The Detroit Free Press is reporting that Birmingham’s City Commission may repeal their onerous bike registration ordinance.

City Commissioners are expected tonight to repeal the community’s 1963 bicycle ordinance — including its 25-cents-a-day charge to impound a bike.

Police Chief Richard Patterson, in a Sept. 11 memorandum to City Manager Tom Markus, pointed out that the ordinance was antiquated.

Birmingham police will continue providing free bike licenses to residents, the chief said in his memo. But he’d like the city to scrap the ordinance, which includes having cops charge 25 cents a day for impounding a bike if the owner lacks a license or is otherwise not in compliance with a litany of outdated bike rules.

This repeal is a direct result of our m-bike article highlighting some Metro Detroit’s ridiculous bicycle ordinances. In that article we noted that all bike in Birmingham sales and purchases must be reported to the police. The city also required all bicycles to be registered, including those of non-residents.

Here’s some media coverage related to biking in Detroit:

Make the Motor City Smaller

Free Press write Bill McGraw has an article in Newsweek about the need to manage shrinking in Detroit.

Detroit has been shrinking for 50 years. The city has lost more than half of the 2 million people it had in the early 1950s, but it remains 138 square miles. Experts estimate that about 40 square miles are empty, and [Mayor Dave] Bing has said that only about half the city’s land is being used productively.

The next steps are complicated and largely uncharted. Moving residents into more densely populated districts has legal and moral implications; it must be done with care and the input of those who would be moved. And what do you do with the empty space? The city is already dotted with big vegetable gardens, and one entrepreneur has proposed starting a large commercial farm. Some people advocate bike paths, greenways, and other recreation areas. Surrounded by fresh water, and buffeted by nature reasserting itself on land where factories used to be, Detroit could someday be the greenest, most livable urban area in the country. A city can dream, can’t it?

Of course the positve side to this abandonment is our roads have few motorists and it’s a great place to bike. This largely goes unrecognized because the yardstick for bikeability is how much money a city has invested in bike lanes and bike racks. That bike-friendly yardstick fails to acknowledge how a shrinking city can make a city more bikeable.

On a related note, I spoke briefly with Detroit council candidate Charles Pugh at Saturday’s Dally in the Alley. He wants to sit down and discuss how greenways fit into a plan for shrinking Detroit.

Right way is the only way to ride a bike

The Times Herald out of Port Huron has a well-written column about riding on the right side of the road. Apparently they had many of their reads call in regarding biking.

Of course, it is a less-than-scientific survey, but a majority of TalkBack callers believe bicycle riders should travel on the left side of the road, against traffic.

On this, as in many matters, a majority of TalkBack callers are wrong.

One additional point is that riding against traffic on a sidewalk or sidepath (also called safety path) is even more dangerous than riding against traffic on the road.

Campaign focuses on plight of Rust Belt

The Pittsburg Post-Gazette covered the Great Lakes Urban Exchange also known as GLUE, who asks the question, “I Will Stay If…” at events throughout the Rust Belt.

The Detroit party was “a qualified success,” said Ms. [Sarah] Szurpicki. “We had around 100 people and collected over 80 good photos” of participants holding a white board with the phrase “I Will Stay If …” completed.

“The photos show that people want better regional cooperation, public transit, bike lanes, curbside recycling, things like that. And what has come out of this is people saying ‘I am staying to be a part of something,’ ‘I am staying because I want to help build that curbside recycling program.’

“This is about place-building.”

On another web site, someone commented that the communities in Southeast Oakland County have ridiculous bike rules unlike the west side.

The reason we didn’t list any weird west side rules is because we hadn’t looked there.

So, in order to be balanced, here are some more true or false questions:

1. You cannot sell ice cream from your bike in West Bloomfield
2. It’s illegal to drive into Kensington Metropark with your bicycle on a rack.
3. Plymouth police can impound residents’ unlicensed bicycles and it costs $3 to get them back.
4. It is illegal to use a child trailer on your bike in Northville.

(more…)

How well do you know the “rules of the road?”

True or False:

1. It is illegal to follow the designated bike route from Birmingham to Royal Oak in the early morning and late afternoon.
2. Cyclists must ride on Woodward when leaving the American Cycle and Fitness/Trek store in Royal Oak.
3. You must have a front and rear light when riding your bicycle in Detroit during the day.
4. Anyone who buys a bicycle in Birmingham, must tell the police or they can impound it.
5. When braking, cyclists must remove their hand from their left brake lever first.
6. Some folding bicycles and recumbents do not have rights to ride on the roads in Oak Park.
7. Clawson ordinances prevent bicyclists from signaling their turns.
8. All cyclists on the Wednesday Wolverine ride must get their bicycles licensed by the city of Birmingham first.
9. Oak Park police can impound your bicycle if you are caught drinking water from your bottle while biking.

Answers below the fold.

(more…)

Throughout the Detroit suburbs, cyclists can expect to hear the occasional verbal assault from motorists. The typical theme is “you don’t belong on the road” or “you’re in my way.”

Clearly state law says that cyclists have the same access to all Michigan roads except limited-access highways.

Some argue that since cyclists can’t travel at the speed limit, they shouldn’t be on the road and that bicycles impede traffic. But courts have dismissed that argument since it would effectively ban bicycles (and pedestrians, pack-animals, farm machinery, Amish wagons, etc.) from all roads.

But are motorists really that concerned about being occasionally slowed due sharing the road with cyclists? How much time do Metro Detroit motorists “lose” to cyclists on the roads?

Rather than attempt to answer that question, it’s perhaps more important to step back and judge all the issues that delay motorists.

How much time do motorists lose to:

• Road construction
• Stop lights and stop signs
• Speed limits
• Rush hour traffic
• School buses loading and unloading children
• At-grade train crossings
• Inclement weather
• Emergency vehicles
• Slow downs due to vehicle crashes
• Other cars on the road

Motorists’ time lost to bicyclists is certainly minor compared with most of these. So are these same motorists yelling at school buses and emergency vehicles to get off the road? It seems that if they were so consumed with decreasing their travel delays, they’d focus on the issues causing the biggest delays.

And speaking of travel delays, this past week an apparently careless driver caused a horrific tanker explosion on I-75 which caused over a $1 million in damage and has left the expressway closed for days. This portion of I-75 carries 160,000 vehicles per day and the closure is causing many minutes of delay per vehicle.

This single crash has likely caused more motorist delay than all the cyclists in Metro Detroit combined — ever.

That certainly helps put this all in perspective.