You're not a member? Good god, not so loud. Someone might hear. After all, everyone's fed up with traffic jams, tired of being afraid on the streets of their own neighborhoods, sick of dirty air, and done with spending the vacation money on a new transmission. So they've all joined the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation and are making a difference (and getting discounts on maps, at bike shops, and events to boot). So carefully now, slip off with this issue of Bike Traffic (another member benefit) and call us or join on-line at www.biketraffic.org. That was close, but it's gonna be okay.

Driving While Infuriated
By Jeff Balch

When the jury pronounced Carnell Fitzpatrick guilty of first-degree murder at the end of the day on December 4, Tom McBride’s family and friends and fellow bicyclists nodded and wept. Cries of anguish came from the defendant’s family and friends. Fitzpatrick wept as he was handcuffed and led away.

One week earlier, on November 27th, prosecutor Lynda Peters asserted to the jurors that Fitzpatrick had "deliberately mowed down" bicyclist McBride with an SUV on April 26, 1999 near 5315 West Washington Street. Peters and fellow prosecutor Patrick Kelly presented three witnesses on the first day of the trial.

Tyrone Hibbler testified he’d been driving east, directly behind an SUV that was "driving a little strange ... I saw the bicyclist, he got close to the curb and I saw it just for a few seconds because the SUV jumped over and blocked my vision ... and then all of a sudden, it sped up and it went over, I saw it bump up a couple times and it had rolled over the kid on the bike."

Lionell Dixon testified he had come from the other direction and "noticed a body underneath a truck ... and I saw the truck pull off headed eastbound down Washington." Dixon testified he made a U-turn and followed the SUV to an alley, where he saw the driver get out, yank the bike from underneath, and toss it aside.

The third witness, Jerry Carter, was walking east on Washington Street near Lorel Avenue on the day of the incident. He gave detailed statements that day to police and to an assistant state’s attorney. Ten days later he repeated his story to a grand jury: he had seen the SUV come north on Lorel, almost hit the eastbound bicyclist at Washington, and "the rider hit the truck with his hand and stated ‘you stupid motherfucker.’ ... The guy on the bike, he started riding off, and the guy in the truck sped up ... And he proceeded to, he bumped him ... [The bicyclist] wobbled a little bit. He continued to pedal the bike and then the guy hit him again and just ran right over him."

But in court on November 27th, after first refusing to testify, Carter took the stand and recanted many of his earlier statements. He testified the driver was "trying to get around ... He accidentally hit him."

On Wednesday the prosecution sought to establish the veracity of Carter’s original story. Police detectives who had dealt with Carter on the day of the incident testified that his statements were spontaneous and straightforward. The assistant state’s attorney who presented Carter to the grand jury said the same thing, and the transcript of the grand jury proceedings backed her up.

Thursday was spent on the prosecution’s physical evidence such as fingerprints found on the bicycle and blood test results. Nine autopsy photographs were shown in open court. Most of Tom McBride’s family wept throughout this display. Fitzpatrick’s grandmother also appeared to wipe away tears.

On Friday the defense presented its case, calling four witnesses. None of the first three was an eyewitness to the incident. The fourth was Fitzpatrick himself, who testified that it was a complete accident. Questioned by defense attorney Sam Adam, he said he was driving northbound on Lorel, slowed but didn’t stop at Washington, looked left, saw no traffic close by, turned right, "suddenly saw a bike in front of me" and hit the brakes but couldn’t stop in time. He said he’d had no interaction with the bicyclist earlier. He said he knew he had run over the bicyclist.

Q: Tell us, in your own words, why you didn’t stop, why you fled.

A: I had never been through any kind of accident, I just panicked.

Mr. Adam asked Fitzpatrick to explain what happened next. "I heard scraping underneath ... the bike was tangled to a piece of wire at the back ... I untangled it and drove off."

Q: Tell us why you proceeded home [from the alley]. Pause.

A: I had soiled my pants, and I was nervous and scared and I panicked.

On cross-examination Ms. Peters asked Fitzpatrick why he had looked just to the left, not to the right, as he approached the intersection. "What could I hit to the right?" Fitzpatrick replied. Ms. Peters asked also about the bike’s position in the street, and about the SUV’s speed going around the corner. Fitzpatrick answered that he took the corner at about the speed limit and the bike appeared "directly in front."

