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.

Level of Service Disservice
IDOT’s road grading scale flunks for bicyclists
By Eric Holeman

Close your eyes and picture your dream bike commute.

You move fast, on a safe route with no car doors to attack you. Cars, if they're around at all, are well behaved, passing slowly at a respectful distance. Your fellow cyclists have all the space they need, at whatever speed they feel like moving. You can pass them when they need to, and they can pass you.

The view is pleasant, there's no glass in the roadway, and only the weather could dampen your enthusiasm for the commute–but since the road surface is optimized for your bike tires, at least a shower won't unduly affect your traction.

Most cyclists lucky enough to have such a commute would rate that imaginary route an "A." So would bicycle planners, who might work in a mention of a high "level of service." Traffic engineers at the Illinois Department of Transportation, however, would disagree.

In the world of traffic engineering, there's a lot of talk about level of service on highways, and a lot of money spent trying to improve it. For traffic engineers, level of service is a boiled-down measure of how well motorized traffic moves on a given roadway. Move more cars faster, and you increase the level of service.

On most days a traffic engineer can glance out the window at an expressway and give a grade to level of service. Free-flowing traffic with little competition for road space gets an "A." Gridlock gets an "F."

On a more technical level, most ways of evaluating roadway level of service look at how many cars are moving and how fast they're going, mixing such measurements into formulas that boil down to letter grades.

"It takes into consideration factors such as speed, comfort, and the driver’s perception" of how fast car traffic is moving, says P.S. Sriraj, a research professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Urban Transportation Center.

A-level service is pretty rare to find, at least on Chicago-area highways, says Sriraj. "You can find 'A' in the middle of the night--on a weekday." But by 4 or 5 a.m., on most expressways, service has degraded to level B.

For bikes, level of service is a concept of growing importance, yet because biker's needs are so different from drivers, the concepts of level of service are still being debated. Ed Barsotti, chairman of the League of Illinois Bicyclists, presented a paper at the Transport Chicago 2001 conference last June that described four different ways of evaluating level of service for bicycles.

One of the more basic measures Barsotti reported was the criteria Chicagoland Bicycle Federation uses in developing the bike map for greater Chicago. Chicagoland Bicycle Federation volunteers evaluate the roads for bike suitability and matched that data against traffic counts and speeds to divide area roads into categories. A green road on the map is great for biking: little traffic at low speeds. Yellow roads aren't quite as good, and red-marked roads are on the margin of cyclability–fast, heavy traffic, but with enough of a shoulder to hold your own. Faster traffic without a shoulder merits a rating of "not recommended: for bikes.

And there's the rub. For roads, more cars moving faster equals better service–but for bikes, it's better if the cars are moving slowly. This makes it difficult for city planners to balance the desires of bicyclists for better bike facilities against traffic planners trying to keep traffic moving–or, if you will, keep the level of service from getting any worse.

In Chicago, improvements in bicycle facilities are often funded though federal grants that are administered by the Illinois Department of Transportation. For those facilities, it's necessary to show IDOT that putting in the bike facility won't degrade the existing level of service for cars on the route. "If level of service [for cars] will go down when a bike lane goes in, then the lane won't go in," said Beth Meier, a planner with the Chicago Department of Transportation.

CDOT is in the process of completing a pilot project that will evaluate the ways various bicycle accommodations affect level of service. When completed, the project will help IDOT evaluate the impact of bike lanes on the existing car traffic, and hopefully streamline approvals of future IDOT-funded bike facilities.

That may not add up to a cyclist's dream commute, but as Chicago's bike facilities grow, it should mean more of your cycling miles are spent in A-level conditions.

You can calculate the Bicycle Level of Service of your regular bike route with Ed Barsotti’s BLOS Calculator at biketraffic.org. Interesting and easy, the BLOS can be used to encourage your local government for better bicycle accommodations. Try it out! Then pay Ed back by visiting League of Illinois Bicyclists’ web site at bikelib.org. –Editor

Bike to the Future
The 2030 plan needs your bike project ideas TODAY
By Derrick James

Concerned about getting squeezed by cars on roads full of speeding traffic? Want your favorite trail extended to the local shopping center or office park? If the roadblocks keeping you from riding anywhere in Chicagoland get you down, (or knock you over?) then you’ll want to know about Shared Path 2030.

Shared Path 2030 is the moniker given to the long-range transportation plan being developed for Chicagoland. The Chicago Area Transportation Study, or CATS, is the subsidiary of IDOT tasked with charting the region’s tax-supported spending on big-ticket transportation projects. CATS is in the initial stages of developing Shared Path 2030. The hard work of Chicagland Bicycle Federation has secured cyclists a seat at the table. So that seat can be a true voice for the needs of cyclists in the future, we need your ideas now!

If you want to improve your cycling environment, get your ideas for transportation projects to: Derrick@biketraffic.org or mail to Derrick James, CATS Highway Working Group, 650 S. Clark, #300, Chicago 60605, or fax 312/427-4907.

Include a project title, description, location, including end points, and how many folks you think would use it. Your ideas will help insure the region not only prepares for a future where cyclists are welcome on our roads, but also corrects past mistakes that make it difficult for us to get around today.

For more information on the CATS planning process, please check their web site at www.catsmpo.org or call them at 312/793-3456.

Durbin Favors Domestic Exploration...
of Bicycling

U.S. Senator Dick Durbin’s (D-Illinois) Conserve By Bike amendment to the nation’s energy bill recognizes bicycling as a potential resource for energy conservation and reduced reliance on foreign oil suppliers.

The amendment calls for two iniatives:

1. Establish a Conserve by Bike pilot program with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). The NHTSA would facilitate ten pilot projects nationwide designed to provide education and marketing tools to convert car trips to bike trips. The ten projects will receive on average $500,000 each, and require a 20% local match. The NHTSA would get $300,000 to coordinate, publish and publicize the results.

2. Authorize $750,000 for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences to conduct a research project on converting car trips to bike trips. The study will consider: 1) what car trips Americans can reasonably be expected to make by bike, given such factors as weather, land use, and bicycle infrastructure; 2) what energy savings would result if these trips were converted from car to bike; 3) the cost-benefit analysis of bicycle infrastructure investments; and 4) what factors could encourage more car trips to be replaced with bike trips.

"Most federal funding for bicycling goes for concrete and asphalt," says Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s Executive Director Randy Neufeld. "Marketing and promotions funds are harder to come by, but they would maximize the benefits of investment in trails, lanes and bike racks. It is significant that Sen. Durbin has chosen to propose these amendments in the energy bill to elevate bicycling as a serious solution."

You can read the amendment's language at biketraffic.org.

Plans for Spans
Bicyclist’s bridge razing pushes city towards open-deck fix
By Steve Buchtel

"I have always been leery of the bridges over the Chicago River because of the way my bike shimmies as it passes in and out of the slits running in the same direction as the wheels" says Chicagoland Bicycle Federation member Kathy Schubert. On January 1, while riding across a wet LaSalle St. bridge, "I made the mistake of trying to change lanes."

The bare metal grating laid open Kathy’s elbow, which took three stitches to close, and her knee, which required fifteen. The stitches also laid bare the irony in America’s best big city for bicycling (according to Bicycling magazine) maintaining such dangerous bridges instead doing the obvious: filling in the bridge decks with concrete.

Kathy fired a letter off to CDOT Commissioner Miguel D’Escoto, expressing her concern that Mayor Daley’s vision to make Chicago one of the world’s great cycling cities would never be realized "unless these bridges are modified to make cycling across them safer." And her story posted to the Chicago Critical Mass listserv encouraged the bike community—where many similar stories are found—to follow her lead.

It’s textbook grassroots advocacy: one person, fed up, organizes a community to affect change. The letters flowing into Commissioner d’Escoto’s office illicited an official response from the commissioner, who posted an open letter to the Critical Mass listserv and asked that it be posted on Chicagoland Bicycle Federation’s web site as well. d’Escoto acknowledges that the open decks—"those in which the steel deck, or roadway, has not been filled in with concrete"—can be "a challenge for bicyclists." Some bridges are slated to be fully or partially paved through CDOT"s mutli-year bridge rehabilitation project. But the solution that most of the letters suggested—filling in all bridge decks with concrete—he says isn’t possible.

