I guess “asleep at the wheel” isn’t funny when discussing cycling and the roads. I seem to have been so busy lately a number of events have passed me by though.

Barton Springs Rd Bike Lanes
One major one is the start of the construction of the new bike lanes on Barton Springs Road, that will run up and under Loop-1 aka Mopac(by the way, why are they called loops when they clearly don’t?) and through Zilker Park.

Work started on June 30th and will progress east to west with rolling road closures, the project is supposed to complete in time for folks to cycle safely to the trail of lights. There will also be walkways set back from the road for pedestrians.

Lance Armstrong bikeway
Also, its worth noting the first part of the Lance Armstrong bikeway between Lamar Blvd and Veterans Blvd is now open. Theres still a gap at the bridge before Mopac and Shoal Creek isnt connected up yet, but this is all goodness and the various folks involved should be congratulated. More details on each of these can be found on the city’s website bicycle section. http://www.ci.austin.tx.us/bicycle/

Michael Argall
Finally I’d like to take a moment to remember Travis County Sheriff’s Deputy Michael Argall. Michael was killed Sunday while out cycling. I never met Micahel, but he sounds like a great guy. The policelink website has an in-depth retrospective and I know he was a coach here in town for Rogue running, and lots of people will be deeply saddened both by his passing and the nature of it, not least his family.

Paula Craig was a promising age group triathlete in my club, training for the triathlon world championships in 2001, that I’d also qualified for. Just like Michael, Paula was a Police officer with a promising future. Paula was also struck from behind by a car driver who was “blinded by the sun”. Unlike Michael, Paula survived and although paralyzed from the waist down, went on to become a national role model for wheel chair athletes.

Next time the sun is directly in your eyes while driving, or worse still, you are overcome by sudden tiredness please take care, its not just you out there. Slow down, take the appropriate action, carefully watching out for ALL other road users.

I’d like to extend the sympathy’s of myself and the other Austin metroblog writers to the family of Michael Argall. He is mourned and will be missed by people who never met him, a great tribute for a great guy.

One of the mainstays of the Austin Farmers Market and, until recently, one of the more successful organic farms in the area, Tecolote Farm is in danger.  Just east of town, near Manor and Webberville, its wells are apparently going dry - not only because of terrible heat and drought, but because the local community is sucking lots more water from the ground, for athletic fields and new houses.  First reported by the Statesman in May, with an  update done on KXAN-TV, courtesy of the Home Sweet Farm blog, this is another example of our priorities gone awry.  According to the Sustainable Food Center, Texas is loosing prime farmland at a rate higher than any other state. Do you want your food to have to be shipped from California, or even China? The owners of Tecolote Farm are asking people to contact their Travis County Commissioner to express concern about water use in eastern Travis County and support for sustainable agriculture.

Really, seriously.

I’ve been following the increasingly rancorous debate in the Austin Chronicle between the cyclists and the car drivers aka the motorists. It has from the start been very polarizing and has become increasingly aggressive as one side take offense at the other.

One thing’s sure, Austin is changing and there are loads of people that don’t like it. Buildings are getting bigger and taller, traffic is getting busier, the steets more cramped. Anywhere where people get “in your face” it causes friction. People in New York City are not a different species, yet they seem to have a hardened, more aggressive voice, nature and look, inside they are just people but they’ve had to adopt a certain attitude in order to survive the pressures of daily life.

And so it is here in Austin with the cyclists and motorists. I’ve been lucky enough to have cycled in many of the worlds biggest cities, London, New York, Paris, Sydney, Manchester, San Francisco, Melbourne as well as in Spain, Italy, Germany and more.

I bike to work from South Austin to up past Braker Lane a couple of times most weeks mostly on the most direct route up Lamar and Burnet. From time to time when I don’t have early meetings and have left my laptop at work, I do the whole length of 360 and some.

What I can tell you is that I’ve been really impressed with most motorists here in Austin. Mostly they do leave space, in town it is not uncommon to be cycling in the right lane and to have 25 out of 30 cars actually pass in the left lane. Would almost never happen anywhere else.

Yeah, you get the occasional driver who really doesn’t think through making their next right turn, overtakes and completely underestimates the 22-24MPH I’m going and cuts right in front of me, causing me to brake. Then there are the motorists not paying complete attention as they make a turn out of a parking lot and I am coming down the street, its hard to “stop on a dime on a bike”, the easiest way is to put a 2000lb steel object with 4-wheels in the way!

And yes, motorists and cyclists don’t adhere to the letter of the law. However, generally Austin is better than many. Rather than escalating letters blaming each other for our problems, lets try to understand that we both have “issues”, both are not perfect but things can get better.

I for one have realized that storming down the right gutter at a long line of cars waiting at a light, probably isn’t the smartest thing I could do. In other cities that might be acceptable, here in Austin though where most drivers will move into the left lane to overtake, it just frustrates the motorists as not only did I possibly pass dangerously, but now I’m making the line even longer forcing them to have to wait more. Mea Culpa, I’ll wait in the traffic from now on.

