars?

So, when you consider that cycling is not necessarily any more dangerous than riding in/driving a car and that mandatory helmet laws tend to reduce the number cyclists out there is it still a good idea to mandate helmet use?

Now, I’ll give two reasons why HB 1147′s helmet mandate was a bad idea. First, it required those under 18 to wear helmet. Second, it put law enforcement officers in the position of safety education.

The first reason, requiring persons under 18 to wear a helmet. It’d be one thing if it was persons under 16, the legal driving age in Colorado. However, requiring those under 18 effectively encourages further use of the automobile. I don’t need to tell you how reckless 16 year olds are with driver’s licenses. We were all there. So, when teenagers are at the best age to be riding bicycles for transportation instead of driving cars, we turn around and discourage their use.

On top of that, you put a law enforcement officer in the position of safety education. You ask the guy whose primary job is to serve and protect the citizens to now also educate the citizens. Law enforcement officers are frequently not trained in bicyclist safety skills.  They are hardly experts when it comes to providing lectures on how to ride a bicycle safely.

If you’re still reading this, I hope that you can see why mandatory helmet laws, especially HB 1147, are potentially damaging to the bicycling culture.

Wear a helmet if it makes you feel safe out there. Just do not force its use among others.

Disclaimer: I’m not against the use of helmets. In fact, it is this authors opinion that it is never a bad idea to wear a helmet. Just, keep an open mind. Also, many of the sites I linked to are not the greatest sources of information. Feel free to tear them apart.

Everywhere in the city, stations are being populated with bicycles.

B-Cycle at 25th St and Lawrence St

I will be volunteering at B-Cycle stations during the launch to tell you all you need to know. Find me on Friday, 4p-6p at the Cherry Creek Mall, and Saturday, 11a-2p at Denver Health.

Also, if you’re free Thursday morning (I’m trying to find a way to be free), join Mayor Hickenlooper at the B-Cycle Launch Event!

Let’s show the nation what Denver can do to be bike friendly!