As the weather warms, thoughts turn to bicycling. CyclingSavvy spring courses are happening. Classroom sessions are being held online — which has proved to be, all in all, an advantage: people don’t have to travel, and can join from anywhere. Instructors and students can hang around longer at the end of a session.
On-bike sessions with Covid precautions are ramping up too. Here’s what we have as of now.
Savvy Cycling Now April Series
Instructors John Allen and Pamela Murray are hosting a Savvy Cycling Now online series on two Wednesday evenings, April 21 and 28. This will cover the same material as the “Truth & Techniques of Traffic Cycling” classroom session of our regular 3-part course, and qualifies students to proceed to the Train Your Bike in-person session anywhere, anytime and with any instructor. Students in this round will qualify for the Boston course described below, if space is available; we’ll arrange more sessions as needed. On-bike sessions will be discounted if you take Savvy Cycling Now to qualify for them.
Here’s a video clip from an August 11 2020 session of Savvy Cycling Now:
“Truth & Techniques of Traffic Cycling” contains a lot of information and ideas. They are easy to digest in a series of one-hour sessions, spread over four weeks. This format has proven itself.
St. Louis, April 21-25
Instructors Karen Karabell and Matthew Brown are running a full three-part course April 21-25. The classroom session is online and the on-bike sessions will be adapted with Covid precautions.
Boston area, May 14-15
Instructors John Allen, Bruce Lierman and John Brooking are runninga full three-part course May 14-15. As with the St. Louis course, the classroom session will be online. The in-person sessions will be in Waltham, 10 miles west of the Boston downtown area. Both on-bike sessions will be on the same day, May 15.
Ride Awesome! — CyclingSavvy’s premium online course — is … awesome. There’s truly nothing like it. During the pandemic, lifetime access to Ride Awesome! is half price. This is the best fifty bucks you’ll ever spend.
This too qualifies students to proceed to discounted on-bike sessions anywhere, anytime and with any instructor. With enough requests, we should be able to have on-bike sessions within driving distance for most U.S. participants. Let us know if you want to complete the course. Contact us
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/Tour-Woodford.jpg540720John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2021-03-28 21:49:442021-04-09 17:40:36Springing Forward with Spring Courses
We can’t understand our present time — or plan for the future — unless we know how we got here. In a previous post, I described how I ride on Massachusetts Route 9. Now I’ll tell you what that makes me think about. Bear with me.
Backstory
One of the pleasures of riding in eastern Massachusetts is to discern the age and the history of roads from their meanderings, and by studying the buildings along them. Most rural roads here pre-date the advent of motor vehicles. That works well for bicyclists. Roads follow the contours of the land, except for notorious roads with “hill” in their name,
From the arrival of the first humans as glaciers retreated, until the arrival of settlers from Europe in the 1600s, there was only singletrack, trodden on foot.
Settlers introduced horses, oxen and wagons. Many old trails widened to doubletrack. The settlers located early town centers on hilltops for defense against Native Americans who did not like being driven from their lands. Settlers later built town centers in valleys with water power for mills. Local people would organize a “bee” — a day when they’d get together for road maintenance. Distances between towns were short, so farmers could manage a day trip by wagon to market and back.
I can infer all this as I ride my bicycle in the Eastern Massachusetts countryside. Some old roads still have stone mile markers from before the Revolution.
In the 1700s, Benjamin Franklin organized the postal service. Town-to-town roads, strung together, connected major population centers. Parts of U.S. Route 20, which passes a half mile from my home, are still called the Boston Post Road. It connected to New York and beyond.
From the Worcester Turnpike to Route 9
In the early 1800s, private companies established turnpikes with government authorization. These toll roads radiated out in several directions from Boston. The Worcester Turnpike heads west to — Worcester. The Turnpike was created in one political stroke, rather than its evolving like most roads. For this reason, it is quite straight, and for the most part, avoids town centers.
