⚠️ NEWSFLASH: The Venetian just got classed up!
Miami's bikeable causeway just got... more bikeable!
Have you biked over the Venetian Causeway lately? There are some pretty sick upgrades to our favorite bridge! We’d like to start the year with a shout-out to a few of the elected officials that championed this: Mark Samuelian, Eileen Higgins, Ken Russell. Thank you!
So what’s new? Physical separators (“armadillos”) have been installed to help keep cars in their lane. The bike lanes on the bridge sections are now an additional foot wider. The narrower car lanes slow down traffic while the physical armadillos help deter the cars from crossing into the bike lane. This is a big deal!
A tragic crash occurred on the Venetian Causeway two years ago. A car veered into the bike lane and crushed a woman from behind while she was commuting by bike, killing her in broad daylight. These improvements could have saved her life.
It’s nice to see that our bicycle infrastructure is coming along through tactical and low-cost urban design. No need for concrete to be poured, curbs to be moved, or fresh pavement laid. This is a great case study where: 1) a problem with the safety of the road was identified and 2) a solution was implemented. A similar method could be used on so many of our roads! Studies show that physical separators between cars and people significantly decrease all roadway fatalities, inspiring the “interested but concerned” riders (like us! this is us!) to ditch the car with these improvements.
Now, no good deed goes unpunished…
“Performance cyclists” are complaining that the armadillos are inconvenient and dangerous to them since they can crash into them when passing other cyclists at high speeds. However, it’s important to remember who protected bike lanes are designed for, and who they are not.
The armadillos on the Venetian Causeway are high visibility (painted with reflective white paint) and non-moving. They don't "jump out" and trip cyclists, and there is a high probability that the people who’ve hit the non-moving, high visibility separators were riding too fast and should’ve been on the actual road.
Protected bike lanes are NOT designed for the “professional,” “experienced,” (and may we add, recreational) cyclists in spandex that you see rolling down the causeway during the wee hours of the morning.
Protected bike lanes ARE designed for the regular folks who bike as a mode of transportation. So the “cyclists” we talk about when advocating for more protected infrastructure are, well, people like you and me. People whose lives are not at risk by the unlikely possibility of hitting an armadillo while passing another cyclist, but by the high probability of being hit by a distracted driver in a speeding car.
The protection of the bike lanes on the Venetian Causeway is a positive story, and we’ll end it on a positive note. Never has there been a better time to get out of your car and ride the Venetian, so hop on your bike and leave “the island!” And let’s be thankful for the beautiful path!
WHAT WE ARE READING
A Brief History of Motion by Tom Standage
Beginning around 3,500 BCE with the wheel — a device that didn't catch on until a couple thousand years after its invention — Standage zips through the eras of horsepower, trains, and bicycles, revealing how each successive mode of transportation embedded itself in the world we live in, from the geography of our cities to our experience of time to our notions of gender. Then, delving into the history of the automobile's development, Standage explores the social resistance to cars and the upheaval that their widespread adoption required. Cars changed how the world was administered, laid out, and policed, how it looked, sounded, and smelled — and not always in the ways we might have preferred.
Today after the explosive growth of ride-sharing and years of breathless predictions about autonomous vehicles, the social transformations spurred by coronavirus and overshadowed by climate change create a unique opportunity to critically reexamine our relationship to the car. With A Brief History of Motion, Standage overturns myths, considers roads not taken, and invites us to look at our past with fresh eyes so we can create the future we want to see.