Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun

So there I am, riding eastbound on the Charles River bike path, and I stop at the North Harvard Street Bridge. There’s a lot going on here at this crossing: Storrow Drive traffic making lefts and rights to get over the river, plus traffic going both ways over the bridge, with incoming traffic trying to get onto Storrow. Thankfully, there’s a walk signal.

Precious reader, Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is a lot of things, but a blog that doesn’t learn its lessons, it is not. I approach the crosswalk as traffic is moving over the bridge, the “Don’t Walk” signal clearly advising me to stay put. I dutifully press the walk button. Bridge traffic stops, and Storrow Drive traffic commences. Okay, I think to myself, this is perfectly acceptable, as I’m sure the walk signal is waiting for all of the lefts and rights over the bridge before telling me that it’s safe to cross. Patiently, I wait, as those lefts and rights go through the intersection.

So, treasured reader, you can imagine my dismay when the Storrow traffic stopped and the bridge traffic re-commenced. Odd, I thought. I pressed the button, and yet an entire traffic cycle went by without my safe crossing being facilitated. I repressed the button, and again watched as the bridge traffic stopped and the Storrow traffic started. Then stopped again. Without the walk signal turning on.

Now, darling reader, Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun is a lot of things, and a blog that will cut off its nose to spite its face, it is. (Hi, Mom.) I would have sat there all day waiting for this signal to turn, had I not had another cyclist behind me waiting for me to cross. So with a clearly audible “F&%$ this noise,” I hurled myself into harm’s way, braving an unsanctioned crossing, the potential for any of a number of vehicles to do unimaginable harm to my person. Thankfully, I survived. No thanks to the walk button.

The author, tongue protruding and eyes Xed out to signify death, crushed by the oppression of the walk button

I hope all of the people who commented on my original walk button travails, both on this blog and off, are reading. A lot of people have a lot of faith in this walk button thing: that faith is sadly misplaced. I’m trying to tell you people, this button is useless! It’s worse than useless; it’s purposely fooling us into thinking that we humans have any agency whatsoever over our own street-crossing agenda. We don’t! Pernicious stuff! I feel like Nietzsche’s madman, lighting a lantern in the bright morning hours:

“I have come too early,” he said then; “my time is not yet. This tremendous event is still on its way, still wandering; it has not yet reached the ears of men. Lightning and thunder require time; the light of the stars requires time; deeds, though done, still require time to be seen and heard. This deed is still more distant from them than most distant stars—and yet they have done it themselves.

So let’s just keep pressing the walk button, each doing our own small part to usher in an apocalyptic nightmare future where the machines don’t serve us, but rather we serve the machines. I saw a movie about this one time. It was called Terminator 2. That one doesn’t work out too well for us humans.

For whatever reason, there’s been a lot of biking-related articles and posts on the ol’ Intertubes. Up here in the Hub, the Globe ran a story about Boston’s plan to institute a bike-sharing program. Perhaps in response to the anti-biking firestorm that erupted in the comments section, the Globe ran a piece a week later lambasting Boston cyclists for their bad habits and lawlessness. Tsk tsk tsk!

Bostonist did a serviceable takedown of that particular story, so I won’t rehash all of the arguments that make drivers sound as wacky as tea-bagging town-hall protesters. I could very well have put up my little GIF buddy and shook harder are car operators (I actually probably will eventually, but whatever), but instead, I’d like to address what I see as the most substantive issue in the whole drivers vs. bikers standoff.

Ryan Avent touches on it here. Money quote:

The other thing to think about is that cyclists typically have no natural place on the road. Pedestrians have sidewalks and cars have their lanes, and a cyclist must navigate his way between the two, which isn’t easy or comfortable.

I remember when I was a kid, graduating from riding-my-bike-around-the-block-for-fun to riding-my-bike-to-get-places, I was amazed and a little frightened to learn that bicycles are supposed to be ridden in the street. Why? Because it’s just not intuitive. Here I am, flesh and bone, on 30 pounds worth of steel and rubber, riding cheek to jowl with Civics, Suburbans, and 18-wheelers. That’s just dangerous! Which leads me to the question at the heart of this post.

Why are bikes and cars governed by the same laws?

