What’s stopping them from scrapping our rights to the road?

Your rights to the road are governed by the State of Washington, not the City of Seattle. Seattle governs whether or not you have rights to ride on the sidewalk.

If you’d like to ‘officially’ let (shithead) motorists know the rules of the road for specifically bicycles, head to a WA DOL office and grab many copies of the pamphlet on Bicycle laws. It’s clearly states in common language your rights, including your right to the full lane.

• http://www.lesstraffic.com/Articles/Traffic/SGTC.htm “People hold contradictory values and desires (which is a good thing – and the key to working for change). In our ‘motoring persona’ we want traffic to go faster. In our ‘resident persona’ we want traffic to go slower (or stop altogether). Second generation traffic calming is built on working with these internal contradictions and helping people find a more creative way to balance these contradictory needs. These contradictory desires are not a bad thing – in fact they make large-scale cultural change relatively easy.”
• http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.12/traffic.html “I think the future of transportation in our cities is slowing down the roads,”

I think the BMP is going to get more cyclists out on the streets. I think the BMP is about more than just bike lanes – it’s about signalizing, road diets, wide outside lanes, and in general small changes that will help encourage people to get off the fence and start riding.

I think leaving Stone Way as a discouraging segment of roadway—what else do you call a four-lane arterial on a hill with significant left-turning vehicles and some truck traffic?—is going to do exactly that, discourage people from riding. I don’t see that as a good thing.

Its basically a free for all due in part to a lack of public maintenence dollars and a lack of political will on the part of the mayor and everyone else who takes the opportunity to give a speech at Bike to Work Day about how much the support bicycling in our city. As it stands now, we have no infrastructure in the city that would indicate that “support”, but the promises are many.

As someone who has been cycling around this city everyday for the past 15 years, I’ve gotten to the point where I fear more a badly executed BMP than the nothing we’ve been getting. Signing and striping won’t change my habits a bit and I fear the extra regulations you mention that may accompany such a half-baked plan would kill my below-the-radar buzz.

Seattle is a great cycling city. In our case, I believe that if people are waiting for effective and safe bicycling infrastructure in our current political climate, they’ll be stuck in their car on on the bus for a long time. Get out there and take your lumps. You’ll inform the process of political change for the better.

But that’s not my entire point. I absolutely do not want my right to the entire road to be questioned now or in the future. They [the city] have already scrapped parts of the promised bike lanes on beloved Stone Way. What’s stopping them from scrapping other parts of the BMP that people are fond of? What’s stopping them from scrapping our rights to the road? It’s the same mentality that’s scrapping our crosswalks all over the city.

Our rights to the road already exist. We have it good in Seattle. It is touted as a progressive city, I’ve lived and biked in other cities and the motorists mentalities there are not easily swayed by mere stripes on the road. I don’t believe our motorists will be either.

I’ve read blogs and have heard people’s reactions to cyclists on the roads. Progressive my ass. People in this city are already griping that this BMP is a gift to cyclists that they do not want to pay for. Without the proper “education”, I only expect more aggression from drivers when I’m not in my so-called allotted space in the street. Just down the road from this will be the eventual limitation of our rights to the entire street.

Lines are being drawn for sure, but sadly these lines are only in the sand.

Furthermore, bicycling climbing lanes are a good idea. Just like truck climbing lanes on interstates, they help regulate traffic that’s moving at different speeds up a steep grade. It’s not unreasonable if done correctly.

Dont settle for anything less than comprehensive ubiquitous bicycle integration.

Michael is right that we should not accept half-baked solutions which are inherently dangerous.

Cheers,

Biff Torino