Potholes - a postscript

If you come home to find your new puppy sitting next to a fresh turd and looking guilty, you can never say for sure that they were the culprit but chances are it was them.

I wrote a blogpost recently about potholes and the cost of repairing them. As with the puppy, I cannot say for sure whether it is bicycles or cars and trucks that are responsible but sometimes the potholes are just sitting there in the road like the dogpoo in my analogy.

Have a look here:



This is on Frome Road just before the bridge over the Torrens next to the zoo. Its bike lanes are in the ever popular door zone but it is nevertheless quite a well used route into the city. Further up the road beyond the roundabout is Adelaide CBD's only segregated bike lane.

Note that the bike lane is completely smooth and intact. The gravel there more than likely has been thrown up from the road to the right.

But note those potholes - lying there like little poo pellets freshly fallen from that BMW X5's exhaust pipe.

It certainly wasn't me.

And that, my friends, is another reason why bicycle riders do not pay registration. And all of this crap about bicycles being registered because of reckless cyclists speeding through red lights and nearly killing people all across the city is, well, crap.

Priorities

I passed this street not long ago. It is just off Osmond Terrace near the Parade in Norwood:

It is interesting because it illustrates a number of things about Adelaide's residential street design that could be improved. The first is the use of the "Cross with Care" signs aimed at pedestrians:

Not all intersections have them. You generally find them close to schools. Norwood Primary School is directly opposite this street on the other side of Osmond Terrace. In other words, the signs are aimed at children.

Here is the driver's view as they approach the crossing:

Note that there is no "Approach with Care" sign for them. You can see there is a Give Way sign but that comes after the part of the road where pedestrians cross. Because of the tall fences each side, any pedestrians who may be approaching from either side are completely hidden.

Here is a close up of the part where the pathway crosses the road:

Note the road continues and it is the pedestrians who have to change level. The clear signal to all users is that it is the road that has priority. You find this design across the city - including around schools.

If the pavement continued with the same bricks and the road was raised to cross using ramps, a very different signal would be sent. Sooner or later, the road and pavements will need to be resurfaced. When they are, it would not be difficult to make some small but very significant changes.

For a far better explanation of how to design minor intersections with continuous paths, see here and here.

Drains

There is a superb blogpost about the process that was adopted to have halfway decent cycling infrastructure installed on one street in London. It is in Camden and it is described in detail on the Vole O'Speed blog (its author, David Arditti, is a board member of the Cycling Embassy of Great Britain. Its website has lots of useful information).

The blog post is long and shows the difficulties anyone potentially faces in improving conditions for pedestrians and cyclists. It is well worth a read if you are involved or thinking of getting involved in campaigning.

There was one point made in the post that got me thinking. That is how the designers and builders dealt with drains. As they are over here, before the bike path was built the drains were on the edge of the road in the gutter. The roads are sloped from the centre so that rainwater runs into the gutters each side and then drains into drains. In the case of Camden, the drains had to be reconstructed leading to further expense.

My big dream is for the wasted space on the side of the arterial roads throughout the CBD be used for wide, raised bike lanes like these ones:

To install them would be easy - just build the borders and then fill them in. There is a great post about how to do it with pictures of some in progress on Copenhagenize.

Let's say in some far distant future by some miracle, we manage to convince our decision-makers that spending a decent amount of money on alternatives to the car is a good idea. What happens when you tarmac over a drain? How is the water drained away, given that one would think you wouldn't want a bike lane on the sloping edge of a road?

I was thinking it would involve complex engineering to re-arrange all of the drainage but it's not quite that complicated at all. I searched on the web for information about it but without success. So I consulted the oracle - Mr Copenhagenize himself. He very kindly replied (very quickly) and said:

Cycle tracks, as a rule, are built along existing curbs, so the drains are rarely moved. They are merely extended upwards to the new surface of the cycle track.

There are instances when a major resurfacing or redesign is underway that drains are extended out to the new curbline, but they usually lead back to the exisiting drain location.

Does that at all help?

Oh yes it does. It means that a cycle track here just requires the drain to be raised a little. This, for example, could be easily fixed:

Where necessary, plonk in a new drain on the road next to the bike track and just connect that to the existing drain. Brilliant.

This drain obsession may perhaps lead to a diagnosis of aspergers but I promise it isn't. I was just trying to think of what other excuses there are not to put a bit of road space aside for this. Drains are now not one of them.

Self-preservation

If you really have nothing better to do than to spend your spare time reading bicycle blogs, it doesn't take too long to come across a phrase called "vehicular cycling". As I understand it, it refers to a series of techniques for dealing with an environment built primarily for the fast movement of motor vehicles. As an example, "taking the lane" refers to the practice of moving to the centre of a traffic lane so that (theoretically) drivers behind can see you and do not cut you off at the intersection or roundabout or other pinch point that you are approaching.

