Traffic

Have I mentioned lately that I don't care what the price of gas is? I just thought you all would like to know, I consider it to be irrelevant information. There. I just had to get that out there before I remember that I have fill up Ginny's car and soon Dave's LRT on occasion. But the bike riding is fairly freeing in that respect.

I was talking to Bohnam before his party on Saturday about interactions between bikers and cars and pedestrians, some of which have been quite newsworthy lately, and I realized today I left out the most interesting interaction as far as I can tell. And that is biker to biker. I'm told that a full 10% of all commuters in my SE neighborhood do so by bicycle, and from my personal observations of the volume of bikes I believe it. And recently I've experienced something that sure didn't happen 11 years ago when I rode my bike to Benson everyday, and that's when two bikes meet at a four way stop and have to figure out who has the right of way. Cuz we all know how bikes dart in front of cars and don't stop, and threaten to run over pedestrians rather than lose our momentum.

What you may not realize is that on the few occasions where we do feel the need to come to a stop and yield to the car that clearly does have the right of way, the misguided doofus waves us on through quite often. What the crap. Make us play by the rules or don't. Cuz if I was going to go in front of you I sure as hell wasn't going to stop. Now that I have stopped, I don't mind at all you taking your turn in front of me. What I don't like is the extended time period right in front of a car that I know want to move in my path. The other morning I was going east on Glisan near 205, and this gal fully passed me and extended to a couple car lengths in front of me with her right blinker on, turned her car slightly as if to turn, and then stopped in the middle of traffic in an attempt to let me back by. Nope, not going to happen sister, I'm not getting out in front of you, you clearly don't have good judgment. I stopped and put my feet on the ground until she went by. So for those of you who are frustrated with idiot bikers, you are probably mostly justified. But don't be overly nice to us, because that just makes the problem worse.

Anyway, back to the bike on bike bit. I haven't really come close to hitting another bike yet, but it is just fascinating to sort the intersection out, and as the number of bikes increase we'll have to figure things out a little better. I think that the bike vs. bike scenario will be the one that gets it though to the teachable people how to yield and be courteous.

What's also fun is the unofficial races. Now when you're on the road in the car sometimes you get in situation where you are pacing someone, and most often it comes down to who wants to break the law the most to finish in front. Not so much on the bike. It is quite literally who is bigger and stronger and has the nicer bike. My bike is kinda slow and I often am carrying some extra weight in my kitty litter buckets. ( I should post a pic, but not tonight) But in the heat of the moment that is no excuse, it is a matter of who wills to pedal harder, and I love it. Coming up Interstate or the Esplanade in particular, I've had some good matches. And I usually lose, sometimes to a girl even, and it makes me want a faster bike. And maybe someday, but this one was free and it's working great, and I am very thankful. Bigger quads don't necessarily have a price tag attached to them, and I want them too.

And while I'm on the subject of transporation, lets talk about freeway merging habits. Oregonians are stupid. Now, I hate it as much as you do when some jerkoff passes on the right in a lane that's about to end, such as on I-5 south at the Rose quarter, or I-5 North coming up the hill out of Tigard, among countless other locations. It really gets my blood boiling at the audacity and lack of common courtesy, and even more so because I realize that they are driving rationally and I don't have the balls to.

Lets think about this. The freeway is only so wide, as we all know. The more lanes there are, the more cars can travel. At some point in the above described scenario, an "extra" lane on the right terminates. Cars in that lane will have to merge to the left. If they merge at the last possible moment, the freeway is effectively wider and can therefore carry more cars more effectively. By merging before the last possible moment, especially in scenarios where traffic is nearly stopped anyway, you are effectively creating a smaller freeway and more of a bottleneck. How early should we merge over, Mr. Oreslownian driver? 1/4 mile? 1/2 mile? 3 miles? By doing so you do reducing the size of the freeway, not efficiently make use of the full road available to you, and you aggravate traffic problems. It would seem that the turd passing on the right is aggravating traffic problems, but if everyone behaved that way, traffic would move more smoothly. Be the change you want to see. Instead of raising taxes to widen the freeways, use all of the ones we've got first.