Fall time's fall time

This is the pothole the morning after it caught me by surprise.
Looks conspicuous now, but the night before, it was under a pond of water!

It's fall time in Hungary, and the elements are conspiring to weed out fair-weathered cyclists. On Tuesday, they nearly weeded out me.

On the way home Tuesday, I was cruising down Kiralyok utja, a fairly busy artery running through the Romai part neighbourhood of Obuda. It was cloudy, the light was dim and droplets from a drizzling rain were beading up on my glasses. Despite this raft of visual handicaps, my mind was musing on some abstract point about cycling infrastructure as I casually slalomed between puddles and storm detritus. Then suddenly, a more concrete aspect of infrastructure intruded on my reverie. BAM! My front tire fell into a gaping pothole, and at least one of my hands slipped off the handles. I skittered off the road and careered right for a hedge. In the helpless moment before impact, I thrust my right arm toward what I thought would be a solid fence underlying the greenery. Luckily there was none. I penetrated the hedge and fell down half way through. On the ground with a throbbing pain in my shin but no apparent bones broken, I disentangled my legs from the bushes and pushed myself to my feet.

A tight shot on the enemy pothole -- warts and all.

As one car after the other splashed by without acknowledging my plight, I cussed the motoring public. However, a boy about seven or eight years old walked by just then and, with an embarrassed grin, asked me if I was ok. I was too shaken to acknowledge the comedy of it just then, but by now, I can see that it must have been hard for him to suppress a cackle after seeing an adult bike straight off the road into a hedge for no apparent reason. Still, he must have recognised trauma on my face, and it was sweet of him to inquire about my well-being -- and to refrain from actually cackling.

Thankfully, I came through with nothing more than bruised bones. It reminded me of the hazards of riding in less than ideal conditions on roads that are less than forgiving. For a car, cracks and holes in the paving barely transmit through the suspension. But for cyclists, they're a real hazard. Every time I have an accident like this, it happens in the cold, dark period between now and April, when visibility declines and holes in the paving are concealed under mud puddles or glazed with ice.

This is the hedge I ran into. Didn't destroy it, but I did give it something to think about.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to check out exemplary cycling infrastructure in the town of Zwolle, Netherlands. All the roads there are like new, exceptionally well maintained, the cycle tracks amazingly well designed, the street lighting bright and clear.

It's not an original thought, but the point it underscores for me is that the test of good road infrastructure is not how well it serves at high noon on a sunny summer day, but how well it works in the rain, after dark for a bike commuter on the verge of the road.

Of course, we live in Budapest, and when we hit the streets we make allowances for the surprise pothole and the gaping seam in the tarmac. For the sake of our own hides, we adapt to it, but that doesn't mean we should accept it.

The Problem with Segregated Lanes

I had an experience that was a beautiful example of why segregated bike paths, in an urban setting, can be more dangerous than lanes that integrate cyclists with motor traffic.

It was on my regular morning commute from Budapest to Szentendre. I was about midway, at the beginning of the dedicated bike path that heads north from Bekasmegyer. The path, which is for both directions of bike traffic, runs right next to the southbound lane of Szentendre út. As I say, I was heading north, and up ahead, a small flatbed truck was pulling out from a compressed gas filling station on the left. The driver had pulled most of the way across the path, and was intending to turn south toward Budapest. Naturally, he was looking to his left, watching the rush-hour traffic and waiting for a gap so he could make his turn.

I ought to have just waited for him to make the turn and clear the pathway -- but it was heavy traffic and I was too impatient to wait, besides being irritated that he was idling there blocking the path. I chose to go around his front end, and at the instant I passed by his front bumper, he hit the gas and plowed right into me. I actually had an inkling that this might happen, and I managed to jump off the bike and land on my feet. I was fine, except for a scrape on my thigh where the bike's cross bar raked the skin. My bike also seemed ok. The driver immediately hit the brakes, jumped out and was clearly upset and worried. I was pissed off, but refrained from expletives and instead told him he should look both ways before turning. He said something about traffic being bad -- a lame excuse for his having been idling there across the bike path trying to make his turn. My main thoughts were, I'm very lucky that nothing worse happened, and that I was foolish for taking the chance of going in front of a driver who I could see was not paying attention.

Beyond that, the experience reinforced wisdom that's gaining more currency these days: on urban roads where traffic crosses other streets and passes driveways, lanes that put the cyclists into traffic can be safer than lanes that keep them separate. Motorists don't pay attention to you when you're removed from traffic, and then when you do cross their path -- at an intersection or driveway -- you take them by surprise. The AASHTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities http://www.communitymobility.org/pdf/aashto.pdf notes that there are only certain places where it's appropriate to put cyclists on segregated paths (or "shared use paths," in AASHTO parlance). The book states, "Generally, shared use paths should be used to serve corridors not served by streets and highways ... ."