Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on August 18, 2010 at 10:56am

Hahaha, what? I didn't realize danger and order were always related in that way. I guess I should install my bottom bracket cups before the bottom bracket. There's no danger there because I won't be going anywhere with an empty bottom bracket shell.

Just admit that you don't give a damn about anyone's time or safety other than your own.

Eddie said:

There would be less stop signs. Bikes are smaller, very easy to manuver, do very little if no damage when crashed. There could be reason to have less order. As danger goes down then so should order (e.g. stop signs, lights, etc).
Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

Let's say there were less cars and more bikes. Wouldn't the increase in bike riders still make stop signs necessary?

Eddie said:

Did you even read my message? I think you misunderstood. I choose to break the law when my safety is not compromised. And again, (if you didn't hear it the first time), if there weren't so many cars, we wouldn't have so many stop signs. And personnally, I think that if you drive a car, you should be penalized with more stop signs. If not for the mere fact that you are more dangerous, and you polute.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

As it stands now, yes, Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules. If you have a problem with it, try to get it changed. Just because you don't like a rule doesn't mean you don't have to follow it. I'm sure all cyclists would be overjoyed if motorists decided to run red lights with abandon, etc. I have a feeling the number of ghost bikes would skyrocket.

Eddie said:

...Not the same speed, weight, and killing power, hence not the same rules. Cars suck, and if there weren't so many, we wouldn't need all these stop signs. F'k the stop signs, and the cops who try to enforce them!! It's my life, and my time, and I choose when to stop, and when not to.
Regards,
A guy who has already been run over by a stupid driver.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

While this should be enforced for all road users, keep in mind that blowing a stop sign carries graver danger for a cyclist than a motorist.

Remember - Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on August 18, 2010 at 11:00am

Yeah, so anarchy never works but I digress...

If you filled the road with bikes and got rid of cars you would still need to have traffic controls because for one thing you are still going to have public transportation because not everyone can/will use a bike not to mention the need for delivery and service vehicles but we'll ignore that little issue and assume a 100% bike world so we replace all the cars on the road with bikes and now we have streets clogged with cyclists taking almost the same routes to and from almost the exact same places that people are driving to and from and you are going to end up with something like this:


Can you imagine trying to navigate that with no form of traffic control? not only would it be nearly impossible to make it through a major 4 way but you would have a ton of collisions, injuries and pissed off people. Trying to hold onto the opinion that reducing the number of cars is going to reduce the number of cars is very poor logic at best.

Seriously, imaging trying to navigate a 4 way where everything looks like this:

And shut the pie hole about how with the proper infrastructure and better city planning making everything run smooth because the fact of the matter is our city is already laid out and making the changes to make it friendly to that many cyclists is a financial impossibility
.
Never mind that fact that without fuel tax and vehicle registrations we are either going to pay a hefty 'bike tax' or have some pretty crappy roads to ride on.

Use your head, stop hating on cars and learn to work the system and make changes as a whole because fighting 'the man' at street level very rarely works out well.

Eddie said:

There would be less stop signs. Bikes are smaller, very easy to manuver, do very little if no damage when crashed. There could be reason to have less order. As danger goes down then so should order (e.g. stop signs, lights, etc).
Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

Let's say there were less cars and more bikes. Wouldn't the increase in bike riders still make stop signs necessary?

Eddie said:

Did you even read my message? I think you misunderstood. I choose to break the law when my safety is not compromised. And again, (if you didn't hear it the first time), if there weren't so many cars, we wouldn't have so many stop signs. And personnally, I think that if you drive a car, you should be penalized with more stop signs. If not for the mere fact that you are more dangerous, and you polute.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

As it stands now, yes, Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules. If you have a problem with it, try to get it changed. Just because you don't like a rule doesn't mean you don't have to follow it. I'm sure all cyclists would be overjoyed if motorists decided to run red lights with abandon, etc. I have a feeling the number of ghost bikes would skyrocket.

Eddie said:

...Not the same speed, weight, and killing power, hence not the same rules. Cars suck, and if there weren't so many, we wouldn't need all these stop signs. F'k the stop signs, and the cops who try to enforce them!! It's my life, and my time, and I choose when to stop, and when not to.
Regards,
A guy who has already been run over by a stupid driver.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

While this should be enforced for all road users, keep in mind that blowing a stop sign carries graver danger for a cyclist than a motorist.

