This is the first installment of #NorthBayNotes, Dispatches from Marin County by Bicycle.
The ongoing series will be things I notice, fun and frustrating, exciting and exasperating, while riding around the county I work in.
This is Nick. He rides an electric tricycle and told me he doesn't even need a car.
Many days he rides up to 20 miles, though the battery is good for 50+. He was generous enough to let me stop him and chat.
Work continues apace on the North-South Greenway Gap Closure project, a new bike/ped bridge over Corte Madera Creek that will replace the existing 4'(!) sidewalk.
Are there any arborists following me?
These trees planted in early 2020 don't look like they're doing great, but city staff assured me they're being cared for.
Another lesson in "If the Dutch don't do it, don't do it."
This bike traffic circle, installed in 2016 near Larkspur Ferry, is very difficult to navigate on a cargo bike, tandem, or even a bike with a trailer.
The center island is unnecessarily large, and only hinders users.
This is the Cal Park Hill Tunnel, opened in 2010 and connecting Larkspur and San Rafael. Expect a full post sometime in another forthcoming series called #TunnelTalk.
The tunnel's gates are open 5AM-midnight, unlike US-101 (which it parallels), which is open to traffic 24x7.
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Cities:
"We must address climate change, but our streets are failing, and people are struggling to pay rent."
Also cities:
"The main plank of our Climate Action Plan is universal adoption of a $50k car that's twice as heavy."
Just to draw this out a little more clearly, battery electric cars are much more massive. E.g. the *battery alone* in an f-150 lightning weighs as much as a small car.
Pavement wear is a factor of the 4th power of weight over the axle - a car that's twice as heavy will do 16 times as much damage to the road.
By planning for more traffic composed of EVs, cities are putting themselves into debt, given that they already cannot repair the roads.
A reminder that drunk driving does not cause traffic deaths.
Neither do cell phones, red light running, failure to yield, or even breaking the speed limit.
No, as any ER professional will tell you, what *causes* traffic deaths is blunt force trauma.
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The key word there is "force."
The human body (namely, the brain and vital organs) can only experience so much of it and survive.
There is a maximum limit that we need to prevent people from experiencing if we want to keep everyone alive.
For those that have forgotten HS physics:
Force = mass x acceleration
To be human is to move about (and to exist is to have mass), so neither factor can be 0, but to minimize the product we can aim at minimizing either or both factors, or ensure that force is never exerted.
I haven't owned a car since the '03 Corolla I sold in 2015 (which was decidedly analog) so I don't think about infotainment systems much.
But as this piece describes, we're baking in distraction, in a way that people might not realize.
Two facts I already knew:
1. Traffic deaths are at a 16-year high (reaching 43k last year) 2. Distracted driving is massively underreported (who is going to tell a cop, "Oh yeah, and I was texting at the time of the crash")
It's been a couple weeks since I got back from my Netherlands bike tour.
Now that I've had some time to reflect, I'm going to start posting my thoughts on the experience.
First up, the bikes of the Netherlands!
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This thread is for the bike nerds out there, but I hope everyone can get something out of it.
The standard Dutch bicycle has several features that set it apart.
While all of these features are found on some US bikes, their consistency in the Dutch bicycle is striking.
The first features are those that you may find on many US bikes, but aren’t standard.
When you buy a bike in the US, it’s usable for a ride on the bike trail, but it’s not functional, like buying a car and finding that the headlights and trunk were sold separately.