Earlier this week, we wrote about a Mike Pintek, a Pittsburgh radio show host who joked about hitting bicyclists with his car.

Today, we read in the Chicago Bicycle Advocate Blog about two young men who were convicted of hunting down bicyclists to hit with their car — while they were drunk.

Good thing they were convicted, you might think. But when you hear the sentences they received, you might be shocked:

The second man charged with intentionally hunting down and striking
a bicyclist in Brookfield on May 31, 2009 has been sentenced to zero
jail time. The driver, 20-year-old Erik Fabian, pled guilty to
aggravated battery with a deadly weapon and leaving the scene of an
accident.  He was sentenced to two years probation.  Fabian’s buddy, Armando Reza, was sentenced last week to 10 days in jail for the same incident, a seemingly light sentence that has outraged a good many Chicago bicyclists. According to the Chicago Breaking News Center,
the two were drinking before deciding to drive around looking for
bicyclists to hit. Both men were sentenced by Cook County Judge Carol
Kipperman.

The Active Transportation Alliance,
a Chicago bicycle advocacy group, has expressed outrage at the
"insufficient sentences" given to the men. This morning the group
started a letter-writing campaign directed at Cook County State’s
Attorney, Anita Alvarez, and assistant state’s attorney, Mike
Pattarozzi, to justify these negotiated sentences. According to the
Alliance the crimes with which the men were charged were eligible for
penalties of up to 2-5 years in jail.

According to a news story
about the incident, the two men dared each other to commit the
assaults. It was like a game to them — they even pulled over to switch
seats so they could each get a chance to play. Fortunately, neither of
the people they struck was seriously injured. But it’s not hard to
imagine how differently it might have turned out.

And yet, in a culture where assault with a vehicle is routinely
joked about, prosecutors are willing to cut offenders an easy deal.

More from around the network: Xing Columbus writes in praise of car-pooling. M-Bike.org has some news about more funding for the Underground Railroad bike route. And Atlanta Bicycle Coalition reports on a $5 million boost for a major bike trail in that city.

Last year, we posted a piece about a couple of shock jocks in Detroit who thought it was funny to talk about throwing things at bicyclists.

This year, the hateful talk is coming over the airwaves from Pittsburgh.

Streetsblog Network member blog Reimagine an Urban Paradise has been following the story of a Pittsburgh DJ, Mike Pintek of KDKA, who made some ugly remarks about being "tempted" to hit people on bikes with his car. The audio has been taken down, but here’s a partial transcript of what Pintek said from Reimagine’s author, Lolly:

"There are some bicyclists who are just these arrogant little dorks that think they can do anything they want because they’re on a bicycle and ‘we’re being green and environmentally friendly’…

"I have been thoroughly tempted — I haven’t done it ’cause I’m not going to do it — I’m not that kind of person…but I have been so tempted to just bump ‘em.

"I have been so tempted to pull up behind them when they’re doing this — you know spread out across the road — put my car in neutral, jam the accelerator down, race the engine and scare the living crap out of them.

"They’ve got to stop being so arrogant about what they’re doing. They’ve got to obey the rules. They have to do the right thing or else they’re going to get killed."

This all is playing out in a city where several bicyclists have been attacked in recent weeks by gangs of kids, as reported by Bike PGH.

Reimagine’s Lolly has this to say about what she thinks the consequences should be for the DJ:

Driver’s licenses are a privilege, not a right and if a person announces their desire to use their vehicle as a weapon, they should lose their license. If they use their job to incite others to commit violence, they should lose that job.

She also notes that in the case of a San Francisco driver who allegedly did target people on bikes and used his vehicle as a weapon, the charges are felony attempted murder.

PGH Is a City and WWVB have more. Apparently Pintek is going to talk about what he said on his show today. We’ll keep an eye on it.

On another note entirely, we’d like to thank the folks at the Top Online Engineering Degree blog for including Streetsblog.net on their list of Top 50 Blogs for Civil Engineers to Read. It’s a terrific list that we’re looking forward to digging into. You should definitely check it out. And we’re honored to be included.

Are garages charging bike parking prices that the market is unlikely to bear? (Photo: Bicycles Only via Flickr)

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Traffic author Tom Vanderbilt writes at How We Drive
about the cost of bike parking at Manhattan garages. (New York’s larger
garages have been required to offer bike parking since late last year,
and they haven’t always been happy about it.)