On the other hand, next time you are coming up on a right turn in your car, and there’s a cyclist between you and the turn, think about it. If you slow, wait for the cyclist to pass the entrance to the turn, at most it won’t even cost you a minute.

A pack of cyclists cycling together is often referred to as a “train”. When a train makes a crossing, you wouldn’t expect every carriage to stop in turn, the same for cyclists. Cycling in close proximity requires attention and a pack like behavior, while the law might require each cyclist to stop individually, in reality, it’s impractical and probably more dangerous, so cut us some slack when it’s our turn to go, please wait if there are more than one or two.

Equally, cyclists need to realize they are often the master of their own destiny, cycling in a cavalier or irresponsible manor will ultimately get payback. We need to take a sensible, consolatory perspective. Many drivers are increasingly finding Austin a difficult place to drive in, and increasingly expensive. Many can’t afford to make the changes that they want. Apart from a minority, nobody enjoys sitting in traffic on I35, Mopac or downtown to go a few miles, and watching the dollar bills get blown out of the tail pipe. Like it or not, cycling to work isn’t an option for most people, most days even me.

I for one applaud the cities efforts in raising awareness of a healthy lifestyle, including cycling. I appreciate their effort to provide an increasingly cycling focussed means of getting around. But equally motorists and cyclist need to focus on safe driving. As the city gets bigger and busier, we all need to do better and focus more, blaming each other for the problem gets us nowhere.

Collide by Howie Day is playing in the background, nothing more than a coincidence I hope.

Even the best fall down sometimes
Even the wrong words seem to rhyme
Out of the doubt that fills my mind
I somehow find
You and I collide

So if you bother to move to the outskirts of Austin, you must be doing so to get a big house on a big lot on a quiet street, close to “good” schools, for much cheaper than Central Austin. If you do so, you have no right to complain that you can’t walk to the store.

Well, people in Oak Hill and Southwest Austin apparently want their cake and to eat it too. As much as I am an avid proponent of denser development and public transit, I find it disingenuous of the community leaders in that area to now start blaming the Save Our Springs ordinance for the fact that their neighborhoods aren’t (and may never be) more pedestrian friendly and dense.

Tomorrow night, the city’s planning staff will present the tentative Future Land Use Map (FLUM) and plan documents to stakeholders for one last discussion before the planning commission and city council vote on it. David Richardson, who lead the effort at the neighborhood level, complains to Community Impact that the SOS ordinance blocks any and every kind of good development because

landowners cannot develop or put impervious cover, which is anything from rooftops to parking lots, over more than 25 percent of an individual landowner’s property, in the area called the contributing zone.

Mr. Richardson complains that you can’t put in denser muliple-use development that would make walking and biking more appealing because of the “roadblocks” like this.

The SOS ordinance *should* be a roadblock. Its intent is to discourage development, which causes water pollution in the sensitive contributing zone and the more sensitive recharge zone of the Edwards Aquifer. If you want to live in a densely developed area, move to Central Austin!

The rains are over and the disturbers of the peace have emerged, but life was wonderful under the clouds: no helicopters, no power mowers, no leaf-blowers, and peace everywhere. There’s no place like home when it’s tranquil, but that doesn’t make for an event-filled existence, so there hasn’t been much fodder for entries here. >>> The never-ending tour of library branches did continue. The biggest pleasant discovery is that the Howson branch, on Exposition, now has a prominent display of Bollywood entertainment, including the first Munna Bhai movie (recommended fun, and the subtitles are against a black background, which makes them easily read). The unpleasant discovery is that some branches continue to try to confiscate old library cards and issue new ones, attempting to impose the same procedure on an existing card-holder as applies to a new applicant. If there’s something about this on the APL site, I haven’t been able to find it. I’ve taken my old card back every time so far because every time the library clerk has said something along the lines of “you need to show me your driver’s license.” “What about people who don’t have one?” “They need to show a DPS identification card.” “And if someone hasn’t paid for one of those?” “Then there’s no card for that person.” The library site lists at least eight additional forms of photo i.d. that are acceptable for new applicants to present and appears to say nothing about existing card-holders. Imposing onerous requirements that differ from stated policy does nothing to increase circulation. A letter about this has yet to be written, but I promise there will be one. >>> TCAD doesn’t care about my backyard wildlife preserve, but the tax breaks reported to be enjoyed by others are truly astounding (”Why Texas Firms Are Keeping Cattle on the Back Forty,” WSJ 7/28-29, byline Jennifer Levitz). Among the examples cited, several are from Travis County. “According to the 2006 wildlife plan filed with the county for the Dell Ranch, Mr. [Michael] Dell cut property taxes to $1,355 from $580,780 by taking actions such as spraying 185 acres for ants, filling six water stations, stocking 11 turkey feeders, and keeping 100 birdhouses for bluebirds.” I want a break for every hummingbird and every butterfly in my little pesticide- and herbicide-free wildlife preserve, but I don’t expect one anytime soon. >>> The Chron has been running an ad for a new art director. Although I haven’t run across any announcement in the current issue and Taylor Holland is still on the masthead, I don’t find the ad, either. Let’s send good wishes to the doughty person who takes on this job, which is the kind that can whisk away the last vestiges of a person’s youthful optimism. My personal request is for a serif typeface for the body of stories that is not so light on the page. >>> The emergence of the sun does not promote a sunny disposition. I like those cloudy days.