"Chicago’s bascule bridges work as the French word "bascule" implies," says d’Escoto, "like a teeter-totter. In order for the bridges to raise and lower properly, the weight of the decks and steel over the water must be offset, or ‘counterbalanced,’ by counterweights located below the roadway. In many cases, the existing bridges are at their limits for adding more counterweight to balance the increased loads of a closed deck."

Instead, "CDOT is looking into a host of other possible options," he says. "Our staff is gathering information on solutions and strategies adopted by cities around the world. We will evaluate the feasibility of those options to see which could work best in Chicago."

Chicagoland Bicycle Federation thinks d’Escoto’s reluctance to order all bridge decks filled immediately is fair, and we’re encouraged by his efforts to find a solution. We’ll take advantage of Kathy’s Schubert’s successful push to put safe bridges for bicycling on the Commissioner’s plate, and follow up with CDOT in the June 2002 Bike Traffic to report on its progress towards improving the squirrely, slippery open deck surfaces for bike riders.

In the meantime, d’Escoto encourages bicyclists during wet weather to use bridges that have had their decks fully filled with concrete. Those bridges are: Washington, Lake, Franklin/Orleans, Wabash, State and Michigan-upper level. Also the Randolph St. bridge sports concrete filler across its span in the bike lane.

To join the Chicago Critical Mass listserv, follow the links at chicagocriticalmass.org.–Editor

Federation Fete:
A Ferrous Fiesta at Finkl’s
By John Greenfield

Why hold this year’s Chicagoland Bicycle Federation Bike Town Bash on the warehouse floor of the A. Finkl & Sons Co. steel foundry? Steel is real, folks.

The Federation briefly considered throwing its annual handlebar hoe-down at the Schroeder Aluminum Works. But in the end it was decided that the steel mill offered the same time-tested advantages as the steel bicycle frame.

"In my book, a steel frame is more comfortable than aluminum," says bike racer Andy Gregg. Likewise, the Bash, Saturday, March 9, from 8 p.m. to midnight, will provide a cushy ride for all who climb on board.

True, the party will take place in a gigantic, raw industrial space which normally houses hundreds of pieces of hardened steel, weighing as much as 60,000 pounds each. The plant, which has been located on Cortland Avenue and the river since 1879, produces 100,000 tons of the gray stuff a year.

But those who attended last year’s shindig at SRAM know the Bash is a cross between the Tour da Chicago bike race and Chicago Social magazine. This year’s theme, "Where Steel Meets Style," takes that gnarly/swanky dichotomy to the next level.

Surrounded by sandblasted brick walls and massive wooden support columns, hundreds of elegantly dressed cyclists and socialites will enjoy cocktails and canapés. Members of the bike industry and local artists are donating products and pieces of work to be showcased in a fashion show by vogue-ing velocipede vixens, followed by silent and live auctions. It’ll be just as classy as Lou Rawls’ Night of A Thousand Stars, and far more pleasant than the Stairmaster race.

"Steel is easy to recycle," adds Gregg. "And I’ve read it’s less harsh on the environment than aluminum." Just as Carnegie’s clay-doh is the ecologically correct material for bicycle tubing, the steel mill was a no-brainer for a PC party venue.

"We do a lot of recycling," says facility superintendent Peter Nechipor. "And Mr. Finkl was way ahead of his time in terms of environmentalism. He knew producing steel requires a lot of oxygen. So we support environmental causes and we’ve planted close to four million trees in Illinois and Wisconsin. We’re actually putting more oxygen into the atmosphere than we’re taking out."

Something to feel good about while you’re nibbling on cheesecake, sipping a dry martini and checking out all the good-looking frames.

Get your name on the guest list now!

I don’t think necessity is the mother of invention - invention, in my opinion, arises directly from idleness, possibly also from laziness. To save oneself trouble.
- Agatha Christie, An Autobiography. Pt. III, Growing Up.

Who needs this SHT?
Not me
By Patrick O’Grady

IN A MULTIMILLION-DOLLAR FEAT of overengineering that dwarfs the best efforts of Microsoft, NASA and Rube Goldberg, inventor Dean Kamen has unveiled his Segway Human Transporter (SHT), a 65-pound, $3,000 "smart" scooter that can travel a dozen miles on a dime’s worth of electricity.

Drooling tweekers, geek-boys and pixel-twiddlers worldwide have eagerly awaited the unveiling of Kamen’s SHTheap, which he told The New York Times may answer our longing for "a transportation choice that fills the niche between walking and driving."

