Fragmentary Evidence

I rode my bike (and ferried a bit, since there’s no bike path over the Bay Bridge—yet!) from Oakland to Ross and back today, yet somehow I managed not to take a single picture along the way. In lieu of any photos of, say, the cute mama and baby deer that I saw grazing next to each other on a slope near Sausalito, you get to look at a screenshot of the route from Gmaps Pedometer instead. (I’m going to make myself a T-shirt: “I went all the way to Marin County, and all I got was this lousy Google Maps screenshot.”)

I rode past this custom build on Telegraph Ave last week, and of course I had to stop for photos:

Many people own Kryptonite U-locks; some unfortunate people own Kryptonite figure-8-locks instead:

(Incidentally, something doesn’t seem to quite add up here. The lock, while bent out of shape, is unbroken. So why did the thief even bother trying to break the lock, if he was able to steal almost all of the bike without worrying about the lock at all? Or am I missing something?)

I seem to see more odd customized bikes in Alameda than anywhere else. This was down the block from where the family bike was parked last month, and across the street from where I spotted the tiki bike last year

The guy who was riding this did have a cowboy hat on, but it wasn’t Slim Pickens.

Bike to work day was last Thursday. Since I bike to work all the time anyway, I have to seek out other ways to mark the day. (I suppose I could borrow a car and drive to work, but that would defeat the point.) Last year I took an extremely circuitous route to work in order to visit the festivities at city hall and some of the other “energizer stations” around town. (I’m a sucker for free food and coffee.) This year, I should have volunteered at one of the BTWD events, but I didn’t have my act together enough to sign up, so instead I decided to take advantage of the free ferry rides across the bay to San Francisco. (Okay, I’m a sucker for free anything.)

Many of the people with bikes on the ferry seemed to be people like me, who would normally take BART across the bay at less than half the price, but who were taking advantage of the chance to get a free scenic trip in the fresh air instead.

I rode around the city for a while admiring all the nice new bike infrastructure since the last time I was there just a few weeks ago, such as the on-street bike racks on Valencia Street and the green-painted, separated bike lanes on Market Street. I then stopped by the San Francisco MoMA to look in on some old friends. I only took a few photos there (photos from an earlier trip to SFMoMA are here), and for some reason I was on a windows and bars kick this time:

(Come to think of it, I have felt somewhat imprisoned by circumstances lately…)

If you listen to some of the complaints of Oakland residents, you might get the impression that the Oakland Police Department is either unable or unwilling to pay any attention to property crimes. And given the high levels of violent crime, it is presumably true that the OPD isn’t able to spend a whole lot of time investigating, say, bike thefts.

It’s reassuring, therefore, that the police do respond quickly (at least sometimes) when they have a concrete lead about a stolen bicycle. I just came across the following notice over at the blog Change Your Life. Ride A Bike. (Yes! Good advice!)

MY STOLEN PEUGEOT WAS RECOVERED TODAY IN OAKLAND!

It’s a little the worse for wear and beaten up, but she’s whole, and only missing her leather-padded toe straps and the contents of my panniers and my seat bag (tools, lock, cable, pump, 3 flashing red bike lights, etc.).

Many thanks to Jason, a Cycles of Change APC volunteer, who spotted my unique mixte in Emeryville, trailed the 12-year-old riding it back to his house in Oakland, then called me.

Many thanks also to Oakland PD Officers Charles O’Connor (#8732) and Terry Jones (#8427), who quickly responded to my call and were at the house before I arrived. They checked out the house, recovered my bike, and brought it to me.

Thanks to all of you who kept an eye out for my ride, spread the word, posted about it in blogs, and offered your support through all this. It has meant a great deal and helped keep me going in the search, which took lots of time and effort in my depressed state.

(In case you’re wondering, he was in a depressed state because the beloved bike was a family heirloom. Really.) Kudos to the eagle-eyed good samaritan from Cycles of Change and to OPD!

Unfortunately, this story isn’t entirely good for Oakland. There is a widespread belief in Alameda that the crime they have on their side of the estuary is mostly caused by hoodlums from Oakland who cross the water and prey on innocent Alameda residents before crossing to safety back in Oakland, where the Oakland Police will be too overwhelmed by violent to help track them down. That fear of the barbarians at the gate—or across the drawbridge, in this case—might be overly simplistic (as is my portrayal of the Alamedan mindset), but the sad fact is that it probably has a lot of truth to it. So when I learned that the bike recovered in Oakland had been stolen in Alameda, my relief at finding out that the Oakland police promptly and professionally handled a call about a stolen bicycle (a stolen bicycle!) was tempered by disappointment at hearing yet another story about something that was stolen in Alameda and brought to Oakland, just over the water but a world away. Sigh.

