Saturday, November 28, 2009

Yard and Water Waste


Here's a strategically placed pile of yard waste that not only blocks the bike lane, but also prevents motorized traffic from smoothly merging into the right turn lane. A nice added touch is the enormous amount of water being wasted due to runoff.

Picture was taken in early August this year. Location: next to an apartment complex on the Southeast corner of the intersection at Covell and Sycamore.

Friday, November 27, 2009

This pic is from December 2006, before these lanes were double striped. Kind of shows the problem, doesn't it? Not only are the bike riders at risk of bike-eating branches, a few branches are lying in wait for pedestrians on the sidewalk.

Location: In front of the high school on 14th Street, just across the street from the church featured in the previous post.

This is the image that finally inspired the creation of this blog. It is a bicycle rider's view of the bike lane on 14th Street in front of St. James Catholic Church. The picture was taken yesterday, Thankgiving Day, at 4 pm. To get some perspective as to the size of those piles, cars can be parked to the right of the right bike lane stripe without intruding on the bike lane.

Davis used to have single striped bike lines, and yard waste like this blocked the lanes all the time. In the last couple of years, we've been trying out double striping on major arterials, just to prevent this kind of situation. Apparently, some people (churches?) don't think cyclist safety is important if they've got leaves to dispose of. Imagine the reaction if those piles were in the middle of the (car) traffic lane. The police would be there within minutes.

Introduction

Davis, California is a relatively small University town in the middle of California's Central Valley, near Sacramento. Davis is the home of the University of California, Davis, and is also renowned for its bicycle friendliness. In fact, Davis was awarded the highest recognition by the League of American Bicyclists, designating Davis as a Platinum Level Bicycle Friendly City.

With this honor, Davis now has a reputation to uphold. Are we perfect? Not quite. In spite of all the progress made over the last 40 years, even Davis still has some rough edges. The idea for this blog came from running across (many times literally) a number of those rough edges. Perhaps publicizing them might help progress to a more finely polished bicycle friendly City.

Thus, the name of this blog. Welcome to our blemishes!