Vanderbilt’s post is prompted by a piece in the Wall Street Journal about one East Side garage that is charging a cool $175 (plus tax)
for a monthly bike parking space. The WSJ’s Ralph Gardner basically
thanks the garage for charging so much because he’s terrified of riding
his bike in the city to begin with.

Vanderbilt wonders what kind of economic thinking is behind the garage’s decision to set such a high rate:

The first question that came to my mind was why it was so expensive
(when presumably you could fit upwards of a dozen bikes in a standard
car spot), and then, secondly, why garages would charge such a high
amount if no one seemed willing to pay it. Wouldn’t it better to make
half (or anything above) the theoretical profit than no profit at all?
I don’t know how these garages are set up, but if parking that bike
means having to have an attendant park and retrieve it for you, I
suppose the garages want to make sure the transaction costs are covered
— i.e., if they charged cyclists ten bucks a month but then had to send
attendants in search of bikes (when they could be retrieving more
lucrative cars). In other words, do they essentially charge that much
to not have to deal with the aggravation of dealing with parked bikes?

Good questions all. Has anyone out there found a good garage rate
for parking bikes in Manhattan? Or, perhaps more to the point, has
anyone out there found a garage that actually seems to see this as a
business opportunity rather than as an obligation to be avoided at any
cost? Will prices shake out if and when demand becomes more apparent?

By the way, Vanderbilt is hosting a very cool forum over at Slate called Nimble Cities.
Here’s the idea: They’re looking for smart new ideas about
transportation within and between cities. Submit your own brilliant
solution, vote on the ideas of others, and see what rises to the top.
Vanderbilt will write about the best concepts in more depth as the
month progresses.

I started riding the public bus to get to school in New York City
when I was about nine or ten years old. It was a trip that took half an
hour or so each way, including a walk of several blocks from the bus
stop to the school door.

Even though I had been riding the bus with my parents since I was
very little, I can still remember the nervousness I felt about making
the trip on my own for the first time. Would I recognize my stop in
time? Would I be able to pull the signal cord to get the driver’s
attention? What if I went too far?

I can also remember the sense of pride and freedom I felt when the
trip went smoothly. And my excitement at the realization that I could
take the bus not just to school, but to a friend’s house, or to the
bookstore I loved way downtown. My world had opened up, all because of
a bus system.

So a recent post from Streetsblog Network member blog Santa Rosa CityBus
about kids learning to ride the bus caught my eye. This California city
has a program to educate groups in the ways of the bus system:

Santa Rosa CityBus offers FREE travel training classes for groups
who want to have someone help them learn our transit system in "real
time". This service is generally used by seniors, students and those
who have mobility challenges.

Santa Rosa CityBus was contacted by teachers from both Santa Rosa
High School and Slater Middle School who wanted their students to learn
how to use public transit. Both instructors realize that knowing how to
read and understand the system route map and time schedule is a very
valuable life skill and more than worth taking the time to learn.

So last week, 39 Santa Rosa students and
8 school staff members were treated to a comprehensive, hands-on
training program. CityBus staff met the students at their schools and
started the training by providing a general introduction to Santa Rosa
CityBus, including helpful information on fares, bus tickets, monthly
passes and transfers.… Feedback from students is always very positive.
They really enjoy the class and, as a result, feel confident to use
Santa Rosa CityBus to travel around town.

In a way, it strikes me as too bad that the kids can’t learn how to
use the bus from parents and other family members, the way that I did.
But the reality of many American cities is that no one in the family
uses anything but a car for transportation. I have plenty of grown-up
friends from other parts of the country who are intimidated by using
public transit in their own cities or any other. So I think it’s great
that Santa Rosa is doing something to change that — to show kids that
independence and connection to a larger world don’t have to depend on a
personal motor vehicle.

More from around the network: Discovering Urbanism on learning from the early family-friendly suburbs. The Transport Politic on how to make transit commuting more interesting. And Newton Streets and Sidewalks on ticketing bicyclists who break the law.

Today on the Streetsblog Network, reports of obstacles for pedestrians from two states.

