Underhanded work in the underpass

I'm sure I've mentioned the pipe works the district heating company did last year (or was it the year before?) but right now I couldn't find the correct blog post. To recap: they dug up the bikeway so they could fix/replace the big pipes bringing bot water from the power plant to the buildings. Apparently they fixed the pipes all right, because I haven't seen any hot water fountains in the area.

Too bad they didn't fix the bikeway properly. They left it lumpy and edgy. Edgy in the sense that the edges of the hole they cut in the asphalt were easy to find with the rims of my bike. And the lumps? Anyone know where Jimmy Hoffa is buried? I have a possible location for the search!

One day I was riding along minding my own business when I noticed the bikeway was dirty. Hmm? It was not the usual fallen leaves and pine needles, it was icky mud! Slippery, made everything dirty mud! And some gravel, too.

Notice how the grass on both sides of the bikeway is turned into mud? Either they are driving some wide machines that don't fit on the asphalt, or they can't drive!

 There was a big excavator before, but now they've finished with the dig and it's gone. Maybe it's on the other side of the underpass. Makes me wonder of two things: a) did they drive it across the motorway (illegal, as it has 60km/h minimum speed limit) or take the long route and b) What did the excavator guy think about digging up the pipes under the underpass? One might think that was cramped... or maybe they used smaller machines! :-)

 The pipes are big. I've heard the company is replacing or installing seven kilometers of the pipes this year. I think this underpass pipe was supposed to be done two weeks ago. Are they behind the schedule? Better get busy, boys, or it'll start snowing before you're finished! :-)

First Snow Videos

Here they are. The first one shows the skateboarding ramps are empty. Those tiny wheels do not work well in two inches of snow! <evil grin:->

The other is shows a real life braking test on a snowy bikeway. Not really icy yet because the snow hasn't been trampled on enough, but there was some ice on it anyway. The big trucks do not have studded tyres so they're  pushing the limit a bit by stopping at a steep hill. I'd say they couldn't have fit trough the underpass, so they would been stuck if they couldn't get up. They could have turned left or right but came up straight, and afterwards I was wondering if they turned back or drove through the no entry signs to the pedestrian crossing to get to the street at the very beginning of the video.

Note the mail van, it's a special, expensive vehicle designed for mail delivery ie. right hand drive so the mailman can reach the boxes :-)

The last of the videos I uploaded is sort of a video response to  bicycledutch's cycling past red lights blog post. The Dutch with their bikeways segregated from the road  often get to ignore the traffic lights. In T-junctions and when doing right turns there often is no conflict with other road users so why should a cyclist be penalized by a red light. This (cycling past red lights) is common in Very Northern Florida too.

Some commenter talked about the aversion to two-phase left turns: having to first cross one street and then wait at another red light certainly is a pain. Even if you don't have dutch intersections, if you have paths on both sides of the street you can cross the street when ever it's best for you and then make the left turn at will.

Riding on the needles

I was asked in the youtube comments if all the leaves had fallen yet. Not quite all, but most of them. And a lot of needles by these weird spruces.

Here's a clip I put together from my rides yesterday and today. As you can see, it is very much like autumn: ice on the ground and falling leaves and so on. It gets below freezing during the night but usually thaws during the day, so there isn't any snow or ice. Except I did find some for the video yesterday because the day was so cold it hadn't all melted away.

And today was windy, and the Oulu River had waves on it. Usually the river is almost as smooth as glass but today I certainly wouldn't want to go out there in a row boat!

Oh, I haven't heard by old bike so I got a single speed bike for cheap. Seems that Oulu isn't quite that flat as I thought when I had gears in my bike. Maybe I should get hub gears for it.

It's a sit-up bike, with a rack which I like. On the other hand it had flat tyres, the rear axle needed tightening (the ball bearings were about to fall off, typical of some discount stores which don't know how to assemble the bikes properly) and it has no lights which are needed this time of the year. And mandatory, too. So it's taken me a few days of fixing and tuning to get it up.

For the lights I've had to hold a lamp in my hand but I got the 'see me' led light system ready, now I've just got to install it. I took an old bike light, sawed it a bit and put a bunch of leds inside. With a bulb it took 250 mA, with leds I can run it less than 20mA and it's still visible. As it has a reflector in the middle of the lens and light goes everywhere it's not really good light for seeing in the dark.

The other light project, modifying a head lamp with a 3w led to work as a 'see far' bike light is still in the works. At least now I got the solder and other gear on the table so I might actually work on it a bit.

I was going to take some photos of the rear axle while I was cleaning it and stuff, but after I took the first photo and did some work on the bike my hands got dirty and I couldn't take more photos. You'd' have to  see the bike as it was to see what I mean. Even the chain was so gunky it was doubled in size. And I didn't have any bensin or diesel to soak the chain so I had to scrub it by hand. Any soaps I had didn't work on the gunk and I didn't have the mechanics hand scrub soap like some other blogger used recently (who was it?). So in the end I used veggie oil and it seemed to work almost fine. And it's environmentally friendly. :-P

Now I just have to get these black grease stains out of tables, door handles, floors...

