Column: Railroad plan no boost to bikes
The Herald Sun
By choice, Caleb Southern doesn’t own a car. He lives and works downtown, walking just about everywhere he needs to go. You might think, then, that he’d be excited about the N.C. Railroad Co.’s proposal to close the railroad crossing at Blackwell and Corcoran streets to automobile traffic. In place of the street-level crossing, the railroad has proposed a 65-foot wide pedestrian underpass.
Southern adamantly opposes the plan.
“I believe the best solution,” to the imminent increase in train traffic at this crossing “is to improve the Blackwell Street railroad crossing at grade.”
Many readers of this column have asked for my opinion as a cyclist. I agree with Southern that closing the crossing to cars is not in downtown’s best interests. Nor the best interests of Durham’s cycling community.
Here’s why.
I’m not sure where it comes from, but there is an assumption that cyclists and drivers are at odds with one another. Occasionally, a driver resents slowing down to pass a cyclist, and sure there is a small but sometimes vocal community of cyclists who proclaim that gasoline consumption is tantamount to global devastation. But for the most part cyclists and drivers are happy to share the road with one another. Think about it, most cyclists are also drivers.
Sharing the road is what urban cycling is all about. A well-designed street is one that keeps traffic - in all modes of transportation - flowing smoothly and safely.
Many Durham residents have long complained that the downtown loop impedes downtown’s ability to attract businesses because the loop diverts traffic around the district. City transportation planners have listened and rethought downtown’s streets.
For example, the city plans to realign the Foster/Corcoran Street, Chapel Hill Street intersection. Coupled with this will be a new bicycling route through downtown. The Downtown Trail will connect the South Ellerbee Creek Trail with the American Tobacco Trail. It will follow Foster and Corcoran, cross the railroad tracks, and continue on Blackwell Street.
I believe downtown’s renaissance depends on growing downtown from the center, out. As I’ve said before, Durham is already a city divided into bike-friendly islands. Closing the Corcoran/Blackwell railroad separates downtown physically and visually from its newest resource - the American Tobacco Campus.
As Southern says, the railroad company’s “plan will clearly impede the continuity of the Downtown Trail for cyclists and pedestrians and further separate the two sides of the tracks.” Finding an attractive and safe street-level solution will unify Durham’s downtown and preserve the flow of Durham’s contribution to the East Coast Greenway - the 2000-plus mile cycling trail from Maine to Florida. If cycling traffic at the railroad crossing is disrupted in any way, Durham may lose its best opportunity for bicycle tourism.
The proposed closure of the railroad crossing shows that cyclists, drivers, and pedestrians share more than the road; we also share the desire to get from here to there as safely and efficiently as possible.
“axe”ident
why you should wear eye protection while chopping wood.
Column: Falling just a beneficial part of bicycling
Phillip Barron
The Herald-Sun
January 11, 2005 9:09 am
DURHAM — All cyclists have stories about accidents: the first time, the worst time, the most recent time. Falling, in my opinion, is just part of cycling. For the most part, especially if you’re wearing your helmet, falling isn’t so bad. It gives you the chance to get back up.
On the way to work a few months ago, a familiar corner of the last 50 yards of my commute revealed itself as unfamiliar. Rounding the corner, I tried to keep as much speed as possible for the climb up the steep hill on the other side. The corner, a sharp right turn, is the only thing standing between me and the momentum I need to coast up at least a quarter of the hill. My 9-mile commute is not hard, but by the time I get to this hill, my feet are heavy.
Seeing how fast I can take the corner is one of the risks I take to challenge myself on my way to work. Every morning I go a little faster, lean the bike a little more, and make myself a little more vulnerable. But, this morning, I rode a little too fast or leaned a little too far. It was tropical storm season, and the suddenly clear blue sky belied the fact that it had rained persistently for three days. Although the roads were dry, under the canopy of the trees the trail was still wet.
