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I've noticed that our friends at the ATA have become quite vocal in support of red light cameras.  I wonder if camera-love is widespread among their membership base (in which I'm included).  I always ride when I'm not working, but I have to drive on the clock, and I've been nailed twice.  Kinda rubs me the wrong way, especially because Chicago seems to have the shortest yellows I've ever seen.  Opinions?  
 

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Well... it's sort of relevant to bikes. People on bikes are more vulnerable when there are drivers speeding up through yellow or running red lights--both of which we know happen all the time-- so we have some interest in intersection safety measures.

mike wehner said:
What does this have to do with bikes? In my opinion you are creating a discussion on the wrong online discussion board. In addition, anything that makes driving more Of a pain in the ass is great! Ride your bike more and you want have to bring this up again or consider the hummer club of Chicago for further support of your reckless driving.
It is always important to stand up for the downtrodden motorist and speak out against the many injustices that they suffer.


mike wehner said:
What does this have to do with bikes? In my opinion you are creating a discussion on the wrong online discussion board. In addition, anything that makes driving more Of a pain in the ass is great! Ride your bike more and you want have to bring this up again or consider the hummer club of Chicago for further support of your reckless driving.
1. Shame on any of us for driving to work, for work, or at times a bike is not practical for us. Bad us.

2. Things like the red light cameras affect how drivers act ont he road which effects us directly because their changes in behavior can endanger cyclists.

3. Making driving more of a pain is not great; many people have to drive because a bike or P/T is not practical for them and making it harder for them is only going to make them more frustrated, edgy and aggressive; you are being selfish and short sighted at best and outright cruel and vindictive at worst...

4. Having an adversarial attitude towards cars hurts more then it helps when it comes to making life on the roads easier. I drive every weekday because there is no practical way for me not to; am I a bad person? Do you want to make my life harder?



mike wehner said:
What does this have to do with bikes? In my opinion you are creating a discussion on the wrong online discussion board. In addition, anything that makes driving more Of a pain in the ass is great! Ride your bike more and you want have to bring this up again or consider the hummer club of Chicago for further support of your reckless driving.
I don't think you're deserving of shame, DUG. As it happens, I think there are some thought-provoking arguments against photo-enforcement in this thread. But there's also a troubling subtext which compromises my ability to buy what you're selling.
Let's talk about how the yellow signal duration is the injustice worth our anger, when it comes to the following intersection:


This car is stopped. There's no stop line painted here, so I suppose parking across the crosswalk will have to do. All of the cars behind this car will also stop on top of the crosswalk.


Ah, finally, a break in traffic.


Yum. This is a place that somebody really cares about, you know?


Where's the pedestrian signal? Oh, there isn't one. And I can't see the light controlling cross traffic, so I don't know if approaching cars (exiting an interstate, by the way) are going to stop or not. Nor can I see the light that's behind me here, controlling the left turn across my path on the other side of the island. So I suppose I'll just have to sort of guess that it's safe to walk out into the expressway ramp.

I wonder if the yellow interval here is 3.8 seconds or 4.4 seconds?


The view of what we're crossing.


The view from the other side, looking back at what we've crossed. Note the hidden crosswalk to the right, the lack of a pedestrian signal, the high-speed turn lane, and the signalled right turn that a pedestrian couldn't see if they were crossing up ahead (and that many drivers ignore anyway, failing to stop when it's red), leaving them at the mercy of a traffic engineer's decision to make sure that drivers never feel "frustrated, edgy and aggressive," which is of course the most important issue here.


The regard for my experience here is humbling. I really feel like a first-class participant, and not like I've been completely forgotten about.

All of these design decisions have something in common, and are entirely on-topic for people who are outraged by photo-enforcement and the injustice of "making driving more of a pain."

By the way, this ain't the 'burbs. We're just four or five miles from the Loop here, on Damen, one of the few legit connections across this great divide, between two densely populated and pedestrian-rich neighborhoods. A third of households in this area do not have a car.

(In the interest of full disclosure, that includes my household. In the interest of more disclosure than is probably necessary, I was on my way to Target to buy some underpants. This is the route people in my neighborhood take to get to Target to buy underpants, when they don't have a car. Of course, most of the people you'll meet walking here aren't nerds with cameras, so why should we care?)
burden said:
All of these design decisions have something in common, and are entirely on-topic for people who are outraged by photo-enforcement and the injustice of "making driving more of a pain."

Burden, I feel you on the pedestrian issue, but the reason I brought up this topic in this forum in the first place is because of the ATA's involvement (in support of the wrong side, in my opinion). And for me it isn't a cars vs. bikes zero sum game. It's a right vs. wrong/honest vs. dishonest/liberty and justice for all kinda thing.
Joe TV said:
Burden, I feel you on the pedestrian issue, but the reason I brought up this topic in this forum in the first place is because of the ATA's involvement (in support of the wrong side, in my opinion). And for me it isn't a cars vs. bikes zero sum game. It's a right vs. wrong/honest vs. dishonest/liberty and justice for all kinda thing.

Okay, but...



This style of right-turn treatment, with a dedicated lane and signal, and a fat, speed-enhancing radius, exists in part because it helps reduce the rear-end collisions that happen when cars are forced to stop or slow down before turning.