Turnpikes served budding intercity commerce, but they soon failed financially. They were expensive to construct. Unlike modern toll roads, the turnpikes had no access control. “Shunpikes” went around the tollgates.
By the mid-1800s, railroads linked cities. The turnpikes couldn’t compete. Many did continue to exist, under government management and free for users.
The eastern half of the Worcester Turnpike survived; the western half deteriorated. In 1903, the entire Worcester Turnpike revived, hosting a light rail line. Trolley cars stopped running in 1932 as increasing use of motor vehicles drained demand. Some political shenanigans occurred, too, as Joe Orfant, expert on Route 9, has told me. He has written a fascinating detailed history.
Trolley on the Worcester Turnpike in Brookline (Brookline Historical Society archive)
“The Finest Motor Road in the World”
You’ve probably read about struggles to improve roads toward the end of the 1800s, involving in no small part bicyclists and the bicycle industry. But hardly any roads outside urban areas were paved before the 1920s.
In 1933, benefiting from Depression stimulus funding, the Worcester Turnpike was designated as a segment of Massachusetts Route 9, and extensively rebuilt. At the time of this construction it was heralded as “the finest motor road in the world.” It relieved the congestion on Route 20, which meandered through town centers.
Route 9’s two roadways separated by a median identify it as a precursor of the German Autobahns and New York-area parkways, constructed in the mid- to late 1930s; the Pennsylvania Turnpike (1942); and limited-access highways everywhere.
Even though much of Route 9 seems interstate-like today, designation of the Worcester Turnpike segment as a limited-access highway has never been possible.
Today’s transportation engineers would not create this sort of roadway through a densely populated area. But by necessity Route 9 is “grandfathered,” because it is lined with businesses and residences. and offers the only access to numerous side streets.
Reaching most destinations on the opposite side requires continuing to the next interchange and doubling back. Space-saving interchanges require drivers to slow before exiting and stop for through traffic before entering. Many of these interchanges still exist, largely unchanged.
Interchange of Cedar Street and Route 9, Wellesley, Massachusetts
Massachusetts Route 9 and Bicyclists
The Worcester Turnpike segment of Massachusetts Route 9 is not quiet or pleasant for bicycling. Until recent years, though, it has been serviceable for bicyclists of an average adult skill level. Route 9’s wide shoulders are easy riding. Its slow-and-stop intersections are tame.
But parts of Route 9 have been modified, one by one, to accommodate increases in motor traffic. From early on, many minor cross streets were interrupted. This works well for bicyclists who don’t need to cross the highway, and poorly for those who do.
And when the Massachusetts Highway Department builds or reconstructs an interchange with a limited-access highway, it tends to add limited-access highway features to the intersecting road. Such it the case with the Route 95 interchange.
Full cloverleaf, original design of Route 9-Interstate 95 interchange
From the time of its construction in the early 1950s until recent years, the interchange with Interstate 95 was a full cloverleaf, as shown in the satellite image above. Route 9 had two weave areas where traffic slowing for an off ramp crossed traffic accelerating from an on ramp. These weaves were underneath the Route 95 overpass.
Traffic slowing down mixing with traffic speeding up inside an underpass on a high-speed highway is not a great concept.
Redesign of the Route 9/I-95 Interchange
Revised design in the mid-2010s eliminated the weaves, introducing instead a couple of signal-controlled left turns. This “partial cloverleaf” design includes reduced vegetation, which improves sight distances.
Revised design of Route 9/Interstate 95 interchange
What does all this mean for bicyclists?
I’ve already described the specifics of a trip which required me to ride through the interchange. Granted, the present configuration is better than the earlier full cloverleaf. As I showed in my previous post, I was able to negotiate it using lane control and a CyclingSavvy bag of tricks.
Bicyclists could use sidewalks. These meet the letter of the law for the Americans with Disabilities Act, though not exactly the spirit of the law. How would you like to negotiate a wheelchair crammed in next to high-speed travel lanes through an underpass? In winter, sidewalk users often must clamber over mounds of plowed snow. Distances are long for walking.
