Getting motorists to co-exist with growing number of cyclists on roads
Rich Hein/Sun-Times
Of the 60 car crashes every day in Chicago, 13 involve a bicyclist or pedestrian.
Or, to put it another way, 47 don’t.
That’s a point Ron Burke, executive director of the Active Transportation Alliance, wants people to keep in mind as they reflect on the growing competition between cars and bikes for transportation right of way in Chicago.
“There’s far too much conflict on our streets, crashes and injuries on our streets, and that’s the case whether you are talking about people in cars, people on bikes,” Burke told the Chicago Sun-Times Editorial Board on Tuesday.
Although more people are riding bikes on Chicago streets, the number of car crashes involving bikes and pedestrians has been up and down over 18 years, with a slight decrease since 2008, which indicates the overall rate has actually gone down, he said.
But more needs to be done to bring down the number of fatalities and injuries, he said.
“We have a bit of a culture of impatience, I would argue, on how we travel in Chicago,” he said. “Not everybody, but a significant percent of the population, is driving too fast, biking through intersections or walking against the light when they shouldn’t be. … There’s no silver bullet for eliminating those behaviors. But there are certain things we can do to improve safety on our streets and also let people get where they are going more consistently.”
Beth Mosher, director of public affairs for AAA Chicago, said, “We’ve seen a lot of the discourse that’s out there about people who prefer or only use one mode of transportaation over the other and saying to the other modes of transportation, ‘Get off my road,’ and that type of thing. And that is not realistic anymore.”
Among the things that can be done, Burke said, are:
Better infrastructure — designing streets to encourage more predictable behavior.
Better enforcement. The city has limited ability to step up enforcement of traffic laws, but it needs to do so.
Education. Education is not as important as enforcement because most people already know when they are breaking traffic rules, and they do it anyway. But it can help, Burke said.
Meanwhile, officials need to stand up to any backlash against changes in the way we use our streets, he said.
For example, some aldermen, saying they have heard many complaints, have asked to hold off on building additional bike lines until 2015 after the next election, he said.
But even those who see bicycles as encroaching on the roads don’t want everyone in cars, he said.
One old joke, he said, says a study found that 99 percent of drivers want everyone else to take public transit or bikes.
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