On Monday both sides gave closing statements and Judge Kenneth Wadas gave the jury the instructions that he and the attorneys had agreed on. Instructions were provided on first-degree murder and on the lesser, non-intentional offense of reckless homicide. The jury exited at 1 pm to deliberate.

Family members and others began returning to the courtroom around 3 pm, wondering if a verdict might come quickly. People on both sides of the room quietly exchanged speculations and talked about the burden of this trial on their lives. At 9 pm Ms. Peters announced that the jury would resume deliberations first thing in the morning.

At 4 pm the next day, word came that the jury had reached a verdict. In the next half-hour family and friends and lawyers returned in silent waves. The gallery was packed and still.

Afterwards one juror, who did not want his name revealed, talked at length about the deliberations.

"One big point was Jerry Howard’s testimony. We wrestled a lot with that, whether to believe parts or discount the whole thing. We finally decided that we couldn’t toss it out. That was key because it was crucial to establishing a motive.

"When [Howard] recanted he said he lied earlier because he was ‘mad at the driver’ for taking off. That just didn’t fit for us. It wasn’t till after the trial that we found out about threats against him.

"So we worked more with Howard’s statements to the police, to the grand jury. They were consistent. We compared them with Fitzpatrick’s testimony, with the physical evidence. [Fitzpatrick] said he hit the brakes. That just didn’t work, didn’t make sense. He said the bike was right there when he came around the corner, in the first ten or twenty feet. We compared that with the actual distance to the blood stains, more than 100 feet. It was pretty clear there was pursuit. And Hibbler’s testimony was very strong in reaching that conclusion, very credible.

"More of us were initially for the reckless homicide charge. Our first vote was about 7 to 5 for that.

"Some of us felt he didn’t necessarily want to murder [McBride]. Maybe he just wanted to bump him. But we thought he was pursuing him, and there was some intent, and we looked at how the murder law is written – ‘creating the strong probability’ by his actions, the strong probability of death or great harm. This is how the law is stated.

"We took anonymous votes, ten or twelve of them. We got to 6-6, then 8-4, then 10-2, then 11-1. It was a slow process."

Do you ride a bike much? Did any of the others?

"No, that wasn’t a factor at all," the juror said. "Some of us had experience with messengers downtown, negative stuff, but there was nothing like ‘he brought it on himself.’ No one should’ve lost their life."

Judge Wadas scheduled sentencing for January 15. Defense attorneys did not indicate whether they would appeal. Fitzpatrick faces 20 to 60 years in prison. He is 31 years old; McBride was 26.

Mulling the verdict, CBF member Tim Herlihey mentioned that when he was bicycling to the courthouse that morning, he rapped on the side of a car he felt was encroaching on him. "But the driver was okay with it," he said. He paused. Then he added, "maybe we can all learn a lesson from this case."

Kids riding bikes to school makes for popular clip art, but less than two percent of our children actually do.

When nearly every child has a bicycle, why so few?

Safety–in other words, "How do I know my child won't get run over?"–is a common reason given by parents who drive their children to school every day. These parents create over 20% of all rush hour traffic.

Nearly one in four children is either overweight or at risk of obesity, so children would benefit from bicycling. Urban smog, traffic congestion and even global warming could also be reduced if kids rode bikes to school instead of being driven. But the hurdle of safety must be overcome before this can become a reality.

Enter the Safe Routes to School program.

This program is designed to increase the number of children who have the opportunity to ride their bicycles to school and to give their parents a break from morning rush hour traffic. The goal is to create safe routes and to provide safe riding techniques for kids to use when bicycling.

The Chicago Department of Transportation has hired the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation to deploy the Safe Routes to School program. Schools can receive help from transportation and bicycle safety experts to develop a safe way for children to ride to school.

For each school involved in the program, a team of bicycling advocates, transportation specialists and health-care researchers works with parent groups, school staff and community leaders to identify barriers to bicycling and eliminate those barriers.

To get involved, a school simply needs to show interest in the idea and a presentation about the program can be quickly and easily set up. Questions and concerns from parents and school administrators will be addressed, and possibilities to promote better bike safety for kids will be outlined.

"By tapping into the pent-up desire of children to bicycle, Safe Routes to School improves conditions for the entire community," said Dave Glowacz, who heads the program for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation. That's because, Glowacz said, the program can result in neighborhoods getting new and better bicycling facilities as well as a greater acceptance of bicycling as a form of transportation. "So residents will see community-wide benefits, making it easier for everyone –not just kids–to bicycle."

For more information or to have a representative contact your school about the Safe Routes to School program, contact Heather Convey at 312/427-3325 or heather@biketraffic.org.

You know the feeling. It comes when you’re riding along on a bike lane filled with gravel (or glass), that seems to tilt at a 45 degree angle between the curb and the car lanes. Or when you approach a bridge to find that it has just enough room for one car lane or worse, just enough room for two car lanes, enabling traffic to race by you as you hope your twinkling VistaLite will be heeded as a warning to avoid, rather than serving as a blinking "Hit Me" sign.

It’s the feeling that tells you in this post-Boub age exactly who the intended users of the road are, and it seems everything you see tells you that it ain’t you.

But according to Nick Jackson, the age of roads designed solely with cars in mind has passed.

Jackson coordinates a new bike tour program for CDOT employees that’s designed to let transportation planners experience the cyclist’s perspective–by actually getting them out on the roads on a bicycle. "The basic idea is to get the people who are designing the roads out there riding a bicycle on city streets." said Jackson, who works for the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation on the city’s Streets for Cycling program at the Chicago Department of Transportation.

Jackson says that the tours have two purposes. "First, to show them that bike lanes work. Second, to get them to think about bike lanes in their design work."

Too often, he said, traffic planners have thought of bike lanes as accessories to road lanes. The tours show the planners and engineers that the lanes actually do get used.

Since last year, there have been about ten tours, typically with two to four participants each. Participants usually work with CDOT’s Bureau of Highways or the Bureau of Traffic.

The tours give an overview of the variety of bike facilities in the city, showcasing both the sublime and the sub-par. "We tailor certain rides for certain projects. Sometimes we look at technical issues, like how different cross sections (lane widths) work." But the route doesn’t change much, he said. "I have a predetermined route. Armitage is one of our newest bike lanes. From Racine to Clark it’s a perfect bike lane street."

And about one of the city’s more notorious bike lanes, Jackson said, "I point out places on Elston where the design has been modified over time.

Jackson said that he makes sure the engineers understand that little things mean a lot to cyclists. "We show ‘em that pavement quality matters a lot more to a cyclist than to a motorist."

But getting good roads for cyclists involves more than just high-grade asphalt. Too often, said Jackson, state road construction standards, designed for optimal car movement, overlook bikers’ needs. Then, planners attempting to include bicycles in plans for state-funded street improvements will need to be ready to justify the bike facilities to obtain needed waivers from IDOT standards. That’s when the firsthand knowledge of bike facilities will be especially valuable.

"It’s really important to understand how (bike facilities) work, because a lot of these projects are state funded, and they’ll have to justify these bike lanes in the design process. Sometimes this requires us to make narrow lanes, and IDOT will ask us to justify this."

Participants have welcomed the tours, Jackson said "They’ve worked on projects in the past that have had bike lanes," so the participants are eager to see how their plans get put into place. The tours help planners see what happens when their designs get put into concrete. "Often highway construction deals with the ideal situation, but bike lanes have to work with existing conditions."

Besides which, "It’s fun. It’s educational as well. Responses have been extremely positive," he said. One participant, who hadn’t been on a bike since a childhood bicycle accident, was particularly enthusiastic.

Jackson said that the tours help nibble away at the idea of bike lanes as strictly a recreational facility, by showing planners that lanes are an important part of many riders daily commutes.

"There’s also still a lingering misconception that it’s dangerous to ride on city streets. This shows them that the more visible cyclists are, the safer all users are."

Will the tour program ultimately have a positive effect on cycling facilities in Chicago? "It already has," said Jackson. "It’s already had an effect on a couple of projects. It’s had a direct effect."

The Fender Gap
Car Owners Net Less than Biking Peers
By Randy Neufeld

Jim Meteja in the November 12 Tribune quotes Runzheimer & Associates who have determined that it costs $7635 a year to own a car in Illinois. That’s $5625 in fixed costs, like car payments and insurance, and $2010 for gas and other variable costs. CBF members should ponder the implications of these numbers.

If you sell your car or one of your cars, you can afford the following over the next year:

1 cab ride a week, (52 @ $15 = $780)
4 weekend car rentals: (4 @ $150 = $600)
6 big-item delivery charges 6 @$25 (6 @ $25 = $150)
200 CTA rides ( 200 @ $1.80 = $360)
Good lights, panniers, misc. equipment and bike maintenance: $1000

And you still have $4745 left in cash plus whatever you can get for your car.

This math won’t work for everybody, but with a little creativity, cash can make your mode shift easier. Transit to work isn’t an option? A thousand dollars or so in well-selected gifts can turn a co-worker who lives nearby into a regular chauffeur. Susie, Jr. doesn’t want to ride her bike to soccer practice? Give her a few twenties and let her figure it out. She can decide to pedal and spend it on Lego or bribe her friend’s mom for a ride home. Removing a car from your life can be tricky, but cash can stimulate good old American ingenuity.

Try Randy’s No-Risk Mid-East Oil Diet: Count how many cars your household has. Figure out if you can live with one less car. Park one car for two weeks. Draw a picture of the mothballed car on an envelope and put $293 in it. If you get the urge to use this car, try to meet your mobility needs with the money in the envelope. If you bike instead, buy yourself some chocolate. After two weeks, count the money in the envelope. Multiply by 26 to figure out your annual savings if you would sell this car.

If you sell a car all CBF asks is 10% of your first year savings. We promise to use it to help others sell their cars too.

Remember, the economics of bicycling are only the beginning. Think of the change in social status. If you get rid of a cheap car, you can afford one of the finest bikes on the planet.

Scaling the Neighborhood
By Payton Chung

In recent years, automakers have taken great strides in making cars safer and less polluting. Continuing innovations could give us cars that don’t pollute and kill far fewer people in crashes. Even if that heralded day ever arrives, though, there will still be at least one big problem with cars: their size. These two photos both show forty people on a city street. On the top are forty people sitting inside (small) cars. On the bottom, the same people are sitting on chairs. Although we’re used to seeing cars backed up in traffic jams that stretch to the horizon, we don’t often stop to think about how much space cars take up within cities. Remove the cars and, voil á! There’s plenty enough room to breathe–ten times more room, to be exact.

The terrific amount of space that cars take up, both while they’re moving and while they’re parked, goes a long way towards explaining why American cities are so expansive. The sheer number of cars, plus their enormous size, ensures that our roads are among the world’s widest and that our buildings will be ringed with immense parking lots.

More importantly, cars–and, in fact, all new transportation "improvements"–also allow cities to sprawl. Say that a new road (or even a new gyroscopic personal transportation device) doubles speeds along a corridor. The road allows people to go the same distance in half the time–but it also allows people to go twice as far in the same amount of time. The latter effect has profoundly changed our cities over the past two centuries of "transportation revolutions": instead of reducing the time we spend traveling, we simply travel further.

As a result, cities which began as places shaped around walking–a mode of transport best suited to narrow streets and short distances, since it’s nimble but easily tiring–were re-shaped by mass transit into walkable corridors of development focused on a central core. In turn, the automobile blew apart those centers and corridors into the endless march of sprawl, where wide, curving roads and copious quantities of petroleum seemingly erase distance altogether. In the midst of suburban sprawl, it’s not just unpleasant to walk or bike (since sharing a road can be deadly at those speeds); it’s downright impractical, since everything’s so spread out. Even crossing the street to visit a neighbor would be a chore in a subdivision of half-acre lots, since a tenth of a mile of driveway and road stand in the way.

Instead of transportation that gets us there faster–which merely creates cities where we can go far and fast but do little else–transportation policy should focus on getting us there better. Instead of letting a single mode dictate the form of a city, planners should work to provide transportation options. Neighborhoods can be scaled to strike a middle ground between walking, cycling, transit, and driving. All it takes is some smart planning and a willingness to think differently about transportation.

www.biketraffic.org

CBF is hiring. If you're a bike planner, this is the biggest opportunity in America.