Wet pavement, hit at an angle and with enough speed, can be slick as ice. It doesn’t take much mud, wet grass, or algae slime to pull a wheel out from under you. Especially if you’re braking into the turn. I should have finished braking before the turn, so that I could accelerate through it. But, my confidence was off and I was still braking while turning. Probably because I was afraid of falling.
The front tire slipped first. The bottom of the front wheel kicked out and to the left. The rest of the bike, not prepared to follow the front wheel’s new direction and keep a 200-pound rider on top, laid down on its right side. By the time the rear wheel was sliding, the handlebars hit the path, bounced, and skidded down the hill. The bike came to a stop about 15 feet away from where the front tire slipped. With a smoothly worn bar-end, the bike faired better than I.
I slid across the pavement on it. The sliding didn’t hurt, even though skin was tearing. It hurt only afterward. While you’re falling and sliding on pavement, it’s almost like it’s not happening to you. You don’t have time to think or feel.
When I stood up, I began to feel. Yeah, my shoulder hurt from the jarring impact, but it didn’t dislocate. Yeah, my hip hurt from slamming into pavement, but I had no trouble walking. Yeah, I was bleeding from my elbow, but not badly considering what just happened.
What I felt most was relief. Relief that I was OK; that my fears didn’t come true. Later, I was even glad that I had fallen. I felt like I had accomplished something important.
As we age, we grow more fragile. We lose the adept strength, flexibility, and elasticity of our childhood physiques. But our habits accelerate the biological inevitability of aging. We are less active as adults than we are as children. We value play less; we value physical activity less. We surround ourselves with safety features like airbags, surge protectors, carbon monoxide detectors and surveillance cameras. For many of us if we play, we tend to play it safe.
This is something to think about. We’re not just growing more fragile as we grow older, we’re also growing more conservative. Some of us take fewer risks because we see risk as a health care liability or a threat to job security.
What are we afraid of? Maybe we’re afraid of falling because we don’t fall often enough. We fear falling when we forget that falling is about healing, about recovering, about learning.
If we fell more, we’d be a little bruised, maybe a little bloody, a little more sore. But, we’d be better prepared for what comes next. Where we fall and bounce back, where we risk and succeed, where we work through fear, that’s where we find meaning in life.
riding in rain
I don’t normally mountain bike in the rain. Riding when it’s wet is not good for singletrack, and I respect the fact that I’m sharing the trail with others including my future self. But what can you do when the weather report isn’t calling for any rain, it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain when you hit the trail, but the sky opens up anyway midway through your ride? I did the only thing I could think of – I kept riding but was very careful not to lock my brakes.
It started as a torrential mist. The air changed from just humid to a thick cloud, as though colloidal water droplets particularized in mid-air. We’re having such unusually warm weather that I have to say it felt nice. I stopped just to enjoy it. It’s just the deer and me in this part of the park; I stood there looking upward, letting the soon-to-be raindrops hit my face and arms. The trail feels like it’s lined with those really fine misting soaker hoses.
Once my soul is as refreshed as my face, I start riding again. A few minutes and it starts to rain. The trail is turning darker, the roots are getting slicker, my tires sound like suction cups pulling up from the dirt, and when used my brakes screech horribly.
Before the trail is wet in all spots, long before the first puddles start to form, the rain stops. The wet roots are still reason to be cautious, but the trail is dry enough to ride without hurting it.
I’ll take 70 degree weather whenever I can get it, but I love it in January.
the snap project
Visiting other cities is always defined for me by people. Some I talk to, if
only for a few seconds. Others I just pass by, coming no closer than a car window
at 20 mph.
Ottawa
–
A bike messenger – too cheap, too poor, or too proud to wear but a bandana
tied around his face. It spreads out over his mouth to keep wind off his cheeks
and chin. His breath freezes as he exhales into the rag; blue cotton turns
dark, then is trimmed with white frost. He track stands on his fixie at the
stoplight. Bike messengers, especially in cold cities, are all a little bit
crazy (or at least they want to be perceived that way), but the few with an
ounce of sanity wear helmets.