First, from Massachusetts, some observations about crosswalk design.
In theory, a crosswalk with a signal and a button for a pedestrian to
activate the signal should be a welcoming sight for someone traveling
on foot. But as TransitBoston
points out in a post this morning, the presence of that button is often
window-dressing for an intersection that functions poorly for anyone
not traveling by car:

At least one intersection in Newton requires three entire
light cycles to cross from corner to corner. Here is a dramatization of
the process: Press a button. Wait a minute. Cross. Stop. Press another
button. Wait a minute. Cross. Stop. Press a third button. Wait a
minute. Cross …. Whew, that was exhausting. And it was only 150 feet of
walking. That is a walk signal functioning (by some meaning of the
word) as designed, and it is not really much of an outlier as crosswalk
signals go. Many other crosswalks require at least two cycles to go
from corner to corner.

Meanwhile, in New Jersey, WalkBikeJersey Blog
reports that a businessman in a Jersey Shore community is calling for
the repeal of a new law that requires cars to stop for pedestrians in
crosswalks. His argument might strike you as strange — he says that the
law is "dangerous." But what, exactly, is the danger he’s so concerned
about? WalkBikeJersey writes:

In New Jersey, where turning right on red is a birthright, the "Stop
for Pedestrians in the Crosswalk" appears to have puzzled a generation
of suburban drivers trained to own the road…. Inevitably lack of
understanding generates backlash. The Atlantic City Press reports
that Long Beach Township businessman Dick Jeffries has started a
petition to repeal the stop for pedestrians law with the endorsement of
Mayor Joseph Mancini.…

Jeffries’ quotes in the article totally reflect his windshield view of traffic safety:

"People don’t know what to do because the law is so unclear.
Everyone is so frightened by this thing with these big signs they put
up. I mean, what is it? A $200 fine and two points on your license?"

Ah, yes. That is terrifying — the thought that if you don’t stop
your two-ton vehicle to let another human being cross the street, you
might risk not only a fine, but two points on your license as well.

More from around the network: City Block on the true cost of gasoline. Livin in the Bike Lane on a Florida law that would require cyclists to ride in bike lanes or to the right of a car traffic lane. And Cap’n Transit on glamour and honesty in bus service.

A few months ago, we had a discussion in this space about the question of whether mobility is a basic human right. Many commenters expressed concern that framing the issue this way was counterproductive, leading to the impression that people in our society should have the right to jet anywhere they want at a moment’s notice. Here’s what commenter Mark Walker had to say then:

I would argue that we’re already hyper-mobile and need to reduce the need for mobility by building walkable communities served by efficient and sustainable transit. Telling Americans mobility is a human right is like telling the morbidly obese that Doritos are a human right.

Several other commenters suggested reframing the argument to emphasize "accessibility" rather than "mobility." And that’s exactly what member blog A Place of Sense, in Indianapolis, is talking about today.

The blog’s author, Graeme Sharpe, writes that it can be instructive to keep the Americans with Disabilities Act in mind when considering how much access people have to the amenities and opportunities of their towns and cities:

[T]he Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, Title III, clearly defines universal accessibility as a right. Architectural barriers to access are not permitted in open establishments, transportation, or public places.

It is well known that the layout of a city shows the values of its citizens. Seen through the lens of the ADA, our street design policies are upside down. Accessibility is a prime concern for any new building
project, but other than a few laudable street designs (Cultural Trail!), most cities cede the public right-of-way to automobiles without a second thought.…

I’m not arguing for a city closed to traffic (which would present a barrier to access by itself), but certainly our cities need a better balance. If we believe that universal accessibility is a civil right worthy of our highest levels of protection, then why are there barriers to access at nearly every street corner?

 Why indeed? Why are so many of our towns and cities designed in such a way that you need a car to cross a street safely (a situation I experienced recently in Pahrump, Nevada)?

I personally have no problem with the term "mobility," if it is understood as the ability to move about the public space safely and freely. But whether you call it mobility or accessibility, people should not be prisoners of municipal infrastructure that disenfranchises anyone who is not driving an automobile — whether for reasons of age, health, ability or personal choice.

More from around the network: Discovering Urbanism on the preference young families show for auto-dependent suburbs. Let’s Go Ride a Bike on evolving bike etiquette in a city (Chicago) with booming ridership. And Spacing Toronto on the politics of biking in that city.