Trouble is, notes Paul Saffo, director of California’s Institute for the Future, "it’s about $2,000 too expensive and 40 pounds too heavy." And about 200 years too late. That’s how long the bicycle’s been around.

One wonders what sent Kamen careening off the tracks and deep into the SHT, seeking the answer to a question that no one was asking. A 49-year-old high-school dropout whose inventions brought him the National Medal of Technology from President Bubba, Kamen has cranked out a series of marvels, including the first insulin pump, the first portable kidney dialysis machine and a chair-climbing motorized wheelchair.

This last was the progenitor of the holy SHT, which Wired News says incorporates 10 microprocessors, custom software, two batteries and a SHTload of gyroscopes, all of them intended to work together to translate a rider’s body movements into motion and direction.

Ho, ho. Anyone who’s ever tried to program his first cell phone, recover data from a smoking hard drive or divine the significance of a "check engine" light without expensive professional assistance should be looking forward to the vicissitudes of owning one of these bad boys.

Imagine the joy of squatting on a San Francisco sidewalk in a driving rain, troubleshooting an extension conflict in your yuppiemobile’s software - call it the SHThead - that makes the damned thing spin in erratic circles like a fogbound wino cadging quarters.

Visualize the cardiac benefits of humping this 65-pound wheeled Delco up a flight of stairs (unlike its daddy the wheelchair, the SHT doesn’t do stairs).

Envision the thrill of dodging SUVs on a machine that takes its directional cues from your movements, whether inspired by reason or terror. Because while the SHT is intended for sidewalks, it seems sure to be exiled to the streets in those metro areas which bar all motorized vehicles - along with bicycles, scooters and skateboards—from what are, after all, intended to be walkways, for pedestrians.

Now, maybe I’m wrong. I find myself looking askance at many a notion held dear by mainstream America, which is said to adore both George Bush and John Ashcroft - the first a born-again towel-snapper who considers his popular-vote defeat a mandate for government by executive fiat, and the second a neo-Puritan who thinks the Constitution was only a series of suggestions, talking points jotted down by the Founding Fathers, and who couldn’t win a straight-up election against a dead guy.

After all, this electric horseSHT has the blessing of whiz kids like Apple’s Steve Jobs, whose own recent brainstorms include a $400 MP3 player, and Jeff Bezos of Amazon.com, a company which considers a third-quarter loss of $170 million tremendous news, simply because it lost $241 million in Q3 2000. This is like trying to put a positive spin on getting your huevos cut off by announcing that you can still dream about getting laid.

More significantly, the SHT is not just so much cow pie in the sky - Kamen has accumulated $90 million in startup money from the likes of Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity, which could have simply bought Schwinn/GT for $86 mil’ and spent the leftovers on public-service ads touting the bicycle as a "human transporter." But they didn’t. And thus, any number of agencies and companies, from the U.S. Postal Service to Michelin North America, will be playing with their own SHT by early next year, according to The Times.

Jesus wept. What a long and winding road Americans will travel to avoid taking a little healthful exercise on an unpretentious mechanical device that has proven its utility and reliability over the better part of two centuries. The bicycle is a marvel of simplicity, inexpensive and long-lived, and most of its idiosyncrasies—flat tires, snapped cables, broken chains—can be resolved in minutes with a few simple tools. You can even spend $3,000 on one if you like, and the only way it will weigh 65 pounds is if you store your Krugerrands in the seat tube. But it doesn’t have an engine, and it requires your active participation, and thus we have a $90 million project to replace it with a device whose owner’s manual is certain to have a "Troubleshooting" section the size of the Beijing Yellow Pages.

Happily, if my own lamentable experience with high-tech devices is any guide, the popular enthusiasm for this scooter on steroids should dissipate once it makes its maiden voyage from Fantasyland into the real world.

And then, instead of the "oohs" and "ahhs" we’re hearing now, the chorus will be the one we’ve heard for years as frustrated consumers stared dumbly at balky microwave ovens, VCRs and laptops:

"Oh, man ... I don’t need this SHT."

