More Bike Lane Fail

I was on my way to work this morning, enjoying the dip in temperatures from the 35+ of most of this month to a more manageable, breezy 23 or so, and went over this spot in the bike lane on Alta Vista.

Now, I go over this spot every morning, pretty much, and most of the time I just swerve out around it and keep on going. But this morning, I happened to be going over it with a great stinking OC Transpo bus passing me, so I couldn't avoid it, and jarred my way over it.

And it occurred to me that not only is this piece of pavement egregiously bad, but it's a patch job over something that was, ostensibly, worse. I vaguely remember this stretch before the half-assed asphalt-slather happened, and I can't really say this is much of an improvement. Look at the bit where the slapped-on asphalt misses filling in the hole by a good eight inches! Look at the sloshes of black tar and grit that sort of got squooshed up against the curb! Check out the scooped ridges just before the white line! It's like this was deliberately indended to be terrible. What is this, some kind of work-to-rule thing on the part of the road crew? Did they have to leave off suddenly and never come back to finish the job? Is this the Mary Celeste of roadwork?

Briefly:

... if you were driving past Billings Bridge Mall this evening around 5:15 or so, and came upon a cyclist at the intersection of Bank and the Billings Transitway exit, holding her bike up with one hand and kicking angrily at a huge ridge of slush and snow that had been thrown out across the bike lane by the plow, breaking it up and shoving the resulting bits of slush to the side of the road with her boot...

... well, that was me. Doing my civic duty.

More about bike lanes

Jonathan, in Montreal, commented on my last post, pointing out that in Montreal where there are segregated bike lanes, the trouble is that they're only separate between intersections: at each intersection you suddenly pop back into traffic, most of which hasn't noticed you because you were off in your own lane, possibly even behind parked cars. (That and where the bike lanes are blocked by something, you have to haul your bike up and over curbs and into traffic that's not used to seeing you there, or get on the sidewalk, neither of which is good.)

I can see that: and a lot of people have been mentioning that the real danger in bike lanes is when they end abruptly, shoving you unexpectedly into traffic. Did anyone see Giacomo Panico's video from last summer of commuting down Albert Street? Where the 'posted bike route' ends, Albert goes from a one-way street to a two-way. Dropping Giacomo, who's been traveling on the left side to stay away from the bus lane, right on the yellow line in two-way traffic with no way off the road. Scary.

Something to remember when designing the bike lanes: making them as continuous as possible. Keeping intersections in mind. Maybe signposting them, too, so cyclists have a sense of where they run, and how to get from point A to point B using safer streets... I know I would happily avoid major arteries if I knew how. One of the problems is all the waterways in Ottawa: bridges concentrate traffic, and so far are prioritized for cars. I see that part of the plan is a bike lane across the Pretoria Bridge, to which I say hallelujah. Especially since cyclists converge in that area to get onto the Canal bike path.

Jonathan's suggestion was to create bike-only streets in places: surprisingly, that's the other motion the transportation committee approved yesterday! There's a proposal to close a few streets leading off Montreal Road in the Vanier area to motor traffic. Wow. Here's hoping.

I'm also just happy to see attention being drawn to increased safety for cyclists in the city. It's too bad it took a year of terrible fatalities to make it happen. I've come across this interactive map of the seven most dangerous intersections in Ottawa for cyclist/car collisions: I use most of these intersections regularly. Elgin and Laurier is a nasty one; Vanier Parkway and Montreal is pretty unpleasant too, although I usually just go straight through it on Montreal, so I don't have to turn. Both of those are scary because there are multiple lanes on both roads, and because cars just don't expect us to merge into left-turn lanes and don't know what to do with us when we do. Notice, too, how many of these dangerous spots are in the general vicinity of bridges: where traffic concentrates. The three or so that aren't are near highway ramps, or on major arteries in suburban areas where the multilane street is the only direct route in a tangle of crescents and residential drives. The bikes wouldn't be there if they had a choice, for the most part: but it's just the easiest, or only, way from point to point. Bike lanes here, separate enough to keep us out of traffic and away from the buses plying those major streets, would be welcome: as long as they don't suddenly end, dropping us in some truly scary situation, which is all too often the case.

Black Mercedes-Benz, plate #AZNZ 999

(written, as a Facebook note, by Katie Malkovsky and reposted here for the edification of the populace. This incident happened in Toronto.)

If you should happen to pass said car, and you're carrying your keys in your hands, and a single key inadvertantly slips out from between your fingers, and as you walk by - oops! - you realize you've scratched said car with your key, rest assured: the owner is an asshole.

