GM's Ad: Correcting The Real Offense

UPDATE: Giant Bicycles post an ad that responds to the GM ad. Details on Grist. The ad is displayed below the GM ad here.

While monitoring the "sound and fury" surrounding the recent General Motor's cyclist-bashing ad posted by BikePortland.org, it was heartening to see the downpour of support for cycling and to see it actually affect GM's plans.

Nevertheless, this ad is just the tip of the iceberg. There's been a media blitz of bicycle-bashing for years (this slate.com article talks all about it). Bicycles and cyclists are frequent symbols of emasculation and failure in media. Just in the last 5 years, there's Brad Pitt in Burn After Reading, Steve Carell in 40 Year Old Virgin, Will Ferrell in Everything Must Go and Ben Stiller in Greenberg. Is it GM we're mad at or Madison Avenue and Hollywood?

Furthermore, it seems silly to be shocked that car ads would use sex to promote cars and disparage other modes of transport. Doubly so, given that we just bailed out this particular company from financial ruin and told them to go and compete as best they can. These are the guys who took private  jets to D.C. to tell us they were broke. We gave them money anyway. Now we are shocked that these guys don't "get it"?

The real offense is that we somehow elected government representatives that chose to keep this company alive instead of promoting multi-modal transportation. Had we not done that, we would be reaping the benefits of job-creating infrastructure projects and economy-stimulating traffic from pedestrians and cyclists. Instead we're spending our time shouting down tasteless ads for which we paid and ultimately voted while dodging more cars.

Given this industry's track record (GM's in particular), it is doubtful GM learned anything from this. While they are issuing an apology to us, it would not be surprising if they try to get a return on their ad investment by simply retrofitting this ad campaign for some place else in the world where folks don't squawk so much. Ultimately, GM has been and will continue to be an obsolete organization ruthlessly preserving itself and perpetuating an outdated, unsustainable, vision of transportation.

Like Steve Jobs once said, "death is nature's change agent". This ad is a perfect example of what we get when we don't let nature take its course.

Successfully shouting down this stupidity is definitely a sign of progress but it won't really change anything. Only starving the old oil and car lobbies of money will do that. Ironically, that will be tough in the next election given that our next president will either be the guy that saved this miserable company and wants to import oil from Canadian tar sands or a guy from Michigan. Regardless, we can still vote with our feet, our pedals, and our media choices.

2011 Cyclists Fatalities Already Alarming. What Can Be Done?

Fatality Spikes
The last few weeks have felt like an epidemic to many cyclists in Los Angeles. BikingInLA reported 52 cyclist fatalities as of September 24 and there have been more since then.

Likewise, Seattle q13fox.com reported 10 fatalities so far this year. Three of those have occurred since July, according to StreetsBlog.

Spikes Not Pervasive
The spike hasn't been seen everywhere. In the San Francisco Bay Area, various news agencies have reported less than 10 for the year. But that's down from 15 in 2009, according to this Bike Accident Tracker. In New York City, Gothamist.com reported the city's 10th fatality on September 4. But that's down from 12 fatalities in NYC in 2009, according to stats cited in the Village Voice. Obviously, the year is not over yet but these numbers are relatively flat given the growth in cycling's popularity and compared to Seattle and LA.

Among improved instrastructure, law enforcement, and training, only law enforcement is quick to implement.

So, as many are asking, "what is going on?" And how do we prevent this? Despite an incredible, perhaps cynical, lack of data collected by our governments on cycling fatalities, we know from experience where solutions lie: improved infrastructure, law enforcement, and training. More detail can surely be revealed about the cause of the spikes this year but simply reviewing some of the cases shows these 3 components would help a lot.

Causes
In Seattle, Seattlebikeblog and others have already identified incomplete and/or poorly designed bicycle infrastructure as a cause. In LA, a common cause is hit and runs by drivers. In New York, one cause was a cyclist going the wrong way down a street. Studies to precisely identify the root causes of all these incidents take time. What can be done to prevent more people from dying right now?

Short Term Solutions: Few
Among improved instrastructure, law enforcement, and training, only law enforcement is quick to implement. New bike lanes or training programs won't save the cyclist who dies tomorrow but better law enforcement might.

