Eugene Cycles
Eugenecycles is a Eugene Weekly effort to better report local bicycle news. To provide bike news tips or guest opinion pieces please contact News Editor Alan Pittman (apittman@eugeneweekly.com or 541-484-0519).
Drunk Driver Critically Injures Cyclist in Bike Lane
An alleged drunk driver struck a cyclist in a bike lane at 11th and High at 2:36 am this morning critically injuring the victim, according to a police press release.
Police arrested Patrick Compton, 21, charging him with second degree assault and driving under the influence.
The victim, Craig Macfie, 24, suffered life threatening injuries, according to police. The bicyclist was westbound on West 11th near High in the bike lane when he was hit from behind by Compton, who was driving westbound in a Toyota 4-Runner, police said their initial findings indicate.
UPDATE: The victim, Craig Macfie, died of his injuries.
Police ask that any witnesses to the crash contact Officer Scott Dillon at 541-682-5157
Here's a Google view of the approximate area of the crash:
Council Likes Bikes/Peds, But Funding in Question
Council likes bikes/peds
A plan to increase the city's wealth, health and livability while saving the environment by doubling walking and biking got a warm reception from the Eugene City Council this week.
Eugene Councilor Pat Farr commended staff for the draft Eugene Pedestrian and Bicycle Master Plan. "It really gives me a lot of enthusiasm for the future of Eugene," he said.
"Good work," said Councilor Mike Clark, "It's very important."
"This is a great plan," said Councilor Alan Zelenka.
The plan proposes hundreds of miles of new sidewalk and bike facilities to double walking and cycling rates over the next two decades. "It's something we think is very achievable," city bike/ped planner Reed Dunbar said of the goal.
Eugene's current bike commute rate of about 11 percent is higher than any other city of its size or larger in the nation, according to the U.S. Census. Eugene's walk commute rate is 7 percent. The city plans to respond to comments and finalize the draft plan in February.
Cycletracks physically separated from menacing car traffic will be a key part of the effort to increase biking in Eugene, according to Dunbar.
Dunbar pointed to Portland survey research indicating that about one percent of people will bike no matter how dangerous it is. About 7 percent are confident enough to bike next to traffic with bike lanes. But about 60 percent are interested in biking but are concerned that they'll be hit by cars.
Here's a graphic he showed the council:
Using safe cycletracks physically separated from menacing cars is needed to boost biking above existing levels, according to Dunbar. "This is going to be necessary if we're attracting families and the 60 percent interested," he said. Cycletracks are "important and something we need to embrace."
Dunbar showed a picture of a cycletrack design:
Mayor Kitty Piercy agreed. "It seems to be the next place we really need to go to get everyone" from the committed to the interested, she said. "That's where we are headed."
Councilor Betty Taylor also backed the cycletrack focus. "We do need more bike paths that are separated from the road completely."
But the new plan proposes only one major new cycletrack connecting the Amazon bike path to downtown and the riverfront trail system via High Street.
Here's a map Dunbar showed:
Dunbar said the city also may consider retrofitting a new two-way buffered bike lane on Alder St. near the UO with flexible bollards to convert it into a physically separated cycletrack. Without the bollards currently, some cars have been driving or parking in the lane and "ignoring all of our paint," he said.
He showed a picture of a bollard cyletrack:
But the biggest deficit with the new plan may be how to pay for the roughly $50 million in new sidewalks and $40 million in new bike facilities over the next two decades. Councilor Alan Zelenka pointed out that at existing funding levels it could take the city 75 years to build all the projects in the city plan.
Other councilors also cautioned that the current controversial system of charging neighboring houses for new houses wouldn't work. If the city is depending on such improvement district charges, "we're dooming this to failure," Clark said.
Councilor Andrea Ortiz said charging homeowners for new sidewalks would be difficult in poor areas of her ward. "It would be a hard push to ask people to put in curbs and sidewalks, when they're barely making it," she said.
"We don't really have any way of funding this great list of projects," Zelenka said. "I encourage the council to look at a dedicated system of funding."
Sue Wolling, a member of the GEARs bike advocacy group, urged the council to dedicate funding to active transportation to save money on expensive new roads. "If you could find a way to build a project that would reduce the need for road projects by 10 percent, wouldn't you do it?" she asked holding up the draft plan. "You can build every project in this book for the cost of one major roadway project."
City transportation planner Rob Inerfeld said without dedicated funding the city often chooses projects based on what it can find money for. "We don't always put forward the project we think is the most important," he said.
To fund priority projects, Inerfeld said the city could include more dedicated bike and pedestrian funding in a planned new street repair bond measure.
Riverfront Path Under Beltline Opens This Weekend
The City of Eugene plans to open the long-awaited extension of the riverfront bike path under Beltline this weekend.
A federal grant paid for most of the $1.6 million cost of extending the path from River Avenue, under Beltline, along Division Avenue to Beaver Street, providing a long needed safe bike connection to the 15-mile riverfront bike system for the River Road and Santa Clara neighborhoods.