This sweet ride was locked in front of Tucker’s Ice Cream in Alameda this afternoon (just across the street from where I spotted the cool Tiki Bike a few months ago):

It seats five, just like the Honda Accord behind it, but I bet it was a lot more fun to ride to the ice cream shop. Sadly, I came by a few minutes too late to capture the grand arrival of this limousine, but I heard it was carrying some incredibly cute triplets.

It’s pretty exciting that the folks at Google Maps have added bicycling directions in addition to the walking and public transit options that have been available for a few years. I’ve played with the bicycling directions a bit over the past few days, and they seem to work pretty well, suggesting routes which have bike lanes or bike boulevards, and directing people around steep hills when a good alternative exists. They advise, however, that “bicycling directions are in beta,” and there are definitely some kinks to work out. Gene at Our Oakland, for example, pointed out that Google suggests riding on a “hecka busy, hecka steep” street behind Montclair Village instead of using the much easier (and much more pleasant) rail-to-trail bike path that I wrote about back in January. My favorite suggestion so far, however, is this route between Grand Avenue and Park Boulevard:

This is an unlikely route for several reasons, but the part that amused me the most is near the top, where Google Maps suggests a shortcut between Beacon Street and Merritt Avenue. That might look like a sensible maneuver on a map, but in real life, few (if any) people on bikes would choose that shortcut. To see why, all you have to do is switch to the street view in Google Maps and look at the turn from Beacon Street toward Merritt Avenue:

Oops! I hope your bike is lightweight, because you’ll have to carry it up about 5 flights of stairs, which just happen to be steeper than most—enjoy the workout!

Google is aware that it is using imperfect data to suggest routes, so they are encouraging people to report problems. If they are responsive to feedback, and receive enough of it, then these issues should be easily fixed, but until then, use caution, lest Google send you and your bike flying down any steep staircases…

One of the delightful things about living in Oakland is that if you get tired and want a rest as you walk or bike around the city, there’s bound to be a sofa nearby on which one can take a quick nap, left there by a helpful fellow citizen. I pity those poor folks who live in places where people take unwanted furniture to the dump, or give it away on Craig’s List. How do weary travelers in those sorts of places ever rest their legs? Whoever left this couch on 12th Avenue was especially considerate, leaving it right in the middle of the street so as to save passersby the trouble of pulling over. Thanks, secret Santa, whoever you are!

(At least the couch was easy to steer around, unlike the opening car door with which I had an impromptu dance a few blocks later.)

I walked by this impressive piece of handiwork in Alameda this morning.

Check out the larger version at Flickr if you want to see some of the detailing, such as the wicker on the fork or the stays (even some of the cable housing is wrapped with rattan or some such). It’s safe to say that a lot of time and attention went into this bicycle.

I went up to Berkeley on Tuesday to remind myself of how the other half lives, and as I rode through the UC campus, I was reminded of something that came up in the comments on one of my earlier posts: college campuses are among the few places where pedestrians, bicyclists and low-speed motorized vehicles mix freely in “shared space” in the United States, and they offer prime examples of how mixed-use, unsegregated roads and paths can be safely used by slow-moving cars, pedestrians, bicyclists, wheelchairs, skateboards—whatever—as long as everyone is paying attention.

Indeed, the fact that all those modes of transportation are forced to coexist on the paths and roads of a campus such as Cal’s is what causes everyone to pay more attention, creating places where people can get where they are going at whatever pace they choose, with almost no conflict or inconvenience. It’s part of what makes a nice college campus feel so utopian compared to your average city street. In most cities, the majority of public space is devoted to moving or parked cars, with pedestrians segregated onto narrow strips of concrete on either side and cyclists uneasily mixed in with the cars (uneasily because many drivers perceive the roadway as “their” turf, and see slower-moving bicycles as obtrusive obstacles). On a college campus, the pedestrian tends to be the privileged one, while cyclists are expected to proceed with caution and automobiles are heavily restricted. Shuttle buses, utility trucks or other motorized vehicles that share the pathways have no choice but to travel at safe speeds and yield to pedestrians.