Which was not the case when I was shopping at Second Time Around this afternoon–doing my part to support local business and recycle. A customer (with a loud, annoying cell phone ring) received a phone call and as soon as I hear the words “Harry Potter” I plug my ears. The woman continued talking loudly for several minutes. When, figuring the conversation had moved on, I finally took my hands off my ears, the clerk loudly repeated, “Oh, so the ending is….blah! blah! blah!”

I gave her an incredulous look and a third woman said, “Hey, don’t talk about the ending.”

“Yeah, thanks a lot!” I yelled and I threw the items I was about to purchase down and stomped out.

A boss of mine used to caution me not to confuse ignorance with malice. I would like to give the people involved the benefit of the doubt–maybe they are just stupid morons. However, the fact they could see that I had covered my ears and was purposely trying not to hear what they were saying, and that as soon as I uncovered my ears that made a point to repeat themselves leads me to conclude that they are just plain nasty.

What separates Texas from “some third-world fascist dictatorship”? Ronni rants perhaps not as much as we’d once hoped. She spotted an AP article in SFGate reporting that “A United Nations human rights expert will head to the United States later this month where U.S. to investigate a highly criticized Texas center for detained immigrant families…” in Hutto. Remember when that only happened to the bad guys: the Russians and the Chinese?

I couldn’t find the article using the search facility at the Austin American-Statesman (if you saw it, let me know where and I’ll put in a Thanks to K, for the link!) but I did find this Hutto tidbit. In his April 22 column, John Kelso noted that TxDOT had just unveiled two new highway exit signs for Hutto. Maybe that’s to help the UN inspectors find it.

While I’ve moved away from campus, I still camp out at JP’s often, and it’s a nice, quiet place to study- its proximity to the law school lends it popularity among the grad student set and its comfy chairs mean we students tend to stay for a long, long time. I was there over midterms for most of the day a few days in a row, and I got a lot of work done. Nice, idyllic hours spent poring over notes while nursing our Texas Toddys.

BEEEEEEEEP BEEEEEEEEP

“Oh you must be joking.”

It’s 10:30- 11pm on a Sunday night before a lot of us have exams on Monday. This LOUD noise keeps going off and people’s heads start popping up like lemurs, wondering who has spoiled our unspoken code of midterms= study and study= silence. We all look at each other with shifty eyes and the noise goes off again. And again. And again.

This middle-aged woman in the chair next to me, who is obviously not a student of any stripe, turns to me and stares at the side of my head until I notice her. I take my headphones off and she tells me she’s lost her bluetooth earpiece and would I mind getting up to help her look for it?

Um.
(more…)

The notice from the City arrived in the mail last weekend. No matter on what day or at what hour the City employee named therein is called, the telephone number is always on voicemail. When I’ve been able to call from a touch-tone, not a rotary, telephone, I’ve been able to punch “O” in accordance with the voicemail instructions. This action results in a 40-minute hold and then a cut-off. During the hold, the annoying music loops over and over again, interrupted only by the message that “all our agents are busy.”

The answers sought are simple ones. Why, when one action before a citizen board was scheduled a month ago, was there a big red-orange sign posted on the property (although briefly and without written notice to most of those who should receive it)? Why, when this action was placed on the agenda again, this time with written notice, was there no big bright sign, as there was the first time? Why is there a big bright sign on another property on the same agenda for the same date as the first matter? What is the difference in procedure as between the two agenda items? Why was the postponed agenda item treated differently the first time as to notice from the way it’s being treated this time?

All apart from the fact that it’s pretty obvious that no answers will be obtained before the agenda items are decided, whether or not there’s compliance and consistency as to notice, public servants who seem always to have their voicemail on do a disservice to anybody who falls into one or more of these classes: has a rotary-dial telephone, has no telephone at work, may call on breaks but not receive return calls during work hours, has no answering machine, has no voicemail, or has no cell-phone. Some people, by the very nature of their jobs, are out in the field all the time, but their voicemail usually says at what hours they may be reached directly and during what hours they return calls. Now leaving rant zone to resume regular activities.

I went to the Responsible Growth for Northcross community meeting last night, and it was well-run and informative. The executive committee presented results from the survey, a possible mixed-use vision of what Northcross could be, and upcoming events. What really stuck with me was a comment made by Chip Rosenthal as he presented results of the survey. When he pointed out the portion of respondents that are for the Wal-Mart, he said, “Remember, these people are your neighbors.” Exactly. We would all do well to remember, when we get upset with a neighbor for wanting Wal-Mart or for not hating Wal-Mart in the same way and to the same degree we do, that the people we’re getting upset with are our neighbors, people who live on our street or around the corner. People that we should treat with respect and civility rather than angry words and insults, regardless of their opinion. As RG4N has said, “Do It Neighborly.”