There are Federal regulations in place for Neighborhood Electric Vehicles (NEVs), which are the souped up golf carts we read about in downstate Illinois. They’re permitted on local streets with a speed limit of less than 35 mph. I see a few of them scooting around in Santa Cruz County and Silicon Valley.

Equestrians have their advocacy organizations who lobby for trail access. I follow their activities a little, partly out of curiosity, partly to see what the cyclists in the area have missed, and partly to find opportunities for combining our efforts.

I’m mostly throwing out hypotheticals now because it’s 4pm on a Friday, but I really do foresee some very confused traffic engineers (and mountains of wasted money) in the future if we don’t change our approach soon.

The budget in the UK for any cycling bike related spending authority, at best, is measured in millions. The budget for road building, is measured in billions.

That is why environmentally responsible cyclists receive a token blob of paint here and there, whilst gas guzzlers get road widening and by-passes.

He did mention that it’s really all about the budget. If he’s got money for auto traffic, then he will spend all of it on auto traffic. If he gets money for bike lanes and paths, then he’s happy to spend it for bikes.

Like Paul mentioned above, it’s probably best to influence the city using advocacy groups and help the traffic engineer get money specifically for cyclists rather than expecting them to carve it out of an auto traffic budget.

Regards,

Scott

By the way, I am a traffic engineer and a cyclist. As well as a bike commuter. But that combination is few and far between.

Truthfully, bike lanes (obviously) get shoved to the bottom of the priority list frequently, sometimes b/c there isn’t always a hard and fast standard for them. Car lanes are generally at least 9′ wide because cars are that big. Sidewalks have to be a certain width to accomodate pedestrians and especially wheelchairs (the ADA will make sure of that). Bike lanes don’t always have someone sticking up for them, so sometimes the less-bike-educated engineers say “Well, we’ve got 2′ of width left to use, we can put 1′ bike lanes on each side of the road, and they can ride in the gutter and that will give them 2′ of width, that should be plenty.”

The good news is, although traffic engineers don’t always accomodate bicyclists as much as bicyclists would like, they are moving in that direction. Other good news is, many larger cities (such as Charlotte where I am) are developing or already have some full time bicycle engineers/planners on the city staff to review plans.

I have a theory on that. The average non-cyclist simply sees a bicycle/cyclist as non-motorized traffic. Since a bicycle is non-motorized, and operates with the same power (two legs worth) as a pedestrian, the perception seems to be that speeds attainable on a bicycle are in the same neighborhood as pedestrian speeds. This theory is supported by my observation of drivers’ and pedestrians’ actions while passing (drivers only) and while entering/crossing the road near me. Cruising speeds in the neighborhood of 20mph seem quite unexpected. Unless this common perception is disproved we will most likely continue to be non-motorized traffic, and lumped in with pedestrians. Just my observations.