Bike Parking in St. Paul

The types of bike parking you find vary drastically by location and to me, too often reflect how much a given business (or the property owner) value or acknowledge that people might arrive at their business by a means other than driving. As an example of this, and as a resource to other people biking hopefully, I'm going to do a series of posts featuring different bike parking options at breweries in St. Paul, Minnesota.

But before jumping into that, I'd like to offer a couple of examples that do a good job documenting how people who bike are treated in St. Paul. Yes, we have a few bikes lanes (mostly narrow, door-zone lanes) and some great MUP options, but in general, the city is a long way from being a safe-biking mecca, let alone a place where anyone but the "strong and fearless" rider type feels comfortable.

Again, the above pictures pretty well illustrate what it's like to bike in St. Paul. You are tolerated, and in some cases have basic accommodations made for you, such as squeezing in the most basic bike lanes or a bike rack added here or there. But as soon as any conditions deviate from optimal, right when you need those facilities the most, they disappear. People freely block the bike lanes, hardly even making an effort to get closer to the curb and bike racks are ignored and not cleared of snow, in addition to being bent and damaged and basically unusable. While these things are absolutely complaints and damning about how seriously our city takes its commitment to improving conditions for people cycling, I'm also going to try and highlight the work of awesome people who are doing things right and setting us on a path for a new standard of bike infrastructure.

Bad Infrastructure = Bad Behavior

Do cyclists who ride on sidewalks bother you? Do you get annoyed when someone takes the lane in front of you and "slows you down"? Think all those cyclists rolling through stop signs are a bunch of idiots? You're as much to blame for that as anyone!

See, here's the issue - as I've touched on before, one of the primary reasons for all of the above behaviors is bad infrastructure. Cyclists don't generally ride on the sidewalk because they want to - it's often crowded, you have to ride slower, and the facts show it's actually much less safe than riding in the street, even with no bike facilities. But for most sidewalk riders, it's about perception. Given the choice of having cars zoom by mere inches away in some cases, or ride on the sidewalk, the safer option in many cyclists' heads is to head to the sidewalk.

I observed this time and time again with a bike lane near my house. The lanes, which had continued for over a mile, abruptly ended several blocks from the next major intersection with nothing more than a tiny sign (seen above) and most people (especially those with children in tow) would transition over to the sidewalk. Given high vehicle speeds (due to speeding, not an inherently fast speed limit), I can certainly sympathize with the choice. But what this really illustrates is that if you want to avoid bad behavior, avoid bad infrastructure. I never observed someone riding on the sidewalk in the stretch with bike lanes (aside from children, who are allowed to do so). It was only the bad infrastructure design that dropped the bike lanes that caused them to make that choice.

What constitutes bad infrastructure? Well, any number of things, but especially notable are transitions from good to bad. As mentioned above, bike lanes abruptly ending is one example. I've mentioned before the example near AT&T Park where a cyclist was killed after the bike lane she was riding in abruptly ends and she was hit and killed by a cement truck.

Other examples include band-aid infrastructure improvements - most often in the case of sharrows. Because these markings mostly do nothing (especially because they haven't been accompanied by education as to what they actually represent for drivers and cyclists), they often aren't heeded by cyclists, who instead continue to ride in the door-zone and car drivers still don't give bikes safe space due to impatience. Separated trails often just end - as I recently encountered approaching the Berkeley Marina along a new Bay Trail extension. I'm heading along a beautiful trail, when all the sudden, BAM, I'm dropped into a gravel parking lot with no signs as to where I should go. Granted this is new, so maybe markings are still coming, but when was the last time you ever drove down a road that didn't say very clearly that it was a dead end or not a through street?

Next time someone complains that cyclists don't deserve better infrastructure until they all follow the rules, keep in mind that much bike infrastructure is designed in a way that basically encourages cyclists NOT to follow the rules out of concern for their own safety or schedule. For a great example of how good infrastructure works, SFMTA recently installed protected bike lanes along the Great Highway near the Cliff House. I used to ride up the sidewalk in this stretch. It's wide, generally not too crowded, and as a natural continuation of the trail along the beach, it was convenient too. However, now that they installed the lanes pictured below, I made sure to use them, since I want to leave pedestrians with the sidewalk. Now that I have a safe way to head up this route (since you're especially vulnerable when going uphill and slowed down), I'll choose that every time! Improvements like this are a great example of getting it right with infrastructure!

No Infrastructure for You!

If you peruse almost any online article dealing with cycling in any form, you will undoubtedly come across cries from bike-haters along the lines of, "cyclists don't deserve better infrastructure until they follow the rules", usually with more cursing and bad grammar and often wishes of bodily harm. It's hard to know where to start dissecting such arguments, so I'll just deal with one aspect here: if you want to make this argument, we should hold car drivers to the same standard. Therefore, I propose that nationwide we make absolutely no improvements to roads until all road users follow all the rules.