Some of the techniques are worthwhile in a hostile environment as survival techniques. I think they become a problem when they are sold as the best way for keeping people on bicycles safe as opposed to designing the environment in such a way that conflicts between motorists, cyclists and pedestrians are avoided. When I say design, I do of course mean proper design rather than designs that end up making things worse - which does happen from time to time.

A good tongue in cheek critique is here.

My own experience is that the problems with techniques such as taking the lane are twofold. First, you are putting your safety into the hands of the person behind you and how is in control of a very large and potentially lethal piece of machinery. The fact that you are in front of them does not guarantee that they will see you. Second, most people do not know what taking the lane is. It can be perceived as arrogant or anti-social when a person in a car, for no reason apparent to them, is greeted by a padded, lycra-clad backside in front of their windscreen. They will not necessarily try to kill you as a consequence but people have been known to make dangerous manouvres in an attempt to get past.

One of the best tips I was given for surviving hostile roads is to assume you are invisible. So for example, when you are approaching a junction with a road to the left where it is obvious cars coming from that direction have to give way to you, do not assume (a) they know that and (b) that they have even seen you. Very often they have not because their focus is on where they expect cars to be rather than where bikes will be.

Vehicular cycing, bicycle driving or whatever you like to call it suffers from the obvious drawback that nobody else knows about it. A perfect illustration is in this (frankly appalling video):



The cyclist is doing everything right. She has right of way but is totally ignored. Had she acted like a vehicle she would be under a vehicle.

Most people do not wish to harm others but setting up a system like that where road users with very different sizes and speeds are required to mix is a recipe for disaster. Unsurprisingly, only a small number put themselves in that position. It means the road toll is lower - not because it is safe but because they are so few people who put themselves in positions of risk.

As Dr Behooving so eloquently put it, "Designing out risk is so much better than expecting humans not to make errors”

Maintenance costs

I was reading one of David Hembrow's older posts recently all about how separation is achieved without bike paths on many roads. A comment came "with an agenda" from someone who didn't like the idea of being "forced" to use bike paths. It was gently explained to him that nobody is forced to but that given the choice between a direct and safe bicycle route and trying your chances on a busy four lane highway, most rational people choose the former.

A further comment suggested that the surface on the bike paths was of poorer quality. Again, it was explained slowly that that is simply wrong. He says:

It's sometimes of lower quality, but also sometimes of far higher quality. There are no potholes in the city which I live. Not one, either on the roads or on the cycle-paths. More than half the surfaces have been replaced in the five years that we've lived here, which is in line with the local policy of replacing everything every seven years. Are the roads that you cycle on all less than ten years old? Do you have potholes in Maryland? 

We certainly have potholes in Adelaide. I don't know if it's the recent rain but they are everywhere. Here is one intersection near me:

Here's a close up of one pothole:

and another:

Here's one in the process of formation:

and here's the bog up job to fix it:

Here you can see how a passer-by has dutifully piled up the broken tarmac into the gutter:

They are everywhere. Not just on the local side streets but you can see them beginning to form on some of the main roads too. The main roads are the responsibility of State Governments. If you are living in a marginal seat, chances are your roads will be fixed first. In safe seats, it can take longer.

Smaller, residential streets are the responsibility of local councils. They have to pay for all of that maintenance through collecting rates from residents. They also get grants from the State and Federal Governments such as the "Roads to Recovery" scheme.

I can't help thinking that the maintenance costs would not be quite so high if local councils didn't allow all of their roads to be used by all and sundry without any financial contribution from them.

Bearing in mind that I do not know the first thing about constructing roads, it seems to me that two things would make a difference. The first is reducing the heavy traffic in the first place. How that is done is obvious. The second is choosing a road surface that is not so susceptible to potholes. The layers of tarmac that we use appear prone to cracking after some time. The cracks get bigger over time and sink. Eventually, the surface of the road just seems to collapse into a pothole. Repairing it is expensive and so you see the uneven patches like the one in the photo.

My own humble opinion is that residential streets should be arranged in such a way that fast driving is physically impossible. Parking for residents and visitors should be arranged in clear bays that are indented from the road itself. Rather than tarmac, in some cases, pavers or bricks might do the job - only because if there is a problem, relaying bricks is so much easier and better than bogging over broken tarmac (it can be done smoothly so that it is bicycle friendly). You could use one of these fantastic machines:


Allowing through traffic to use council run and maintained side streets amounts to a subsidy paid for by local ratepayers. It is also unnecessary. Changing that stae of affairs is one of a number of easy policy changes that could be a world of difference.