Law Enforcement
However, better law enforcement requires the right laws to be in place and resources, a.k.a. dollars, to take action. As of this writing, Governor of California, Jerry Brown, just vetoed cycling advocate's third attempt to pass a "3 feet rule": SB910. Even more challenging, he did so at the urging of the CHP.

Operation Safe Passage
Even so, law enforcement does act on similar issues. Right now, a collaboration of police agencies and the CHP are implementing "Operation Safe Passage", a program to enforce "zero tolerance" of hazardous driving around schools. This operation was planned in advanced but it was able to start just a day after a 6 year old pedestrian was killed.

Since cyclists are not concentrated in one area like a school, such a program is tougher to scope to address cycling risks. Nevertheless, something similar could be designed and implemented quickly if the political will exists.

Sources of Political Will
So where to get political will? The three classic sources are money, publicity, and pooling support with other groups. All are already at work for cycling in various degrees. With immediacy being the current goal, only one stands out.

Money Can't Buy Us Love
In the current system, money could very possibly buy us love but can we afford it and do we want to perpetuate this perverted system? Regardless, using money to lobby for cycling has obvious drawbacks for the cycling community. Bicycles alone do not represent the dollars that cars and other industries do.

Bicycle Revenue Connection Still Fuzzy
Many studies show bike-friendly communities do generate lots of revenue but the association with all those dollars is not as direct. Any bicycle lobby will find it tough to compete until it consolidates financial support from all the ancillary businesses that benefit from bike-friendly streets. And that won't happen until more bike-friendly communities are created which, ironically, requires more lobbying.

Publicity
So if money can't buy cyclists love (at least for now), what about publicity? These tragedies have produced that. Seattle's mayor plans to hold a bicycle safety summit in response to all the recent cycling fatalities. However, summits don't necessarily lead to a solution as Los Angeles knows all too well. Their mayor held a bike summit last year. Despite a lot of great cycling developments in LA since then, the deaths keep coming.

Even Alan Dershowitz Can't Get Justice
In order for such events to be effective, they need the focus of the greater majority and not just the cyclist community. As Alan Dershowitz's experience shows, as he tries to identify all those involved in his sister-in-law's death, going it alone to get justice is tough. If one of the foremost attorney's in the country can't get justice, it is clear other forces need to be employed.

With a high enough profile, Mr. Dershowitz would get a cooperative DA and Los Angeles could immediately find/raise money for officers to clamp down on texters, speeders, and drunks causing the hit and runs. Without that larger audience, no summit or anything else will generate enough political will to do much more than is already being done.

Publicity Possibilities
AIDS Awareness
Nevertheless, getting that focus is not impossible. Good lessons for how to do this lie in how AIDS awareness was expanded beyond the minorities that first experienced the disease. Again, the problem is time: expanding AIDS awareness took decades.

Occupy Wall Street
So what can be done in the short term? The group Occupy Wall Street is showing one way right now: a protest. However, this is having limited success because their message is not clear and they are not appealing to the majority's self interest. This lack of focus may be intentional but it still leaves the mainstream confused and apathetic.

Overcoming Distraction
If you want a distracted person's attention, you can't waste time telling them what you are against, you've got to tell them what you are for, what you want and why they should care, and do this instantly. That's more rally or vigil than protest.

Celebrity Association
One way to instantly get people to care is to simply get familiar faces associated with your event. The Occupy Wall Street protest really took off when Michael Moore and Susan Sarandon showed up: shallow but true. The other way to engage is to illustrate the magnitude of the loss, again instantly, e.g. the AIDS quilt.

Rally For A Common Cause
This is what cyclists can do in the short term. Hold a vigil or rally for those we've lost with something visual and large of which distracted passers by or TV viewers will take note, and with a clear way for empathetic people to respond. With a high enough profile to the event, it is possible to obtain substantial new resources quickly.

Pooling Support
Pooling support with groups sharing common interests is yet another way to build support. In this case, the obvious group is pedestrians. Many groups already combine cyclists and pedestrians for this reason. This group is as financially challenged as the cyclist group, so joint efforts may not have a huge impact in lobbying any legislature. Nevertheless, it could potentially have a huge impact on any rally. Like the cycling community, pedestrians suffer greatly from cars. Many people do not cycle but almost everyone is, or has been, a pedestrian at some point. Holding a combined rally would appeal to the majority's self interest.