That I-5 bridge over the Skagit River that recently collapsed? Sorry, we can't fix it until no drivers in Washington are pulled over for speeding. If no drivers in Washington are pulled over for traffic violations for one month, then they can begin work to repair the bridge. That resurfacing taking place on the road down the street from you? Nope, can't finish it until no one in your city is seen double-parked or on their phones while driving. These are of course absurd suggestions, as are those that cyclists don't deserve better infrastructure because some cyclists don't follow all rules.

The worst part of this situation is that many cyclists don't meticulously follow the rules exactly because of bad infrastructure and out-dated laws. Many cities are finally investing in bike infrastructure and have seen fantastic gains in their cycling rates. This is great news for those cities, their cyclists, and their citizens in general for all the great reasons I won't detail here. However, much of this improvement is happening in a highly piece-meal fashion and because of this, what starts as a good or great bike facility can suddenly vanish before your eyes, dumping you into the middle of a street crowded with speeding traffic. For many people, this event is enough to even keep them from riding, but for many others, it just encourages them to hop up on the sidewalk where they feel relatively safer (though many studies show you're actually at a much higher accident risk while on the sidewalk, but that's another story).

I'm not advocating that this is alright, but I certainly understand this behavior from less-confident or fit cyclists. If you're new to cycling in an urban environment (and often even when you've been riding in one for some time) there are situations with speeding, impatient, inattentive drivers that can be downright terrifying. One particular spot where this occurs is on King St. in San Francisco, between 2nd and 3rd. In this spot, Diana Sullivan was killed earlier this year when the bike lane she was riding on vanished and she was then hit by a cement truck. As can be seen in the Google Maps screenshot below, this lane just ends (the dashed line is the last breath of it, move around Streetview to see more of the location) with a small sign and one sharrow on the roadway ahead to give any indication of what's going on. I've ridden through this spot many times myself and while pretty confident on my bike around cars, I always leave this spot with an adrenaline high and a deep breath, because you without fail are dealing with impatient, speeding cars - speaking of, it would be great if the SFPD actually enforced speed limits on the Embarcadero instead of pointlessly harassing cyclists!

Dangerous gaps in bike infrastructure like the one detailed above only serve to encourage "bad" behavior among cyclists while making conditions dangerous and frustrating for both cyclists and drivers. So to all the cycle-haters out there; no, "scofflaw" cyclists don't mean that there shouldn't be improvements made to cycling infrastructure - it means quite the opposite! If there were more continuous, protected cycletracks, people would be much less likely to ride on the sidewalk. If you reform laws that force cyclists to conform to car-centric rules, again, cyclists would be far less likely to break them (allow stopping and proceeding if safe at red lights and treating stop signs as yields, both of which most cyclists do very safely already). The more common and safe-feeling that cycling becomes, the less it will carry an "outlaw" feel to it and cyclists will encourage better behavior among each other as well!

Entitlement, or "Why'd you take a picture of my car?"

A lot of noise gets thrown around trying to claim that cyclists are an "entitled" group. While most of this comes from the same small group of internet trolls and their equivalents in "the media" (most notably recently, people like Dorothy Rabinowitz, whose delusional anti-cycling rants have garnered too much attention), such arguments are troubling because of their complete lack of connection with reality.

First off, yes, most cyclists are entitled by definition. If we look for a definition of entitlement, we find, among others, "a right to benefits specified by law or contract". To my knowledge, every state has laws that cover cyclists, usually under the context of other vehicles. While I'd never claim that all cyclists follow all of these rules all the time, most of us do ride courteously and safely, always yielding when required and in a manner appropriate for the conditions. The problem, as in most cases, are the outliers. In any group of people, there will be those who either don't know or choose not to follow the rules. This is true for cyclists, drivers, pedestrians, transit riders, and any group of people anywhere.

Problems arise when outliers are treated as the norm and people ignore the infractions of their own "group". For example, some drivers will go on and on about how they see cyclists going through stop signs while ignoring that most drivers do exactly the same thing and these cyclists in all likelihood didn't endanger or inconvenience anyone. Go to any intersection and see how many drivers actually come to a complete stop. In both cases, this is usually utterly harmless, since you can clearly judge if the intersection is clear and it's safe to proceed slowly instead of coming to a complete stop. On a bike, with better visibility, hearing, maneuverability, and an already slower speed, this is especially the case.