The 3,200 foot-long path includes lighting and an undercrossing at the main truck entrance to the Delta Sand & Gravel yard on Division Avenue.
Amsterdamized, UO course imports cycletrack success
About 50 people packed the Humble Beagle Pub last week to get a glimpse at how Eugene could become like Amsterdam, where more people bike to work than drive.
Students from a course on "Sustainable Bicycle Transportation" visited the Dutch city last summer and brought back pictures, video and ideas on making a greener Eugene that they shared with the local community on Nov. 3.
"It was fantastic," said UO graduate Briana Orr of the eight-day trip to Amsterdam with a dozen other students. Orr, UO's Bike Center Project Coordinator, said she'd read about Amsterdam's 38 percent bike commute rate but, "I don't think you really get the understanding unless you're biking in it."
Orr attributed the city's cycling success to its system of safe cycletracks physically separated from motorists. "It's definitely the infrastructure. It's facilities that make women, make children, feel comfortable," she said. "This was the first time biking that I didn't feel like I was going to get hit by a car."
UO planning professor Marc Schlossberg said he was a "skeptic" about the importance of separated cycletracks before he went. But he said, "I returned convinced about how amazing it is."
Eugene's bike system largely consists of bike lanes. But while that may work for the bravest 5 percent of potential cyclists, if your goal is actually to increase that to get a good majority of people," Schlossberg said, "a bike lane doesn't cut it."
In Holland the separated cycletracks protected from cars by curbs provide bikers convenient, safe, pleasant and direct routes, "all the things we give to cars," Schlossberg said. The cycletracks provide space "where regular people can bike to do their regular things and not have to worry and be tense. They can relax," he said.
Ted Sweeney, a student in the Department of Planning, Public Policy and Management, said he saw lots of regular people on bikes in Amsterdam. "There were kids, moms with their toddlers, older people, professionals in suits, well-dressed women, plus everything in between," he said. "All kinds of people were biking because it was really easy and convenient to do."
With policy and infrastructure changes, it was "eye-opening to imagine what may be possible for American cities," Sweeney said.
??"It was hard to imagine why every city that is serious about bicycles doesn't build similar infrastructure," said Sophie Luthin, another UO student on the trip.
Eugene has taken a first step toward the Dutch model of cycletracks. This summer the city installed a two-way bikeway on Alder for about a dozen blocks near the UO. For most of the route, the bikeway is protected by a wide painted strip instead of a curb or other physical barrier and isn't like the physically separated cycletracks in Holland. But for two blocks, the route is behind a lane of parked cars and safely protected from cars.
Luthin said she was "thrilled" to see the Alder improvement when she returned to school after visiting Amsterdam. "It's awesome, and I can't wait for more," she said.
More could be on the way. The city's draft new bike and pedestrian plan includes a major cycletrack on High Street connecting the Amazon bike path to downtown and the riverfront path system.
A citizen advisory committee of the powerful Metropolitan Planning Committee (MPC) has also recommended that the region's transportation plan include a policy that "it is preferable that bicycles and pedestrians be physically separated from the flow of traffic."
After objections from Springfield and MPC staff and right-wing County Commissioner Jay Bozievich, the MPC staff watered down the recommendation to read: "it is preferable, when practical, that bicycles and pedestrians be as physically separated as possible from the flow of motorized traffic."
The Amsterdam cycling photos will stay up at Humble Beagle through Nov. 17. Schlossberg said about 85 students have expressed interest in another course next summer that will also include Copenhagen.
If physically separated cycletracks can get imported here, that could provide a big boost to proposed city plans to double cycling rates. Orr said when she got back from visiting Amsterdam and rode Eugene's streets next to cars, "I was a bit shaken up."
Orr said another big factor in the safety of cycling in Amsterdam is the empathetic drivers. Because most drivers bike during some part of their day, "there's no just drivers," she said.
By the time a Dutch kid gets her drivers' license at 18, he's spent a decade cycling, according to Orr. "You understand the movements, you know inherently," she said.
Prof. Schlossberg said he was also impressed by how Dutch bicyclists, motorists and pedestrians were able to safely and politely take turns. "There's almost never a stop sign, so everything is yield," he said of Dutch intersections. But he said the intersections work with people driving more slowly and waiting for safe gaps.
"You get this dance that happens," Schlossberg said. "Some aspect is really left to people to navigate ambiguous space."
But the professor acknowledges that Dutch drivers may be different than Americans. "We tend to be quite angry and aggressive here," Schlossberg said.
Here's a photo Schlossberg took of the student group (he also took the bike parking lot photo above):
Going Dutch, Will Eugene cycle like Utrecht?
What would Eugene look like if it accomplished a bike plan goal of doubling cycling to 22 percent in the next 20 years? Maybe something like the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands where 28 percent commute by bike.