Opportunity is Possible in an Auto-Centric Landscape
In an ideal world, pedestrians and slower, local, wheeled traffic — people on foot, bicycles, e-bikes — would not to have to use Route 9 at all. But this traffic would have to cross Route 95 somewhere.
Including a separate underpass or overpass while reconstructing the interchange would have added little extra cost to the project. It didn’t happen, no thanks to the Massachusetts Department of Transportation Highway Division.
But a single overpass and less than a mile of paths could connect the William Street office park, east of Route 95, to Cedar Street and several residential streets to the west, also opening up a riverfront park to residents and to workers. Route 95 crosses the Charles River on a bridge north of the interchange. A path on a boardwalk could run next to the river. Just sayin’.
Paths could provide alternative access and open up a riverfront park. Click to enlarge.
Worcester Turnpike, to Route 9, to the Big Picture
My story raises the larger question of sustainability of the transportation system and world economy. The die was cast in the mid-1800s as railroads bootstrapped the accessibility of coal — fossil fuel — for themselves, for industry, and for space heating, supplanting water power and wood.
Then petroleum made possible the motor vehicles which led to demand for motor roads. These among other technological developments allowed the world to support an increasing human population.
It’s easy to look at what succeeds in the present while neglecting thoughts for the future. It should have been obvious from the start that fossil fuel resources were finite. Grimly, climate change — caused by fossil fuel use — is catching up with us faster.
I almost regret saying this, but the present Covid-19 pandemic is showing us how bicycling becomes more popular in times of crisis. No matter how the future unfolds, people will ride bicycles. The more difficult conditions get, the more people will need them. For all of us, this is motivation to make bicycling better.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/Rt9featured.jpg5921053John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-10-02 11:55:112020-10-08 13:17:05Worcester Turnpike to Route 9 to…?
If you’ve taken the CyclingSavvy course, you’ll recall the video of John Alexander’s bicycle ride across a huge highway interchange. At less than 10 miles per hour, on an Elektra Townie bicycle.
If you haven’t seen the video, watch it here, and relax. John’s bicycle ride was boring, not daring.
John — and Keri Caffrey, riding behind him with cameras to record it all — had the road almost entirely to themselves, through thoughtful choice of lane position, and by taking advantage of traffic-signal timing.
My own gnarly bicycle riding challenge
I face a similar situation later this month. I have two doctor’s appointments about a mile apart. By far the shortest route between the two doctors’ offices passes through a similar huge highway interchange. I could take a much longer way there, but this longer ride would include backtracking on a poison-ivy-infested sidewalk.
On Monday, I checked out the route in a car, with a dashcam running:
So here’s a challenge for you:
How would you ride this?
Would you ride it at all?
Have a look in Google maps
The image below shows my route, from right to left, in Google Maps. (When I drove, I went straight through on Route 9 rather than turning into William Street. That doesn’t change anything important.)
Google will let me share the location but not the route information. Here’s the location in Google Maps. You can play around with Google Street View and get a closer look.
Google Dude is the yellow fellow in the lower right corner of Google Maps
Not familiar with Street View? If you’re using a computer, click on Google Dude, the yellow fellow in the lower right corner of Google Maps. Drag the green fog under his feet to any street that lights up in blue, release the mouse button, and there you are.
You can move around using the the keyboard’s arrow buttons. The right and left buttons turn you around. The down button is your reverse gear, up button moves you forward. Or click on the image and drag with the mouse.
Once you’ve dropped your Dude, there’s a “compass” in the lower right corner that also makes it easy to turn around:
Compass in lower right corner (in Google maps but not in this screen shot) spins map to the view you want.
Once I dropped Google Dude on the road, I spun the compass in the lower right corner to point Dude in the direction I’ll be riding next week. I clicked on the street to move forward, and stand with Dude in the middle of any road.
The arrow in the black box at the upper left corner of the screen takes you back to the overhead view.
