Tom Burrows
September 23, 2014
updated August 27, 2018
My recommended improvements for the 2040 version of the RTP are:
Promote competent, safe cycling instead of merely trying to coax as many people as possible out of their cars and onto bikes they don't know how to ride properly.
Promote sound bicycle traffic engineering principles instead of bikeways, which are based only on misguided ideology and create problems for both bicyclists and motorists. The ideal roads for cycling simply have a lane wide enough to be shared by bicycles and motorists, without any bike lane markings.
Respect private property rights.
Replace "chipseal," which is almost like broken glass, with conventional tar-and-gravel.
Recognize that for many reasons, including our extreme summer/winter temperatures and year-round ultraviolet, it is not likely that non-motorized transportation will reduce the need for motorized transportation.
Where I previously lived, and had better roads for cycling, I accumulated over 20 years of bicycle commuting experience. I was able to successfully coexist with motorized traffic because 1) I followed the rules of the road and 2) I used a set of safe cycling strategies known as vehicular cycling. The "bible" of vehicular cycling and bicycle commuting is John Forester's book Effective Cycling.
Forester is also the foremost critic of bikeways (bike paths and bike lanes):
"The government's program for bicycle transportation is based on attracting cyclists who don't want to ride according to law and believe that bikeways eliminate that need." ... "Today, the governmental program for bicycle transportation pretends to make cycling so easy, by bikeways, that cyclists no longer need to learn how to operate as drivers of vehicles." [Effective Cycling (7th Edition), pp. 322, 325]
A high percentage of cyclists here of all ages ride like toddlers, thinking that "urban trails" reduce the need to learn to ride a bicycle legally and safely as a vehicle.
In addition, bike lanes, which are the centerpiece of Mesa County's "governmental program for bicycle transportation," are being widely shunned by the cyclists themselves. Cyclists depend on the sweeping action of car tires to keep the road clean; and I routinely observe cyclists avoiding the bike lane and riding in or next to the auto lane to stay in the clean part of the roadway, forcing motorized traffic to go into oncoming traffic to get around them. It is difficult to say who suffers the most from this approach to bike transportation, the cyclists or the motorists.
For further details on how to improve bikeability of streets and roads, please see my white paper on "Improvements for Bikeable Streets and Roads in Mesa County" at thomasaburrows.com/trails/biking.html and John Forester's papers at johnforester.com/articles.htm