Remember - Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Tank-Ridin' Ryan on August 18, 2010 at 11:32am

Eddie said:

There would be less stop signs. Bikes are smaller, very easy to manuver, do very little if no damage when crashed. There could be reason to have less order. As danger goes down then so should order (e.g. stop signs, lights, etc).

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

Let's say there were less cars and more bikes. Wouldn't the increase in bike riders still make stop signs necessary?

Eddie said:

Did you even read my message? I think you misunderstood. I choose to break the law when my safety is not compromised. And again, (if you didn't hear it the first time), if there weren't so many cars, we wouldn't have so many stop signs. And personnally, I think that if you drive a car, you should be penalized with more stop signs. If not for the mere fact that you are more dangerous, and you polute.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

As it stands now, yes, Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules. If you have a problem with it, try to get it changed. Just because you don't like a rule doesn't mean you don't have to follow it. I'm sure all cyclists would be overjoyed if motorists decided to run red lights with abandon, etc. I have a feeling the number of ghost bikes would skyrocket.

Eddie said:

...Not the same speed, weight, and killing power, hence not the same rules. Cars suck, and if there weren't so many, we wouldn't need all these stop signs. F'k the stop signs, and the cops who try to enforce them!! It's my life, and my time, and I choose when to stop, and when not to.
Regards,
A guy who has already been run over by a stupid driver.

Tank-Ridin' Ryan said:

While this should be enforced for all road users, keep in mind that blowing a stop sign carries graver danger for a cyclist than a motorist.

Remember - Same Road, Same Rights, Same Rules.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by David on August 18, 2010 at 12:18pm

Eddie didn't say you'd need no traffic controls with bikes, he said you'd need fewer controls (OK, he actually said "less", but give him a brake :-). It's right there in the first line of his post.

And if you get away from straw-man arguments and I hate cars/I hate bikes and all that and just think about urban planning, the point is correct. In my neighborhood, there's a stop sign at every single corner and they're all really just for cars. If we had 100% bike traffic, we'd still need traffic controls on major streets and intersections, but many of the side street stop signs could safely be removed.

Even at, say, 50% bike traffic or so, most four-way stop signs could easily be converted to two-way stop signs. Bikes require less infrastructure support, that's not a radical anti-car statement, it's just the simple truth.



notoriousDUG said:

If you filled the road with bikes and got rid of cars you would still need to have traffic controls because for one thing you are still going to have public transportation because not everyone can/will use a bike not to mention the need for delivery and service vehicles but we'll ignore that little issue and assume a 100% bike world so we replace all the cars on the road with bikes and now we have streets clogged with cyclists taking almost the same routes to and from almost the exact same places that people are driving to and from and you are going to end up with something like this:

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Doug Haynes on August 18, 2010 at 12:53pm

There will be less but they still need to be there and I am just taking it to an extreme to make a point.

I support the bicycle rolling stop for side streets, stop signs and the like as well as treating signals like stop signs or a yield.

It is an issue of city planning and the cities have already been planned and society has been programed and if we want to change the standard plan in the future and update societies programing the 'CARS SUCK!' 'FUCK THE COPS!' 'YOUR EVIL IF YOU DRIVE!' rhetoric needs to stop, people need to respect drivers and otherwise put goodwill out there to help convert people.

Successful conversion never comes from a negative campaign; preaching bikes rock is better then preaching cars suck.

David said:

Eddie didn't say you'd need no traffic controls with bikes, he said you'd need fewer controls (OK, he actually said "less", but give him a brake :-). It's right there in the first line of his post.

And if you get away from straw-man arguments and I hate cars/I hate bikes and all that and just think about urban planning, the point is correct. In my neighborhood, there's a stop sign at every single corner and they're all really just for cars. If we had 100% bike traffic, we'd still need traffic controls on major streets and intersections, but many of the side street stop signs could safely be removed.

Even at, say, 50% bike traffic or so, most four-way stop signs could easily be converted to two-way stop signs. Bikes require less infrastructure support, that's not a radical anti-car statement, it's just the simple truth.



notoriousDUG said:

If you filled the road with bikes and got rid of cars you would still need to have traffic controls because for one thing you are still going to have public transportation because not everyone can/will use a bike not to mention the need for delivery and service vehicles but we'll ignore that little issue and assume a 100% bike world so we replace all the cars on the road with bikes and now we have streets clogged with cyclists taking almost the same routes to and from almost the exact same places that people are driving to and from and you are going to end up with something like this:

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by millenial removing Bernie tattoo on August 18, 2010 at 1:20pm

The problem is, among other things, that Chicago makes almost every non-signalized intersection a 4-way stop, and this make both cars and bikers real real lazy. Its bad road design. If there were more "cross traffic does not stop" intersections, you would have far less stop sign blowers.

