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800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
800 Maynard Ave S, Suite 200, Seattle, WA 98134
Rail tracks? They're for mass transit. Which is a Good Thing. Deal with them.
And, @2--sorry if you feel threatened by bicyclists who can ride faster than you can drive, but we don't even need to slow down to cross the tracks. Or even use right angles. Just cross them at an angle no less than 15 degrees or so. It's just about bike handling skills. Hell, if you're slick enough, you can bunny-hop over them in a parallel fashion.
4-8,000 bike commuters across the whole city http://www.seattle.gov/transportation/bi…
So one streetcar route gets, assuming 2 boardings per person about 10% of the traffic as the whole city does on bikes. I'd say streetcars are much more important and likely to get people out of their cars than bikes.
So yeah bikes need to adapt. And I'd second @13. Bikes generally annoy the fuck out of me when I am walking. They swerve by way to fast and way to close and seem oblivious to anything but their need to get where they are going as fast as possible. Not all, but enough that it makes me temporarily very anti-bike.
20- the etiquette is that peds keep to right when possible. There are some signs posted to this effect.
You are noobs. If you're running parallel, then learn how to cross them at a sharp angle if you need to cross them. Remember that metal is as slick as ice when wet, and remember that in Toronto, cyclists ride in the snow during wintertime with streetcar tracks located everywhere — including steep inclines (like Bathurst north of Dav!).
The only good beef you have, Seattle cyclists, is that the SLUT tracks are curiously on the outer driving lanes — not inner lanes, like in Toronto — and this is where you're going to be most often. So plan ahead your lane changes, remember the cross-tracks-at-angle rule of thumb, remember the "wet metal equals ice" rule, and most of all, accept that you're going to scuff your ride* and your body a couple of times before you get the hang of it.
Best of luck,
A bicyclist with years of riding experience in Toronto
* I found that the quantity of bikes seen around in Seattle tend to be higher-end and costly more often than seen in Canada. The impression is that more cyclists in Seattle — MTBs, road bikes, fixies, etc. — are generally just shy of showing off "trophy rides" than they are with just getting around on two wheels as a daily commuter. If there's worry about marring a perfect bike, then don't ride it around the city. Ride a beater.
And yeah, there's a lot of irresponsible pet owners that don't exercise control or respect for others when handling their dogs (again a strange primacy of person/property versus others). So I am pretty empathetic to your nervousness.
1) If they're not well-marked with easy to see and read signs, they will be overlooked.
2) If a cyclist isn't confident that the route will take them directly to where they need to go (such as with a meandering scenic route instead), the paths will be ignored.
3) If the cyclist doesn't know the route, they will go with the psychogeography (i.e., streets) they know over those spaces that are unknown quantities (i.e., bike paths that disappear around a bend).
And of course Dan doesn't provide any data on crashes per mile of track in SF, nor does he cite such data for Seattle so we can actually see if SF does have fewer accidents or if he's just pulling anecdotes out of his ass.
And as 9 suggests, there's a learning curve with this sort of stuff. Compared with Amsterdam or SF, Seattle basically has no rail. Cyclists here would be expected to have less experience with tracks, and to take longer to get experienced with them. Why not see where we are in a few years when we have more than 1.3 miles of track.
Of course, even if having issues with tracks isn't a Seattle thing, taking it to the point of a lawsuit might well be.
Assuming many of those are round trip, a whole 600 people ride the SLUT every day. That's sooo worth it.
And, since the SLUT doesn't go anywhere useful, the claim that it cuts down on car use is laughable. Those people would have otherwise walked, taken the bus, or opted not to go downtown to run errands during lunch.
My experiences cycling in Seattle, though, have shown me that it's very hard to do this while swooping downhill. And I agree with Tesla that lots of Seattle cyclists seem to have trophy bike/status issues of their own. Slowing down is so. . . pedestrian.
I'm all for both, but overall I'd say streetcars are a much better investment than bike stuff. But then I hate riding bikes and suck ass at it, so I am certainly biased in favor of streetcars.
Also, assuming everyone rides the entire length of the SLUT, 1000 boardings x 1.3 miles = less than 1700 miles traveled via SLUT each day. Bikes are moving many more people, many more miles, to many more places. Until we get streetcars that actually go places, to argue that the SLUT is "much more important" than bicycles is just absurd.
Even if they didn't have tracks in the road, that only leaves 1,000 other things that can knock you on your ass if you don't know how to ride over and around them.
Fnarf is also correct. Those paths are for everyone and wheels must yield to feet. And yield means yield, not "*ding* *ding* Get out of my way!"
This does not mean my anecdotes trump yours: they're just anecdotes.
What matters is not this sort of anecdotal shit: what matters is facts. I recall someone on Slog, during one of the Critical Mass or other Slog threads on this topic a few years back, posting a study from Canada that shows that motorists are at fault the vast majority of the time there's a car-bike collision (which would include dooring, of course). Anyone out there have any facts to add?
Of course, it's could well be true, but what difference does it make? You want "The driver was at fault!" carved on your tombstone? For decades insurance companies and governments have tried to build a better driver, but all they've managed to do is build a safer car and improve accident trauma care. Humans are bad drivers, that's all.
Humans are also pretty poor bicyclists. Rail is the answer. Rail is real transit. Bicycling is a stoner hippie solution.
Oops forgot that I left this earlier, the path in question is the bike bath over the low-bridge in West Seattle. Hardly ever used by peds, but on the other side of the street when heading east in the morning. So they ride down the entrance to the upper-lower bridge, turn left and go under the bride. This blocks everything, and backs up the cars, but that is ok because they ignore the lights that I get stuck at for (no shit) 10 minutes. Less than 100 feet from the well marked bike path.
I lived in Portland during their initial light rail (downtown to Gresham), and during the 2nd phase- Downtown to Hillsboro. Oh the bitching and moaning about uselessness, etc. But it caught on. Next thing we had private entities laying light-rail tracks to all sorts of places, with suburbanites taking MAX downtown and to the airport because it was so easy and un-confusing.
Seattlites need to be encouraging ALL efforts at non-bus, non-car solutions- Seattle is decades behind Portland in public transportation. I can hardly wait until the downtown-->Capitol Hill line gets put in- if someone doesn't kill it first.
Sometimes you have to put up with other vehicles on the road; it's called traffic. If you can't handle it, try the bus.