Has anyone seriously addressed this issue? It makes so little sense. Cars are faster, larger, and less nimble than bikes. Just saying that these two wildly different classes of vehicle have to share the road doesn’t make them equal. It strikes me as a lazy, cheap, and unimaginative way of dealing with the very real problem of bikes and cars coexisting. It doesn’t require lawmakers to either a) come up with a reasonable set of parallel regulations to govern bicyclists, or b) pony up for the infrastructure that would make bicycling safer. As it stands, bikes inhabit a little-policed no-man’s-land between driving and walking. It’s really the worst of all worlds for bicyclists and drivers alike.

Bicyclists aren’t scofflaws, by and large. I’ll parrot what most bicyclists who have written on the subject have said about the “lawlessness” of bikers: most of the time, when a cyclist breaks the law, it’s to pursue what they see as the safest or least absurd route.

I say safest because sometimes, riding on the sidewalk is safer than riding on the road. I ride on the sidewalk, the wrong way, down Martha Road every morning to get to the Museum of Science. Why? Because going the right way on the road would take me into fast moving traffic. My rolling at half a mile an hour down the sidewalk is a much better option for everyone.

And I say least absurd because, honestly, when I’m sitting there at a red light with the rest of the cars on the road, and I’m watching pedestrians cross the street because there’s no cross-traffic, what’s the point? If I were to hop off my ride and walk it through from corner to corner, I’d be entirely justified and within the boundaries of the law. (In fact, the City of Boston advises bicyclists to use crosswalks if traffic is too heavy to make a left turn.) Why wouldn’t I roll through a red light if there were no cars coming?

Now, I understand, the law is the law. But there’s a powerful cognitive dissonance here. And I also understand that if cars acted in the same way as bikes, there’d be chaos.

Which leads me to this recent post from Matt Yglesias. The main thesis:

The basic idea of traffic rules—separated uses, painted lane markers, giant signs, etc.—is to make it safe for the drivers of cars to drive their cars very quickly. That’s an okay design principle for a highway, but its nearly-universal adoption as a design principle for urban roadways is arguably very misguided.

Yglesias has a tendency to throw radical ideas out there and let his commenters hash them out, and this particular case is no different. No one expects Commonwealth Avenue to become a wide-open free-for-all of walkers, bikers, and drivers. But it’s been done elsewhere. And it’s at least worth thinking about how we can develop more effective, and more safe, ways of bikes, cars, and pedestrians sharing the same space.

Today’s installment of Shake Harder, Boy is dedicated to the stupid Walk Button. You know, the button on the corner that you press to compel the walk signal to light up. The button you sort of impulsively press because there’s nothing better to do while you’re waiting for the light to change. The button that’s undoubtedly crawling with all manner of bacteria, germs, pathogens, viruses, protists, nematodes, trichina worms, assorted flagellates, and grimy elements. That one.

The plain and honest truth of the matter is that the concept of the walk button is so ludicrously dumb that anyone that isn’t a child just assumes that it’s a placebo device. A button, that makes the signals work? That anyone can press? Really? Think about it this way: while you’re walking down the street on any given day, how many actual functional buttons do you come across? Do you come across any? Good! There’s a reason we don’t put buttons that are actually connected to consequential circuitry out where any Tom, Dick, and Harry can press them. Odds are, any Tom, Dick, or Harry is the kind of idiot you wouldn’t trust with the buttons on his own shirt!

So when a normal human comes across the walk button, can you blame her for just standing there patiently waiting for the light to change? Has anyone actually witnessed proof that the walk button actually does anything? In 25 years, I’ve never been foiled by the walk button. With that body of experience backing me up, I made a decision I’ve made thousands of times before: when I came to the intersection of North Washington and Thacher streets, I just stood there, and patiently waited for the light to change.

It’s not a terribly complicated intersection, but North Washington does lead to a bridge, and there’s a left-only light going in one direction, so there’s some stuff going on. So I waited. As I rolled up, the left-only traffic was just wrapping up. So then the traffic on North Washington started moving (this is the traffic that’s perpendicular to my route, so I had no choice but to wait). All the while, the red hand on the other side of the street is steadily shining at me. Then the left-only traffic started moving again. Now, there was a guy on the corner with me, and a girl on the other corner, so a certain amount of mob non-moving mentality was at play. The red hand is still shining. Then . . .

Press me. If you're an idiot.

The North Washington traffic started moving again! The walk sign never came on! Because no one pressed the walk button! Seriously!

