Category: Current Affairs

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In San Francisco, Bikes Overtaking Cars

San Francisco transportation officials say that they’re seeing a sharp increase in the number of cyclists. Their statistics use one busy intersection as a gauge: Market Street and Van Ness Avenue. A recent sample there of downtown-bound a.m. commuters found that cyclists outnumbered car traffic nearly two to one. I wish I had a little video clip to show what that looks like. Here’s an excerpt from a Friday press release from the San Francisco Metropolitan Transportation Commission:

On July 1 SFMTA Bike Program staff gauged, as they have over the past two years, the volume of bicycling after Bike to Work Day. From 8 to 9 a.m. at the intersection of Van Ness and Market, they counted all of the eastbound traffic. A total of 602 bicycles were counted, compared to 331 automobiles. Bicycles made up 61 percent of the total vehicles headed eastbound, while automobiles came in at 34 percent (transit and taxis accounted for the remaining 5 percent of the vehicles). In 2009 bicycles accounted for 54 percent of the vehicles and automobiles for 41 percent.

On May 13, this year’s Bike to Work Day, the SFMTA counted a total of 1,038 bicycles, compared to 307 automobiles. Bicycles made up 75 percent of the total vehicles headed eastbound, while automobiles came in at 22 percent (transit and taxis accounted for the remaining 3 percent of the vehicles). In 2009 bicycles accounted for 66 percent of the vehicles and automobiles for 32 percent. The 2009 to 2010 growth of bicycles on Bike to Work Day was 34 percent.

These numbers indicate that the growth in Bike to Work Day participation closely matches growth in everyday cycling on Market Street.

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A Passing: Daniel Schorr, 93

NPR's all-staff message on the passing of Daniel Schorr this morning:

On Behalf Of NPR Communications [Communications1@npr.org]
Sent: Friday, July 23, 2010 9:48 AM
To: AREPS; allstaff@npr.org
Subject: [areps] From Vivian Schiller: Dan Schorr

All –

I have very sad news to share. We’ve just learned that Dan Schorr died peacefully this morning surrounded by family, at the age of 93. His family has asked us to share this news with the extended NPR community.

It’s impossible to overestimate Dan’s impact on journalism – from his early days working with Edward R. Murrow, to the founding of CNN, to the last 25 years as NPR’s news analyst, a familiar and beloved voice to millions of listeners. Every one of us who happened to see Dan coming in to work — walking a little more slowly with time but with a razor-sharp wit and warmth that never dimmed – learned a lesson in the dedication, determination, and integrity that it takes to be the best. He was.

NPR will air an obituary, and you’ll soon find tributes, Dan’s archived commentaries, and a retrospective on NPR.org. Additionally, we’re preparing a one-hour special about Dan to make available to all stations. Joyce MacDonald and her staff will be in touch with stations as soon as possible with those details. We’ll share news of a possible memorial service once we know more.

Please join me in remembering this great man.

– Vivian

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Lifestyle Critique

“Robbers of the world, they have exhausted the land and now scour the sea. If their victims are rich, they despoil them; if they are poor, they subjugate them; and neither East nor West can satisfy them. Alone among men they covet with equal greed both poverty and riches. To robbery, murder, and pillage they give the false name of empire, and when they make a desolation, they call it peace.”

–Part of a speech attributed to the Caledonian chieftain Galgacus in Tacitus’s history “Agricola,” vol. 32, p. 29. Quoted in Gray Brechin’s “Imperial San Francisco: Urban Power, Earthly Ruin.”

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Berkeley Cycling: A Dangerous Place, Part II

[Previous post: ‘Going to a Dangerous Place‘]

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post called Going to a Dangerous Place” about a series of stories about the death of a cyclist, Kim Flint, on South Park Drive in the Berkeley Hills. In particular, I took issue with the description of Flint as “obsessed” with a socially networked training-log site called Strava, whether his concern for attaining speed records for various road segments drove him to ride dangerously on the hazardous South Park descent, and whether his death could really be blamed on the service that Strava provides. A few days ago, a Berkeley cyclist I’ve met named Patrick Gordis offered to set me straight on some of the issues I raised. What follows are his comments on some of the issues raised by this incident. Patrick posted these as a long comment on the blog, but he gave me the OK to repost it as a separate entry (and the picture below comes from him, too; I’ll post a better version later). Here’s his post:

Dan: Thank you for your thoughtful analysis of this tragic accident. I would like to add a few more details to clarify the record. First of all, I don’t know if you came across the account of his accident as reported in the Daily Cal? Note in particular the following quotes of his partner of 19 years:

