Today’s Journal North Journal Santa Fe Santa Fe Journal* has a rather enraging story about an artist, Paul Pascarella, who, after getting hit by a passing vehicle, got a ticket for walking on the wrong side of the road. From the Journal (subscription required):

Pascarella was walking on a narrow road recently when he was hit by the side mirror of a passing pickup. Pascarella was walking with traffic, not facing it — which, as Pascarella later found out in the hospital emergency room, is a definite no-no.

A State Police officer visited him at Holy Cross Hospital in Taos, heard his story, read him the state statute on which side of the road pedestrians are supposed to use and gave him a warning citation.

Speaking to the Journal, NMSP spokesman Peter Olson didn’t even come close to acknowledging that the officer might’ve made a mistake in judgment.
There’s a sort-of-happy ending (spoiler: the guy who got hit gets a new jacket), but the real takeaway from the story is how terrible things are for anyone who’s not driving a car—preferably the largest four-wheel drive vehicle available—in Northern New Mexico. Albuquerque is doing more for cyclists and pedestrians than Santa Fe. You’d think local officials might find that embarrassing.

Instead, the general attitude is not too different from the state cop who cited a pedestrian for getting hit by a car. Or from this guy:

Last night, I went to pick up some groceries at Sunflower (sorry, Zane; sorry, Co-Op—but Sunflower sells beer). After locking up my bike, I saw a scene brewing in the parking lot. An older woman who’d been crossing the parking lot with her bags was scolding a driver in a sedan who’d nearly hit her. “Pedestrians have the right of way,” she said. Which happens to be true. A middle-aged man who’d seen what happened stood there to back her up.

The driver, who was younger and bigger than everyone around, was having none of it. He got out of his car, shouted at the woman—”I wasn’t going to too fast or nothing!”—and got close enough to the man to throw a punch. That looked like where things were headed, and I tried to get in between them, telling the driver to cool it.

I was thinking, “What kind of shitbag almost runs over a woman carrying her groceries, then gets out of his car not to apologize and see if she’s OK, but to brawl with the witnesses?”

The lady had a guess. As the driver was getting back into his car, she spat at him, “Go home and beat your wife!” To which he replied, “White trash bitch!” and drove away to points unknown.

Even if this dude wasn’t a wife-beater, he clearly had an anger problem. But, as any daily car commuter can attest, simply being on the road and behind the wheel in traffic is enough to make any normally sane person gnash his teeth and curse at total strangers. There must be a better way. Matter of fact, there is. It’s just that nobody in Santa Fe is talking about it. The most recent episode of NOW on PBS focuses on the transportation infrastructure in Denmark. You’d think a story like that would be a snooze, but it’s frankly inspirational. Watch it and ask, “Why can’t we do that?”

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* I’ve noticed some confusion about what the Albuquerque Journal’s special Santa Fe edition is actually called. The website is no help, see?

Or is it…

Until I got an email from the editor, Mark Oswald, I hadn’t heard “Santa Fe Journal,” but it’s his paper, so we’ll just go with that.

Day 1

The current state of the River Trail

Admission: I almost always ride my bike to work, but rarely do I ride my bicycle.

In other words, I take my motorcycle to work as often as possible, so I do better than the average car with my 55 to 60 mpg, my small parking footprint and relatively few raw resources required in the manufacture and upkeep of my transportation. If anyone is wondering, Ride to Work Day for motorcycles, is July 15.

Today, May 11, of course is the first day of Bike to Work Week (I guess they need a week, ’cause they move so slow compared to motorcycles), and I still did not ride my bicycle to work. Like everyone else who failed, I have an excuse: 2.3 million errands and meetings to fit into a very small time span and a very large space span.

Internal combustion aided and abetted me and I feel OK about it.

But I do plan to honor Bike to Work Week for the remaining four days. 4.7 miles each way is not a big deal in a normal city, but in Santa Fe, it can feel like a death wish. Still, ever since being an avid rider and amateur racer in the 1980s, I have remained a big bicycle dork, so I’m looking foward to it.

In fact, my big dilemma is wheter to take the fixie–fast and light–the single speed coaster brake with the big farmers market basket–utilitarian with a touch of hooligan–or the 29er–able to roll over cars at will.

All are single speeds, naturally: it’s pretty flat around here and I lost my taste for riding up steep mountain roads a long time ago. Continue reading »

Hot on the heels of SFR’s own commuter survey, the Santa Fe Metropolitan Planning Organization is out with a two-page survey, geared mainly at cyclists and timed to Bike to Work Week.

I filled one out last week. You should too—even if you’re not a cyclist—although it’s a bit of a pain to print out and mail the PDF. Better to just pick up a form at one of this week’s many Bike To Work events.

(Update: Or use this fill-out-able version of the survey PDF, released late yesterday: Click to download.)

The best part of the survey is the essay question, natch. Not to try to influence your answers, but I suggested: Bike boxes at dangerous intersections, a “rolling stop” law for cyclists at lower-traffic intersections, and smoother shoulders, among other things. Last year I wrote an article for SFR’s sister paper in Portland with many more suggestions for bike-ped improvements that could work in Santa Fe.

Last week I got a letter from Severn Thomas of Livingston, Montana, who’ll be riding in the Santa Fe Century on May 17, “in the ‘Obama’ jersey.”

“As a serious recreational cyclist I have been the target of frequent verbal abuse; had bottles, trash and other projectiles thrown at me; been threatened with bodily harm; and nearly run off the road by several motorists,” Thomas writes. “Cyclists are not simply going to go away, and brazen attempts made by ill-tempered and irresponsible motorists to deny cyclist’s rights will only radicalize elements on both sides.”

Granted, there are plenty of irresponsible cyclists. Not two hours ago I passed a guy cycling the wrong way, in traffic, past the new convention center downtown. But as I cyclist, I know that Thomas is right.

On Sunday morning, headed south on Agua Fria, the driver of a big, shiny blue pickup tried to force me out of the rode as I merged out of the right-turn-only lane approaching an intersection. He then spent a moment honking at me as we waited for the light to turn green, only quieting down when I made it clear, by shouting, that I had a right to the road as well.

Even worse, a few weeks ago I had a similar experience with a city bus while at a red light on Guadalupe at Alameda. I could hear the bus creeping forward behind me. When I turned to look at the driver, he motioned that he wanted to take the right turn on red, which would’ve required me to enter the intersection on a red light. By creeping forward, he was essentially forcing me into cross traffic. This was a city bus, mind you.

Has any cyclist in Santa Fe not had several experiences like this?

Continue reading »