"No matter your age in the Netherlands, you cycle," Ronald Tamse, an Utrecht city planner, told a group of about 50 people gathered by LiveMove at the UO Knight Library last week. "It's perfectly normal in the Netherlands to see businessmen on the bicycle," he said. "It's not something cool."
Tamse showed slides of everyone from people in business suits, to small kids to old women biking in Utrecht. In Eugene, 82 percent drive to work, compared to 39 percent in Utrecht. "You see a few cars, and you see a lot of bikes," Tamse said.
With biking "here it's something that starts to grow; in my country it's a huge tree," Tamse said.
"The bikes are just as important as the cars in my city," Tamse said. He said if he designs a road without the best bike facilities, he won't have to wait for the public backlash. "My boss will ask what's wrong with me."
With so many cyclists, accident rates become very low, according to Tamse. "You have a certain power, you create a certain road safety," he said.
With the high share of people cycling, safety also increases because "the car driver is a cyclist himself and is aware of your behavior," Tamse said.
Most cyclists in the Netherlands do not see the need to wear helmets, he said. "I'm 45 years old, and I never fell," he said. Like other Dutch cyclists, Tamse said he rides slowly often talking and socializing with friends while rolling along.
With many bikes-only shortcuts, cycling is often the quickest and easiest way to get to destinations in Utrecht, Tamse said. "We do this not for health or the environment; it's more convenient for me," he said.
"I don't need a car," Tamse said. "I can tell you, I can't drive a car."
Tamse said drivers licenses in the Netherlands are difficult to obtain, often requiring taking a test multiple times.
In accidents involving bikes and cars, Dutch law puts the burden on the driver to prove he was not in the wrong, according to Tamse. "We have this law to make the position of the bike stronger," he said.
Children in Utrecht start to bike at 4-5 years old and often bike to school by themselves by second grade, Tamse said. For the children the independent mobility "becomes freedom," he said.
Tamse showed pictures of the main train station in Utrecht which has 17,000 parking spaces for bicycles. Many of the bikes are stacked on top of each other, and 10,000 of the spaces are guarded. Train riders often have two bikes that they park at either end of their train commute and also can rent bikes using their rail fare card, he said.
In addition to the many separated bike paths along streets, Tamse showed slides of "woonerf" streets where children are encouraged to play in the street and where cars know they have the lowest right of way priority. On "fietsstraat" bikes have the right of way and ride in the middle of the street with cars following slowly behind as guests.
Tamse said children can learn to judge the speed of cars by 8 to 10 years old and need cycling experience for safety. If children are driven to school instead of biking at that age, "you're taking away the possibility of this child to learn," he said. "It's not only about creating good infrastructure, it's about teaching," Tamse said.
Do to air and noise pollution, building new roads for cars is very unpopular, according to Tamse. "Just building roads isn't possible anymore in the Netherlands," he said. "The people of our country won't accept it."
Almost everywhere in Europe, leaders accept that car-centered transportation is a thing of the past. Even the mayor of Stuttgart, Germany, a major car producing city, has called for change. Tamse quoted mayor Wolfgang Schuster: "Our traffic concepts of today are not sustainable and will be of no use for the future of our society and our planet."
For a look at what it's like biking in Utrecht, here's a video:
Bike Census Drops, but Eugene Still Leads U.S.
Eugene's bike commute rate dropped last year, but the U.S. Census survey has a big margin of error and Eugene remains the top city in the U.S. of its size or larger for biking.
In 2010 8.3 percent of commuters in Eugene, almost 6,000 people, rode their bikes to work, according to the Census's American Community Survey estimates. That's down from 10.8 percent in 2009, but the survey reported a margin of error of 2.3 percentage points for the 2010 data.
Eugene's 2010 bike rate is still the highest in the nation for cities its size or larger. Portland's 2010 rate is 6 percent.
A few smaller cities have higher rates than Eugene. Boulder, Colo. has a 9.9 percent bike commute rate, Davis, Calif. has a 22.1 percent rate and Corvallis has a 9.3 percent rate. But Eugene is a third larger than Boulder and more than twice the size of Davis and Corvallis.
The long-term trend for bike commuting in Eugene is increasing after a decline, according to Census data. In 1980, 8 percent biked, in 1990 5.8 percent and in 2000 5.5 percent. Here's a graph of the Census data:
A new bicycle and pedestrian plan headed to the Eugene City Council this month calls for more accurate local counts of cyclists. To dramatically reduce global warming pollution and increase health and livabiity while saving money, the plan calls for a doubling in biking over the next two decades.
Sunday Streets Draws Thousands
Thousands of Eugeneans took back the streets from cars last weekend for the city's first Sunday Streets event promoting active, healthy and green transportation, community and fun. The Sept. 18 event closed a three-mile route downtown including 5th Ave. to cars giving the public space to everyone from kids with training wheels, to strollers, to bicyclists, to hula hoopers to dancing seniors. Here's a slideshow: