Storm winds decorate the bikeways

Yesterday Very Northern Florida was hit by a storm. It rained, and the wind gusts were over 25 m/s. The winds came from the south and pushed the sea towards the Bay of Bothnia with it. The sea levels rose more than a meter above average, but I've not heard of any damages or casualties at sea.

The wind did some minor damage on dry land. Yes, there was a picture of yet another collapsed scaffolding in the newspaper. Aluminum tube scaffolding is light and easy to build, but due to it's light weight it's easily tipped over by wind.

Some trees fell or snapped in two, the bikeways have plenty of debris on them. Fallen leaves, needles, branches all over.

See the tyres cleaning a path through the debris. :-)

In the photo below, the tree has been cut to smaller pieces with a chainsaw, then dragged into one pile waiting for Mr. Tractor Guy.

What the roads look like

 A regular road about 10-15km from downtown. Basically all trunk roads on the countryside look like this. There's no shoulder to ride on. The gravel is lower than the edge of the asphalt, so one can't ride there. Cyclists are supposed to ride a little to the left of the white line. There is no alternate route, so I had to ride on this road.

Coming back, just a few kilometers closer to the town. You see streetlights above, although they're for cars, not for cyclists. The shoulder is wide enough to ride on. Still, it's less than a meter wide and this is a 100km/h (I think, I've never driven a car on this road :-) area so it does not feel nice when cars and trucks pass me.

On this strech, I did not have to ride on the road, but I did so to get the photo. There's a bikeway about 100 or 200 meters to the right, closer to the houses behind the trees.

There's no question which route is nicer.

Third Autumn Post

Almost a month since the last post! Well, I've been busy watching "Big Brother 2011" on tv and what time was left I was doing something else.

A few days ago it got below zero C during the night, but that was just the first warning. Today the weather forecast says temperatures between +4 C and +11C and rain for two days, as a low pressure moves over us. Maybe it's just a regular low pressure zone or is it the remnants of one of the hurricanes that hit the east coast of US a few weeks ago?

Second Autumn Post

Autumn is also a season for mushrooms. When I'm walking the forest looking for berries, it's easy to pick a few mushrooms for example for...

I ate it and I'm still alive: not poisonous.

mushrooms, onions, cucumber, paprika.

...pasta sauce.  This sauce was pretty good. I wonder if I can make it twice. My cooking is pretty experimental, and the results are sometimes not so good.

Yes, the yellow spots are leaves from the trees.

Most of the leaves are still greenish, but some are totally yellow and red already. It's not the cold that turns them yellow, although it can get below freezing at night on a cold day. It's the shortening of the daylight that triggers the  change. Sunrise was today at about 5:50 (am) and sunset is about 21 (9pm).

Some of the newspapers already have articles for cyclists to remind them to check out the reflectors and lights on the bikes. With mornings and evenings getting darker and a lot of kids and students going to schools by bike, they're a good reminder. Sadly some of the articles cointain factual errors, but it's not a very big deal if the reflectors are wrong color or something like that. When they write articles about yielding rules for cyclists, the errors will cause danger for cyclists and confusion for everyone.

Speaking of lights, maybe I should check the batteries in my bike light...

Fishing Bikes from Canals

Somebody had been digging some pipes with an excavator, stirring the water brown. It's not normally that brown. I'm not sure who found the bike, but it had been in the water for a while but not totally rusted.

I stopped and took the photo to prove that the horse poop blog- sorry, I mean cyclingwithoutahelmet :-P is not the only place where you can see bikes fresh from a canal.

Sunny Sunday ride

The weather was great: warm, sunny, just a little bit wind. A lot of people were on the bikes, I was not the only one. Even if there's nobody in the first two pictures:

 With the new buildings came a few new bikeways. These are really new routes, riding them will certainly qualify for LGRAB summer games. Recently the local newspaper told the city has decided the new standard for MUPs is 3,5 meters minimum width, to make it easier to clean them from the snow in the winter. The gap between the bikeway and the street is for snow.

