"Above all, be safe out there."

Those were the final words by Charles Pelkey on VeloNews in The Explainer - We just wanna ride: in his October 21st entry. From where ever our departure point is at the end of a ride I generally say to the guys I ride with, "Be safe." I truly mean it. There is nothing casual or habitual about that pair of words. I mean it each ride more than the previous. Despite more of us out there, or because of it, the conflicts are increasing.

Over the past weekend I was finishing up a ride with Alex and we were only blocks from my house when the road offers a right turn to bikes and pedestrians only - a large right arrow with red circle and slash through it as well as verbiage saying no right turn emphasize the point. In the past year the entire road crossing has been redesigned to include a concrete road island, flashing lights, a speed register unit advising to slow to 15 mph. The effort has worked, most of the time. The biggest problem is a few drivers want the right turn, they just can't give it up. The issue is vehicle rights (as in turns) threaten cyclists and pedestrians.

Each of the past two weekends as we finished a ride a vehicle in front of us has turned right where it clearly says, in sign language, "no right turn - Except Bicycles". Dropping Alex for the moment I sprinted ahead to catch the vehicle and let the driver know the error. I think each time my demeanor has been informative and purposefully not accusatory and not angry. The result - two VERY different responses. The first, a woman, apologetic, the second, a 30-something man, belligerent, denial, finally caustic, profane, and it nearly erupted in him getting out of the car (I think he realized there were two of us [thanks Alex], much fitter, and that it was stupid, or else his wife tapped him on the leg as if saying - don't been more stupid than you have been.)

My solution if he had stepped from the car was going to be simple - my cell phone, a call to the police, a picture of him out of his car and one of his license plate/with car - and if required ride away from his rage. I'm not fighting anyone - period. But the real question is HOW do we move forward on the issue of sharing the roads in a culture that is so car dominant with an attitude of car/driver-entitlement? How do we have encounters that don't end in road rage? I know I have had more than one middle-finger pointed at me in anger, usually accompanied by a couple of F-bombs, for something another person on a bike (not always a cyclist) did. That residual anger get's people - cyclists - hurt. So how? How do we start to turn things around? I think the only solution is we ALL get involved.

In a Charles Pelkey article “Whose bike path is it anyway?” two weeks ago the discussion has often turned to how to deal with problems. That's what we need to figure out, before more people get killed and badly injured ("at a time when a doctor (of all people) is on trial, facing charges of trying to assault – some might argue that he was trying to kill – two cyclists on a narrow canyon road near Los Angeles.") The long-term solution of course is changing the car/driver-entitlement mentality, but that will start with early eductation in elementary schools and take a couple decades minumum, but a great place for all of us to get involved. In the interim what? Timely question here in Portland as the city is in the process of evaluating its 20-year draft Portland Bicycle Plan for 2030 (see Portland Cyclists - share your voice - please!).

With that in mind Pelkey's final comments in the Oct. 21st Explainer are even more purposeful:

"I’ve mentioned before and I insist on mentioning again, that cyclists and other non-motorized travelers need to make sure their voices are heard. We ride and we vote. Whether it’s a question of access or holding public officials accountable and supporting those who pursue cases.

Perhaps the first step is to work with advocacy groups either locally or those, like Bikes Belong, [in Portland we have BTA and reporting tools like B-SMaRT on BikePortland.org] which operate on a national level and lobby Congress on critical access and funding issues.

It's important to get involved and stay involved. I realize that activism related to the one thing that brings you a bit of peace, some relaxation and a whole lot of contentment can be a real pain in the ass at times. Riding should be fun. It shouldn't require going to meetings, writing letters and dishing out dough to organizations. Unfortunately, it does."

(Portland is definitely trying and my kudos to everyone working so hard from the Mayor's office to PBOT: The City of Portland Bureau of Transportation is moving full steam ahead on their first 15 miles of new bicycle boulevards that were promised by Mayor Sam Adams when he took office in January. See all the details on BikePortland.org)

Last Sunday's driver encounter was a shitty way to end a lovely fall ride, and while the driver probably will be aware of that corner in the future, he likely hates cyclists (all of us - because after all, we are like eggs and all look alike) even that little bit more now. But I think of the morning when I approached that corner and three little kids were on their bikes, crossed what they thought would be a safe section of road, to reach the crosswalk for an even safer crossing of the street - had either of those two vehicles rounded the No Turn Right - Except Bicycles at that moment little bodies would have scattered like bowling pins, certainly injured probably worse - so if it takes occasionally ending a lovely fall ride with an encounter so be it. I would rather my voice be heard than the screams of an injured cyclist or child.

Locally how you can get involved resource links:
Bicycle Transportation Alliance (BTA)
Bike Safety Monitoring and Reporting Tool (B-SMaRT)
BTA Bike Safety and Education Programs
RideSmart Program (Cascade Bicycle Club)

Are we really haunted by ghost bikes?

A dozen ghost bikes are sadly scattered about Portland streets, and if you are reading this blog you undoubtedly see them. But does your boss? your neighbor? your boyfriend? your wife?