This driver felt that a cyclist had cut him off, so he honked. So far so good. Then, he sped up and drove the cyclist all the way over to the side of the road, and continued behind, a few inches away from the cyclist, forcing the poor guy on the bike to go speeding down the street in order to not be run over by the car directly behind him. When the person you're tailing is in a car, that shit is intimidating. When the person you're chasing is on a bike, that shit is murderous.

So the car goes back to the middle of the road and stops, and the driver gets out. He starts yelling at the cyclist. A car in the next lane stops to yell at the first driver. Now both lanes are blocked, cars are honking, and this psycho driver is still yelling and cursing at the cyclist. I walk by, pull out my phone, and say, "so, I'll just call the police then, unless you're just about done?" At this point the cyclist speeds off. Fuck. I meant to scare the driver, not the cyclist.

Driver 1 and Driver 2 continue to yell at each other. Driver 2 speeds away, Driver 1 pulls over and just sits there. I dunno why.

Sorry for the crappy photo quality. Cell phone cam. I was also trying to be discreet, so as no to anger the psycho.

Another one.

I would have written something about this yesterday, except that my life was pretty hectic that day - two days ago a cyclist was killed on Sussex Drive when she was hit by a bus. As far as anyone can tell, she left the bike lane and wound up in the bus lane, and then got hit and dragged. She died at the scene. The CTV short video here has a few details, but not much.

I don't know which is worse, that this is just one more in a series of horrible bike/vehicle accidents in this town this year, or that it's the second time in a matter of months that an STO bus has killed someone. Or that in this case the bike lane may have contributed to the accident. (When there's a bike lane, people tend to assume that the bikes will stay in it: which isn't always the case. Sometimes you need to merge out of the bike lane in order to make a turn or avoid an obstacle. The bike lane can generate a false sense of predictability. Just today I found myself staying in the bike lane going over the bridge toward Saint Patrick and Crichton, when I should have ignored the bike lane and stayed in the right-turn lane so I could get onto the bike path - effectively, the bike lane caused me to get in a more dangerous position than ignoring it would have.) Or is it just the basic awful thought that friends of mine, on hearing the news, automatically thought to themselves, "Is there any reason Kate would have been on that street then?" Automatically worried for a moment that it could have been me. She was the same age as me after all.

What is going on? Why have we had so many fatal collisions this year? Are there more bikes on the road? It's irrational to feel as though motorists actively hate us (although some certainly do: I've seen evidence enough for that on the comment pages of most online articles about the subject.) But it's hard not to feel beseiged.

In this case though, it was a bus. That's even scarier. Buses are big, and their drivers are supposed to be professional drivers. But by that very token, they're also likely to be tired, or pulling an extra shift, or worn down by routine to the point where they're working on autopilot. And you might survive a collision with a Yaris. Not with a full-size city bus. If there should be separation between car traffic and bikes, all the more should there be separation between buses and bikes. I'm all for public transport, but I'm scared of some buses. Not all, mind you: there are drivers that hold up, give cyclists space, pull out and make sure they give you a couple of meters of clearance. But the ones that don't, well... we saw two days ago what happens.

Bad roads and good intersections

I just discovered that the CAA has developed a site where you can vote for the worst roads in Ontario. While I'm sure I don't have roads anywhere near as bad as they probably have in, say, Kenora, I have been keeping a tally of the worst roads in Ottawa, back in a bottom drawer of my mental filing cabinet. Some of the worst offenders:

Somerset where it turns into Wellington, just on the west side of the train overpass. You know, down in front of the Giant Tiger. Bone-jarring, that.

Bank, anywhere south of Billings Bridge. I know because I travel it every day. It's big, it's fast, and there are unexplained long gouges in the pavement that seem placed so that they'll grab your tire and yank it sideways. I am thankful, every day, for Mike's burly 2" tires. What kind of crazy person relies on 3/4" racing tires in the real world?

The same goes for Heron Road, also part of my commute. The potholes on Heron are easily an average of two inches deep, and they appear and disappear like mushrooms, overnight. The drain covers are surrounded by them. You feel like maybe the entire road around the drain will suddenly crumble away, leaving only the metal cover and whatever cartoon physics is left holding it up.

And, construction or no construction, burning summer heat or driving nasty autumn grit, the snarl of crap at the bottom of the escarpment where Albert Street turns into Scott, near Lebreton Flats, is unnavigable, unpleasant, unfriendly, and full of buses and trucks and chuckholes and gravel and misery... oh, and it's also apparently a posted, city-approved bike route.