Violet Hefner, Flint’s partner of 19 years, said she is “99 percent certain he was trying to regain his lost record,” the day he was killed. Hefner said they had originally started cycling together, but she thought it was too dangerous. “He knew that I was very, very afraid of him riding on city streets,” she said. “I begged him not to.” Hefner added that once Flint joined Strava, his interest in his speed and his ride statistics became more intense. “Things really escalated once he got involved with Strava,” she said. “It became an obsession with him.” Flint holds a best time of an average of 33.9 miles per hour on the “Centennial Drive Descent” in Berkeley as well as the record for the “Skyline Boulevard Descent” in Oakland with an average of 30.4 miles per hour. Hefner said Flint had been focusing more and more on getting “king of the mountain” – the highest speed for a certain stretch of road – for downhill segments over the last two months. Hefner added that though the website fueled Flint’s urge to push himself, she didn’t blame the competitive nature of Strava for his death.

south_park_15mph_curve.jpg The Daily Cal story also seems to imply that Kim may have entered the sharp corner towards the upper section on South Park Drive where he sidewiped a passing car at close to 45 mph. Based on my own experience on that turn, I would say anything over 30 mph at the apex of the turn would be a difficult, if not impossible line to sustain without use of the entire road (even then, anything near 45 mph seems too fast for a turn of that kind – even for “Il Falco”). (Click picture for larger image.)

Furthermore, I had some private email exchanges with Kim the weekend before his death in which we discussed various Strava segments of a 95-mile ride we had taken together with one other cyclist. In particular, he analyzed for me why, in his view, he did not get the KOMs on the Palomares north side descent or the Joaquin Miller descent from Skyline to Mountain. From these email exchanges, from conversations I had with him about Strava on our rides and from observing him descending, it’s clear to me that he was very focused on obtaining Strava downhill records and attempting to reclaim any that he lost. For example, he carefully analyzed how he could enter the beginning of a Strava downhill segment with the maximum possible speed (based on different possible approaches). He concluded his analysis of our last segment down Joaquin Miller Road by noting, “Now I’ll need to plan a ride just with winning this one in mind. It’s not right to see a descent in the East Bay without SteveS or me at the top!”

Like you, I respect and admired Kim’s strong competitive spirit which (as you note) is often, on one level or another, a strong animating force in many serious or avid cyclists of various stripes. However, based on my own extensive riding and competitive bike racing experience, I don’t concur with your equation of Strava with pretty much any competitive group ride experience.

You wrote, “That having been said, the focus on Strava is misguided. The virtual competition encouraged by the site is simply another version of what happens whenever groups of fast, fit, competitive cyclists get together. They’ll often ride aggressively–on the climbs, on the flats, in sprints, and yes, on descents, too. Why? Bottom line, it’s challenging and fun.”

On group rides, a relatively less experienced cyclist like Kim would likely try to follow the wheel of a faster, more experienced rider down a technical or superfast descent. This is a valuable learning experience by which one learns how to descend fast and safely by trying to follow the best lines through turns, learning how to set up for the next turn and how fast to approach sharp curves which more seasoned riders have successfully cornered at high speed many times. On a group ride, you can learn to go faster in a controlled manner, profiting from the years long experience of other riders. When you are racing a Strava opponent, it is more analogous to some type of virtual or online/videogame opponent – a faceless entity you probably do not know at all.

When Kim analyzed for me in our email exchange his unsuccessful attempt to gain the Palomares descent KOM (Kim wrote that he was the fastest on the steep upper portion, but lost time on the flatter section lower down), he did not know that he was comparing his performance to a multiple national track and crit champion who is as close to a local cycling legend as we have in this area. In a nutshell, at least for me, that is the central danger to downhill racing on Strava. Aside from the obvious risks to innocent bystanders, Strava can set up a direct competition between someone like Kim who had been avidly cycling for about two years, mostly riding on his own or with one other rider, and pit him against someone who may have been a national champion or a professional cyclist.

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Today’s Red Herring: Oakland’s ‘Outside Agitators’

Oakland Police Chief Anthony Batts, along with other city officials and community leaders, wants to find someone to blame for the vandalism and looting that followed the verdict in the Johannes Mehserle trial last Thursday night. And they’ve found someone: outside agitators and faceless anarchists. Friday, the day after the mini-riot that followed an emotional but peaceful post-verdict gathering outside City Hall, Batts made a big show of breaking down the hometowns of the 78 people arrested. The police said 19 of those arrested were from Oakland, 28 were from the Bay Area outside Oakland, 19 were from elsewhere in California, and 12 were from out of state. “There’s a time that we have to say that people coming from outside that impact our city, our town, the place that we live, that we work, that we play in, needs to stop,” Batts said.

