Cities across the nation are trying to make it easier and safer for commuters, health enthusiasts and plain old joy riders to have a safer experience on their bicycles. In some cases the solution is complex but in others it's amazingly simple.
Take the case of Tempe, Arizona, a wonderful desert community with clean, warm air and miles and miles of open spaces. In other words, a perfect place for bike riding whether it's for fun or function.
Tempe transportation planners did what they thought needed to be done when they set aside dedicated lanes for cyclists. Those lanes were separated from the other lanes by thick, white lines and even had a bike icon painted on them. The problem was that drivers of cars and trucks didn't pay enough attention and there were numerous crashes involving cyclists who were where they were supposed to be. Yes, the city could write all the citations it wanted but they knew that the issue of safety was more important and they came up with a solution. They painted the entire lane red. According to The Scottsdale Tribune the materials used isn't really paint but rather an epoxy stone treatment. After tests showed that this colored lane concept worked the city added green and blue to its palate. The beauty, in addition to reducing the number of injuries, is that it only cost the city $3,600 to test the idea in two areas.
Up in Toronto they have devised a solution to the problem we have raised in the past and that is how can bicycles trip loop detectors that make traffic signals know they are there and that they are waiting. The city is using three white dots, each about the size of a Frisbee, to sense that a bike is in queue. These highly-sensitive pavement markings can sense the presence of a smaller mass of conductive metal. I guess those riding high-tech composite bikes are out of luck. The problem is that the city, according to The Toronto Star newspaper, has done a poor job of promoting these "bike dots" and so the benefit has been slight. They have tested the concept and found it to be worthy enough to build them out in numerous intersections and yet transportation officials didn't let the end users know how to use them... not a good use of technology or resources. They have subsequently decided to paint small images of a bicycle next to the dots so that riders might get the idea.
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It may have been an intriguing idea when it appeared in movies like The Italian Job (the remake, not the original) and Live Free or Die Hard but few of us probably thought it was something that could happen. In each of those movies computer wizards hacked into a city's traffic control system. That meant that they could turn lights red or green as it suited their needs. In The Italian Job it was all about making one route of green lights that trucks full of gold would have to follow. In the Bruce Willis movie it was about shutting down intersections to create chaos in our fair city by making all of the signals in an intersection green at the same time. But that could never happen, right?
It can and it did. Two traffic engineers in the City of Angels (that's Los Angeles) pleaded guilty earlier this month to hacking into the computer system that controls the traffic signals. According to the Los Angeles Times the two shut down the traffic signals and the control boxes in four intersections as part of a collective-bargaining dispute. It took four days to return the system to normal and not before some back-ups that wound through the city for miles. The good thing is that the city and, one would presume, others with which L.A. officials share information have now been able to patch some of the technical holes that existed. Taking control of traffic signals may be a neat plot device for the movies but in real life it can be deadly.
Steve Eldridge is a long-time reporter, observer and commentator on the Washington region's transportation issues. You can contact him directly by writing to: Steve@SprawlandCrawl.com. Unless otherwise requested, letters or portions of letters can be used within future columns. Letter writers will be identified by their first name and city/neighborhood.
Around Washington a slug is just as likely to be a commuter; someone practicing casual hitchhiking. They will congregate in designated areas depending on their final destination and wait for a motorist to come by and pick them up. This benefits everyone because it allows the driver to qualify for the High Occupancy Vehicle lanes that usually move faster than the oft-congested main lanes along I-95/I-395.
Lastly, congratulations to the District Department of Transportation's (DDOT) 
