However, every group has to take responsibility for making the road conditions better for all road users.
In this two-part editorial, I want to look at ways to help everyone be better road users and to help drive improved conditions that will hopefully help reduce incidences of road rage, accidents, and make the roads a more pleasant place for everyone.
Today, we will look at motorcyclists and car drivers, considered the top of the US road usage hierarchy. To read about pedestrians and bicyclists, see Part 1 of this editorial.
Motorcyclists are also often given a bad reputation, caricatured as either scofflaw sport bike riders with no disregard for the authorities or ignorant obnoxious Harley riders who are little more than weekend warriors out for the cruise to the local biker bar. However, motorcyclists can play a major part in reducing traffic congestion and parking challenges in major cities due to their significantly smaller physical footprints when compared with cars. Providing motorcyclists with sensible options for locking up their bikes and storing their riding gear would address two of the biggest concerns of riders and also help encourage more people to utilize it as a means of transportation in place of cars.
Lane-splitting can improve use of space and reduce congestion by taking advantage of the smaller footprint of the motorcycle (Image courtesy of SFGate.com) |
Situational awareness is key to improving safety and reducing road rage (Image coutesy of Agilitize.co.uk) |
But changing the road users is only half of the solution; the other half is to improve way our urban roadways are designed. Currently, roads are designed to favor the flow of cars at the expense of all other forms of traffic and thus create, or at the very least contribute to, the increasingly dangerous situations for anyone not protected by the full metal cage of an automobile. With the lack of good pedestrian walkways and bicycle lanes, those modes of transportation are often discouraged in crowded urban centers when they should instead be encouraged in order to reduce congestion and crowding. While I am certainly guilty of favoring my motorized forms of transportation more than I should, I do recognize that there is great value to be recognized, especially on our crowded city streets, from shifting more traffic away from cars and instead making everything more accessible via walking, bicycling, or public transportation. However, in order to make this shift, car drivers in particular must be willing to participate in the collaborative efforts to shift our country's transportation policy in that direction. Think of it this way: for every person who gives up their car during the daily commute to walk, ride a bike, or take public transportation, there is one less person and at least one less car on the road to compete with in traffic, add to the pollution of our air, and get mad at, adding to your blood pressure.
In Copenhagen, Denmark, they have already started to put these measures into place, with raised bike lanes that exist between pedestrian sidewalks and the roadway used by cars. All three layers of roadway are set at different heights to distinguish them and to provide a physical barrier to keep the three types of traffic separated. Additionally, motorcycles are allowed to filter in slow moving traffic to optimize the space between cars that would otherwise be wasted. This arrangement has served Copenhagen well and studies done on the effectiveness of these cycleways have shown improvements in traffic incidents involving bicyclists with both pedestrians and motorized vehicles. Several US cities have started to look at testing this method and are already starting to see results in safety and traffic reduction.
So in the end, sharing the road is about more than just a change in how we behave towards each other when we use the roads we already have. It is also about changing our mentality and approach to the infrastructure we put in place on those roads. Taking some of our sprawling urban centers and making them more accessible to pedestrians and bicyclists will help alleviate traffic, notch down the flared tempers a bit, reduce our consumption of finite fossil fuel resources, and reduce pollution. Hopefully, it will also make our communities more enjoyable to live in. Being able to step out of our homes and get access to all of our basic necessities without using a car would be a great start. Being able to get anywhere within the continental US with the same kind of ease would be even better. But for now, I would settle for not having to waste hours of my life each year sitting in traffic.
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