On a tablet or smartphone, you can tap and swipe the screen to access these same features.
This bicycle ride is possible!
I have discussed this ride with a few other people and found at least two, maybe, three different ways to manage it. I don’t consider the ride difficult even for a novice cyclist, but savvy strategies can make it much more convenient. (Hint: see my description of John Alexander’s ride above.)
Please post comments and suggestions. I’ll get back to you in a couple of weeks with video of my ride.
I love to ride my bicycle, but I have my limits. Arriving at the doctors’ offices drenched in sweat during a pandemic would exceed those limits! If necessary, I’ll ride the route on a different day to shoot the video.
Your turn now.
I’m eager to hear your thoughts on this ride.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Route-9-fallback.jpg395702John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-08-14 11:55:362020-08-28 14:01:43Would You Ride A Bicycle Through Here?
Little did he know that a yet-to-be savvy cyclist would play a starring role in it.
Here’s what the savvy cyclist did in the video.
He sees the bus stopped ahead. Well in advance of reaching it, he looks over his shoulder to check whether there is a vehicle behind him.
There is, so he makes a left-turn signal with his left arm, indicating the desire to merge left to pass the bus.
He verifies that the driver behind him is yielding to let him move left before he does so.
He passes the bus with safe clearance, ready to brake and fall back in case the bus starts to merge out from the curb.
Once in the bus driver’s forward field of view, he signals to the bus driver the desire to merge back to the right.
He positions himself so that he can see a pedestrian crossing the street right in front of the bus. He allows ample time to slow down or maneuver if a pedestrian pops into view.
After passing the bus, he adopts an appropriate lane position, preventing being overtaken by two lines of traffic at once and jammed against the curb.
The next driver behind has let the savvy cyclist into line.
The yet-to-be savvy cyclist:
Keeps far right as long as possible before reaching the bus, and does not check for overtaking traffic.
Does not signal to indicate the desire to change lane position.
Swerves out shortly before reaching the bus, again without checking to see if there is any traffic behind.
Rides close to the side of the bus! This puts the yet-to-be savvy cyclist in danger of being swept underneath if the bus merges out.
Would not see a pedestrian crossing the street from in front of the bus until the last split second — and therefore would be likely to collide with that pedestrian.
Merges to the right without signaling to the bus driver.
Merges all the way over to the curb, inviting drivers of motor vehicles to “share” an un-sharable lane.
The other cyclist merges out just before passing the bus. What if a car, rather than another cyclist, had been following her?
I, the savvy cyclist
I’ll admit it, I was the savvy cyclist. What were my expectations?
I believed I could communicate with the driver of the vehicle behind me using a hand signal and head turn.
I knew the driver behind me had to digest my request to merge into line, so I started my communication early.
I did not assume the motorist would cooperate and let me merge, so I checked — trust but verify. This is easy to do with a quick glance into a rear-view mirror.
I understood that passing a bus close to its side places me in deadly danger if the bus merges out, and also invites unsafe overtaking.
I knew the bus driver would have an easier time knowing my intentions if he or she could see me as I prepared to merge right.
I understood that I could safely allow only one line of traffic to overtake after passing the bus. I had to position myself to avoid unsafe passing by two lines of traffic at once.
I had a mental inventory of things to watch for: the bus pulls out abruptly, an overtaking motorist moves too soon, a pedestrian abruptly emerges in front of me. But I was ready, so none of these things would cause me a problem, or even require quick action on my part.
This sounds like a lot, but it’s not. It becomes second nature when practicing “driver behavior.”
I am passing the bus safely. The other cyclist couldn’t see a person crossing the street in front of the bus, and couldn’t avoid the bus if it merged out.
The cyclist in the video was practicing “edge” behavior
Her behavior indicated that she wanted to take up as little space as possible. She was an “edge rider,” naive about potential hazards in front of her, and fatalistic about those behind her. This made her moves unpredictable and turned potential hazards into real ones.
What behavior is truly easier for motorists?
