urban cycling in tulsa

[ChicagoJoe]

Ponder, that's a good point. I'm starting to realize how spoiled I am up here. The city uses huge street sweepers on every street once a month (I've had a few $50 parking tickets when I failed to notice the signs []).  I guess that's a topic for another thread!

Although, it could be argued that bike lanes in Tulsa would raise consciousness about street debris, resulting in the city cleaning them! OK, maybe my idealism is starting to show.

[Ed W]

Tulsa Public Works has a maintenance backlog that keeps them behind the curve - always.  They'll never catch up and be able to do proactive maintenance.  So it comes down to setting priorities.  Which would you prefer, that the manhours go toward maintaining streets and signalized intersections, or would the manhours be better spent sweeping debris from the roadside.  From a public safety standpoint alone, the signalized intersections will be higher priority.

Couple that with the hodge-podge of agencies and governments involved in planning and maintenance, and you begin to understand why bicycle facilities can take so long to complete.  A trail may cross city, county, state, and Indian land, and each of them must approve the project.  And if the feds get involved, like FEMA at the missing bridge in SE Tulsa, it gets even more interesting.

Nothing happens fast in government.  Maybe that's a good thing.

[perspicuity85]

The quality of one's bicycling experience in Tulsa is determined on what part of the city you live in.  If you live near 81st and Memorial, for example, you will probably find it very difficult to bike anywhere except your in own subdivision or apartment complex.  If you live in Midtown, you will find most of the roads to have sidewalks, and most speed limits to be lower than the suburban roads.  The saving grace that benefits all areas is the bike trail system.  Currently, you can basically bike from NSU-BA (101st St S. & 193rd E Ave.) straight West to the river, and then north to Skiatook (146th St. N).

[brhino42]

Hi Joe,

I've read through some of the responses to your request for info.  Ed Wagner makes the most sense.  Much of the rest of what you're hearing is bogus.  deinstein is inordinately negative, though I won't speculate as to why.  Floyd welcomes a trail that was forced through an area that doesn't need one and isn't conducive to good design.  Tim Hutzinger makes an unsubstantiated claim of danger.  JDB claims stiff fines in California for touching a bike lane line with one's car tire when the California Vehicle Code actually requires motorists to merge into the bike lane before turning right.  Then you were unfortunate enough to be greeted by Paul Tay (in disguise) who told you not to move here.  I apologize for the
sorry welcome.  Despite appearances, Tulsa does have an active bicycling advocacy contingent.

Question 1:  Yes, the city's infrastructure lends itself to safe cycling.  It is essential to practice vehicular (Effective) cycling and not behave as a pedestrian.  I've met people from Oregon & Washington who don't know what to do if they don't have a trail or bike lane, so they ride on sidewalks.  If you're a sidewalk rider, no, Tulsa is not a safe place.  Of course, this is true most everywhere.

Question 2:  I ride on main streets every single day (5-7000 miles per year) for all purposes--commuting/utility, recreation, exercise, race-training, etc...  Cyclists in Oklahoma, as in most every other state, are expected to integrate with traffic, and this is very easy to do.  Most roads are amenable to this (some two lane roads with heavy traffic are not as welcoming).  However, Oklahoma cyclists typically have no training, and some will make unwarranted statements about how dangerous on-road cycling is.  Spend time lurking and posting on national forums, and you'll notice that most Americans know very little about cycling, so our community is not unique in this respect.

Question 3:  TAOBIKE, the Oklahoma Bicycling Coalition (okbike.org), Tulsa Bicycle Club, and Tulsa Wheelmen promote safe and responsible cycling.  Representatives from all of these organizations have met with local and regional government.  INCOG has a mediocre record of due diligence.  Public Works in Tulsa has not shown itself very knowledgeable about cycling.  Its primary emphasis has been on getting big government grants to build trails, sometimes forcing the trails through areas that don't work.  At a million dollars per mile, by golly, they're going to make that trail happen.  

Several of the TAOBIKE members sitting on the INCOG subcommittee vociferously encouraged on-street linkages because people were being encouraged to drive their cars to trailheads instead of bicycling to them.  Without these voices, Tulsa would have no on-street routes.  City of Tulsa engineers did not grasp the idea that cyclists need access to important destinations, not just out and back or circular trails.  The end result was okay, though we can dispute whether or not cyclists need to be told they can ride on neighborhood streets.  The same engineers also had to be actively educated about the differences between cyclists and pedestrians because they tend to group the two together.  Explore all the trails, but I would encourage using only the RiverTrails (because it is continuous and minimizes cross-traffic).  The other trails (especially the most recent additions, such as the embarrassing monstrosity of a super-sidewalk built on North Peoria) are not built to AASHTO Guidelines and have awkward intersections with major streets.  The Creek Trail is the second most embarrassing example of such improvised design.

Some bicycling advocates in Oklahoma suffer from coastal envy.  Austin, Portland, San Francisco, LA, Chicago, and New York have bike lanes.  It doesn't matter that bike lanes create problems--these Okie-bikers want to be more cosmopolitan.  But if we can get past the mindless emulation of design models that are fundamentally flawed, we can at least not make things worse, and maybe even make them better.
... check out the bike lane contrarian page for more details (tomrevay.tripod.com/projects/MassBike/BikeLanes/).
Also, a pros and cons page on facilities that does a fair job of affecting objectivity:  http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/bikelanes.html
For a broader view of bicycling friendliness, try http://www.cyclingadvocacy.com/index.php?termid=178
But I would recommend Fred Oswald's crankmail site as one of the best:  http://crankmail.com/fredoswald/bike-res.html

Hope this doesn't sound too argumentative, but other than Ed, most of these posters provided pretty unreliable info.  Best wishes for a safe move.  Ride long and prosper,

Brian Potter
League Certified Instructor #1064

quote:Originally posted by ChicagoJoe

Greetings. My wife and I are seriously considering a move from Chicago to Tulsa, and I've been reading up on the city's online buzz, trying to get a feel for the city. One part of life that I haven't heard much about is cycling within the city.  Here's what I'd like to know:

a. Do you feel that the city's infrastructure lends itself to safe cycling?
b. Do you or does anyone you know bike to/from work or school?
c. Is there any community group that promotes cycling or works with the city planners to do so?

