City Cycling Response

Chapter 6 of City Cycling answered many questions that I had on bicycle policy, mainly why we don't separate bicycle lanes.  The most memorable part of the chapter was realizing the bias toward cyclists in the United States.  AASHTO, the American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials, said, "...no designated bicycle facility can overcome a lack of bicycle operator skill."  While the previous statement is true, that sentiment is inappropriate if you are a transportation organization.  AASHTO used this logic to justify the Vehicular Cycling (VC) theory.  VC basically says that bikes should use the roads in the same fashion as slow-moving vehicles.  Therefore, there is no need for any bicycle-specific infrastructure.  That is irresponsible.  Why do we carry babies and guide small children when walking in public?  It is because we understand that children are smaller, slower, and fragile.  As a result, a baby running into an adult is problematic when compared to two adults bumping into each other.  Why don't we realize this with bicycles?  I believe the answer is in the mindset.  When a baby runs into an adult, we see a 20 pound person colliding with a 200 pound person.  The average person knows that the physics will be in favor of the 200 pound person winning.  If we break down the communication of a bike-car incident, we default to thinking a bike (vehicle) colliding with a car (vehicle).  We SHOULD think of it as a 200 pound person colliding with a 2000 pound object.  When put in this frame, it is easier to understand that bikes do not fare well against cars.  One of my favorite sayings to illustrate this is, "bike plus car equals car" (unknown).  If more people heard that saying, perhaps we could convince spending on bike safety via infrastructure.

To prove the benefits of cycling, I compared my daily school commute by mode (walking, car, bicycle).  The starting point was Walnut and Santa Rosa with the final destination as the business building (bldg 02).  The table below summarizes my results:

While bike parking is free, I figured $.10 per trip would help offset for maintenance.  The car trips cost $2.50 for parking and $.50 for gas.  Walking is free.  If you look at the car's return column, it takes 20 minutes to return because traffic on campus when leaving at the end of the day (6 pm).  The advantage of cycling to school becomes apparent when I account for the value of my time ($10/hr).  Both car and bicycle use 25 minutes of my time; this works out to about $4.17.  Walking uses one hour, so it costs $10 of time.  When I combine the cost of time with the cost in the table, I get: car $7.17, bike $4.27, and walking $10.  Therefore, the most cost-effective option is riding my bike to school.  Since I am saving $2.90 over the next cheapest option, I wouldn't mind investing some of the savings into the bike infrastructure in SLO.  In fact, I think that many Cal Poly students would not mind donating $20/year toward improving bike safety and reliability in SLO.

~Alex