We Won’t Cede The Road

A car struck my bike, with my 3‑year-old son in the attached child seat, as I was riding eastbound on Edgewood Avenue toward Edgewood Park. The driver, to avoid slowing down for another car turning left, cut from the left lane into the right lane and banged into my handlebars, knocking us toward the curb.

Then, in December, I was rear-ended on my bike by a kindly 85 year-old lady who apparently did not see me stopped at a red light. She drove right into my back tire, mangling it in the process.

Yet, I was alive. More importantly, so was my son.

I was well aware in both instances how much worse it could have been. For many cyclists, similar encounters end with battered bones; for some, they end in death. The collisions were a reminder of how much better our roads could be. For while I do not believe either driver intended to strike me, the collisions were not accidents. They were products of choices – choices by individuals and choices by society. (Click here for a similar harrowing tale by a mom-cyclist.)

Like most cyclists, I drive, too. I get it. We are often in a hurry and we trade safety for shortcuts. But often, we do so for no rational reason. The first driver who hit me advanced no faster for it. He ended up waiting at the same light cycle he would have waited at anyway, had he chosen to drive responsibly.

Of course, the individual choices run both ways. I chose to be on the road with my son on a bike. And there is no doubt that car drivers are more likely to survive collisions with a bike than cyclists, just as it is safer to be on a bus than in a car. So there is an understandable inclination to look at cyclists and deem their activity reckless.

However, the truth is a little more complicated. Mile for mile, biking is actually safer than driving. Moreover, the health benefits of biking outweigh the risks; indeed biking is good not only for individual health but also good for public health. It’s good for the economy and it’s good for the environment. Foregoing these benefits in the face of antisocial driving only cedes the public square to the worst actors. I won’t do that.

Besides, I love it—the open air, experiencing the city from outside the steel box on my way to work, talking with people on the street, at red lights, anywhere. And sharing these experiences with my kids. I am not alone, especially in New Haven, the per capita leader in bike commuting in the Northeast.

Spaces Makes A Difference

But, as a society, we could choose to make cycling safer, both through the better use of space and better law enforcement. Cycling (and walking) in the United States is six times more dangerous than it is in Germany and the Netherlands. Bike lanes, which are common in both those countries, cut cycling injuries in half. Protected bike lanes, which have a physical barrier between the road and the lane, cut injuries by 90 percent.

In places like New Haven, where a number of travel lanes are already too wide for the posted speed limit, reallocation of space can have significant safety benefits. An example is Elm Street’s new design. For years, Elm Street between York and College was the worst part of my morning commute. But the city reorganized the existing space on the street to create a bike lane, making this stretch far safer for cyclists. It is currently a stretch of my commute that I now look forward to. 

This can be done elsewhere. Currently, one lane at the corner of Elm and Church is closed to all traffic and, even with the new bike lane along the Green, this has caused no traffic problems – even at rush hour.

Edgewood Avenue remains highly problematic. Speeding has been a longtime complaint of residents, particularly in the education corridor between Troup School and Amistad Academy. This is an area full of children on bikes, on skateboards and on foot, many of them heading to or from school. The road is never congested with traffic and the lanes are too wide for the traffic that does use it. And, as studies show, when given wide spaces, cars speed.

Moreover, this wasted space could be used for other activities. In fact, it often already is. A cyclist or skateboarder heading the wrong way along this section is a daily sight. It is also extremely dangerous. The city would benefit from reducing the driving lane to one lane, moving the parked cars from the right to the middle lane and making the right hand side of the road safe for bikers and skateboarders heading in either direction. (Example here and here.)

Ticket Speeders!

Reallocation of space along Edgewood Avenue and in other problematic corridors would be a significant start at addressing road safety. But law enforcement must be another prong. Elm City Cycling routinely gets complaints about incidents in which bikers are struck by cars and the drivers are not ticketed or cited.

This is not a problem unique to New Haven. Unfortunately, it is all too common here. In September, Elm City Cycling was contacted by a cyclist who was passing through a green light when he was struck by a car turning left at the corner of Prospect and Trumbull, throwing the biker onto the hood and mangling his bike. The car was clearly at fault. Yet, despite a witness who corroborated the cyclist’s account and a driver who didn’t dispute the facts, the police did not ticket the driver.