Here’s the analogy of the day from the Streetsblog Network: Parking spaces are like toilets — at least for conventional planners.

That line comes from Reinventing Urban Transport, and while it’s good for a laugh, it yields several important insights on closer examination.

Paul Barter, the blog’s author, has been thinking about the parallels between parking spaces and toilets for several months now. Here are some of the similarities that he notes:

1. Both are treated as an essential ancillary service that every building will need.
2. It is usually assumed that no fee (or a token fee at most perhaps) will be charged. Remember, we are talking about the conventional approach to parking policy here. Some jurisdictions even ban fees for such facilities.
3. There is thus little direct return on the investments. So the private sector would under-provide them unless forced to. To the rescue come regulations in the form of parking or toilet requirements in planning or building codes.

But as Barter goes on to argue, planning for parking the way you do for toilets is a fundamentally flawed approach. Here’s how he starts breaking it down:

1. It is much more difficult to predict parking demand than to predict toilet demand (which itself is not easy). The human need to expel waste changes little (except when beer is consumed in large quantities perhaps). The demand for parking can change enormously over time as car ownership changes and as mode choices shift.
2. Everyone needs toilets. Only car users need parking. (But conventional parking policy assumes that ‘car users’ = ‘everyone’.)
3. Parking takes a lot more space than toilets. Forgive me for stating the obvious here. It is common for American suburban office parks to be required to have as much parking space as they have floor space for other uses. Buildings in Kuala Lumpur…or Bangkok often have a third or more of their floors devoted to parking. Parking standards often dramatically limit the density that is feasible on a site.

There’s a lot more to his original post, and Barter is looking for more insights to help develop the idea — which he finds has been quite useful in presentations. Head on over to his site and offer your feedback.

More from around the network: The Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia reports that the installation of 1,500 bike parking rings on old meter posts has begun. This is a stimulus-funded project. Bike Denton has the story on a $15 million grant for bike lanes in Austin, Texas. And The Transport Politic asks, whose turn is it to lead transport planning?

A new study on how design and planning can keep these numbers down. (Photo: Amy the Nurse via Flickr)

How the heck can we get people to drive less?

That’s one of the most vexing questions facing sustainable transportation advocates. Higher gas prices seem to do the trick, although anecdotal evidence suggests that watching an entire ecosystem being destroyed by a busted oil well doesn’t have much effect.

The fact is, too often we are engaging in guesswork and speculation
when we talk about strategies to reduce vehicle miles traveled (VMT).
But thanks to a new study of how land use affects transportation
choices, we now have a great new source of actual data. The study, a
meta-analysis of 50 previous studies, is called "Travel and the Built Environment," and it’s published in the Summer 2010 issue of the Journal of the American Planning Association.
It’s the result of several years’ work by Reid Ewing of the University
of Utah and Robert Cervero of the University of California, Berkeley.

Kaid Benfield at NRDC Switchboard did a great job of summing up their conclusions:

What they found: location matters most when it comes to land use, driving and the environment. 

The study’s key conclusion is that destination accessibility is by
far the most important land use factor in determining a household or
person’s amount of driving. To explain, ‘destination accessibility’ is
a technical term that describes a given location’s distance from common
trip destinations (and origins). It almost always favors central
locations within a region; the closer a house, neighborhood or office
is to downtown, the better its accessibility and the lower its rate of
driving. The authors found that such locations can be almost as
significant in reducing driving rates as other significant factors (e.g., neighborhood density, mixed land use, street design) combined.

Daniel Nairn at Discovering Urbanism also wrote about the study, pulling out a thread about connectivity on the street-grid level:

[The study is a] big win for connectivity, which is great because this is something that can actually be done. Some cities and states are starting to write codes to ensure a robust street network in new developments. Even more important is retrofitting connections
into existing networks. Hopefully these results will spur localities to
look for those odd scraps of land and consider punching a street or
multi-use trail through them. Although cycling was not considered in
this analysis, I can attest from personal experience that street
connectivity is the single most important factor for enhancing safety
and convenience.

More excellent analysis, focusing on the importance of intersection density, can be found at Lawrence Aurbach’s Ped Shed.

