‘We don’t need to build more highways out in the suburbs’
[B' Spokes: I'll start off with this: The cheapest and best time to add bike lanes is when the street "goes dark" during resurfacing.
Yet a bikeway was not recognized by the State Highway Administration. That is to say during resurfacing SHA removed the bikable shoulder from one half of the roadway when they could for the same money center the new striping to accommodate cyclists on both sides of the road. The short version is SHA has a policy that they don't have to think about cyclists when resurfacing (but at least we get the requirement to accommodate cyclists on new projects where practicable and feasible.)
My point here, just as cyclists led the Good Road Movement in the 1880's that lead to the creation of paved roads, we need to put pressure to keep the roads in good repair by more frequent repaving. It's not just that cyclists love a good smooth road (we do) but roads in poor condition can cause injuries and law suits.
A Mill Valley man who fell off his bicycle during a charity ride through Petaluma last August is suing the city and says that the poor condition of the road is directly responsible for his injuries.
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Claims and lawsuits against the city for road conditions make up roughly 25 percent of all legal actions by residents, a number that increased by 70 percent between 2009 and 2010, according to Ron Blanquie, the city’s risk manager.
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http://millvalley.patch.com/articles/mill-valley-man-sues-petaluma-after-bike-incident
And it's not just cyclists Potholes, Poor Roads Cost Motorists $335 Per Year
And the most damning of all, not keeping the road in good repair wastes tax payer money, as the following article points out.
Conclusion: We need to demand a fix it first mentality when it comes to our roads and we need to demand that they reverse decades long of ignoring cyclists in ALL road projects. It just makes economic sense to think about accommodating cyclists during road resurfacing projects then the current SHA policy of non-requirement to think about cyclists when doing a resurfacing project.
(Note the following was found via Envision Baltimore, subscribe to their newsletter.)]
by Brad Plumer, Washington Post
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Among other things, there’s a solid economic case for making repairs a much higher priority. As Kahn and Levinson explain, road pavement tends to deteriorate slowly at first but then more quickly over time. It’s much, much cheaper to repair a road early on, when it’s still in “fair” condition, than when it drops down to “serious” condition. And that’s to say nothing of data suggesting that poor road conditions are a “significant factor” in one-third of all fatal crashes , and cause extra wear and tear on cars.
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