This screed previously appeared in VeloNews. You can get more of O’Grady at maddogmedia.com. (c) 2001 by Patrick O'Grady/Mad Dog Media. All rights and most lefts reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, redistributed, laser-printed, photocopied, crocheted into a sampler, spray-painted on an overpass, shared in whispers in the back row of an adult theatre, shouted from the rooftops, translated into Squinch, or communicated via telepathy without the permission of and the hefty payment to a heavily armed, whiskey-addled cyclo-cross addict who knows where you live. Bonehead shysters and the simpletons who employ them, take note: The opinions expressed on the DogPage contain toxic quantities of hyperbole, satire, parody and humor. Pah-ro-dee. Hyyuuu-mor. Acquire a sense of same or read at your own risk.

Al Stern
Recovery Fund

Fitzpatrick Sentence: 45 years. On February 20, Carnel Fitzpatrick was sentenced to 45 years for his road rage murder of bike rider Thomas McBride. The judge said that Fitzpatrick could have shrugged off their earlier near-collision and drove away, but didn’t. remarking that Fitzpatrick’s use of his SUV to kill McBride was as "intentional as it gets." More at biketraffic.org.

The County of DuPage broke ground on February 19 for the 46-mile Southern DuPage Region Trail. Completion of the trail will link Aurora; Naperville; Woodridge; Darien; Bolingbrook; Downers Grove; Westmont; Clarendon Hills; Willowbrook; Burr Ridge; Hinsdale, and unincorporated areas of Naperville, Lisle and Downers Grove. The county will construct 26 miles of the new system at an estimated cost of $8 million, with the remainder picked up by local communities and the county’s Forest Preserve District. Engineering is underway for most of the segments, with some construction beginning this spring. Call the county at 630/682-7413 for more information.

Special 8 Saved! The DuPage County Forest Preserve District voted unanimously to acquire the Special 8, a botanically and geologically unique parcel of land along the Great Western Trail in Glen Ellyn. The Illinois Prairie Path (IPP) not-for-profit group organized a successful grass-roots (pun intended) campaign to lobby county board members to preserve the land from development. The IPP also donated $10,000 to the county to help purchase the land. So reward them for it: consider joining them at www.ipp.org.

Powerful argument for riding a bike. Chicagoland Bicycle Federation member Peter Chen has posted his famous Bike Power Calculator at biketraffic.org/power.html. Accounting for esoterica like tire width, air temperature, and your position on the bike, Peter’s Calculator can show you in hard numbers how many calories you burn, how much fat that equals, and how much pollution the same trip in a car would create. Future updates will include how many Dove Bars you can eat.

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
Patricia Weismantel
Dave Glowacz

Layout
Steve Buchtel

If I’m not on the guest list for the Bike Town Bash, Herschel, I’ll take everything. You’ll lose it all, Herschel: the house on Martha’s Vinyard, the Miró, your precious ‘75 Chateau Lafite. It’s quite simple: if I can’t be on your arm at A. Finkle’s March 9th, your head will be on my wall. You can reserve tickets for us at biketraffic.org. Mother never liked you, Herschel. I’ll be in the garden, brushing the hounds.

Review CDOT’s Bike Program Plans for your neighborhood! North Side public meeting to review bike lane plans is March 5 at Sulzer library, 4455 N. Lincoln; West Side meeting is March 13 at Garfield Park Field House, and South Side is March 19 at South Shore Cultural Center. All times 6:30-7:30 pm. Sounds kind of like a Moby tune. I look at my friends, and we start to ride.

Kind of like the day after prom. On March 10, what a nice way to recover from the Bike Town Bash: kick it at the 2002 Bike Winter Film Festival, 1-9 p.m. Fat acets Multimedia Video Theatre, 1517 W. Fullerton in Chicago. Screenings include Return of the Scorcher, Taken for a Ride, America’s Black Bicycle Corps, 2 Seconds and more. Details at bikewinter.org

Bike parking racks 45% off of wholesale! Public entities (‘cept fer Elvis) can load up on bike parking cheap through the Council of Mayors’ Bike Rack Program. Two deadlines for orders: February 15 and April 1. Call Chicagoland Bicycle Federation or look yourself at www.biketraffic.org.

Deadline for the May Bike Traffic is April 5. To file for an extension, use form EXT-1040. Or, as usual, simply grovel.

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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

Robb Zbierski
Special Events Assistant

Rosie Newton
Bicycling Ambassador

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