More from around the network: Livin in the Bike Lane on the effect of air pollution on bicyclists (this is not good news, folks). On Two Wheels wonders if Montréal could benefit from fewer traffic signs. And The Bellows considers the benefits of congestion.

This morning on the Streetsblog Network, a bike parking success story from Los Angeles.

Network member Soap Box LA reports on how the organized efforts of bike advocates forced a new branch of Trader Joe’s in Hollywood to install bike parking — just weeks after it opened with no such facilities.

The new Trader Joe’s is part of a major transit-oriented development (TOD) project at the fabled corner of Hollywood and Vine. But when it opened, people who wanted to do their shopping by bike found an absence of bike parking, and a lot of excuses from the chain store.

A boycott ensued, fueled by Facebook and Twitter. Many phone calls were made to corporate and government officials. And after some dithering, the store installed appropriate racks.

As Stephen Box points out on Soap Box LA, it’s mystifying that a redevelopment project touted as progressive design failed to include bike parking in the first place. But quick action by a network of engaged citizens was very effective in this case. Box writes:

It’s been two weeks since the TJ’s in Hollywood opened, It’s been two days since the director of construction installed the bike racks. They look great and they are a victory for a few reasons.

*We’ve got bike racks and can lift the boycott! Now we can shop at Trader Joe’s!

*We’ve established a bike parking standard for the Trader Joe’s corporation! No wave or wheelbender bike racks, simple inverted-U racks that are properly installed and spaced and protected and accessible and visible and convenient and effective. This is the bike rack standard for Trader Joe’s.

*We’ve established a bike parking standard for the Metro and for the [Community Redeveloment Agency]. Transit-oriented development must have a bike parking standard for the project as a whole and for the tenants.…

*We’ve established a bike parking standard for the neighborhood.

Maybe next time, they’ll put the bike racks in first and save themselves the headache.

More from around the network: Transit Miami on the deadly nature of Florida’s highways. Hugh Bartling on the potential for waterborne transit in Chicago. And Half Mile Circles on an upcoming US DOT webinar about the role of transportation in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

(I’m going to be away from the computer for the rest of the day, so enjoy this "classic" Streetsblog.net post.  It’s coming to us all the way from last Thursday – DN)

You’re seeing electric-powered bicycles more and more on the streets
of New York these days, so far mostly ridden by restaurant deliverymen.
But are they just early adopters of what will become a more widespread
trend?

Today on the Streetsblog Network, Commute by Bike
has a post asking just that question. Big caveat up front: It’s written
by a woman who owns a shop that sells electric-assist kits for bikes in
Carrboro, North Carolina.

That said, it raises some good points about how electric bikes could
be a part of the future of transportation, especially for people with
children and other cargo to transport, or for longer commutes. The
author says she was inspired to start her business by her own
experience:

You see, I had three small people under the age of five to take care
of, and not only did they need to be transported, but I needed to have
the energy to deal with them. After a lengthy internet search, a cargo
bike was selected to transport them. But I didn’t live super close to
town, and there were some big hills in the way. I didn’t think I could
do it. I could barely pedal the bike up the first hill out of the
driveway.This is where the electric assist kit transformed this into a
realistic solution.

With my kit, I can pedal the bike even with three kids or a week’s
worth of groceries, over 12 miles of hilly terrain. I can do it every
day and it doesn’t take forever or leave me sweaty and exhausted. It’s
become a realistic and competitive alternative to the car. And in fact,
it’s become the preferred option most of the time as everyone enjoys
riding the bike more than riding the car, especially Mom!

Setting up this bike actually was a life-changing experience for me,
so I started a bike shop to help other people realize their own dreams
of using their car less and their bikes more. Electric assist has been
a big part of this.We help a lot of people like myself who want to
electrify cargo bikes.

But we also help a lot of commuters with distances of over three
miles to go. Some people are even riding 20 miles each way, and the
electric assist just makes this commute much faster and more do- able.
Instead of bike commuting one day a week, they’re doing it three or
five days. We’ve also helped people with disabilities, people who are
out of shape, and people who just want to have more fun riding their
bikes. It’s been a pleasure watching all of these people dust off bikes
and leave their cars in the garage. In my book, anything that enables
people to do that is worth doing.

