Bicycling

We walk, bicycle, drive, and fly by orders of magnitude

Hank Garfield

One of the things that happened when I gave up car ownership was that I began to see my surroundings in a different way. I walked more, and on the street you see faces and encounter other human beings at close range in real time. You can even stop and have a conversation. You can certainly stop and smell the roses, or look in a store window, or anything else.

Walking is slower than bicycling, which is slower than a bus, which is slower than a car, and so on. But each successive system of propulsion gives up in intimacy what it gains in speed.

On foot, you are one with the land. You can see and hear and touch it. On a bicycle, you’re faster but a little less connected. In a car, you’re in your own private room that you can direct, and on a train, you’re in a public room you can’t. In an airplane, of course, you’re not on the land at all.

You’ve probably seen a variation of the video that zooms out from a woman’s hand into the Universe and then zooms back in, all the way to sub-atomic particles in the cells of her skin. The size of the picture increases or decreases by a factor of ten, an order of magnitude.

This is a phrase often misused by math-indifferent writers, and a concept often misunderstood. An order of magnitude is a step in an exponential series: 10, 100, 1,000. Exponential growth starts slowly but gets huge in a hurry. When you read that traffic has “increased exponentially,” smile and be thankful that it hasn’t. No one would be able to move.

I first learned of magnitude from the stars. The system is an overlay of modern astronomy on a framework devised by the ancient Greeks, who classified stars by brightness. Stellar magnitudes run in reverse: the lower the number, the brighter the star. Prominent stars are first-magnitude stars. A few very bright stars have negative magnitudes. The faintest stars on the edge of visibility are magnitude 6. Anything fainter requires a telescope. Each magnitude is approximately 2.512 times brighter than the one below it.*

Have I lost you yet? What do orders of magnitude have to do with cars and transportation?

Well, I was just thinking…

The base doesn’t have to be ten. Average human walking speed is about four miles per hour. Some people walk faster or slower, of course. But that’s what we’re built with: four miles an hour.

Multiply that by four, and you get the approximate speed of a bicycle: 16 mph. It’s possible to go much faster, but hills and age and obstacles will take a big bite out of your average speed.

At 16 mph you’ll miss things you would have noticed on foot. You’ll wave at the friend on the sidewalk instead of stopping for a word or two. Traffic demands more of your attention because you are on the road instead of alongside it. You can still stop and revert to walking any time you want. But it’s an order-of-magnitude distance – small, because the numbers are still low.

But multiply by four again, and you get the speed of a car on an unencumbered roadway: 64 mph, or nine miles an hour over the speed limit, a typical operating speed for a car.

It’s another order-of-magnitude step, but a much steeper one. You’re fortified in your own private bubble, and you consider it your private space even as you move it about in public. You’re restricted to the roads and parking lots, subject to many more rules. Your interaction with the land and the people on it is limited to the places you choose to stop. You communicate with your fellow drivers through gestures, some of them friendly.

Four times 64 equals 256, or 44. Both China and Japan have developed high-speed trains capable of speeds higher than 256 mph. In service, they operate at speeds of around 200-220 mph. I’ve never traveled on a train that fast, but the experience on a train is that of an observer, as the world scrolls by.

Multiply by four again and you’ve got the Concorde: 1,024 mph. Passenger planes fall somewhere between it and the bullet train. But any kind of flying strikes me as an order of magnitude above any kind of land transportation.

Next: How orders of magnitude (should) shape traffic laws.

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* – A star of magnitude 1 is 100 times brighter than a star of magnitude 6. The number 2.512 is an approximation of the 5th root of 100, so that (2.512)5 ≅ 100. Every five magnitudes means a 100-fold difference in brightness. In this way the old Greek system is preserved, and can be extended to extremely bright or faint celestial objects.

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Driving below the speed limit is an act of ‘Civil Obedience’

Hank Garfield

Some years ago, I was driving on Interstate 495 in Massachusetts. The owner of the car, who shall remain nameless here, was in the passenger seat, and we were tooling along in the left lane, doing about 70 – five miles an hour over the speed limit.

Suddenly, a car came up rapidly behind us, flashing its lights. “Move over and let this guy pass,” my companion said.

“I’m going 70,” I replied.

“Yeah, but he wants to go faster,” she said. “And that’s his right.”

At this point, the smart thing to do would have been to shut up and find a gap in the adjacent lane. Instead, I said, “How do you figure it’s his right? The speed limit’s 65.”

You can be completely correct and still lose an argument. Half an hour later, I was in the passenger seat, and we were still speeding but no longer speaking.

I thought of this while attending a recent forum in Bangor on walkability, hosted by GrowSmart Maine. There was much discussion of street design, and how the visual cues along a roadway affect the speed at which drivers feel comfortable. There was also some talk about the culture of driving, and the assumptions we all make about roads and transportation.

One of the presenters at the forum was Jim Tasse, Assistant Director of the Bicycle Coalition of Maine. “You all drive too fast,” he said. “I do, too. The roads encourage us to drive too fast.”

Most of the people in attendance were car owners and regular drivers. Tasse encouraged them to obey the speed limit – even drive three to five miles an hour under the speed limit – as an act of “civil obedience.”
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I’ve always believed in obeying the spirit rather than the letter of the law. It’s why I roll through stop signs on my bicycle when it’s safe to do so, and why drivers don’t think they’re breaking the law when they’re going five miles an hour over the speed limit. But speed limits are maximums, not minimums. Nobody has the “right” to drive any faster.