Long Term Solutions
A lot of the long term work is already being done. The goal is obviously to do it more effectively and swiftly. One well-known key to that is to fill the data gap. Enact legislation that forces officers and other officials to collect detailed data on bicycle traffic volume and accidents.

Data gives the few intrepid politicians out there the foothold they need to take unpopular or unprecedented action. Unfortunately, many industries like the oil, tobacco, and auto industries know this so they sometimes lobby against collecting the data.  Nevertheless, from good data can come good infrastructure, training, as well as the good laws and enforcement.

After supporting any rally in support of better law enforcement, my focus is going to be on legislature that improves data collection on all cycling activity including these accidents. At best, we need to know as much detail as possible about the cause of these tragedies. At least, we need to concretely document for the powers that be how many more of us are now out there.

None of this will bring those victims back but for those of us that feel we must do something, these are constructive and tenable.

Bicycle/Train Compatibility: the good, the bad, and BART

Update 20111031: Rockridge BART Getting New Fare Gates: BART to  start work to provide an extra wide turnstile that accommodates wheelchairs and bicycles.


Update: BART's Bicycle Survey
Since this post, BART has disseminated a link to this bicycle survey. Please offer your feedback to BART through this tool. It is good to see BART taking an interest in cyclists. I applaud those involved with this at BART and encourage them to do all they can to support some of BART's most loyal patrons.

Beautiful Partnership When Allowed
Bikes and trains are such a powerful combination. Trains cover the longer parts of a trip and bikes polish off the last mile(s). Yet, this incredibly elegant partnership proves elusive on many train systems because of poor train policies relating to bicycles.

BART Not Onboard For Bikes
One system in the San Francisco Bay Area is particularly unfriendly to bicycles. Coincidentally, it is also struggling to sustain ridership levels. The Bay Area Rapid Transit system (BART) bike rules spell out the bicycle hostility in clear detail. No bikes allowed to San Francisco during commute hours and/or crowded trains. In other words, bikes are banned at the precise time when all modes of alternative transport should be working together to minimize car use.

Other Offenders

BART is certainly not the only offender. At the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver's brand new metro system was equally hostile to bikes.  No bikes were allowed on the system between February 8 and March 3, 2010. In other words, no bikes were allowed during the Olympics when the city needed all the help it could get to deal with added traffic congestion.


Separate, Don't Eliminate
Keeping bikes and regular train passengers separate during crowded conditions is understandable enough. No regular passenger should risk cutting their shin on a bicycle when they ride the train. Likewise, bicyclists deserve facilities that ensure they and their bicycles safely board the trains without damage. Banning bikes altogether during congested time periods is NOT a solution.

Beat The Flexibility Benchmark
One obvious reason cars are so popular around the world is the flexibility they provide to their passengers as to when and where they can travel. Of course, their popularity has largely negated that flexibility by way of traffic jams. Given that, alternative transport is essential.

However, no form of transport is a true alternative to cars unless it can match the flexibility that the car provides. Since no single  mode of alternative transportation can do this alone, it is essential that all modes support one another. In other words, trains, buses, bikes, etc., MUST work together to create a collective web of passenger support.

Neighbor Metros Refute BART Excuses 
BART is clearly not on board with this idea. Whereas Caltrain, a separate commuter train system in the bay area, just added a second dedicated bike car to each train it runs, BART has yet to add one.

BART always cites cost and space (for longer trains) as reasons why they have not provided similar bike support but those reasons are clearly false.

Caltrain
Caltrain has achieved its superb bicycle support despite desperate budgetary concerns this year.

Good Enough for LA and NY Metro But Not For BART?

Both the Los Angeles Metro and New York Subway systems welcome bicycles "on Metro rail trains at all times."  Why are bicycles good enough for them but not BART? BART claims that adding a bicycle car (or just more cars in general) would cause trains to be too long for some of its stations.

This claim supposes that longer trains are even necessary.  Look inside a Caltrain bike car at rush hour and you see how efficiently bicycles can be stored. If bicycles were not scattered throughout the BART train, they wouldn't use as much space.

