Updated cumulative population by density, 2010 census

Among our excuses for not riding bicycles is that America is too spread out. This explains why we don’t ride cross country very often, but not why we don’t ride to the grocery store. In fact, a whole lot of us live in places that are quite dense. I attempted to graph this before using 2000 Census data and “50K areas” but I was unhappy with the result, both because of my errors and because 50K area leaves out a lot (I live in a town of 25000, for example).

Happily, with new data, organized by non-overlapping zipcode, I can solve both those problems. One sixth of us (52 million people) live in places denser than 5362 per square mile; the next sixth, denser than 2786 per square mile, the next sixth, denser than 1292 per square mile (that’s the median density for our population; half of us live in zipcodes less dense than that, too). With all the zipcodes included it’s clear that many of us live in plenty-dense places.

I’ve tagged the graph with zipcodes in the Boston area north of the Charles River, mostly inside 128, plus all of Boston, and also plus three European cities known for their relatively high bike trip share.

Biking in Cambridge: better, but nowhere near good enough

We went for a ride on the tandem today (actually, months ago, I sat on this for a while), into Cambridge, to Inman Square, and we had to get there reasonably quickly. The conclusion from the stoker S was “that was not much fun; I would do it again on the tandem, but not on my own”. For all the claimed bike-friendliness of Cambridge, they’ve got a long long way to go.

The two main problems are (1) that the calm routes are not direct, and the direct routes are not calm and (2) avoiding nasty traffic and tight spots requires improvisation that is technically illegal, which makes it unsettling to many people, and hides it from official discussion of routes and infrastructure planning.

And people need to understand — me, personally, it’s good enough, but I’m a member of the biking 1% who tolerates traffic. The rest of you people, if you think to yourself, “gee, I’d like to commute to work on my bike, I need to lose 20 pounds, and I HATE parking in Cambridge” — until Cambridge gets serious, it’s probably not going to happen for you. You’ll try it, and hate it. And it’s not your fault; it’s Cambridge’s fault.

Software developers can’t write error messages

This is the sort of stuff that drives me nuts. Some guy (you know it was a guy) saved himself, oh, a minute or two by not writing an error message correctly, and that means that I (another guy) must spend many, many minutes in a debugging McGuffin to try to figure out what’s really going on.

Improving a Cambridge Crosswalk

Biking across Cambridge remains problematic despite their various efforts to improve things. The least-challenging routes are nowhere near direct, and the more direct routes contain uncomfortable stretches and a few random dangers. Sometimes fixing trouble spots is hard — for example, there has to be a tradeoff between car flow and bicycle flow, or between parking and bicycle flow.

But sometimes, making things better for bicycles requires no tradeoff. An example of this is the crosswalk from Cambridge Common to Harvard Law School across Mass Ave. Technically it’s “not for bicyles”, but in practice it is, because the other routes through Harvard Square are crowded and full of cars.

This crosswalk has two problems. First, it’s not big enough; there’s often enough pedestrian and bicycle traffic that people pile up and get in each other’s way. This can lead to conflict between bikes and peds, which is not good. Second, it’s not intuitive. For whatever reason, the crosswalk is divided into segments that don’t all “go” at the same time. A cyclist who’s not aware of this (who makes the completely reasonable assumption that it’s all go) runs the risk of sprinting right into the front of a car with a green light.

The problematic lane is marked with a blue dashed line. The other lines, pink and blue, show (what could be) the two basic cycles for this light.

My solution to this problem comes in two parts. First, the pedestrian crossing must be all “go” at the same time. The light then has two cycles, pink and blue. One problem with this is that it requires a very long walk signal for the slowest pedestrians to get all the way across, and this will probably interfere with the car traffic flow. Instead, run the walk signal on a shorter cycle that only gives the slowest walkers time to get half-way across. However, at the island where they are expected to stop and wait, provide a nice place to wait (shown in the picture with a green box). That means covered to protect from the weather, and with substantial barriers to protect from passing traffic (in the case of parents with small children, to help keep children getting into traffic). This should include a bench, so people can sit and rest.

Second, because the faster pedestrians and cyclists will certainly plan to cross in a single cycle, make the crossing wide enough (and mark it) so that they can spread out, move fast, and avoid conflict. There’s no particular reason that the crosswalk needs to be as narrow as it is; there is an ample stretch of unused space, and it should be dedicated to making this crossing nicer for people who aren’t driving.

All the crosswalk signals must have countdown timers, so that people crossing can properly estimate whether they can make it across in a single cycle or not.

Uninvited bicycle-facilities feedback

Dear Burlington Planners,

I don’t live in Burlington, but I work in Burlington, and I often ride my bike to work, and what keeps me from riding to work more often is the abominable cycling and pedestrian facilities that you (Burlington) provide. I think you can and should do better. In addition, a friend of ours has a somewhat-special-needs son who works at the Dollar Tree; he cannot drive, but with a few road improvements in Burlington he could probably ride a bicycle to work, which would be better for everyone involved.

Good job, Cambridge!

Cycle track, the good side, the evening of the day that the blizzard ended:

The not-so-good side is even less good, but I this was a LOT of snow, and lots of drifty winds.

And it’s lovely ice pudding for dinner again!

What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s crying with all her might and main,
And she won’t use the bike lane – ice pudding again -
What is the matter with Mary Jane?

Pictures taken January 8, snow from before the New Year.
But at least, when we get to the light, bicycles have their very own plowed lane: