Tag Archives: infrastructure

Making Denver a Cycle Haven pt. 2: Better Bike Share

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Denver B-Cycle is great. I’ve used it many times during the last season. Let me say though, it has huge room for improvement.

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.

Making Denver a Cycle Haven pt.1: Colfax Bike Lane

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Colfax Ave in Denver is a 26 mile long arterial that stretches from the west end of Denver all the way to the east end of Denver. I’m not sure how accurate this is, but it is often thought of as the longest continuous street in Denver.

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.

Becoming Even More Bicycle Friendly

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Was sitting on the bus today, watching a cyclist hug the curb of Wewatta St in Denver. Obviously, he was aware that the street was safer for him than the sidewalk, but he still wasn’t positioning himself in the safest position in the lane.

So, I ask the question many vehicular cyclists want to ignore. How do we get ordinary citizens on the road, cycling in a safe manner?

How can we make bicyclists feel comfortable riding on a big span of concrete and asphalt such as the picture below?

Wewatta and Park Ave

Stolen from Google Maps

The answer does not lie in vehicular cycling dogma. You can tell cyclists all you want that the safest position for them is in the center of the lane. You can even tell motorists the same. There will still be conflicts, there will still be cyclists who fear the street. Who can blame them? Roads like these were obviously designed for cars with any other users simply an afterthought.

Let’s turn to Copenhagen and Amsterdam and the other famous cycling friendly cities in Europe. They’re doing something right if 37% of commuters in Copenhagen ride bicycles.

Traffic Skills 101 Impressions

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Over the last weekend, I took part in the LAB‘s Traffic Skills 101 course. The league describes the course as:

Gives cyclists the confidence they need to ride safely and legally in traffic or on the trail. The course covers bicycle safety checks, fixing a flat, on-bike skills and crash avoidance techniques and includes a student manual. Recommended for adults and children above age fourteen, this fast-paced, nine-hour course prepares cyclists for a full understanding of vehicular cycling.

I found the course quite interesting and useful. It is a rare situation when you get cyclists together from all walks of life. We had a man about my age there who didn’t even own his own bicycle – he borrowed his friend’s Huffy. We also had a few cyclists who had done some amazing road rides such as the Triple Bypass. We had a director from the local bike advocacy group there – as a participant! – as well as other people from various advocacy groups.

As for the actual course content, it was a mix of discussing the local traffic laws, bicycle maintenance and vehicular cycling. Despite the description above, there was very little trail discussion.

The “classroom” discussions were kinda dry and boring. Involved talking about local traffic laws (such as Colorado’s Three Feet law), types of crashes and how to avoid them, and the ever interesting discussion on bicycle clothing (*yawn*).

The fun came with the part where you actually sit on the saddle.  We started out in a parking lot where the instructors had placed halves of tennis balls in various configurations.

The first exercise was the quick stop maneuver. Easy enough, simple pull on the brakes, the front harder than the rear, and slide your ass back off the saddle as far as you can.

Second exercise was a quick turn. We approached the turn, and just right before the turn, flipped the handlebars to the left, then punched it to the right. This made for a very high speed right turn. Perfect for avoiding those right hooks.

Third exercise was a rock dodge. Simple, just flick the handlebars in either direction to avoid the rock and with some miracle of physics, the front wheel goes on one side of the rock and the rear goes on the other side.

The final exercise was the funnest. Involved going through a slalom at varying speeds and varying “tightness”. Helps you get a feel for how the bike handles with just leaning. The tough part was to make it through the slalom without turning the handlebars at all. Doable, but very difficult.

Then came the road course. We took off on a few (of like a billion) of Aurora’s high speed arterial roads. Even involved a bit of a six lane road with 45mph speed limit. Using proper Vehicular Cycling techniques, one can easily ride on these roads without too much headache. The one big advantage we had was being a group. Its hard to miss eight cyclists in one big long line.

We maybe spent a total of 15 minutes on a local bike path. This is understandable. IMO, a bike path is easy to ride. The biggest rules are keep it slow and yield to pedestrians. Its also nice if you keep right and announce your passes (please, please, please announce your passes).

Do I think TS101 is a necessary course? Oh god no. However, if you live in neighborhood where your local road opens up to a high speed arterial and you’ve had too many close calls on them sidewalks, you might wanna look into it. It may give you the confidence and necessary knowledge to handle it safely.

(Disclaimer: This does not mean I’ve become one of the John Forester, anti-bicycling facilities maniacs. I’m still all for well designed infrastructure for cyclists, including bike lanes, sharrows, bike paths, separated bike tracks, bike boulevards, etc)

A Few Words on Sharrows

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Sharrows? What are those funny things?

If you’ve ever driven through Denver, you probably have seen these funny looking things but have no idea what they really mean. Denver has been using these things for years. They’re not something new.

According to the Wikipedia article on “Shared lane marking“, the term sharrow is a combination of SHared lane and ARROW.

Sharrow + Handlebar

Sharrows on a Denver Street

Now these are relatively recent markings in the history of pavement markings. Sharrows really only serve two purposes:

  • Assist bicyclists with lateral lane positioning
  • Alert other road users to potential bicyclists on the road

A proper sharrow is placed far enough away from the curb as to encourage cyclists to ride out of door zones and in a more visible location on the road.

Sharrows on Sherman

Sharrows down Sherman St in Denver

In a recent San Francisco study, sharrows have been shown to encourage cyclists to ride further out into the road and away from the “door zone” of parked cars. Cars have also been shown to give cyclists a wider birth when they pass in the presence of sharrows.

So now, when you see a sharrow lining the city streets, you have a better idea of what those funny looking things that aren’t quite bicycle lanes are.