Thanks! I hope someone can enlighten me!

[ChicagoJoe]

brhino42, no need to apologize, actually I'm pleasantly surprised by the array of opinions on the subject.

As it turns out I've been practicing vehicular riding for years but wasn't aware of the philosophy behind it. It seems like common sense to someone as experienced as yourself, however I'm wondering if the average citizen would subscribe to it. Personally I feel a strong rift between elite riders and folks who view a bike as an occasional transportation choice. The latter group doesn't spend time training or getting educated, rather they simply would like a safe way to pedal from their house to the convenient store without fighting cars for space on the street. If faced with such a challenge, my feeling is that they'll opt for the Buick.

Also, I found ttownjoe's comment pretty funny, actually.

[brhino42]

Hi Joe,

ttownjoe is the pseudonym of Paul Tay.  He's a fairly bright guy with a dark sense of humor who makes up aliases to troll unmoderated newsgroups.  He was also recently hauled to jail in OKC for charging an abortion rights demonstration with a fake machine gun.  You can do the math--or an internet search to verify.

As far as vehicular cycling goes, it shouldn't be viewed as an elitist perspective or practice any more than driving a car.  The average American is on the recent side of a cultural rift, before which cycling was a normal adult tranportational activity, and after which it is a recreational activity reserved for children.  While most of the rules on the books nationwide still support the latter, the change in attitude and the "coolness and convenience" of cars has made real knowledge about normal on-road cycling rather less common (but no less common-sense).  Alan Wachtel, a noted cycling transportation expert, suggested (and please forgive the rough paraphrase) that when we make it easier and more popular for cyclists without knowledge to operate their vehicles in an unvehicular manner, we're making it less safe for them at the same time.  Education before engineering.  Check out johnforester.com for more details--oh, and always take ttownjoe with a grain of salt.

Ride long and prosper,

BDP

quote:Originally posted by ChicagoJoe

brhino42, no need to apologize, actually I'm pleasantly surprised by the array of opinions on the subject.

As it turns out I've been practicing vehicular riding for years but wasn't aware of the philosophy behind it. It seems like common sense to someone as experienced as yourself, however I'm wondering if the average citizen would subscribe to it. Personally I feel a strong rift between elite riders and folks who view a bike as an occasional transportation choice. The latter group doesn't spend time training or getting educated, rather they simply would like a safe way to pedal from their house to the convenient store without fighting cars for space on the street. If faced with such a challenge, my feeling is that they'll opt for the Buick.

Also, I found ttownjoe's comment pretty funny, actually.

[ChicagoJoe]

brhino,

Thanks for the reply.
I agree with the principles of vehicular cycling, although I see it being practiced in addition to other proven approaches. In Chicago I'm probably using bike lanes about half the time. The rest of the time I'm concentrating on staying out of the door-zone, making sure I'm projecting my stops and turns so that motorists are aware, etc. These are survival skills, plain and simple. Skills that should be used whether I'm in a painted lane or not.

With that in mind, I'm still puzzled by yours and Ed's aversion to the creation of bike routes. The link you gave to bicycleuniverse lists 8 arguments supporting bike lanes vs. only 1 opposed. And johnforester.com features such declarations as:

The government's bicycle design standard is based on engineering incompetence.

and

Government knows that bikeways don't make cycling safer, but it uses the public superstition that they do.

I find it difficult to get past the combative tone of these sentiments long enough to gain any "training" on safer cycling, and I'm much more of a cycling enthusiast than the average American.  I'm all for education, but I also believe that the hypothetical students need a safe, well-defined government-supported surface upon which to practice.

[Ed W]

quote:Originally posted by ChicagoJoe

And johnforester.com features such declarations as:

The government's bicycle design standard is based on engineering incompetence.

and

Government knows that bikeways don't make cycling safer, but it uses the public superstition that they do.

I find it difficult to get past the combative tone of these sentiments ...

While it's true that Forester is well-educated and knowledgeable about cycling, it's also true that he's long-winded, highly opinionated, and, well, let's be kind and call his approach 'abrasive'.  Still, that doesn't reduce the impact of what he has to say.  

Statistically, the crash rates between bike laned streets and non-bike laned streets are roughly equal.  There are methodology critiques that highlight the difficulties of developing reliable studies, but that's a subject for another time.  The short version is that the differences in crash rates are relatively minor, so why spend inordinate amounts of public monies for what amounts to 'feel good' measures?  

If we're good citizens (and we are, for the most part) we want to see that our tax money is used wisely and provides the widest possible benefit.    For instance, I'd rather see signalized intersections that reliably detect bicyclists and motorcyclists than a bike lane next to an effectively inoperable signal.  I'd like to see building codes that provided for bicycle parking.  I want to see bicycling education in the schools, providing kids with an opportunity to learn the rules of the road and some critical judgment skills long before they ever get behind the wheel of a car.

We don't build roads for unskilled drivers.  Why make the assumption that all cyclists are unskilled and have to be segregated away from the 'real' traffic?  In this sense, what Forester said about engineering incompetence is entirely accurate.  If there's little statistical difference in crash rates, why go to the trouble of advocating separation?  It has more to do with making driving more convenient rather than providing a safety benefit for bicyclists.

When you get here, Joe, I'll gladly ride with you!