–
The woman at the vegan bakery – with her dreadlocked hair and loose-fitting
clothes, she leans over the counter uncomfortably far to offer assistance and
winks when you order the “Hemp Brownie.” She leans so far, that she’s in your space. You want to take a step back, but there is a line of people behind you. It’s like driving down a narrow street when the car in front of you suddenly stops and tries to back into the space on the right. You need to back up to get out of the driver’s way, but there is a car behind you. All three cars just sit there uncomfortably until the stalemate is broken and the trying-to-park car drives off to circle the block and try again.
She wears sleeveless tops,
in layers, even in January. Each layer is a sheer ankle-length dress. But she wears just enough layers not to raise eyebrows. She’s dressing in layers, but not the way most people
mean to in below-freezing weather.
–
Jody asked where I’d climbed before. We swapped stories of climbs in the mountains
of North Carolina, and he told me about a temporary job he once had planning
routes at a climbing wall in Kitty Hawk. He proceeded to teach my group the
basics of belaying. He’s one of those people with a gift for explaining something
three-hundred times, and on the three-hundred and first, it sounds fresh and
new. He’s not bored with what he does. Why can’t New York subway conductors
sound like that?
–
When packing for the trip, I saw that I was down to one pen in my messenger
bag. Mental note: I need to pack another pen. “You’ve used this pen forever;
it’s not going to run out,” I reply to myself. What kind of sense did
that make? The longer you use a pen, the closer you are to needing a replacement.
5:10pm, December 31st, my pen runs dry. I’m picky about what kind of pen I
can use, so I set off walking across the enormous parking lot of the hotel
I’m staying in to find an open store with a pen that will satisfy my grip.
Halfway across the parking lot, a Jeep Cherokee pulls up beside me. The driver
leans out the window to ask, “do you know where the Baton Rouge is?” “In
Louisiana,” I reply earnestly. From his use of the definite article,
I should have guessed that he wasn’t testing my knowledge of geography as much
as looking for a Cajun restaurant. He drove away more confused than when he’d
stopped.
New York
–
The svelte young desk clerk at the hotel has those pouty lips that all of
Hollywood desires. She explains to me how to get my parking ticket validated
so that I can pay the discounted rate. Although I understand what I need to
do, there’s something interesting about her accent, so I ask a question that
prompts her to explain it all again. Something about the way she says “…so
that you won’t…” rings in my ears, and I search for a question I can
ask so that she’ll say it again.
–
This summer, I went to Disney World – not for the first time, and probably
not for the last. Disney is a strange place because of its ability to trick
you into thinking that more of what goes on there is real than what is artificial.
The real-to-fake ratio is actually pretty low. What clinched for me the artificiality
of it all was going back for a second day of Magic Kingdom. I watched for the
second time, the exact same skits, dances, parades, and fireworks show; each
seemed so original and special the day before. It felt like Groundhog Day,
only I knew that the only way back to reality was just to leave Disney altogether.
Times Square is a lot like Disney World. The lights, the gloss, the stores,
and the street vendors are all hocking pop-culture icons. They try to sell
you a souvenir you don’t need; a hat that you’d think ugly anywhere else, but
you want it because “Disney” or “NYC” is stitched on
the front. Uniquely odd are the “NYPD” emblazoned paraphernalia
and the booklets of amateur photographs of the destruction of the Twin Towers.
But New York is even more strange than Disney because it’s not just an artificial
world. It doesn’t close down at night for cleaning, polishing, repairing, and
preparing for the next day’s show. The show goes on all night long because
the characters walking down the street aren’t paid to do so. For 8 million
people, New York is their home.
About
nicomachus.net is the virtual representation of Phillip Barron, who is responsible for all of the writing and photography, unless otherwise credited. Want to know more?
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