But back to the idea of entitlement. As I already said, cyclists are entitled to use the road (with the exception of most freeways of course, but that's another post), but that's of course not what anti-cyclist ideas imply. These usually imply that cyclists somehow think they're better than drivers and are above the law. This idea is almost laughable. First of all, cyclists get ticketed just like drivers do, often for pointless reasons that do nothing to enhance safety, simply because police squads decide to "blitz" an area and user group. Second, in the rare cases where people have been killed in incidents with cyclists, both cyclists in SF have faced charges. It is extremely rare that drivers face charges when killing cyclists or pedestrians, even if it's clear that the pedestrian was in a crosswalk with the right-of-way. These cases are usually just called "accidents" and no criminality is suspected as long as the driver wasn't drunk and didn't flee the scene. The driver's word is often the only one taken, since it's hard to be a witness when you're unconscious or dead. If you're riding a bike, often the first thing noted is whether or not you were wearing a helmet, even though this is not required in most places and certainly doesn't do much to protect you when getting hit by a car or garbage truck.

In my opinion, the real issue of entitlement boils down to concepts of selfishness versus recklessness. Much of the entitled behavior of drivers is selfish and endangers others and that by cyclists is reckless and only endangers themselves. Drivers park in bike lanes, speed, pass too closely, honk when you're "in their way", and text while driving. All of these are selfish behaviors that generally don't endanger the driver, but greatly endanger those around them, particularly cyclists and pedestrians. When cyclists blow through stop signs, change lanes without looking, or ride too fast for the conditions, they usually put only themselves in danger (with notable exceptions mentioned above). The selfish behavior of drivers is a much bigger sign of an entitled attitude in my opinion. In the picture below, the driver was parked right in the middle of the bike lane where traffic in the auto lane generally speeds by well over the posted limit. There are plenty of better options to temporarily park. I stopped behind her to take this picture and as I passed she yelled out her window, "Why'd you take a picture of my car?" I just said because she was illegally parked in a bike lane and continued on my way knowing from past experiences that any more of an explanation wasn't worth my time.

On the same day I had a driver buzz by then stop right in front of me in the bike lane to park causing me to have to slam on the brakes and swerve into the auto traffic lane after being sure I had room to do so. The light right ahead was red so I turned around and asked her if she had seen me. She said yes, but had apparently not cared enough to wait 1 second more for me to pass safely. The law entitles me to use that bike lane; her selfish sense of entitlement made her see no issue with cutting me off to save one second and put me in danger of hitting her or getting hit by passing traffic. These are just a few of the daily instances I see where the idea of entitled cyclists falls flat. In too many cases, "modal bias" makes those who spend most of their transport time behind the wheel ignore the bad behavior of drivers while being overly critical of those who use other means. None of this is to say that cyclists can't or shouldn't make strides to better follow the rules, but to claim that all cyclists don't and that all drivers do is completely divorced from reality and a dangerous misconception.

Rule Breakers?

It's been a long time since I last wrote anything here! This isn't due to lack of things to write about of course - with the topics of this blog there are honestly too many things to write about. But for this post, I want to comment on an old topic that is particularly irritating. Many in the anti-bike realm suggest that cities and states shouldn't make improvements for cyclists until all cyclists follow all the rules of the road. While I can't add any new pieces to this debate, I'd just like to point out the biggest flaw in their argument. A huge number of drivers (and likely all of them at some point) break the rules of the road, too. Though this was crystal clear already, the past two days I've bothered to stop and take pictures of some of the offenders - in this case drivers parked in bike lanes. Whether running in for coffee or sitting in a delivery van, each of these drivers has blocked the space designated for cyclists and created a safety hazard where cyclists have to go around them in traffic. In the case of the Accord on 16th, this driver had parked right around the corner from where the bike lane turns, so anyone riding around the corner would be put in extra risk due to lack of visibility to see the offending motorist's car.

The van on Howard just didn't seem to care and was too busy having a smoke break to move out of the way.

In either case, the main issue here is lack of concern for others and putting your own convenience first. And while I'm the first to admit plenty of cyclists do this too, drivers can't claim innocence. Whether parking in bike lanes, texting and talking while driving, speeding, not giving enough space when passing, running red lights, running stop signs, blocking intersections, not looking when opening your door, or cutting off a cyclist to save a half second (or no time at all, since you're often rushing to get to the next red light) drivers break plenty of rules everyday, yet no one argues that they shouldn't have safer, smoother, and less congested roads until they follow the rules. Instead we keep widening freeways, repaving streets, and making other improvements that dwarf overall spending on cycling infrastructure. I'm all for cyclists behaving better and try to be a good example myself, but you're living in a fantasy land if you believe drivers don't break many (of the same) rules every day!