Friday, September 14, 2018

More anti-cyclist infrastructure on the Cotton Valley Trail

As if riders didn't have enough to handle at the rail crossings, now they've added these slalom gates. Gossip says that the intent is to guide riders to the exact crossing point. The goofy yellow paint and the "no shit Sherlock" arrows are more unhelpful attempts to deflect liability by belaboring the obvious.

I will say that I have observed riders winging through the crossings at stupidly oblique angles and foolishly high speeds. The ones I saw managed to pull it off, but they obviously had no idea how lucky they were. So the gates prevent a rider from slicing off the corner. But they constrict traffic during heavy use periods, when the path can be a log jam of pedestrians and riders. And any minor error in alignment -- that you might have been able to correct -- risks catching a pedal on those orange posts. They're springy, to reduce the chances of impalement, but not so floppy that you could hook a pedal and just ride through it.

At least one crossing also has the heavy wooden sign post inconveniently -- not to say dangerously -- close to the crossing itself. Cyclists dismount indeed. That crossing is further out, closer to Bryant Road.

The intent is always to get riders to dismount. A rider who isn't riding isn't bothering anyone. That's true on roads or paths. But it isn't really true when a knot of pedestrians and riders tangles up in the confined space of a crossing that was already too small before the addition of the slalom gates.

The drive-to-ride crowd can drive somewhere else. Mountain biking has become entirely drive-to-ride. As dedicated trail networks proliferate for purely recreational forms of cycling, large blocs of the pedaling population are neatly removed from the traffic mix and feel less need to advocate for the freedom to ride everywhere.

Long distance transportation cycling isn't highly practical for the vast majority of people, but infrastructure should still be built to accommodate riders no matter what. A rider might make short hops on a long road, and long distance riders have rights, too. Most attention gets paid to built-up areas with denser populations. This compartmentalized approach is as wrong as wildlife management plans that focus only on one species, or too small a piece of habitat. Any trail that connects two relatively major points of interest needs to be considered from the transportation as well as recreation angle. Any trail that can be connected to the rest of the transportation network is part of that network.

2 comments:

  1. "Cyclists dismount" signs along trails & paths eventually cause cyclists to simply abandon the trail and return to the highway. These signs may be posted in the interest of "safety" or -more likely- to reduce any liability for badly designed infrastructure, but rarely make any real sense. On my area's trails, i tend to ignore such signage.

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  2. I do my best to ignore them as well. Once you know the little dance move to get through the crossing without getting "railed," it becomes second nature. Just don't get overconfident, and be aware of changing conditions. Because the dominant user group is not the most numerous, the majority of users have to bend to their will. The rail car club managed to snag priority. In all likelihood, if the cyclists raise too much of a fuss, the rail car people will just pull their strings at the state and get bikes excluded. This proves that it isn't always about the economy, because thousands of riders use that path in the summer, compared to dozens of rail cars.

    The new orange posts crowd the crossings. I'd be surprised if the people who placed them do much riding. But there is also a contingent of trail organizers who do ride, but who are completely obedient to the rail car contingent. I often wonder how much those organizers ride on their own trail anymore.

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