 Saw a train, too. Some new double deckers. The rail company used to have red livery, now they're painting their trains green. Is that greenwashing? :-P

The parking lot of a supermarket on a sunday aftenoon. Note the green asphalt? Here in Very Northern Florida, it's the cars who get painted asphalt, not bicycles. Although I have to admit this was the quieter half of the parking lot. Still, there's not many cars...

but bikes a plenty. I tried to count the cars in the parking lot and the bikes parked in the racks, but that is difficult because they keep moving. There was about 50 cars, and 58 bikes. This is a supermarket which has a huge parking lot, and it's located very conveniently for car commuters to do their shopping. On a sunny sunday most of their customers got there on their bikes. Awesome.

Improvement or Not?

A month or two ago I met these barricades on the bikeway (a major route to downtown, a real cyclehighway route if any):

A detour, while the bikeway seems to be fine behind it? And all cyclists actually following the detour, rather going around the barrier? Now this could be worth a blog post!

Well, this explains it. A look from the other end of the blocked bikeway. They've cut the old bikeway and left us with sharp edges and gravel. The new route is an easier and a more comfortable route. Otherwise we'd be likely to ignore the barriers. A week after this photo, they had dug up more of the bikeway, all the way to the other barricade.

I decided I'd make a post, or maybe even a series of the street construction project instead. It seemed to me this project was not really as good for the cyclists as it first seemed. Here's a video on youtube so you can see it yourself.

The new houses being built is the excuse for moving the bikeway. The bikeway used to be next to the street. The boring, straight, long street has no protection from the wind, and is even a slight uphill. With the new high houses I think the wind tunnel would be even worse. By moving the bikeway closer to the houses, they can plant some trees to calm down the wind. And the bikeway is not so boring when you've got the chance of being run over by cars coming behind the corner of the building:

The bikeway is pretty close to the corner of the building. It's not really bad from this direction, as the driver has the lanes on the left to see a cyclist coming from the left:

Plenty of reaction time for cyclist from the left. But how about cyclists from the right? I certainly hope they're not going to park vans like this to block the view once the construction is finished. Also note the unpaved area in the middle of the street. I guess theyre going to plant trees on it. Sadly, it's also additional hump on the bikeway.

A very limited view to the right. Also note how the sign post with yield triangle has also the street name sign on it? Who would put the name sign on a post 20 meters from the intersection? Looks to me somebody dragged the yield sign from the intersection here to cover the bikeway.

A look from the right. Can't see the cars until you're almost on the crossing.

Was this an improvement over the previous bikeway? Let's list the pros and cons.

Pro:

• New route is not a straight line, not so boring
• Protection from wind
• New surface, no potholes

Con:

• On the side of the street the bikeway was covered by the yield signs on the sidestreets. Cyclists had priority over cars on the sidestreets and over cars wanting to turn to the sidestreets. By moving the bikeway 20 meters off the intersection, the street-bikeway crossing is a stand-alone crossing on which bikes must yield to traffic. Cyclist on one of the busiest routes must yield to cars going to and coming from the parking lots of the buildings!
• The old bikeway crossing was pretty smooth, now there is and extra hump in the center of the crossing.
• Limited visibility, with no speed humps for the cars. Why not build a raised crossing?

I was all ready to make complaints and initiatives to the city council to improve this inferior bikeway crossing. Oulu is supposed to be a Cycling City, and you're building this crap? When I was writing my drafts, I decided to look what the plans said about the final result. In one of the documents I found this:

 It's a part of the diagram of the construction site. The intersection I've been complaining about is the black bulls-eye. Guess what? That bulls-eye is a roundabout! It makes many of my worries nought. All my ranting and planning was wasted!

A vehicle exiting a roundabout is turning, and must yield to traffic going straight. Cars have to yield to bikes! And the other direction is covered by the yield sign. Cyclists have not lost priority after all.

Now, the raised crossing would still make sense. I'll have to see if I can find out if they're going to build it or not. The crossing has asphalt now, and I think they would have to cut it open to install a raised crossing. That would suggest they're not going to build it. On the other hand, they need all sorts of heavy equipment and lots of gravel and cement and stuff when they're building. So it might make sense to do the humps after the buildings are finished.

Is it going to be better than before? We'll find out when it's finished.

Edit: I got a reply from a city planner, and he said there's no plans for a raised crossing at the moment as it should be fine as it is. The traffic circle will be built next year if they have the money to do it, and it will improve the intersection experience.