We’re Growing Fatter
We should be growing smarter. U.S. Surgeon General David Satcher’s booklet, "Call to Action to Prevent and Decrease Overweight and Obesity," issued mid-December by the U.S. Public Health Service, says more than two thirds of Americans fail to meet the federally recommended 30 minutes of moderate physical activity five times a week, and more than 60% of those say they engage in no physical activity during leisure time whatsoever. Satcher’s strategies to combat the problem include communities providing safe and accessible bicycling and walking facilities. "When there are no safe places for children to play, or for adults to walk, jog, or ride a bike," says Satcher, "that’s a community responsibility." "Call to Action," a brief and highly readable booklet, is available at www.surgeongeneral.gov/
topics/obesity.

What’s a community to do? The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has unveiled a new online resource to facilitate and support smart growth development, featuring information on smart growth policies, technical tools and more. Available at www.epa.gov/ smartgrowth, the report is titled "Our Built and Natural Environments: A Technical Review of the Interactions Between Land Use, Transportation, and Environmental Quality." Allow us to add "and Being Able to See Your Toes Without a Mirror While Standing."

Bike Traffic is published by the Chicagoland Bicycle Federation, a nonprofit, volunteer advocacy organization that is improving the quality of life in Northeastern Illinois by making cycling safer, more convenient, and more fun. All material that isn’t copyrighted may be reprinted. Advertising rates available on request.

Managing Editor
Steve Buchtel

Editors
Laura Devine
Heather Convey
Nadia Oehlson
Patricia Weismantel
Dave Glowacz

Layout
Steve Buchtel

Bike parking racks 45% off of wholesale prices! The Council of Mayors is making these CMAQ-funded racks available to towns, schools, forest preserves, and anyone else who can tax the public. Tell your town's planners quick, because deadlines for rack purchase requests are Feb. 15 for the first batch, and April 1 for the second. Click here for more info.

Go With the Snow II: Winter Cycling Tip and Tricks holds class at the Gallery Cabaret, 2020 N. Oakley, 3-5 p.m. on January 13. Topics will include: winter biking attire (including the ever popular "get layered demo"); riding safely though wind, snow, ice and darkness; maintenance tips and more. Door prizes will include homemade facemasks, reflective tape, wool socks, chain lube and other items that make all season cycling a breeze. www.bikewinter.org

CBF’s Bike Town Bash is the single most swanky celebration of Chicago’s cycling culture. The date is set: CBF’s semi-formal event will be on March 9, 2002 at A. Finkl & Sons Co. A Style Show brings you velo-inspired haute couture as natty servers weave among you offering desperately delicious delicacies from Coup de Gras. Plus music, an auction, games...Beautiful, baby! Click here to go to the show!

Ride with hundreds of cyclists on a self-induced tour of city streets and neighborhoods…for FREE! Critical Mass meets at Daley Plaza underneath the Picasso at 5:30 pm, January 25. More info at chicagocriticalmass.org or bikewinter.org.

Deadlime for the Match Bite Tragic is February 5**&@@##You have been hacked by Gog & Magog, Apocalyptic Cryptics of Future’s Unseen Bretheren! The New Reality foretold as history is upon you! FATAL EXCEPTION Module 000aa PARTITION FAILURE This disk is unreadable. Do you wish to format?

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Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
Staff Directory

At 650 S. Dearborn:

Randy Neufeld
Executive Director

Pamela Brookstein
Membership Director

Steve Buchtel
Communications Director

Heather Convey
Research Coordinator

Dave Glowacz
Director of Education

Anne Nepokroeff
Office Manager

Nadia Oehlsen
Program Assistant

Lauren Strickler
Director of Events

Randy Warren
Program Director

At Chicago Department of Transportation:

Mark Counselman
Bikeways Technician

John Greenfield
Bike Rack Technician

Milda Grigaite
Outreach Assistant

Nick Jackson
Bike Lane Program Manager

T.C. O'Rourke
Bikeways Technician

Copyright 2002, Chicagoland Bicycle Federation
650 S. Clark, Ste. 300, Chicago, Ill. 60605
Ph: 312/427-3325  Fax: 312/427-4907 E-mail: cbf@biketraffic.org