First Published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan Feb. 7, 2011

My favorite story of the law and bicyclists in Fort Collins is of the time 1½ years ago, when a Fort Collins police officer stopped the then-National Collegiate Cycling champion and issued a warning for what the officer thought was an illegal left turn.

The national champion, experienced bicycle commuter and experienced bike handler was headed to work on North College Avenue, turning north from the right-most left turn lane on Cherry Street. The officer handed him a pre-printed form from www.Colobikelaw.com. The form explained how a cyclist should make a left turn by keeping to the far right, crossing with the light and repositioning himself on the far right side of the intersection to await the through light.

The officer didn’t realize that the form he handed out mentioned two other legal left turn options available to the cyclist, one of which includes the use of the left turn lane, the choice of this expert cyclist.

The option identified by the police officer is the technique that we teach 12-year-olds, inexperienced cyclists or anyone in a busy intersection. At Cherry Street and College Avenue, there are two left-turn lanes, and experienced cyclists should use the right-most left-turn lane, which leads them right to the bike lane as they complete the turn.

Other oft-repeated anecdotes among cyclists are those involving officers responding to minor bike-car crashes in which the officer asks the cyclist, “Would you like me to file a report?” The correct answer to this question in all cases is, “Yes, absolutely.” But this is a question that shouldn’t even be asked in a bicycle community like ours.

Since 2007, the San Francisco Police Department has used a 10-minute training video to instruct police officers on the rights and responsibilities of bicyclists. Produced in cooperation with the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition, the video informs officers that cyclists should avoid the “door zone” near parked cars and that cyclists should take and “own the lane” on narrow streets. The video further clarifies that bikes belong in traffic, not on the sidewalk. The film explains that officers are required to file an incident report when cyclists report aggression by a motorist or any time a bike-car crash results in injury or property damage. Officers should not dissuade a cyclist from making such a report.

Pueblo and Longmont have done, or are doing, similar trainings. League Cycling instructors in Fort Collins could conduct trainings with Fort Collins Police Services. It would take just 20 minutes to show officers the film, “Bikes Belong In Traffic – SFPD Training Video,” available on www.youtube.com, followed by a brief question and answer session. That should be enough to address recent revisions to Colorado Bicycle Law, dispel “safe” bicycling myths, explain what to expect from safe cyclists and identify dangerous bicycling behaviors in Fort Collins.

When can we start?

Negotiating College and Mulberry in Fort Collins

Bike mechanic Scott Hinkson works for ExperiencePlus! Bicycle Tours in Italy during the summer. He made this fun demo last August.

The folks at the Washington (DC) Area Bicyclist Association (WABA) have adopted the following resolution as they make 2011 the “Year of the Bicycle.” They want “every bicyclist in DC, Maryland and Virginia to take part.”

And they have a point: as they advocate for the rights of cyclists on the road they are hard put to do so when many bicyclists believe that they don’t have to follow the rules of the road.

When I teach bike safety to kids in local schools, we talk about rules. Even the kindergartners understand the concept of rules of the road. And when I point out that it would be pretty tough to have a football or basketball game where one team is required to follow the rules and the other is allowed to make up their own rules, that the game wouldn’t be fair at all.

So think about this as you run that next red light or as you come off the sidewalk and across the crosswalk at breakneck speed past those pedestrians (“walkers” as the kindergartners call them).

Then think about adopting WABA’s 2011 resolution. It’s pretty simple:
“In 2011…
…I resolve to be a more responsible bicyclist.
…I resolve to better respect the rights of other road users.
…I resolve to make a good faith effort to better follow the law.
…I resolve to yield to pedestrians.
…I resolve to help make bicycling safer and easier for all of us.”

Check out WABA here.

City Council has asked City staff to write a Bicycle Safety Education Plan. They have also asked that this plan consider whether we should build a bicycle “safety town.” The plan is underway and will be completed in March of 2010.

For a preview of what a bicycle safety town might look like, take a look at these photos from Peoria, Illinois. This bike safety town, run by the Peoria Parks District is almost four acres in size and has close to 4,000 feet of bike lanes available. The parks districts runs classes for elementary school children and you can book the safety town for a birthday party during the summer. Seems to us the possibilities are endless!

For more photos of Peoria’s Bike Safety Town click here:  http://www.flickr.com/photos/expeditionplus/sets/72157625730513841/

By Rick Price, Ph.D. (Rick is the Safe Cycling Coordinator for the Bike Co-op; this column was published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan on January 3, 2011; Rick’s Smart Cycling columns appear the 1st and 3rd Mondays of every month in the Coloradoan)

Mia Birk’s book, “Joyride: Pedaling toward a Healthier Planet,” is a how-to manual for creating a first-class bicycle community. Both City Council and city staff would benefit from reading Birk as a way to put Fort Collins even more in the lead in this national movement.

Birk recounts a perfect storm of events when she became bicycle coordinator in Portland in 1993. Congress had just funded the first six-year federal transportation package that included a small allocation for “transportation enhancements.”
“Enhancements” were meant to fund transit, bicycling and walking facilities as Congress
attempted to counter the “roads only” policies of state departments of transportation. This enabled states and cities like Fort Collins and Portland to write bicycle plans and to hire bicycle coordinators.

In Portland in 1990, the Bicycle Transportation Alliance, or BTA, had been founded, and was to become one of the most active advocacy groups in the nation. Earl Blumenauer, now Congressman from Oregon’s 3rd Congressional District and founder of the Congressional Bike Caucus, was Portland’s Commissioner of Public Utilities. With Blumenauer’s support and with the backing of the BTA, Birk set out to make Portland, a city of 500,000 people, a friendlier place to ride a bicycle.

As she explains in “Joyride,”Birk had a series of revelations during the first years of her job that opened her eyes to the challenges she faced. Despite enjoying great support in the bicycle community, she noted that “if I spend my time preachin’ to the gospel choir, the bicycle revolution isn’t going to spread very far.” Additionally, when Portland’s traffic engineers suggested that rather than stripe bicycle lanes, they get the police to enforce the law to encourage more cyclists, she noted “the police won’t even talk to me (as bicycle coordinator),” let alone enforce the rules of the road to protect cyclists.

Another revelation came after her third bike-to-work day,when Birk asked herself, “is this helping to get more people out riding? Is my time best spent running events like his, or working on bikeway projects?” The answer, she found, was that she needed to mobilize the non-bicyclists in town, build bike paths and lanes and to become more of a catalyst in bringing people together to change the culture in order to get reluctant cyclists on their bikes. “It’s not enough to adopt a Bicycle Plan, she wrote, “we’ve got to retrain all the humans involved, both inside and outside government.”

So Birk began with neighborhood meetings at Denny’s. Then she met with the Lions Club. Once she was fully under way, she was meeting with “business groups, ethnic groups, neighborhood associations, school groups, churches” and, as she explains it, “pretty much anyone who” would listen in a series of 60 meetings across Portland.

The results of Birk’s work are impressive to the degree that “Joyride”should be required reading for anyone who wants to see bicycle ridership double in Fort Collins.