That’s a good line, especially for a guy who just moved here from Long Beach, but it’s meaningless. For one thing, it ignores how easy it is to turn the arithmetic around: You say three-quarters of those arrested came from out of town? I say three out of five of them came from our own backyard. You say there were dozens of anarchists armed for trouble? I say that of the 78 arrests you made, 66 were on misdemeanor charges, mostly failing to obey police orders to clear the area.

Batts and others also ignore that people communicate with all sorts of little devices, including cellphones with video cameras, and that lots of people from lots of places heard about and saw tape of Mehserle, a young white transit cop, shooting and killing a young, black, unarmed train passenger, Oscar Grant. The shooting, and law enforcement’s initial ham-handed response to it, enraged many–even people who live outside Oakland. News travels, and people travel, too. The killing of Oscar Grant was not an Oakland tragedy, though it was played out there.

The biggest flaw in trying to point the finger elsewhere for the troubles that have attended the Grant case is that it tries to whitewash the issue of who was actually out on the street smashing and grabbing. Check out pictures of some of the looting that broke out Thursday night--here’s a slideshow from the Oakland Tribune–or read the accounts of what happened out on Broadway. One business owner the crowd victimized told the San Francisco Chronicle, “I feel like they were familiar with the store. They knew what they wanted.”

Let’s disperse the mystery about why the hell-raising happened. It wasn’t a conspiracy, and it wasn’t a bunch of out-of-towners out to ruin Oakland. It was a crowd of thugs, opportunists, and recreational miscreants from a variety of ZIP codes and demographic profiles seizing their moment–again. Beyond the destruction and stealing, the hell of it is that this is what most of the media–meaning me and people in my line of work–end up focusing on. That, instead of the fact the thousands of people who feel wounded by the case and are doubtful of the quality of justice the system is handing down are trying to deal with the disappointment and anger in a contemplative and constructive way.

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Today’s Top Find: ‘Man and the Future’

Here’s a nugget that Kate unearthed while digging through an accumulation of papers. It’s a column-filling blurb from a 1976 issue of The New Yorker. Here’s the item in its entirety:

THE CLOUDED CRYSTAL BALL
[“Man and the World Community the Century Ahead,” by Arthur Larson, in “Man and the Future,” University Press of Kansas, 1968]

I suppose the area outside of the physical sciences where the authentic scientific approach has been most successfully applied is that of economics, particularly in the prevention of severe recessions and the reconciling of free enterprise with orderly growth. One reason is that economists now have an impressive array of reliable current facts on which to act, in the form of economic indicators, touching investment, savings and spending, income, sales, inventories, employment, prices, and dozens of other categories of facts and data. Careful study of past experience now enables economists to watch these dials, notice the need for some adjustment, turn a knob here, tighten a valve there, on discount rates, taxes, government purchase policies, social insurance, fiscal measures, and the trouble is righted.

Thanks to the the miracle of the World Wide Web, which has made the world an even more rational place than Larson found it, here’s the Google Books link to the volume (and here’s a copy for sale on eBay). And the knob-turning, valve tightening Arthur Larson? He was a well-known moderate Republican legal scholar who served in both the FDR and Eisenhower administrations. Here’s an obituary, from 1993.

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Long Days, Vanishing Sun

June 22: Among other things, it’s the anniversary of the Germans’ invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the birthdays of a couple good friends, Dan and George, whom I haven’t seen in a long time. I always think of those three things on this date.

It’s also the date that, up here in the Northern Hemisphere, daylight starts bleeding away after the summer solstice. At my latitude (a bit below the 38th Parallel), one rather complete reference, timeanddate.com, reports that we’ll have about two seconds less daylight today than yesterday (the daily shrinkage is greater the farther north you go). Tomorrow, six seconds less; a week from tomorrow, 29 seconds less, a week after than, 50 seconds less. Here, the sun will set after 8 p.m. until mid-August. It’s about then, when the daylight is shrinking by two minutes a day, that I always feel that I start to notice it.  

Some of the math that goes into determining the length of daylight is here, a 1998 post at the Ask Dr. Math forum. And a very cool-looking Java applet that spits out daylight data for any point on the Earth’s surface is here: Daylight Applet (it takes a while to calculate your data; there’s also a paid, dowloadable version that gives you a lot more numbers and tables).

