Lazytown, TX, and a couple petitions y'all NEED to check out.

Not a lot to read around here the past few days. My fault. Fun time stuff with the good people of Austin happening in the real world = me not working on my website, and in fact not even noticing a couple hours of downtime due to a blown PDU or some such, which my partially-cybernetic and wholly silent computer machine administrator Ed was able to fix and get things back up and running.

Something big that has come up in the past several days are a couple interesting petitions being circulated around the local (and beyond) bike community. The first one I head about was a petition from the incredibly hard-working folks at BikeTexas concerning a potential bicycle ban in a town just north of the DFW area called Bartonville. You can read more about the issue on BikeTexas' site.

One of the things I LOVE about the BikeTexas folks is their unflagging support of the rights of cyclists from smaller cities around Texas, as well as some of the larger Red counties that don't necessarily prioritize their bicycling infrastructure as much as Austin does (heh). These guys also do a lot of state-wide advocacy and education, which can be a pretty thankless job a lot of the time. Please take a few moments to read about and if you agree with it sign their petition. I have so many friends touring, returning from tours, or planning tours, and I hate the idea that in the near future towns in Texas on major thoroughfares could deny access, ticket and harass them simply because they choose to ride through rather than drive.

The next petition is a local one that's being spearheaded by Luke Iseman, an outspoken and politically active member of Austin's pedicabbing community. Under the header of "Legalize Pedicab", this petition is trying to bring recognition to pedicabbing and cycling in general as "Austin's only safe, carbon-free, and rock-hard-thighed form of transportation", as well as call attention to the unprecedented number of citations recently for performing job tasks that were until now accepted and approved by the APD.

According to Luke the Austin Police Department will be implementing new rules September 7th on how they deal with pedicabbers and bicyclists in the downtown area, with no public discussion or input from pedicabbers, cyclists or anyone else for that matter. The Department of Ground Transportation has also been discussing changing the rules that regulate pedicabs in Austin, which could potentially put many pedicabbers out of business.

Finally, he's asking for a grocery list of rights and (dare I say) extended privileges for cyclists:

1. Bikes everywhere: Allow pedicabs and all other pedal-powered vehicles to operate in every area of Austin with speed limits up to 35 mph, within areas barricaded to cars, and on all roadways up to special events.

2. Stop as yield: Allow bicycles to treat stop signs as yield signs.

3. Red as stop: Allow bicycles to treat red lights as stop signs.

4. 3-foot passing enforcement: Require Austin Police to enforce and file monthly reports on the 3-foot passing ordinance, which requires motorized vehicles to give bikes at least 3 feet of room when passing.

Honestly I don't like the 35mph wording in that first point, as many of the roads I ride on have higher speed limits than that and this could potentially be used as a loophole to ban cyclists from those roads. The ability to ride on those roads (pretty much every FM/RR in town) is what gets in and out of the cities on bikes. Aside from picking that one nit, I like the other points and totally agree that the APD SHOULD actually enforce the 3-foot passing rule, especially in cases where a motorist strikes a cyclist (who is behaving legally) in a traffic collision. If you want to read more or sign the petition, you can do so right here.

And now back to your regularly scheduled slacking...