Although bikes are legally entitled to use the roads just as cars do, in practice cyclists do not enjoy the equal protection of the law. 

This double standard is no more prevalent than in the discussion of cycling that occurs, often in these pages, in which neighbors berate cyclists for flouting traffic laws. Indeed, there is no question that such flouting occurs. This is dangerous, and it’s a problem. But it’s hardly more prevalent than near universal jaywalking by pedestrians and speeding by motorists. However, when pedestrians and bikers disregard traffic laws, they take their lives into their own hands; when automobiles do so, they risk others’ lives.

The speed limit is just a farce until it is enforced. The only time I’ve seen someone stopped for speeding in New Haven was when I was stopped in 2006. But I see dangerous driving daily. Cars speed through our streets with impunity, while city workers swarm the sidewalks ready to ticket any car at an expired meter. Why? The city retains the parking penalties. The state gets the money from speeding tickets and only remits a $10 surcharge to the municipalities. This doesn’t give the city enough incentive to enforce traffic laws.

New Haven’s police department is busy, and it is difficult to incentivize speed enforcement when the city receives less for each traffic ticket than it does for each parking ticket. However, if your child is killed by a speeding car or killed by some other illegal act, he or she is dead regardless. When cars travel at 40 mile per hour, pedestrian collisions are fatal 85 percent of the time; at 20 mph, car-pedestrian collisions are fatal only 5% of the time. Pedestrian safety, bike safety and speeding traffic should be a priority.

New Haven cannot increase the portion of the penalties it receives from traffic tickets without help from the state legislature. And the push for red-light cameras, spearheaded largely by New Haven residents, appears to have stalled in Hartford. However, the city arguably could impose processing fees to offset the cost of enforcement – as long as those fees are “reasonably proportionate to cost of administering and enforcing the [corresponding] ordinance.” Under this scenario, the police could penalize the speeder by issuing the driver a ticket and then also charge the driver a fee for having required police intervention.

As far as I know, there are no other Connecticut towns that use their power to charge municipal fees in such a way. But, no other Connecticut town is New Haven. 11.2 percent of our residents commute to work on foot. Another 3.8 percent do so by bike. None of these numbers include recreational bikers or walkers or the high student population that lives, studies, and works in New Haven. And these numbers are far above the national average. New Haven’s share of commuters who bike to work is equivalent to the share in San Francisco; its pedestrian commuter percentage is higher.  In fact, New Haven’s bike and pedestrian percentages are only slightly behind Washington, D.C.’s, a city that has earned plaudits in recent years for its bicycle infrastructure.

Nonetheless, government officials are often loath to employ uncommon, creative solutions to the problems they face, and understandably: Change carries risk. For example, a court could find such a processing fee to be really a penalty by another name and void the city ordinance. 

Progress requires risk taking. In Connecticut, there are more people killed by automobiles than by guns. According to UConn’s Connecticut Crash Data Repository, there were approximately 119 pedestrians hit by cars in New Haven in 2012 and more than 5,000 car collisions total (including cars hitting property). A few relatively small changes can save lives.

Making safer roads is also an issue of economic justice. According to census data, cyclists are disproportionately from the lowest economic quartile, despite the popular perception that cyclists are urban yuppies. Moreover, cyclists with incomes under $30,000 a year are almost twice as likely to be injured than higher income bikers. By making biking around town safer—and thus more attractive—we can also help alleviate the costs associated with commuting for residents who would take up biking. This is good for the economy, good for public health, and good for the city.

Today, New Haven is lucky to have an incoming director of traffic and transportation who, like his predecessor, understands the importance of these infrastructure reforms. And the city’s approach to policing has been consistently progressive on many other issues, from Project Longevity to its reentry programs. The mayor herself has supported vulnerable victims legislation at the state level and stated that the city needs to “make it easier for people get around the city on bicycle and foot.” Cities around the world are implementing Vision Zero policies, aiming for no traffic fatalities in their jurisdictions. We can, too. And in the process we can make this great city an even better place to live in for everyone – workers, students and parents toting their kids in bike seats.

Liam Brennan, a federal prosecutor, lives in Westville.