A bicyclist does, however, have the right to “control the lane” at an intersection, forcing the cars behind him to slow down for the few seconds it takes to get safely through. In practice, however, bicyclists who execute this perfectly legal maneuver are often subjected to horn honking, verbal abuse and dangerous driver behavior.

How did we get to the point where bicyclists behaving legally are berated, while drivers are almost expected to exceed the posted speed limits? Why do otherwise reasonable people believe that drivers have a “right” to go as fast as they want, or at least as fast as they can get away with?

Many of the presentations at the GrowSmart forum touched on “traffic calming” measures. Some of these measures include planting trees along roadsides, adding pedestrian islands in the center of a road, and reducing the number of car lanes in favor of wider sidewalks and marked bicycle lanes. These are all worthwhile. But the most needed change is a cultural one.

Drivers need to get the message that it’s not okay to speed, especially in populated areas. A pedestrian struck at 20 miles per hour has a 90 percent chance of survival. At 40 mph, that chance diminishes to 10 percent. Pedestrian deaths are up across Maine, and the Department of Transportation has noticed. We will likely see more traffic calming road design, like Bangor’s recently revamped upper Main Street, in the near future.

This is also justification for more and better bike lanes. Bicyclists make the roads safer for everyone. The more bicyclists there are, the more drivers must notice them and accommodate them, which causes drivers to drive more slowly. Bicyclists are human traffic calming. And every bicyclist on the road equals one less car.

The next time I’m behind the wheel, I’m going to take Tasse up on his suggestion, and drive three miles an hour below the speed limit, though I expect to feel, in his words, “the psychic pressure wave of irritation from the driver behind you.” But as another presenter at the GrowSmart forum pointed out, there is a difference between speed and mobility.

Communities and economies thrive when they have a healthy mix of transportation options, including walking, bicycling, and public transit. It’s challenging to convince people of this after decades of car-first policy. It will take time. But most important changes do.

 

A Tale of Two Trips

Hank Garfield

August was this year’s month for out-of-state travel. First came a solo work trip to Danbury, Connecticut, then, two weeks later, a journey to Missouri with the lovely Lisa to see the total eclipse of the sun.

I decided to do Danbury by bus, because I didn’t want to be one of those armchair liberals who advocates for public transportation while tooling around in a Subaru. I plotted out a trip that would put me on a bus from Bangor at 7 a.m., connecting at Boston’s South Station, with a transfer in Hartford that would get me to Danbury by five that evening.

Little did I know that bridge construction in Boston had sent a ripple effect through bus schedules all over southern New England. My first inkling of trouble came when I looked up from my laptop an hour and fifteen minutes out of South Station to see that we were just passing Fenway Park.

I missed my connection in Hartford. A second bus failed to materialize. I finally got into Danbury around eleven o’clock, sixteen hours after setting out from Bangor. It’s an eight-hour drive.

On the way home, another bus was canceled. I made it, but not without spending a lot of time in bus stations – which is why it’s always advisable to bring a laptop and a good book.

Eclipses happen when they happen. Humans are powerless to postpone them. I’m sorry to disappoint the purists, but we flew to Kansas City and rented a car. We wanted mobility in case clouds moved in – though it’s hard to imagine chasing a shadow moving over the land at 1,400 miles per hour.

Missouri drivers only seem to drive that fast. On Interstate 70, where the speed limit matches the route number, people blew past at 80 or 90. All along the route we saw temporary signs cautioning drivers about the upcoming eclipse. As if anyone could possibly be in the dark about it at this late date.
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Kansas City has a ring of hotels surrounding the airport, and a convenient, free shuttle system. We stayed there on the first and last night of our trip, but we saw the eclipse from Jefferson City, the state capital. The path of totality just grazed Kansas City and St. Louis, but Jefferson City enjoyed two and a half minutes of darkness.

Though it’s surrounded by asphalt, the center of Jefferson City is pedestrian and bicycle friendly, with tree-lined streets and parks with views of the Missouri River. There’s a local bus system called JeffTrans. My only complaint concerns the hotel I booked on-line, which advertised itself as “_____ at the Capitol Mall.” Well, the hotel wasn’t “at” anything. It was five miles out of town, and the only thing within walking distance was another hotel, which likewise did not have a bar. To get anywhere, you had to get in a car – and this is, sadly, typical of many places in America, including Danbury, Connecticut.

Don’t get me wrong: I liked Jefferson City, and I was impressed by the welcome we and other visitors received. A Pink Floyd tribute band named Interstellar Overdrive performed “Dark Side of the Moon” in front of the capitol the night before the event. NASA set up shop across the street. Parking fees were waived in the downtown all day (I know, this encourages driving, but eclipses are nothing if not exceptional). The people were unfailingly friendly.

On the night before we returned to Maine, we took in a Kansas City Royals baseball game. Kauffman Stadium is a beautiful ballpark to which television does not do justice. But it’s miles from the city center, at the intersection of two Interstates, and, again, everybody has to drive. Parking is fifteen bucks. Though there’s probably a bus that can take you there, I saw no evidence of it.

The Royals’ starting pitcher, a lefty named Danny Duffy, held the Colorado Rockies hitless through the first five innings. What are the chances, I wondered, of seeing a total eclipse of the sun on one day and a no-hitter on the next? A walk and a two-run homer with two out in the sixth ended that line of wishful thinking. The Royals held on to win, 3-2, and we held on to survive the drive back to the hotel and the plane trip home.

Renting the car enabled us to travel freely within the American Car Culture. But I was glad to leave it behind when the trip was over.

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