I have long contended that having to slow and follow a bicyclist disturbs motorists much less than the following confusing situations:
The cyclist is inviting me to pass, but the available width looks iffy. The angel on one shoulder says that I should wait till there is more room. The devil on the other says: ‘It’ll be close, but I’ll make it.’
Or perhaps:
The cyclist can’t continue riding behind the bus. She is either going to stop behind it, or swerve out. The angel on one shoulder says: ‘Slow down so she can swerve out in front of me.’ The devil on the other shoulder says: ‘Damn bicyclists.’
How about if you’re the bus driver:
I lie awake at night worrying that I’ll crush a cyclist under my bus.
This has happened in my city.
How much better it is for the mental health of everybody concerned for a cyclist to act as a participant in traffic, rather than a nobody!
The shared-lane marking properly indicates my line of travel. The bus changes lanes to pass me safely. The other cyclist’s wheel is visible in the corner of the picture.
Lower stress and more safety passing a bus
As for cyclists, it is infinitely more satisfying to interact as a full participant in traffic, rather than be a wallflower!
For savvy cyclists, stress levels go way down, safety goes way up — and there’s even more: A rewarding sense of interaction with other people. Almost every motorist will cooperate with you, if you only help them know how to do that.
One more thought
The driver of the vehicle behind me, intentionally or not, was standing guard for me. I was protected from following vehicles. (The word “protected” has been used and misused in other ways related to bicycling, but that is a discussion for another post.)
On any typical ride, a cyclist interacts directly with tens or hundreds of strangers, sometimes thousands. Cycling and motoring are the daily activities in which a person interacts directly with more strangers than in any others.
It’s a dance, and as we say in CyclingSavvy, the dance is yours to lead. I find it soundly rewarding to do that assertively yet cooperatively.
I shot this video in May 2017 on Boston’s Longwood Avenue — here, in case you would care to know. This neighborhood has a high concentration of health science and research facilities. I may well have been photographing a doctor or scientist. Brilliance in one field doesn’t help you understand safe behavior near a bus. That’s why we need to teach all people, no matter how smart, how to ride safely.
Update
I wish that I could offer a bright and sunny conclusion to this article: Longwood-area cyclists signed up for a CyclingSavvy course, discovered how easy it is to communicate with other road users and control safe space around themselves.
Not so. Since I shot the video, the shared-lane markings on Longwood Avenue have been replaced with bike lanes.
2019: Google street view of Longwood Avenue
These bike lanes direct cyclists to ride like the one in my video, and give motorists to understand that this is bicyclists’ proper place and conduct — as shown in the image above downloaded from a 2019 Google Street view.
Enough for now. The reasons bicyclists get set up for failure like this are a topic for another post.
https://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/bus-SLM.jpg335536John Allenhttps://cyclingsavvy.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/CS-logo_xlong-header.pngJohn Allen2020-06-08 09:55:062020-07-21 18:55:14Passing a City Bus Safely on a Bicycle
This was spring in Boston, on a beautiful night. I had joined a Meetup ride, and a group of us were chatting afterward at a local eatery. Pamela Murray, a lovely Asian woman with a Southern accent, sidled up to me with a question.
“Are you going to the CyclingSavvy class that’s starting tomorrow?”
I didn’t know what she was talking about. I’d never heard of the program. But as she and John Allen described it, I thought: What have I got to lose? When I got home that night, I registered on the website.
Classroom session at Dana Farber Institute in Boston, with instructors Pamela Murray and John Allen
There’s a lot to a CyclingSavvy workshop.
The Friday evening program consisted of short lectures, videos, diagrams of street scenes, and techniques to avoid dangerous road conditions and traffic configurations.
The emphasis, to me, was on maximizing visibility — you can’t be too visible in traffic. A secondary topic was reading and assessing street and traffic patterns to anticipate potential dangers and avoid them. To this end, we discussed optimizing road position for safety and making one’s intent clear and unambiguous at all times.