I'm quite sure that we could find some studies that show that this type of right turn is safer for drivers than other types of right turns. And I'm sure that we could find drivers who felt frustrated by slower corner designs, or who were in a wreck because someone stopped suddenly to make a turn.

Sound familiar?

That's the context in which I'm listening to your arguments -- a context in which a safety feature for drivers is also a crazy deathtrap for pedestrians, and in which a million small concessions to speed culminate in a wasteland like the intersection of Damen and I-55.

So it's not that I think you're inherently wrong, and it's not that I have any particular trust in the City to not be shady about stuff like this. It's that I'm unconvinced that a program of escalating accommodations for high-speed road culture has worked out very well for us so far. As the intersection above illustrates, safety interests are, in fact, often in competition as long as we're inclined to measure safety only for a given minimum roadway speed.

In turn, I think enforcement cameras are a red herring. Even if you're right that they're oppressive and graft-ridden, the best way to challenge them is not to design further accommodations for speedy, "frustration"-free motoring. That is, engineering fixes that facilitate drivers' apparently natural refusal to approach intersections with caution are often part of the problem, not the solution. Likewise, our belief that drivers should never feel any kind of frustration or experience any challenges has led to places that are legitimately hostile and dehumanizing for everybody else -- often especially for people who already have an unfair portion of injustice on their plates, and probably don't have much of a voice on this or any other matter.

If the discussion weren't framed in those terms, I'd be far more inclined to pay attention to the admittedly weird implications of automated picture-cops, but until then, I think we're just getting distracted from the real issues.
Very well said. The Damen/55 interchange is a frikkin' travesty of hideousness.
To make matters worse, you can't even bail to the sidewalk easily as the (deep) curb cuts come away at right angles to the sidewalk in most places, making it impossible to pull a trailer.

To Joe and the ATA position-- I think it's disingenuous to frame it as a cars vs. bicycles stance-- if you knew the folks at ATA better you'd know that they are deeply concerned about avoiding such an unproductive duality; at issue is that our built environment is deadly for non-motorists, and dangerous driving has almost become the norm in the city; the police force has been steadily cut back and we have very few realistic options for reining in reckless and dangerous driving; the red light cameras are not a perfect solution but at least they're something. The claims that they only exist to provide a revenue source for the city . . . *yawn* you can keep repeating it ad nauseum but that doesn't make it true.
Thanks burden, great stuff.

There was a guy at the Break The Gridlock social last month who suggested that things would be better for peds and cyclists if only the traffic lights were timed better, so that drivers wouldn't have to stop as often, and would therefore be less frustrated. Unfortunately, he left before I had a chance to talk to him and explain the fallacy of his logic, that making accommodations to facilitate driving was a never-ending game which would only lead to more traffic, and eventually more frustration for everyone, and which was, to my mind, the complete opposite of what BTG is supposed to be about.

I don't speak for anyone else, but for me, it's not a cars vs. bicycles thing. It's a cars vs. people thing. There's nothing "zero sum" about saving lives.

People who drive (and I include myself in that group, occasionally) are not bad people, but they are both victims and perpetuators of a system which has evil consequences. It's certainly not the only such system, but it's the one that's the number one killer of children in this country. Fighting that system isn't about punishing people or making them feel bad for being a part of it, but it is about making them want to change it, and to change themselves as a part of it, and helping them to realize that facilitating that system, even when it may seem expedient, is only feeding into it.
Jessica said:
Do any of you guys regularly drive in the 'burbs? Because people just floor it from earlier out where I'm at. I don't know. I agree with the 1-2 second 'all red', but increasing the yellow times won't necessarily solve the problem.
That is anecdotal. it doesn't matter what we think or feel is the right answer, every city that increases the yellow light times reports a decrease in both t-bones and rear end collisions. We might THINK that "i'll just be more likely to run the red" but the facts show otherwise.

Science should be used to determine how to increase safety at intersections, and nothing else.

Of course at most intersections there is a lot to be desired, like the pics posted above. There are always infrastructure improvements that can be made, like the ones people post about sometimes from Holland. Even ones that make driving safer also make it safer for everyone else, since clear signals and signs, and giving people plenty of time, gives room for error and lends predictability to their actions.

It seems part of the purpose of infrastructure is because drivers and all of us are bad drivers/bikers/walkers and don't pay attention 100%. Which is why the designing for the minimum 3 seconds and people being perfect is a bad idea. Changing timing is a cheap step that can be done all across the city.

I think getting rid of the "either or" is what we have to do when trying to figure out how to increase safety.
Chris B said:
it doesn't matter what we think or feel is the right answer, every city that increases the yellow light times reports a decrease in both t-bones and rear end collisions. We might THINK that "i'll just be more likely to run the red" but the facts show otherwise.

Science should be used to determine how to increase safety at intersections, and nothing else.

My thoughts exactly. We've argued this one into the ground, but since I'm not a physicist I can't break it down any further.
I'm not pro or con. But I do set them off on my bike all the time. Twice this week the city got a good shot of me and my bag ..
As for ATA there just trying to keep all of us alive.

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