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Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

Jul 7 • 14 tweets • 6 min read

It's the July edition of #NorthBayNotes, my ongoing series documenting Marin by bicycle!

I literally just never get tired of Tam.

A poignant note about a friend who, it seems, died by suicide from the RSR Bridge. I suppose this is a sad consequence of the multi-use pathway.

The Golden Gate Bridge has seen hundreds of millions in funding for the suicide deterrent system, but no program exists for the RSR.

Andersen Drive in San Rafael. We definitely couldn't fit a protected bike lane in here. No sir. Think of the parking impacts.

The trees on the Francisco Blvd E bike lane that I was worried about are apparently fine (though one, not pictured, has been hit by a car).

@SFBART

This guy, Jake, told me he was riding his OneWheel from Golden Gate Park to Novato to cut down the $ of his Uber ride to Concord.

Why he didn't take @SFBART I'll never know.

@Derailluer

Appreciation post for all those giants whose shoulders I stand on, who fought for the path on the RSR that I use to ride to work.

🙏 @Derailluer, @prinzrob, @griependerp, and others who I'll never know.

On the Richmond side of the RSR, you can see a device they used to do maintenance on the underside of the westbound span.

It seems like it has not been used in some time.

There's actually a lovely scenic viewpoint looking at Angel Island and SF just south of the RSR Bridge toll plaza.

Creepy tunnel used to access the toll plaza from the south side of I-580.

My legs after going for a PR on the bridge.

No matter how hard or unpleasant we make it, kids will always find a way to ride

@SFBART

As usual, the Richmond @SFBART station is in dire need of some love.

The real time arrival screen is off, the map is ripped, and the ADA/bike fare gate is once again broken.

@SFBART

@SFBART It's been like this for a while.

https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1450187134812315649

https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1403549248168206341

A long while.

https://twitter.com/WarrenJWells/status/1403549248168206341

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Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

@WarrenJWells

Jul 7

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.

Read 5 tweets

Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

@WarrenJWells

Jul 6

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.

🧵

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.

Read 20 tweets

Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

@WarrenJWells

Jul 6

There are so many absolutely wild facts in this piece about distracted driving and in-vehicle infotainment systems.

In short, the distraction is coming from *inside the car.*

latimes.com/business/story…

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")

Read 9 tweets

Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

@WarrenJWells

Jun 30

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!

🧵

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.

Read 27 tweets

Warren J. Wells 🚴🏙️

@WarrenJWells

Feb 8

I've always been bothered by the classic urbanist Powerpoint slide showing "this is how much space people take up walking/biking/busing/driving."

While illustrative, it has several flaws that actually undermine its important message.

🧵

First, it downplays the role that right-of-way *width* plays.

Note that while a bus and the bikes take up 2-4 car lengths, they only take up 1 car width.

They could have lined up the 56 cars, but then the photo wouldn't work, because the queue would be 1/4 mile long.

Here's a simulation that illustrates that by putting several modes (all with 200 people, rather than the 68 in the photo above) in one lane each.

While the 200 bikes take up about a football field, the 133 cars stretch over a kilometer.