A few years ago, I won a case in small claims court that I maybe should have lost. Allstate Insurance coughed up a couple hundred dollars toward the purchase of a new bicycle after my old one was crunched in a collision with a car.

I should have lost because I was riding the wrong way on a one-way street. The street is small and residential, and the one-way uphill block represented the most direct route from the old location of the Bangor post office to the east side address where I then lived. The elderly female driver had plenty of room to avoid me. But she made a truncated left turn, cutting off the corner. She claimed she didn’t see me over the hood of her Cadillac. I suffered a few scrapes; the bike’s frame was bent beyond repair.

I like to think of myself as a conscientious bicyclist. I wear bright clothing and use lights and hand signals. I was way over on the side of the road. An alert driver would not have hit me. Had there been a car parked where I was riding – as is often the case on that street – the woman would have struck it.

This was the point I made in court – or rather, in a mediation session that included me and a mediator and an attorney for Allstate, who had driven up from Portland that morning. My case went to mediation because the judge was acquainted with the woman who had hit me. The case was going to be postponed for thirty days.

I’ve forgotten the attorney’s name, but we had a hilarious conversation about how much money Allstate was willing to pay him to defend a $400 case. Wouldn’t it be cheaper just to give me the money, even if I was, technically, in the wrong? He made three phone calls before the company agreed to split the difference and throw me two hundred bucks toward a new bike.

It was fun being a thorn in the side of a huge insurance company. I felt like I had struck a blow against the forces of evil.
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But before my court date, I had read Mary Karr’s memoir Lit, and one particular passage began to gnaw at me. Karr tells of a conversation with another writer, who advised her not to try to make herself look good in the reflected light of memory. I realized that I had allowed my attitude about cars to color my perception of what happened.

It pains me to admit that I can cop an air of superiority when I’m on my bike in traffic. I convince myself that I’m doing something more enlightened than the drivers around me. Any one of those cars could squash me like a bug. Their drivers are trying to get through the day and get things done, just as I am. I’m not going to convince anyone of anything if, even subconsciously, I’m looking down at people who have made a different choice. I tell myself I don’t do this, as Karr convinced herself she never drank in the morning. But my actions speak otherwise. I need to pay attention to this.

A bicycle is a vehicle. It is every bit as illegal to bicycle as it is to drive the wrong way on a one-way street. We’re supposed to stop at red lights and stop signs. I admit that I don’t always obey the letter of the law. But when I roll through a stop sign (after looking both ways) or cut across a parking lot to avoid a red light (after making sure that it’s safe), I’m doing the same thing a driver does when exceeding the speed limit by five to ten miles an hour.

Or am I just rationalizing my own bad behavior? Well into my forties, I blithely rode my bicycle with my head protected by nothing harder than a baseball cap. I did this on the streets of San Diego and on the lonely highways of Maine, until a surgical nurse I’d grown close to described for me in graphic detail the injuries suffered by freedom-loving, bareheaded bicyclists. “But Bobby Orr never wore a helmet when he played hockey,” I replied.

She looked at me with what can only be described as incredulity. “Do you hear yourself?” It was clear in that moment that I didn’t have the stronger argument. I’ve worn a helmet ever since.

I took the money, and I still believe that drivers operating 3,000-pound motorized vehicles should be held to a higher standard of safety than bicyclists. But I haven’t ridden up any more one-way streets.[wpdevart_like_box profile_id=”” connections=”6″ width=”15″ height=”10″ header=”1″ locale=”en_US”]

The bicycle is out of the basement, a few weeks later than last year. I don’t like to ride on ice or snow, and both stuck around a little too long this spring in this corner of the country.

Some places are dicey to ride even in clear, warm weather. A small city like Bangor ought to be easy to navigate by bicycle. But a recent presentation by traffic planners at City Hall left me feeling anxious about the future.

The subject was a study of what to do about traffic on Broadway, one of Bangor’s busiest streets. Though fewer than 20 people attended, several parents showed up to point out that many sections of the road are unsafe for bicyclists, and at best uncomfortable for pedestrians.

According to traffic engineer Thomas Errico of T.Y. Lin International, the Falmouth firm that conducted the study, it’s one of the busiest corridors in Maine, carrying 25,000 cars a day. It passes two high schools, a university, a shopping center, a fast food alley, a medical park, an ice cream stand and a truck stop on its way out of town toward Dover-Foxcroft.

Bangor High School presents particular problems. One man said, “I don’t understand why the public transportation in this town isn’t coordinated with the schools.” Other parents described near-death scenarios getting into and out of school entrances. (The other high school, John Bapst, is closer to downtown and lies smack dab on two bus routes, but nonetheless clogs traffic in that area.)

Though fond of phrases that would make E.B. White cringe (“left turn movements,” “a high priority on Interstate facilities,” e.g.), Errico and his team laid out several scenarios for improving bicycle and pedestrian access in the area. There was much talk of moving traffic lights, eliminating driveways, and altering intersections. The millions-of-dollars option is a roundabout at the intersection of Broadway, Center Street, and the interstate.

I like roundabouts. They’re much safer than four-way intersections, for both drivers and bicyclists. And I like the idea of a back road on the Bangor High side, all the way from the shopping center down to the community on the other side of the hill.

But I was dismayed at the paucity of talk about public transportation. The area is not well served by the present bus routes. There is no direct bus between Husson and downtown, for example. The Center Street and Mall Hopper routes converge at the shopping center, but Outer Broadway is not served at all.

And my favorite option – eliminating a lane of automotive traffic in favor of bicycle lanes – was ruled out almost immediately because, in Errico’s words, it would have caused “significant traffic congestion.”
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The anarchist in me loves that possibility. It is fun, I admit, to zip past a long line of stalled cars on a bicycle. And if traffic in the short term became intolerable, would that not lead a number of adults and high school students to conclude that bicycles and the bus were more convenient?

A lot, maybe most, of the daily drivers on Broadway would still drive, but consider: If just one of every ten drivers were a bicyclist or a bus passenger, it would reduce the number of cars in a day on Broadway by 2,500. Two and a half thousand fewer cars on the road would resolve many of Broadway’s traffic problems.

The short-term ire of drivers likely precludes anything so bold as taking out a lane. But that’s the direction traffic policy should be heading. We should be looking for ways to reduce the number of cars on the road. Better bicycling and bus service is the way to do it.

I give Errico points for promoting pedestrian access. When someone observed that few people walk on Broadway, he replied, “I like to think that with these street improvements, we’ll see more people walking.” The same is true of bikes and buses.

+ + +

This Saturday is the Kenduskeag Canoe Race, which is a lot of fun to follow by bicycle. I like to throw my bike on the Capehart bus and take it to Finson Road. From there it’s a short ride to Six Mile Falls, where cars will be backed up for half a mile along every approaching road. It’s easy to follow to the course downstream from there via Outer-Outer-Broadway, Kenduskeag, Valley, and Harlow into downtown.

I hope to see a lot of bicyclists, weather permitting. Bicyclists and drivers alike: please don’t get in the way of the racers, and observe courtesy on the road at all times.

Spring, finally, is here.