As a quick postscript: it should be said that David Hembrow addressed each of the poster's comments with evidence. He did not respond again.

Changing the world one bus stop at a time

Back in January 2011, after complaining about a pedestrian crossing, I bumped into a woman at a bus stop. She had been waiting for some time and her feet hurt. There was no bus shelter or seat there. I wrote to the council about it and, for good measure, wrote a blog post.

I go past the bus stop almost every day and nothing has changed for 18 months but today, I saw this:



A shiny new, grey (:\) grafitti proof bus shelter. Inside it is a little bench. The school boy I saw there looked just as miserable as anyone does at a grey bus stop but the rain was off his head and had he chose to, he could have sat down.

I would like to be able to take credit but no doubt the bus stop has been in the planning stage for a while.

Whatever. Go Prospect Council.

Mauer im Kopf

Between 1992 and 1997, I lived in Berlin. It was then and still is one of the coolest cities on the planet. The wall had only just come down and there was a great deal of change going on. I worked with quite a few people from the former DDR. An expression that was often used at the time was "Mauer im Kopf", meaning "wall in the head". It was a reference to the belief that while the wall may have come down, there was still a wall in people's heads that needed to be removed and, it was suggested, it would take a generation to remove it.

I don't know whether there was a mauer in people's kopfs and whether it is still there. I was in Berlin again in 2007 and there was no evidence of it all.

It is a good metaphor though for our thinking. I think it is common knowledge that we all tend to try and find information and evidence to suport our pre-conceived beliefs and notions. I know I do. It is also well known that human beings' thinking can be quite irrational. A perfect example is the fear that we now have to allow our children to walk home by themselves but at the same time will think nothing of strapping them into the back seat of a car and driving around in traffic - something that is way more risky.

When attempts are made to provide ways for people to use bicycles for some of their journeys, they are often met with "mauer im kopf". Any article in our local newspaper about improving cycling infrastructure is generally met with some support but also a lot of the usual comments about lycra, registration, obeying laws, etc ad nauseum. Combatting it I think is a bit of a waste of time. You cannot convince people one person at a time. You also often get the "we're not [insert nationality], it's too far, it's too hilly, it's too hot, it's too cold" and other nonsense. Interestingly, when the measures were first introduced that have transformed Copenhagen over the last 40 years, they were met with "we're not Italian" so it's nothing new.

One way to try and break down the "mauer im kopf" about increasing cycling is to point to children, particularly teenagers. They do not have access to cars and so have to rely on walking, riding a bike or catching public transport. I think anyone seeing a video such as this one would have to agree:




A few years back I heard a talk about how to get people to volunteer for things. This was about getting members of a club to volunteer to be president, treasurer, etc. The speaker's thesis was WIIFM (pronounced "wiffum"), which stands for "what's in it for me?" A lot of people you speak to treat riding a bike rather like the use of public transport, public education and reducing car use. They fully support it as long as it is someone else doing it. If you can appeal to that self-interest, I think you're halfway there.

Depending on what is being done, some transport methods are better than others. You wouldn't catch a cab from Adelaide to Melbourne. Clearly an aeroplane is better. In some circumstances, such as after a rock concert or football game, the best way to move a lot of people in one go is a decent mass transit system. Same with the rush hour when a lot of people are all moving in the same direction at the same time. And of course, for some journeys, the humble bicycle is best - either because of the relatively short distance or because the person travelling does not have access to a car.

Improving cycling networks raises the number of people cycling. That is unarguable. The rate of cycling, even inside countries like the Netherlands, is proportional to the quality of cycilng infrastructure. It might be claimed that it is merely correlation rather than causation but what cannot be denied is that it is more than mere chance. If you build a decent network that allows people to choose that mode of transport because there's something in it for them (low cost and speed spring to mind), they probably will.

Once you make those alternatives to cars good enough that people can choose them, they will. Maybe I'm being simplistic but it strikes me that you will then have fewer cars on the car networks. That makes those still driving happier. Also, if I use my car less, I have more of my household budget left over to spend on other things. It also means you have fewer cars making potholes on non-arterial roads administered by local councils that can ill-afford the maintenance. For those who choose cars for say short journeys, the length of them may be increased from 2 minutes to 4 minutes because they can no longer use streets where people live as rat-runs. But hey, that's a small price to pay. And besides, they're sitting down anyway.

Selling change as a good thing because other people will adopt the changes seems to me to be a winner. The other people who change are happy because they can change and the other other people like the fact that the other people changed so that the other other people don't have to.

If you know what I mean.