Share the Road update

In September, I asked members of the Spinners email list to suggest roads in Greenville County that would be good candidates for “Share the Road” signage. Many of you responded to help me put together a great list. Some routes on that list stand out as clear priorities and work still needs to be done to get signs installed in several of those locations. To be honest, the effort to get additional “Share the Road” signs in the County has been slow, but I do want to share with you a few locations where you will see new signs soon in the City of Greenville.

Cleveland Park will get six new “Share the Road” signs very soon, most likely by the end of February. Many local cyclists ride through Cleveland Park so we all owe Greenville’s Urban Designer Andrew Meeker a big thanks for his efforts to get these signs approved and implemented. In this case, the City's Traffic Engineering Division is doing the sign fabrication and installation, so I think we can expect to see them installed without much delay.

Another location where signs have been officially approved and will appear soon is on Roper Mountain at the 385 bridge crossing and also on Roper Mountain as it crosses Woodruff. Though this seems like a busy location for cycling, it is a route used by several cyclists (myself included) to get to the ICAR/Millennium Campus/Verdae area. As this area develops further, bicycle traffic on the roads leading in will greatly increase, so it is important to get out the Share the Road message early. I brought this location to the attention of City Councilman Sudduth, and I really would like to thank him for his prompt attention to my emails on this subject and for his support of cycling in general.

In my mind, the next big priority for “Share the Road” signs is Old Buncombe. That road is heavily used by local cyclists and came out at the top of my informal poll. As I mentioned early, efforts to get signs in the County have been slow, but I think we can do it if we focus on locations one at a time. I don’t know if it will happen, but my goal is to have new “Share the Road” signs installed on Old Buncombe before the US Pro Championships at the end of August. I’ll let you know in the future what you can do to help make this happen. It is a slow process and it takes a lot of support from the public to get these things done. Thanks again to those of you who have helped so far. Trust me, I will be calling on you again.

I also owe you all an update on the progress toward new bike lanes, both downtown and beyond. Some of the news is good and some is not so good, but I will save that for a future post. Again, making Greenville a bike friendly place is something that we can do if we work together as a cycling community. I would love to see it all happen faster, but sometimes it takes baby steps to make a positive change.

"Reward" for the apprehension of the white pickup

I briefly mentioned the troublesome white pickup in my previous post. Bill Reichert is offering a reward of sorts for the capture of the driver. He will donate $100 to the Palmetto Cycling Coalition when the pickup is apprehended by law enforcement officials.

Bill challenges other cyclists that ride Dividing Waters and nearby roads to pony up and make cycling safe again. If you are interested, email me your reward/donation commitment now and I'll see all are complied and posted later.

Threats to cyclists, here and elsewhere

Some of you may have seen the December 27th article by Matthew Parris in the London based paper, The Times. The column, titled What’s smug and deserves to be decapitated?, has sparked a bit of outrage among cyclists on the Internet. In his column, Parris says "A festive custom we could do worse than foster would be stringing piano wire across country lanes to decapitate cyclists." In the course of his article he goes on to make several more threatening statements aimed at the “panting, sugar-gulping, chocolate-chewing, Lycra-clad leisure-cyclist?” Read the article for yourself to see how truly sickening it is.

Bike Biz, the British trade journal for the cycling industry, now reports that the Press Complaints Commission has received over 200 complaints making this the 3rd most complained about article of 2008. Parris has since apologized saying, “It was meant humorously but so many cyclists have taken it seriously that I plainly misjudged. I am sorry." Yeah right. It just sounds to me like he just wants to keep his job (for the record, I don’t think he should).

Since Parris' column appeared in a major world newspaper, it has received a lot of attention. When I first read it though, it reminded me of the article that was recently written by a columnist in the nearby Boone, NC newspaper, The Ashe Mountain Times, about cyclists on the Blue Ridge Parkway. The author of that column, Ron Fitzwater, though less directly threatening, was just as ignorant as Parris saying things like, “Roads are made for cars and are not safe for bikes, these are facts that are not debatable and it is time cyclists came to grips with them.” Fitzwater also suggested to cyclists, “when cars are coming, get off the road. After all, having to stop and start over again is better than getting a real close look at the undercarriage of a Cherokee.” For those of you who have not seen the Fitzwater article, The Incidental Cyclist posted about it a month ago and his post includes a link to a pdf file of it.

The Boone article hits closer to home than the London one, but even closer to home for cyclists in Greenville are the repeated threats and attacks on individual riders that have been made by the driver of a white truck on the route to Saluda. As has been mentioned on the local cycling clubs’ email lists, several local cyclists have had altercations with this driver who obviously wants us off the road. Hopefully, with renewed attention on these incidents, the driver will be caught and off the road himself soon.

Though only one of the people I mentioned in this post is physically acting on his aggression, the behavior of all three of these cyclist-hating individuals should be cause for great alarm. Unfortunately there are others out there who feel the same way and don’t want us on the roads. Personally, these attitudes only increase my resolve to work on “share the road” initiatives and other local cycling advocacy issues. I hope that many of you will join me in 2008 to really push for a cycle friendly Greenville County. We may not be able to win over everybody, but we can definitely work make the streets of Greenville and the surrounding area safer for all users.