We’re a huge fan of Tom Vanderbilt’s How We Drive blog. While he doesn’t always talk about cycling, he almost always talks about issues affecting cycling (and pedestrians!)

For instance, we recently noted how many drivers blame all cyclists as a collective group, but not all drivers. Vanderbilt says this is a psychological phenomenon called the Fundamental Attribution Error. So it’s not just us…

Streetsblog recently interviewed him and produced this video.

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Google has added bicycle directions to Google Maps.

And, when you’re looking at their map, you can turn on the bicycling information by hovering over the “More…” button. The bicycle facilities that show up (e.g. bike lanes, bike routes) are given priority when giving directions.

One problem is Google thinks there are bicycle facilities where they are none.

For example, you’ll see a dark green line show up on the east side of Woodward around 12 Mile Road (as of this morning or the attached picture.) It’s about 50 feet east of Woodward, roughly where parts of an alleyway exists — and that’s not something they should be routing us on.

After this showed up on some bicycle routing we made on Tuesday, we clicked on Google’s Report a Problem link. We selected the bad routing portion from the drop down menu and said, “There is no road or bicycle facility to turn on to.” We quickly received a confirmation email.

This morning we received this response:

Your Google Maps problem report has been reviewed, and you were right! We’ll update the map soon and email you when you can see the change.

In our opinion, less than three business days is a decent turnaround time for investigating this issue. We’ll see how soon they update their base map.

There are other non-existent or improper (e.g. sidewalk) bicycle facilities throughout this area. Clearly Google is relying on similar efforts from many people (i.e. crowdsourcing) to improve their bicycle routing.

Center for Creative Studies' uncreative bike rack at the Taubman Center. Nudge, nudge.

The Wheelhouse Detroit blog has an excellent discussion of bicycle parking and racks.

As Detroit becomes more bike friendly, more and more businesses and institutions are installing bike racks — which is great, no doubt about it. What is frustrating, though, is to see funds and good intent wasted when, simply put, the bike rack is not functional. This occurs when the rack is poorly designed or poorly placed.

This is perfect timing as the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals released a second edition of their Bicycle Parking Guidelines. Their first edition is available on-line, but this second edition adds:

• Guidance long-term bicycle parking
• Elements of a good bike locker, including specific performance criteria
• Maintenance best practices
• Sample site plans and diagrams to help avoid blunders in rack and locker placement
• Sample quantity requirements for bicycle parking to meet need by land use
• A worksheet for programming bicycle parking for a building or cluster of buildings
• Abundant images and charts to illustrate concepts and conditions

One issue is funding. Cities like Chicago rely on Congestion Mitigation and Air Quality (CMAQ) funding for much of their bike parking. SEMCOG’s CMAQ funding formula does not give the same priority to our non-motorized projects — something groups like MTGA want to change.

It also seems that once we find a funding mechanism, we can spur green job creation by having local steel workers creating bicycle racks. Why would a underemployed manufacturing city import these simple metal structures? We should be exporting bicycle racks.

According to a report on myFoxdetroit.com, a local taxi driver hit a young cyclist in Melvindale.

Ten-year-old Madeline Gomez was just doing what kids do when it’s nice outside; riding her bike. Out of nowhere a taxi hit her, knocking her to the ground and knocking out her teeth.

A decent person would stop, but that cabbie just kept on driving.

The cab driver has not yet been caught.

She told the reporter “It’ll be a long time before she can think about even riding her bike again.” How sad.

We wish young Madeline a quick recovery.

MDOT and Wayne State University’s Transportation Research Group is collecting survey data for all roundabout users, including cyclists and pedestrians. We encourage all cyclists to participate. It’s short and painless.

Link: Take the Roundabout Survey

One issue with the survey is it generalizes roundabouts. Not all roundabouts are the same. The single lane versions are far simpler and safer for cyclists than the overbuilt three-lane versions. However, the survey doesn’t take this variation into account. The researcher told us they will be looking at crash data for these different versions.

Unfortunately, MDOT issued an errant press release about this survey. In it they said the survey was “aimed at finding out what motorists think about roundabouts.” The Free Press, Detroit News, and Oakland Press have repeated this mistake in their news coverage, so it’s extra important that we get some cyclist and pedestrian responses.

MDOT did apologize for the oversight.