Another principle of the shared space philosophy that I was reminded of is the importance of making the space truly shared. Even a subtle division of the space by painting a strip on a path and telling walkers and bikers to stay on opposite sides of the line can have unintended consequences, especially if there is a limited amount of space, causing people to stray from “their” territory. The lovely path over the Brooklyn Bridge, for example, is divided into a bike lane and a walking lane, and back when I used to commute over the bridge by bike, the division of the space seemed to cause as many problems as it solved—inevitably, pedestrians would cross the dividing line and enter the bicycle side, either because they wanted to pass a group of slower pedestrians, or because they wanted to pose for a photo next to the opposite railing, or because they just hadn’t noticed that the path was divided into a ped lane and a bike lane. Cyclists would be irritated by the incursion into “their” space, so they would angrily swerve around the pedestrians at high speed, often having to cross into the pedestrian lane, which would cause other pedestrians to feel threatened by having a high-speed cyclists suddenly invading “their” space. The number of conflicts between cyclists and pedestrians may be reduced, but the unpleasantness of those conflicts when they do occur is greatly increased.

Given the fairly narrow path on the Brooklyn Bridge, the large number of pedestrians who walk across the bridge at certain times, and the desire of commuting cyclists to be able to ride at high speeds across the long bridge, that path may not actually be a great candidate for truly shared space, but it does demonstrate that dividing space so that each mode of transportation has its own territory doesn’t eliminate all conflicts—it might reduce their number, but when conflicts do arise, they may not be as smoothly negotiated as they are on, say, the paths of the UC Berkeley campus.

There is some effort to keep bicyclists off of some Berkeley campus areas, but in my opinion, it’s a good thing that those rules are so widely ignored—if bikes stayed on the paths that are marked as bicycle routes, then I think there would be worse conflicts between walkers and bikers at those places where they need to interact. As it is now, bicyclists tend to ride among pedestrians nearly everywhere on campus whether they are supposed to or not, and everyone seems to negotiate their way around each other just fine, because walkers and bikers alike are very alert to the possibility of encountering a faster or slower traveler at any time.

(more…)

Some people’s thoughts bend toward the numinous when they see a crude outline of the Blessed Virgin Mary in a cloud, or in a piece of gum stuck to the sidewalk. Others of us worship differently, and feel the presence of grace when we come across a crude outline of a bicyclist indicating the imminent birth of a bike lane, like this one I photographed yesterday on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland:

I haven’t been so excited about seeing a bike lane since I saw the protected 9th Avenue bike lane in Manhattan (complete with its own bicycle traffic signals) in August, or the lovely bike lane at the eastern end of Alameda in April. What makes this latest bike lane special isn’t its design—it looks to be a standard 5-foot paint job between the car traffic lane and the car parking lane—but rather its location, and the contrast with what was there before. Lakeshore Avenue alongside Lake Merritt has long been a truly awful road on which to ride a bicycle, which is unfortunate for me because my bicycle is my primary mode of transportation and Lakeshore is the most direct way from my apartment to most points north or west of here.

Lakeshore was terrible to bike on for many reasons: the pavement was pitted and rough; there was almost no room to squeeze between the car traffic and the parked cars; drivers went too fast around Lakeshore’s many curves; the heavy recreational use of Lakeside Park means that a lot of people are getting in and out of their parked cars, increasing the likelihood of being doored; and after dark the road was not particularly well lit. If you took all the most dangerous aspects of riding a bike in a city and put them together in one street, you might end up with something resembling Lakeshore Avenue in its former incarnation. I would sometimes take a less direct route home, especially after dark, in order to avoid having to bike on Lakeshore.

So the brand new pavement, the reduced number of car lanes from 4 to 2 (which will hopefully reduce speeding) and the new bike lane really do come as a revelation. I knew that bike lanes were included in the master plan for the park and roadways around the lake, but I had also heard some recent speculation from people in the neighborhood that bike lanes were not going to be painted on Lakeshore after all, because there wouldn’t be enough room between the parking lane and the car traffic lane. I’m glad to see that those rumors were unfounded, and we are definitely getting our bike lanes after all.

I’ve been pretty down on Oakland lately, for reasons that I can’t entirely pinpoint, but the privileged status of the automobile here is certainly one factor. The danger posed to vulnerable pedestrians and bicyclists from automobiles (which are all too often controlled by reckless, oblivious, or downright angry people) was tragically brought home two weeks ago when an 11-year-old girl in East Oakland was killed by a hit and run driver as she walked across a crosswalk from a bus stop to her school at 8 o’clock in the morning (as far as I know the killer still has not been identified). I’ve written plenty before about the importance of making the world safe for pedestrians and cyclists (including schoolchildren). The resurrection of Lakeshore Ave.,with its new pedestrian islands in the median, its bike lanes, and a reduction in its number of car lanes, should be a model for other parts of the city (like, say, lower Park Boulevard, perhaps?).