Now, on a rural two lane dirt path, in the dead of night, in a sparsely populated county, where there are rarely any pedestrians, I would understand having a system where walk signals didn’t turn on unless there was someone there to press a button. Because who wants to be stuck at a red light on an invariably haunted rural county road for no reason? But this is downtown Boston! There’s always going to be people crossing the street!

And why is the burden of button-pushing on the pedestrian? The people in cars don’t have to press anything. I’m not an idiot; I’m not advocating some wacky system of button pushery on the part of motorists. All I’m saying is, the regime of button pushery should be brought down for everyone!

And really, the walk button isn’t affecting the actual traffic lights. (That’s not based on any real knowledge; I just have to assume that people pressing buttons on the sidewalk aren’t affecting the length of traffic lights. I need to believe that, precious reader. I need to.) And it’s not like if the walk signal isn’t on, that the don’t walk signal isn’t on either. There’s always a light on! What’s the benefit of not just automatically putting the walk signal on when it’s safe to walk? Why are we putting this onerous responsibility on the shoulders of pedestrians?

Regular readers of Dangerous, Dirty, and Unfun know that the sad and terrifying truth about your favorite blogger is that deep down, his heart is a roiling cauldron of hate. I don’t know what it is; middle child syndrome? Six-plus years in the heart of Red Socks Nation? Who knows. I’m like Ren Hoek. It’s bad.

Fortunately, I make the most of it (sort of like these guys.) How? By complaining. So you can imagine how much of a godsend Sweet, Sweet Alice has been for me. That bike is my admit-one to one of the most perennially aggrieved, justifiably indignant populations there is: bicyclists. An entire world of distasteful, obnoxious, objectionable people, things, and circumstances has been opened up to me. Consequently, I’m bringing back “Shake Harder, Boy,” to highlight all of the things that, perched high up in my saddle, I’ve discovered I can do without. Enjoy the art, too.

Tonight’s installment: People who don’t walk
This is your typical still-stander, your scenery-admirer, your iPod-playlist-adjuster. The guy or gal who decides that the middle of the bike path is the ideal place to stop and do whatever it is they have to do. When you’re in a car, and you have to stop, you’re sort of forced to pull over; stopping in the middle of the road would cause you, and the other drivers on the road, a world of problems, so no one would even remotely think of doing it. A bike path, on the other hand, doesn’t have the inherent deadliness of the open road, so these brain donors obviously feel like they can just stand there and not worry about a damn thing.

Here’s the problem: I’m trying to get to work! And so are the people riding on the opposite side of the path! Move it or lose it, buster, is what I say. The Person Who Doesn’t Walk is extra insidious because of the availability of perfectly acceptable still-standing places.

Stink lines added for emphasis

I mean, we’re talking about the entire world as a better place to stand around picking your nose. There’s literally eight lateral feet in the entire universe where standing around is unadviseable. So of course that’s where the Person Who Doesn’t Walk stands. I’m shaking my fist menacingly at you!

So I bought a bike this weekend, in order to ride to work in the mornings. I’ve been meaning to do this for years, dating back to when I lived in Allston. Problem is, I never had anywhere to put a bike. I never felt good locking one up outside in Allston, and then when I moved to the Theater District, I lived on the fifth floor of a walkup in a crummy neighborhood. Now that I’m in the North End, I can store a bike in the basement of my building. I rode it around yesterday, and I tested out a route to work today (and went to the grocery store). It was pretty good!

Here’s a map of the bike path I’m going to use for most of the way. I picked it up at the Museum of Science, and took it all the way to Western Ave. in Allston. I took Western to Market Street, then made a right onto Washington at Brighton Center, then onto Foster Street to Commonwealth. I gotta say, I think I hit every hill possible once I got away from the river. I might try to get onto Commonwealth a little earlier. We’ll see.

But the bike. Here she is.

<3 <3 <3

Isn’t she beautiful? Nice wide saddle. Rack. Fenders. Oh, those fenders. She’s just a gorgeous bike. I’ve got a pannier (that’s bike-speak for “bag”) that fits right on the rack, and fits a decent haul of groceries. I’ve got a good lock, lights, the whole nine. I’ve got that opium-like high that only comes from owning new stuff, and I gotta tell ya, treasured reader, I’m bustin’.