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  • Courts reduce road agency liability

    It’s already difficult to sue road agencies under state law for the quality of the road beneath your tires.

    MCL 691.1402 GOVERNMENTAL LIABILITY FOR NEGLIGENCE

    Each governmental agency having jurisdiction over a highway shall maintain the highway in reasonable repair so that it is reasonably safe and convenient for public travel. A person who sustains bodily injury or damage to his or her property by reason of failure of a governmental agency to keep a highway under its jurisdiction in reasonable repair and in a condition reasonably safe and fit for travel may recover the damages suffered by him or her from the governmental agency. The liability, procedure, and remedy as to county roads under the jurisdiction of a county road commission shall be as provided in section 21 of chapter IV of 1909 PA 283, MCL 224.21. Except as provided in section 2a, the duty of a governmental agency to repair and maintain highways, and the liability for that duty, extends only to the improved portion of the highway designed for vehicular travel and does not include sidewalks, trailways, crosswalks, or any other installation outside of the improved portion of the highway designed for vehicular travel. A judgment against the state based on a claim arising under this section from acts or omissions of the state transportation department is payable only from restricted funds appropriated to the state transportation department or funds provided by its insurer.

    Remember that in Michigan bicycles are not vehicles, therefore road agencies can’t be sued for defects in bike lanes or on paved shoulders.

    That’s both good and bad. It’s good for countering road agencies arguments that bike lanes raise their liability. They don’t. In fact, they can reduce it. That’s not our opinion. That’s the opinion of the Michigan State Attorney General’s office.

    The bad part is this lack of liability removes a motivating factor for keeping them well maintained. Then again, the roads aren’t in all that great a shape either.

    Gravel doesn’t count

    Last week the Michigan Supreme Court clarified the road liability a little more. They said the Road Commission for Oakland County (RCOC) could not be sued for gravel that accumulated on a road. That gravel allegedly caused a motorcycle crash.

    From the Spinal Column:

    “Basically the law states that a defect must be in the traveled portion of the road and the higher courts interpretation is that it must be in the road bed itself and the gravel was simply a dusting on the surface of the road that you would see anywhere on a daily basis,” [RCOC attorney Paula] Reeves explained.

    Michigan law established that if snow and ice are on a roadway, the RCOC is not liable for any damages. Subsequently the Supreme Court last week issued an opinion stating under Michigan Law the agency is not culpable in this incident since RCOC is responsible for keeping the roadway in “reasonable repair,” and loose gravel on a roadway does not fall under this definition.

    “The courts took this logic and extended the law to apply to gravel,” Reeves noted.

    This ruling could likely be applied to a bicyclist crashing on gravel in a vehicle travel lane.

    Again, this is good and bad for the same reasons mentioned earlier.

    However, if reducing the liability means more bike lanes, we’ll take it.

    We’ll deal with the occasional gravel.

     

  • Inaugural Cycle into Spring ride is May 19th

    From the Conner Creek Greenway web site:

    Join the Detroit Eastside Community Collaborative for the first annual Cycle into Spring!

    Enjoy a pleasant pedal from the Detroit River to Eight Mile and back along the Conner Creek Greenway (CCG), nine miles of cycling infrastructure that traces the original Conner Creek and links people, parks, green spaces, neighborhoods, schools and shops. Five miles are complete; funds raised at Cycle into Spring! will support programming and the development of the final four miles of the greenway. Refreshments provided at rest stop.

    Sites along the route include Chrysler Mack Assembly, Wayne County Community College, Chandler Park, Mt. Olivet Cemetery, Conner Playfield, Coleman A. Young Municipal Airport, Better Made Snack Food Factory and the Milbank Trail.

    Cost: $25; $35 includes a full lunch from Slow’s Bar B Q post-ride. $15 lunch only.

    Register now!

    Check out our event on Facebook and tell your friends.

  • Rochester Hills doesn’t have some basic traffic ordinances

    This story started with a trip on the Clinton River Trail through Rochester Hills. The trail crosses Crooks Road midblock. There’s a stop sign for the trail users and a crosswalk, but no stop sign for road users.

    There’s another sign for trail users: Cross traffic does not stop.

    This is odd for two reasons. First, it’s not the intended use of this sign according to the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). These signs are for two-way stops that users might mistake as four-way. That’s not the case here.

    But secondly, road users are supposed to stop when a user is in the crosswalk. If you’re going to invest in signs, shouldn’t they tell the motorists to yield to those in the crosswalk?

    Not in Rochester Hills

    Most cities adopt the Uniform Traffic Code (UTC) in their city ordinances which includes a provision for motorists and other road users yielding to pedestrians.

    Rochester Hills apparently forgot to include this. It appears as if it used to be in Article III of Chapter 98 according to one of the park ordinances. It’s not there now.

    The Rochester Hills City Council did just update these ordinances and included the Michigan Vehicle Code, but they must have overlooked the Uniform Traffic Code. Or did they?

    What does this mean?