Fewer Excuses, More Efficiency
Even with the current infrastructure and budget there are a variety of simple ways to deliver better service if not more capacity.

Shorter Intervals
BART could try to find a way to run current train lengths at shorter intervals the way LA Metro does. Their platforms are no longer than BART's.

BART's current 15+ minute train interval is too long as it is. LA Metro targets a 12-minute interval. Recently, it renamed its "12-minute map" to "15-minute (or less) map". Nevertheless, LA Metro ensures that a rider will not wait more than 15 minutes for a ride within a large portion of central LA. That's impressive for the former car mecca. If Los Angeles can do this, can BART really do no better? Please...

Longer Trains That Reposition For Bike Car
Some commenters point out that BART's routes across the bay and through downtown are at max capacity and, therefore, cannot support shorter intervals. The experience of others during those times make this debatable. Regardless, that doesn't preclude BART from finding innovative ways to support long trains. Trains often reposition 2 or 3 times at a station as it is. One of those repositionings could be for a bike car.

Boosting Capacity Is Inevitable, Start Now
Even if more tunnel capacity is needed to support tighter intervals, this is something any transit system should constantly be planning to address. It is done perpetually to freeways. As of this writing, crews are boring new tunnels on both sides of the bay (i.e. the Caldecott and Muni upgrades). Why not for BART?

Stop digging this hole

Not surprisingly, BART has experienced major ridership declines in recent years. BART chooses to address this with cheesy ticket giveaways during holiday periods and failing to re-upholster absolutely filthy seats.

Stop giving the service away and use the money to make the service more useful. Specifically, stop turning away some of the most impassioned transit riders at times and places when all commuters most need them to travel.

Low Hanging Fruit
Until the train car/capacity issue is resolved, BART can focus on "low hanging fruit" to provide proper bicycle support. Namely, it can improve basic sanitation and improve the ways that riders of all types can get in and out of the stations.

Fix The Stairs
Currently, BART bicyclists must carry (yes carry) their bicycles up 2 and 3 flights of stairs. The staircase at the Embarcadero station is a steep decent more than 25 yards long. I am tall and my bicycle is light so I have no problem with this. However, for many others this is a show stopper for bike/train commuting.

Given the weight of many commuter bicycles, climbing stairs with one is something many cyclists physically cannot do. My friend Christine is in pretty good shape but, given her petite frame and the weight of her commuter bicycle, she struggles to make it down these stairs without falling.

Elevators are available for those with disabilities and they are also available to bicycles but elevators cannot move bicyclists in the volume necessary to successfully get people to and from their trains during congested times. Again, the solution is not to ban certain riders at those times. The solution is to properly design stairways to be more bicycle-compatible.

In fact, BART already does this at some, but definitely not all, of its stations. At the Mission street station, troughs exist along the sides of the staircase where cyclists can wheel their bicycles up and down. This is an effective, dirt-cheap, solution so BART should use it.

Fix The Ticket Gates
The final component of proper bicycle support is proper ticket gate configuration. Never mind that many metro systems around the world function just fine without ticket gates, any system using them should provide a simple way for cyclists, luggage carriers, wheelchair users, etc., to get through them.


As of June 12, 2011, Rockridge BART station (a very busy station) has no extra wide ticket gate. Passing through the narrow ticket gate is a needlessly cumbersome experience for cyclists, those with disabilities, or just those with luggage.

Because of the lack of wide ticket gates, BART requires cyclists to:

1. park their bike
2. pass through a regular ticket gate
3. move back through an emergency gate
4. retrieve their bike (assuming it hasn't been stolen), 
5. bring the bike back through the emergency gate. 

Aside from being unpleasant and time-consuming, this process produces the excessive congestion that BART claims it is trying to avoid.

The solution is simple, have at least one extra wide ticket gate at all stations. The fact that they are at most, but not all, stations doesn't do anyone needing one much good if they reach a station without one.

Learn From The Bad Lessons
Let BART be a lesson to other transit systems for how not to do things. Frequent train intervals and heavy coordination with all other alternative transportation modes, not gift cards, are the keys to ridership revenues. Some of BART's own transit partners, like Caltrain, and neighbors, like LA Metro, show it can be done under the same geographic, political and budgetary conditions.