I was in Florida on vacation, driving a car, and anytime I was on residential streets I would stop at every intersection, even if I didn't have a stop sign. That's how conditioned I've become to Chicago streets.

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Permalink Reply by Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! on August 18, 2010 at 3:36pm

(SORT OF OFF TOPIC) Dug,

I'm not sure if you know this but Anarchism has a long history of being a legitimate non-authoritarian truly democratic model for political organizating. The lack of law is not Anarchism. For further explanation click the links or watch this:


And it has actually existed as a model in our history most dramatically in the 1936 Spainish Revolution where there was a real Anarchist soceity,

They don't cover this in the video but the reason the Anarchists revolution was crushed wasn't due to an internal failure. In fact the new model of organization ended up being far more productive than anywhere else Europe at the time. Rather than ending by internal failure the revolution was subverted by an agreement between the Capitalists and Communists to no longer supply the Catalonia region with steel for bullets. When they cut of the supply they put a nose around the neck of the revolution.

And finally this nice music break...

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Permalink Reply by Amy on August 18, 2010 at 3:39pm

I told the operator that I was reporting "suspicious activity." Why do you ask?

Spencer "Thunderball" Thayer! said:

What exactly did you tell the police when you called 911?
Amy Abramson said:

Interesting. Had the cops been on Wells at around 4:45pm they would have caught a guy walking (very quickly, westward) with a bike frame (no wheels, etc.) and rolling another bike by his side. I called 911. Did they follow up on that? Who knows...

I really question the priorities here.

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Permalink Reply by Mike Zumwalt on August 18, 2010 at 3:39pm

The city is in a huge budget crisis and the front page of one of the daily's (can't remember which one) was about not enough tickets being written.

We ditch the car to avoid parking fines, a parking permit, insurance, gas...then they start ticketing bikes.

I'd say sit at an intersection in Lincoln park, Wicker Park, Loop, River north and see how many cars don't stop or are talking on the phone.

Or start giving cabbies, out of state/area drivers and luxury vehicle drivers tickets IMO they are the worst!

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Permalink Reply by Vondo on August 18, 2010 at 5:22pm

I have a hard time being convinced that in an all-bike or mostly-bike city, fewer road controls would be needed. IMO, the basic need for traffic control would carry over from cars to bikes; unsafe, irresponsible operators.

I'm sure many of us here have witnessed cyclists at bike-centric events like CCM and Bike the Drive operating their bikes irresponsibly and unsafely. There are always those who choose to ride their own personal TT, weave unpredictably, pass too close or without warning etc. Without the threat of potentially colliding with an automobile, I can only imagine these types of riders pushing it even more.

Also I think it is a weak argument to say bikes do less damage. Break a leg or an arm or sustain a head injury in a bike on bike collision, and you might be sidelined for weeks or worse. How, in an all-bike city, would you conduct your business with a broken limb and no busses or cars to get around on?

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Permalink Reply by payton on August 18, 2010 at 5:57pm

Word. Stop signs didn't even exist until there were so many cars that they ended up running into each other.

Every single pedestrian in every single crosswalk now is a moving STOP sign. When is that going to get enforced?

Eddie said:

Cars suck, and if there weren't so many, we wouldn't need all these stop signs.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by payton on August 18, 2010 at 7:10pm

America's traffic death rates are three to four times higher than in Denmark or the Netherlands, and urban cycling rates there are 30 or 40 times higher -- but stop signs are incredibly rare in both countries. Stoplights, in my experience, are comparatively rare and yield signs are commonplace. I described cycling across Copenhagen recently as "an effortless revelation" since you really don't think all that much about stopping. The big streets are timed for bike travel, and there isn't very much car traffic to yield for since everyone's on a bike and taking that much less space. The mass transit network is plush but not at all frequent and kind of underutilized.

This has nothing to do with having exceptionally law-abiding and polite societies, either; per capita, more total crimes are actually reported to the police in either country than in the USA. Nor are these theoretical constructs: they're functioning places (Danes are the world's happiest people!) that are just about as rich as us, it's just that they're much less likely to violently die. Why do Americans continue to put up with this bloodshed?

Vando said:

I have a hard time being convinced that in an all-bike or mostly-bike city, fewer road controls would be needed. IMO, the basic need for traffic control would carry over from cars to bikes; unsafe, irresponsible operators.

• ▶ Reply

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