Probably there are purists who don’t like e-bikes precisely because
they allow people "who are out of shape" to ride (heck, we all know
there are folks who apparently look down on gears). That’s
not my concern at all. I do, however, worry about electric assist bikes
in urban settings — that they can be too fast to mix well with regular
bikes in heavily trafficked bike lanes. I’ve already seen some scary
situations caused by e-bikes, and I’m sure I’ll see more as they
proliferate.

(On a side note, the International Cycling Union is looking into what is known as "motorized doping" in pro bike racing — the possible use of hidden batteries to increase a rider’s speed. Hat tip to @spokesnyt for that link.)

What’s your e-bike opinion? Let us know in the comments.

There’s also a semantic bike controversy is brewing on the network
today: Is the term "cyclist" one that people who ride bikes should
embrace, or reject as marginalizing? Is calling people who ride bikes
"people who ride bikes" going to make those people more acceptable to
the mainstream?

A post on Seattle’s Publicola kicked it off. Bicycling Toronto is in the anti "cyclist" camp, saying, "The last thing Toronto needs is more cyclists." But Biking in LA
takes the other side, writing, "You’re a cyclist. Get over it.… No one
benefits from getting caught up in a question of semantics."

Of course, this all leads us to the question: Is a person who rides
an electrically assisted bike a person who rides a bike? From behind a
windshield, at least, we’re betting the answer is yes.

Today, even the CEO of BP used the words "environmental catastrophe" to characterize what’s happening in the Gulf of Mexico.

Admitting you have a problem is, of course, the beginning of the
road to recovery in the 12-step tradition of overcoming addiction.
We’re happy that BP’s Tony Hayward has taken that first step —
congrats, Tony!

But the magnitude of this particular catastrophe is paralyzing for
many of the rest of us — including those who have known for a long time
that our addiction to fossil fuels is an ongoing catastrophe. 

Streetsblog Network member blog Straight Outta Suburbia/Saliendo de las Afueras
(our only bilingual blog) is determined to get beyond paralysis. Today,
it has a list of actions that people and governments could take to
reduce their own consumption of oil. Here are a few:

• Write your city council person and demand that 5 percent of the
  parking spaces in your city be converted to bicycle racks.
• Instead of driving to the gym, walk to the store.
• Employers should not buy parking places for their employees.
  Instead, they should use the money they spend on parking to pay extra
  cash to employees. When other people pay for parking, people drive more.
• Gasoline-powered leaf blowers, meet your eco-friendly replacement, the rake.
• Pass a modest carbon tax and index it to inflation. This would give
  people an incentive to conserve while raising money to subsidize
  alternatives to gasoline-powered transportation.
• Believe that you can. That’s the first step. Next time somebody
  says we need oil, tell them they’ve underestimated the power and
  determination of a growing group of disgruntled, passionate and
  pissed-off people!

Will actions like these fix the problem of dependence on oil? No.
Are they naive and idealistic? Maybe. But can they be part of a
paradigm shift that would lead to real, long-term solutions? Possibly,
especially that part about the carbon tax.

One thing is for sure: Failing to do anything is what’s known in the addiction-recovery community as classic denial.

More from around the network: Greater Greater Washington reports a victory for transit — and social media. The Transport Politic discusses the importance of imagining a multimodal future. And WalkBikeJersey
sadly notes that New Jersey drivers place last in a recent insurance
industry survey that tested motorists on their knowledge of rules of
the road. Not that people in the rest of the country did so great either.

In honor of National Bike Month, we asked you to send in pictures of bike infrastructure you love. And we got one message loud and clear: you love your bike infrastructure. A lot. We got hundreds of submissions. 

It was terrific to see all the great stuff that’s out there, particularly because so much of it is new. More great bike facilities in more places — urban, suburban and rural — is bound to mean more people on bikes. Cause for celebration.

Take a look:

Many thanks to all who contributed: BeyondDC.com, Christa Clark Jones of Santa Barbara Cycle Chic, Greg Raisman, Dave Feucht of Portlandize, Amalia Holub of ITDP, Alison Smith of Stantec, Mitchell Nussbaum, Jeffrey Schwane, Sabinna, Aaron Bialick, Brandon McPhail, Megan McManus and Justin Marks.

You can find even more of the contributions on Flickr, tagged with "streetsblog infrastructure." Add your own! We’re obviously going to have to do this again.