    In Michigan, the “rules of the road” have been divided between the Michigan Vehicle Code and the Uniform Traffic Code. Among many other rules, the Uniform Traffic Code includes:

    • Road users yielding to pedestrians in the crosswalks (Note that state law requires yielding to pedestrians and bicycles only when turning through a crosswalk.)
    • Prohibiting jaywalking and hitchhiking
    • Prohibiting littering on streets
    • Prohibiting driving on sidewalks
    • Requiring pedestrians to yield to vehicles outside of crosswalks
    • Requiring vehicle drivers to exercise due care around pedestrians, but especially children
    • Treating skateboarders, roller skaters, or in-line skaters as pedestrians and prohibiting them from roads

    We’re not suggesting you try all these, but if you are struck by a car that fails to yield on a trail crossing in Rochester Hills, don’t expect city ordinances to help.

    As for the rest of the Clinton River Trail, Auburn Hills, Pontiac, and Rochester have adopted the Uniform Traffic Code. Sylvan Lake has not.

  • Detroit Bikes: Making bicycles in the Motor City

    You’ve heard about the eye-candy, low volume retro jewels from the Detroit Bicycle Company. This isn’t them.

    This is Detroit Bikes. They are creating a simple, low-cost, practical urban bikes that should retail for just under $500. And they expect to be building them in the city of Detroit – up to 100 a day if all goes as planned.

    Detroit Bikes is starting to get noticed. The Detroit News and Crain’s Detroit Business both wrote about the new company and its founder, Zak Pashak, an entrepreneur from Calgary.

    Pashak told the News, “Henry Ford’s goal was to create affordable, reliable transportation. That’s my goal.”

    However, the best, more comprehensive coverage of the new company is on Detroit Make it Here.

    Pashak is intent on taking advantage of the industrial opportunity here. He said that he doesn’t think he would have been able to easily find welders and machinists in Calgary and that in Detroit he can buy an industrial building for $300,000 that would cost more than $2 million in his native city.

    Manufacturing bicycles “doesn’t seem like the kind of thing I could start in Calgary,” Pashak said.

    It’s possible to produce affordable, American-made bikes in volume, especially in Detroit, he said.

    This is really exciting. We’re not sure the last time bicycles were built in earnest within the city of Detroit.

    We are sure about wanting to buy one of these.

  • Catching up: Media coverage of Detroit biking

    It’s springtime and that means more bicycling articles in the media.

    And we’ve got a lot of catching up to do.

    Huffington Post Detroit series

    This really has been a special series of three articles on Detroit bicycling that break the standard templates used before. These are not articles about lycra-clad club riders going for a weekend recreational tour. It’s about Detroiters, many of whom are relying on bicycles as transportation.

    Detroit’s Bicycling Booming To Meet Transportation, Recreation Needs

    Joe Simpson bikes out of necessity. The 61-year-old used to work for the nonprofit Focus: Hope, but he’s currently unemployed. “Cars are an inconvenience on my economic level,” he explained. “I can get into the city by bike at least as fast as I can by bus, and that’s not even considering the wait for the bus.”

    “This is my transportation, that’s why I bike,” Simpson said. “It’s not exercise. It’s not a hobby. That’s my involvement in bike culture right there.”

    Detroit Bike Lanes Expand, Giving Cyclists New Options

    [Detroit’s Department of Public Works director Ron] Brundidge said Detroit is aggressively building bike lanes to promote a healthy lifestyle and to encourage environmentally conscious behavior. “We just feel it’s our responsibility to do everything we can to have our citizens have the option and ability to get out there and bike,” Brundidge said.

    Detroit Bike Shops, Community Spaces Lend Momentum To Cycling

    Some of these two-wheel havens have only been around for a few years, others have been solid pillars of their neighborhoods for decades. From fixing gears to fixed-gears, each of the following spaces offers a unique spin on what what cycling means to Motown.

    dbusiness journal

    The Motor City Goes Motorless

    So what makes Detroit, a city built for four-wheeled traffic, so bike-friendly?

    “Number one, it’s the abundance of infrastructure,” says Karen Gage, co-owner of The Wheelhouse in Detroit. “The city was built for (two) million people but there are less than a million now, so we have lots of roads and not a lot of traffic.”

    The South End

    Motor City slowly becomes bicycle friendly

    Detroit is also filled with neighborhoods that are fascinating to ride through. Corktown, home of the famously abandoned Michigan Central Station; Indian Village, an east side neighborhood known for its historic homes; and McDougall-Hunt, the small neighborhood where the Heidelberg Project is located.

    More interesting neighborhoods include: Eastern Market, West Side Industrial, Milwaukee Junction, New Center and Wayne State’s very own Midtown, among many others.

    Changing Gears (and Forbes)

    On Earth Day, Turning The Motor City Into Cycle City

    “Detroit has a very cool, strong cyclist culture,” says Eli Bayless, the Tigers’ director of promotions and in-game operations.

    Modeshift

    Re-designing Detroit means re-thinking the city

    MS: What can you say about road diets and bike lanes contributing toward the effort?

    JG:?We’re talking about using excess road capacity to create something like bike lanes or greenways or wider sidewalks. They’re recreational venues, they tend to be venues for economic development since people develop things along those routes.

    We’re talking about creating sort of landmarks within neighborhoods so you have one big thing like the Riverwalk meets a smaller one that’s coming into it and that creates a lot of venues where people can get together.

    This is all about strategies to connect people in different neighborhood within neighborhoods and connecting different neighborhoods to each other through these intervention strategies which are not just the typical build roads, build highways, build stadiums and casinos but doing some of the non-traditional stuff.