They always cause me pause when we cross paths. I do think of the rider(s) senselessly consumed in the impatience we inflict on our daily lives, and how often on my daily rides I have had these moments, swishes of passing danger, my presence less valuable, less important, less respected because I'm not cocooned in a four, five or six thousand pound beast that can ignore my relevance. I travel in the urban-otherland. I wish I was as secure as a side-walk bipedal, they have six or so feet of clear sailing and at worst only collided with creatures roughly their size and speed.

"My" lane is also the curbside recycling strip, delivery truck double-parking way, construction ahead sign corridor, the movie company dolly-track sector, the taxi wait station, and always, the car door opening lane. (BTW - a century plus ago ‘bipedal’ was one of the original concept names for what is now bicycle - we should have hung on to it, we might have our own six foot wide lane now!)

The Guardian news in the UK recently asked in a web clip - "Ghostly all-white bikes appear by roads where a cyclist has been killed following an accident. Do these monuments make the roads safer for other cyclists? Or are they simply tragic street art?"

I wonder the same. Do these ashen spirits of our most livable city whisper to any passersby except those that push pedals? Sure I notice, I'm on a bicycle virtually every day in one capacity or another – so that means I also engage with motorists in one capacity of another. Do visitors to our city notice? Do police notice? Do pedestrians notice? Most importantly do those who matter most notice – drivers?

And if not, then what?

How do we signal our fragility?

Perched a top less than 30lbs of steel, aluminum or carbon, we are no match for the steel leviathans of Detroit. More importantly we are no match for the attitudes wheeling the Detroitasauruses about.

So how do we get safer?

Like most solutions, one is short term, the other systemic. We need to all put our heads together on it, not just attorney Ray Thomas, Del Sharffenberg and a few others. We already have what it takes; we have a higher percentage of people who bike to work than any other large American city; we have nearly 20,000 everyday folks come out and ride the bridges every August, that’s an army; Portland is already widely considered one of the country’s most bike-friendly urban centers. That means there are a lot of people out there to work on solutions – a start is join BTA (Bicycle Transportation Alliance) and get involved beyond wearing the t-shirt or getting your 10% off at the local bike shop. There’s a lot of lip-flapping from the saddle, but not often enough do they flap their way to a transportation hearing or local council meeting.

We need more ideas like those Big Green Bike Boxes, believed to be the first such to be put to use by any city in the country, but we need to encourage Portland police to be as vigilant about warning drivers who blunder into the boxes as they do passing out stop sign violation tickets to cyclists behind OMSI.

Long-term, education – again get involved. Folks like the Community Bike Center and BTA have safety programs for kids, lit’l Newbees, and they need your passion for the bike to help these kids learn and grow into adults who both drive with respect and believe cyclists of every ilk deserve a piece of the road.

But finally it may also rest with us – the one’s on bikes – starting with “Do unto others…” We need to obey the road rules, until We change them (see article link under Legally Speaking over on Bicycling Northwest). Stop signs mean stop – period! Red lights are for us all – period! I know it’s shitty to have to unclip, kill the momentum, but motorists don’t get us, they don’t know what we’re doing (hell, neither do we half the time), and bottom line – those Detroitasauruses can kill us.

No more ghost bikes, no more ashen art pieces – let's work together for solutions – or park the cars and the bikes until we do.

The First Ghosts Were Seen…

The ghost bike idea seems to have originated with a project by San Francisco artist Jo Slota. Slota began the original ghost bike project in April 2002. This was a distinct, purely artistic endeavor. Slota was intrigued by the abandoned bicycles that he found around the city, locked up but stripped of useful parts. He began painting them white, and posted photographs on his website, ghostbike.net. As the idea was taken up for different purposes, Slota faced a dilemma. San Francisco is one of the safer U.S. cities for bicyclists, but memorial ghost bikes sprang up there as elsewhere, changing perceptions of his project.

The first ghost bike memorial project was in St. Louis, Missouri, United States in October 2003. After observing a motorist strike a bicyclist in a bike lane on Holly Hills Boulevard, Patrick Van Der Tuin placed a white-painted bicycle on the spot with a hand-painted sign reading "Cyclist Struck Here". Noticing the effect that this had on motorists in the area, Van Der Tuin then enlisted the help of friends to place 15 more "ghost bikes" in prominent spots in the St. Louis area where cyclists had recently been hit by automobiles. They used damaged bikes, in some cases deliberately damaged to create the desired mangled effect.

Today the general meaning is a ghost bike or ‘ghostcycle’ is a bicycle set up in a place where a cyclist has been hurt or killed by a motor vehicle, as a memorial and as a reminder to passing motorists to share the road. A junk bicycle is painted white, with a placard attached, and locked to a suitable light pole, post or object close to the scene of the accident. These memorials are mainly a political statement – aiming to make a wider point beyond personal loss. Not all ghost bikes commemorate real casualties: some merely reflect indignation at near-misses by careless drivers, or even protest against a poor road surface.

Portland’s ghost bikes began appearing in the summer of 2005. Similar projects began in Pittsburgh in 2004, New York City and Seattle in 2005, and Chicago in 2006. London Ghostcycle was active in 2005 and 2006. There have been similar projects in dozens of other cities worldwide. http://www.ghostbikes.org/

Above photo courtesy ghostbikes.org website