The Friday evening program reminded me of the United Kingdom’s voluntary Institute of Advanced Motorists program, modeled after a defensive/assertive driving course developed by the London Metropolitan Police. It taught forward-looking road positioning, awareness of other road users (motor vehicles, bicycles, pedestrians, livestock!) at all times, anticipating their intent and actions, and generally avoiding potential trouble spots.
As a result of taking that course, I was rewarded with a healthy discount on my auto insurance. And not coincidentally, I had neither crashes nor close calls during the two years I drove throughout the UK and continental Europe in a right-hand-drive car.
CyclingSavvy holds benefits for people from all levels and backgrounds.
The six participants Friday evening represented a wide range of experience and riding skills. Another gentlemen and I had been bike commuting year-round for decades in and around Boston.
One woman had recently moved from New York City. She enjoyed the Hudson River Greenway and Central Park for weekend recreational rides, but was fearful of riding on NYC or Boston streets, even in bike lanes. She had learned of the program only that morning at a Bike Week get-together. She was willing to learn whatever CyclingSavvy had to offer, as commuting by bike was her best option.
A couple of other folks had ridden occasionally in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville running errands and on weekend group rides, yet felt uneasy riding alone on city streets.
Another woman, Binbin, had purchased a bicycle only a month earlier. She told me she was frightened to do anything but ride in circles in an empty parking lot on Sunday mornings.
Saturday morning:
Train Your Bike offers an easy way to discover the amazing capabilities of the marvelous machine known as the bicycle
The class spent three hours practicing bicycle-handling drills in a parking garage. The first exercise was to mount the bike and start from a dead stop. Most everyone could do this effortlessly, but Binbin appeared to have no idea how to get started. At one point she said she started in her favorite empty parking lot with a gentle slope, and used gravity to gain enough momentum to stay upright. She practiced that morning until she could reliably get the bike going by pushing off on one foot.
Then we spent the time practicing weaving around traffic cones, emergency stops, turns, evasive maneuvers. Binbin had a hard time with the emergency stops, but eventually got the hang of it.
I myself discovered that I could do better. During emergency stops, I repeatedly skidded my rear wheel. I’ve since practiced and my stopping distance is much reduced. Among other skills in which I learned that I could improve was a quick evasive maneuver to avoid hazards like potholes, rocks, dead squirrels, broken glass in the street.
On the streets of Boston.
After lunch, we went out on streets, executing prescribed routes and turns both as a group and individually. We made left turns from a major street, crossed trolley tracks the safe way, and finally navigated around the huge complex of streets at Park Drive/Riverway/Brookline Avenue/Boylston Street.
Here I am, doing a good job communicating with other drivers.
It was impressive to watch Binbin.
She, too, was amazed, as she negotiated the route with ease from Beacon Street to Brookline Avenue. I’d consider it a minor miracle, as a witness to her transformation between 9 AM and 3 PM that very same day.
During the last exercise, Binbin even had the confidence to respond with kindness to an abusive motorist while they were both stopped at a traffic light.
“Bicycles are not allowed on this road!” he yelled at her.
She politely thanked him for his “information.”
John Allen describes a route including a left turn across trolley tracks
When the light turned green, she proceeded ahead of this obnoxious driver, whose self-advertised knowledge of the law was obviously nonexistent. He offered a clear demonstration of the Dunning-Kruger effect — i.e., the less people know, the more they tend to think that they know.
With awe I still compare and contrast the newfound knowledge and confidence Binbin developed in order to ride safely in traffic in one of the most challenging confluences of streets in Boston.
CyclingSavvy holds benefits for people from all levels and backgrounds. Beginners like Binbin advance to where they can ride steadily and handle everyday cycling challenges. Longtime cyclists like me learn new skills that improve safety and confidence.
I’m kneeling at lower left, with my CyclingSavvy group and statues of Dr. Sidney Farber and Jimmy. Binbin is to my right. Photo credit: Fred Clow. All other photos by John Schubert