No room for error
Cyclists still feel squeezed and scared in ‘bike-friendly’ Pasadena
By Rashi Kesarwani 05/10/2007
Every morning as the sun comes up, Lyle Hatridge hops on his bike and embarks on a mile-long commute from his home to California Boulevard and Wilson Avenue, where he teaches math to seventh graders at Polytechnic School.
But for Hatridge, heading eastbound is a chancy proposition, as the rising sun shines in the eyes of motorists, which prevents many of them from seeing him.
For Hatridge, “Pasadena is a miserable place to ride.”
Co-owner of Pasadena Cyclery and a bicyclist for 40 years, Tom Purnell feels similarly. He's had lots of close calls, prompting him to say drivers simply “need to start paying attention, get off the phone and slow down.”
Since the creation of its Bicycle Master Plan in 2000, Pasadena has instituted a wide-ranging set of “bike-friendly” reforms — from designated bike lanes to a promotional “Bike Week Pasadena,” which begins Monday.
For its efforts, Pasadena was honored in 2004 as the most bike-friendly city in LA County by the LA County Bicycle Coalition, a membership-based advocacy group.
However, this may not be saying much, given the fact that even experienced bicyclists still fear for their safety on city streets.
Lennon Rodgers, a mechanical engineer at Jet Propulsion Laboratory who heads JPL's bike club, says the problem really boils down to one inescapable fact: “The biggest issue is that a car can kill the person [on the bike].”
On Pasadena roads, 13 percent of the seven fatalities and 916 injuries that occurred in 2002 involved pedestrians or bicyclists, according to the CHP.
When it comes to motorists and cyclists sharing the road, there's little room for error. That's
why Rodgers and some of his colleagues scoff at Pasadena's efforts to place bike lanes on busy city streets, or, as he calls them, “these painted lines on the side of the road” that people can drive in and out of in order to turn and park.
In Pasadena, the golden age of cycling coincided with the city's settlement at the turn of the last century. In fact, Pasadena's first streets were designed specifically for bicycles, pedestrians and light rail trolleys.
Back then, former Pasadena Mayor Horace Dobbins developed an elevated bike path known as the cycle-way, which linked Pasadena to downtown Los Angeles. Now regarded as a forerunner to the freeway, the bike path was hailed in a November 1901 issue of Good Roads Magazine as “the strangest and most interesting of links — a magnificent, elevated cycle-way, with a smooth surface of wood, running for nine miles through beautiful country, flanked by green hills, and affording views at every point of the snow-clad Sierras.”
By 1910, once Henry Ford began mass production of the Model T, the popularity of the car surpassed that of the humble bike. This evolution from bike to car is perhaps best reflected in the architecture of Colorado Boulevard. As one travels east, the human-scale storefronts of 19th-century Old Pasadena give way to 20th-century super-size buildings with rear parking lots.
It wasn't until the early 1970s that Pasadena witnessed a renewed interest in bike use. A 1974 city program added painted bike path lines to Sierra Madre Boulevard, portions of Marengo Avenue, and Maple, Corson and Glenarm streets in order to create designated bike lanes.
Further measures toward bike-friendliness were taken in 1991 when former Mayor Jess Hughston assembled a bicycle task force. The group created an element to the city's General Plan, a general blueprint for a community's development, that called for a street network system that would provide either a striped bike lane or a sign-only bike route to commercial areas and transit stops.
Unfortunately, few of these measures did little to spur riding habits. According to 1990 US Census data, 42 percent of employed Pasadena residents worked within the city, but just 1.3 percent of those people rode bikes to work.
Today, city officials want residents to get reacquainted with bicycling, an activity that decreases traffic congestion, improves the environment and boosts health and fitness.
Rich Dilluvio, a city transportation planner, said Pasadena has added 300 new bike racks to 1,000 existing racks in popular locations throughout town. Officials have also increased street signage, reminding drivers to “Share the Road” with bikes.
Dilluvio said he hopes Pasadena will soon be known as “that city where everybody rides their bikes.” His biggest speed bump, however, may be what Rodgers calls a lack of “symmetry in the relationship [between driver and bicyclist]. If I make a mis-take, I could put a ding in your car. If you make a mistake, you could kill me.”
Hatridge said California Boulevard, a designated bike route, is “too narrow” for both bicyclists and drivers.
He should know. In 1987 Hatridge was hit by a pickup while cycling in Claremont. He was wearing a helmet, but said he was “massively bruised” in the accident.
Ironically, Hatridge's helmet may have put him at greater risk for collision, according to a recent study by traffic psychologist Dr. Ian Walker of the University of Bath in England. Walker found drivers tend to pass closer when overtaking cyclists wearing helmets than when overtaking bare-headed bikers, thereby increasing the risk of a collision.
Walker argues that many drivers view bicyclists as “a separate subculture to which they don't belong.” Therefore, they stereotype bikers with helmets as “more experienced and less likely to do something unexpected,” so they leave less room for them when passing.
Walker concludes that most adult cyclists know what it is like to drive a car, “but relatively few motorists ride bicycles in traffic, and so don't know the issues cyclists face.”
Until drivers get a clue, Pasadena may remain a risky place to ride.
DIGG | del.icio.us | REDDIT