My least favorite pothole in all of Creation is the one on Heron, heading up the hill from Bank. It's exactly at the point where the right-turn lane fades into the street itself. It's at least three inches deep. And it's right where, if you're pedaling up the hill, you have to move out into the actual traffic lane, where people accustomed to the Parkway are accelerating away from the light and up the hill. So you're pushed by the curb into traffic. The road is narrow. It's popular with trucks. And just as you have to get close to the cars whizzing by you, your wheel rattles over a chuckhole the size of a salad plate. Not fun. I'm tempted to go down there late one night with a bucket of filler and fix it my own damn self.

However ... I do have a surprising favorite intersection.


I know, it looks kind of hellish, doesn't it? But it's actually, once you get to know it, one of the sanest intersections I know.

Coming up from bottom right is Alta Vista, which is pretty and residential and has a bike lane down its entire length. (Cue angelic choirs here.) The big road is Riverside Drive: ignore it, we just have to cross it. You come in along Alta Vista. Merge left across two lanes once your bike lane runs out. Now you're in the innermost of a double left turn lane. You stay to the left, because the lane you're in becomes a through lane, and slip into the outermost of another double left turn lane onto Riverside... but then you don't quite turn left, you make half the turn and then swing right onto (hooray!) the paved bike path. Then you just have to cross Hurdman Transitway Station (the big parking lot at left) and you're on the Eastern River Path, and it's all joggers, wildlife, and senior citizens feeding the ducks from there on in.

It seems like any intersection that involves a bicycle and double turn lanes should be scary and senseless - but somehow once I got the flow of it, it became almost dancelike. And the traffic stays out of your way, and it's pretty calm. Only once did I have a driver go into some sort of weird fit, banging on his horn and swearing at me for taking up the lane... before then turning right onto Riverside, which confuses me. Since that means I wasn't in his way at all. But I figure he was probably just having a really, really bad morning.

For one thing, he wasn't just about to turn onto a pathway lined with Michaelmas daisies and people out walking their basset hounds. Poor man.

Chasing Cars (by Katie Malkovsky)

(Kate says: I was told I could use this for my zine. I had to share - this is not only a really crazy story, but it's really well written. Everyone should get treated at some point to one of Katie's open letters on Facebook. They're always a good read. And this one, well, it's an object lesson.)


Toronto drivers, we need to talk.

You are all insane. But I suppose that's a generalization. Rather, a few of you are insane, which gives the rest of you a bad name. But those few who are insane are completely off their rocker.

If you decide to make a U-Turn directly in front of a "no U-Turn" sign, and almost hit me on my bike, I think it a little strange to blame me for being in the way. I think it's even more strange to yell out the window about what a stupid bitch I am for not having a light on my bike. I thought I was set with my flashing red LED, my reflectors, and my helmet with reflective stripes, yet apparently all of these things only work to make me invisible. I'm sorry. I hadn't realized.

Ah, but you didn't leave it there, Toronto Driver. I'm not sure exactly what you hoped to accomplish by following me and intentionally cutting me off and trying to run me off the road, all the while screaming about my missing light. I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that you weren't trying to look like a complete psycho, so I suppose I should commend you for making psychosis look effortless. Three cheers for you, T.D.

Though you proved yourself to be unquestionably crazy when you pulled up ahead and over to the side of the road, waited for me to pass you, and then opened your door, hoping to hit me with it.

I have to admit, I was relieved when you finally stopped following me and just drove away, but not before you leaned out the window and screamed that I'm a "stupid fucking cunt." I think you should know that I found this insulting, though not for the reasons you may think.

I don't mind being called a cunt. I do mind that you immediately reached for a gendered insult. I couldn't just be the annoying cyclist, could I? No, I had to be the annoying *female* cyclist; the "stupid-fucking-cunt." You seem to have a deep hatred of women, Toronto Driver.

And at the end of the day, T.D., you have to know you really blew it. I'm a pretty damn responsible cyclist; one of the few who doesn't run red lights or stop signs, and I actually signal when I turn. I cause no inconvenience to you as you drive, and I like to think that my pollution-free cycling makes you breathe a little easier in this smog-filled city. As for what you can do for me, Toronto Driver? I know I'll breathe easier once you've had your license suspended, though I know this will probably happen after you hit or kill someone with your car. You're on a dangerous path, T.D.

And, just for you:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5UZ0K5yGW3E&feature=related

- Katie Malkovsky (check her out on MySpace, here)