Construction blocks the path

In the last few weeks several blogs have posted videos of construction blocking the bikeways. As expected, in the Netherlands there usually is a good alternate route with clear signage.

A few days ago the path near a supermarket was closed by construction huts. So the next time I took the camera with me to get a video. Starts with a good, wide bikeway...

When there was only the huts, I got around them by going left through the empty parking lot that is hardly ever used. On a later ride, they had put a fence around the work area. Nobody wants people milling about their work space, and especially not when you're working on ladders. So now I had to ride through the car park on the right. Oh, the horror. :-)

How about  the signage? Well, there was the rather useless round red-and-yellow sign saying you can't go through here. Some kind of arrow pointing which way to go would have been nice so I wouldn't have tried going left first. And there was no sign for drivers to look out for people going around the fence, but maybe they expected the drivers to use their brains and do it anyway. There are no temporary paths marked by bollards or fences or any limitations on the parking so the drivers are not inconvenienced by the construction.

Sure, this is only one of the three routes for bikes and pedestrians (not counting going through the parking lot). So maybe there could have been a detour sign earlier, like 50 meters before the beginning of the video where I could have turned right and taken the other route.

And another clip to provide some comic relief for an otherwise gloomy post. Evening sunshine (the video was shot after 7pm yesterday) , green grass, new leaves growing on the trees and...

Mopeds out of bikeways: less accidents

The Finnish traffic law says mopeds are allowed on bikeways (MUP's) if there is a sign saying so. Often the sign is there.

For a few years there was loud complaints and public discussion in the local newspaper about youngsters riding noisy mopeds too fast on the bikeways and too close to other users of the paths  giving them a scare. Part of the problem was that moped users rarely seemed to slow down, they liked to ride full throttle everywhere, including underpasses and tight corners with limited visibility. (Car drivers go faster it the road is wide. Maybe the same is true for mopedists: our bikeways are too wide?)

The other part was that the speed differential with other users of the MUPs was too big. A moped has a max. 50 cm³  (or 4 kW if electric) engine and has a maximum speed of 45 km/h. It is rather easy to do some changes to make the moped go faster (60? 80?). And who would be likely to tune up their moped to go faster? Maybe the reckless youngsters. Mopeds going over 45 km/h among pedestrians... not good!

In August 2010, most of those signs were removed in Oulu and mopeds had to ride on the streets (default speed limit in urban areas is 50km/h, could also be 40km/h or 30km/h) and on roads with speed limits of 60km/h or less. If the speed limit was higher and there was no other route, they were allowed on bikeways next to the road. It's the speed differential thing again, only mopeds are the slow vehicle this time.

There was another cry in August 2010: the mopedists would be slaughtered by the cars. Some parents were afraid their kids would get hurt if they had to use the streets. Others said the reckless mopedists don't know traffic rules and shouldn't be allowed on the roads.

A research comparing injuries before and after the change shows safety improved 70%, says the local newspaper. I haven't seen the article in print, but the short web clip says in the year before the change (Aug 2009-Jul 2010) there was 53 injuries involving mopeds. A year later the figure was only 16!

Unfortunately the short version of the article on the web page doesn't give exact figures for pedestrian, cyclists and mopedist injuries in moped related crashes. So I can't tell you how many less grannies were mowed down by the mopedists. Neither can I tell you if there has been a decline in trips taken or kilometers travelled by moped. Fuel prices have gone up, but the mopeds are not exactly gas guzzlers.

One might make an educated guess that there might be less mopeds in the winter than the previous year. The moped riders had to move from well gritted and snowplowed bikeways to icy, rutted streets and roads, which are not gritted or plowed well enough for two-wheeled vehicles. On the other hand, riding a moped in the winter is very cold. You're just sitting there and you're not getting heat by using your muscles like when biking. And what I recall, there weren't that many moped users in the winter anyway.

Anybody who has been reading Hembrow's blog knows he has written how in the NL the different modes (or speeds) of traffic are often kept separate to reduce conflict and damages done by a collision. Their bike paths for bikes only are world famous.

Unfortunately, in Finland many politicians and traffic planners think streets are for cars and they use 'light traffic roads' (also known as MUP, multi-use paths )for everything else. Looking from the windshield perspective it seems dangerous to have unarmored mopeds on the streets, they might get hurt! Not to mention they are slowing down the traffic! This is why allowing mopeds on MUPs has been widespread even if it puts fast moving mopeds among dogwalkers and kids and grannies.

On the other hand mixing pedestrians and cyclists does work, sort of, if the MUP is wide enough and there isn't too many of them. If the traffic is heavy, the modes should be split, to reduce conflict and smooth the bicycle traffic flow, just like they do in the Netherlands! :-)

Now that Oulu has shown the example and has statistics to show it works and is safe, some other cities are doing the same. It certainly has calmed down our bikeways when the noisy contraptions are gone!