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Election Hangover: Consequences, Intended and Otherwise

To catch up with something I started to write about just after the California primary on June 8: Our state ballot included an initiative to change the way primary elections are conducted. Up through this election, California primaries worked the way they do in most states: Each party put up candidates for elective offices, and each party’s registered voters went to the polls to decide which of their candidates will go on to the general election.

Under Proposition 14, which passed with a healthy majority among the one-third of registered voters who cast ballots, the exercise changes. Primary voters can now vote for any candidate in any party; and instead of the winner in each party advancing to the general election, now the top two vote-getters, regardless of party, will appear on the general election ballot.

The theory behind this “reform” is the same as the thinking behind an open-primary scheme the state enacted (as Proposition 198) in 1996. First, voters get a more meaningful choice. Second, the top-two system is supposed to empower independent voters (the fastest-growing bloc in the state) and thus moderate the positions taken by party candidates (one article of California’s current conventional wisdom is that extreme partisanship by both parties has crippled the Legislature’s ability or even inclination to govern).

By the way–what happened to Proposition 198, which set up open primaries? Predictably, the major parties didn’t like it. The Democrats sued the state on the grounds the system violated their First Amendment right of freedom of association. In essence, they argued that as groups organized around certain principles and beliefs, they ought to be able to say who represented them in elections and in office; open primaries crippled their ability to express themselves in that manner. The Supreme Court agreed in a 7-2 majority decision written by Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, and the open primary system was thrown out.

Proponents of Proposition 14 say it’s different somehow. Thanks to a similar “top-two” system approved by voters in Washington state, that issue has already been to the Supreme Court once (see Washington State Grange v. Washington State Republican Party) and is likely to begin wending its way through the federal courts again this fall. The Washington Republicans argue that the top-two system also interferes with freedom of association. In California, the chief complaint levied against the system is that it virtually guarantees that the host of small parties that have won the right to appear on statewide ballots–Green, Peace and Freedom, Libertarian, and American Independent, among others–will never place candidates on the general election ballots. Again, that’s something that will likely be fought out in court.

It’s significant that voters keep trying to enact these schemes, though. They seem to be saying they want some sort of change. But do they really want the kind of change the top-two primary will bring? We’ll see, I guess. But for now, it’s possible to get a glimpse of how Prop. 14 would affect some elections in the state. If the initiative had been in effect on June 8, the general election slate for eight races would have changed. In two congressional districts–the 19th and 42nd–the top two vote-getters were Republicans, meaning they, and no one else, would appear on the November ballot; in a third district, the 36th, two Democrats ranked one-two. Five Assembly results would also have ben affected: the 9th, 20th, 28th, 47th, and 50th; in all five instances, the top two vote-getters were Democrats, and they’d be the only ones listed on the November ballot if Prop. 14 were already the law of the land. (Here’s a spreadsheet with the details.)

Now, people will be looking at those results and trying to figure out what they mean in terms of party strategy and voter impact. For instance, maybe parties will discourage large fields that could split votes and thus deny all participants from getting on the November ballot. Less choice in a field of primary candidates doesn’t seem like an enhancement of the democratic experience. Seeing your party simply eliminated from the general election doesn’t seem like a magnet for more voter participation, either.

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Father’s Day: Instant Retrospective

Father’s Day: I talked to my own dad, briefly–back in Chicago, which once upon a time didn’t seem like so far a distance. But he sounded good, and then Kate talked to him while we drove over to a brunch we’d been invited to.

The brunch: Our friends and neighbors Piero and Jill invited us out to Piero’s laundromat in East Oakland. The building has an enormous lot behind it, and Piero has turned it into an urban farm: olive trees, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, zucchini, and some more exotic stuff. A few Lombardy poplars. Jill and Piero’s kids were there, and some other Berkeley friends and neighbors, and some of Jill’s family.

We were out there at least a couple of hours, then headed back to shop. Our son Eamon and his wife Sakura were coming up from the South Bay. The plan was a Father’s Day barbecue, preceded by a viewing of the last episode of the second season of “Lost.” We stuck to the plan. Our younger son Thom showed up after he was done at work, and just as I was starting to talk about coffee. That prompted Eamon and Sakura to tell me I ought to open the box wrapped in “Happy Holidays” gift paper that they had brought.

It was an espresso machine. Wow. I have thought of these as only slightly less exotic and difficult to operate than a nuclear reactor. But after a trip to buy some beans, I fired the machine up and actually managed to make some cappuccinos. Then we sat around and talked for awhile. Eamon and Sakura left on their drive back down toward San Jose. And I got ready to ride my bike with Thom back to his apartment in North Oakland. He had ridden over, and I grabbed the opportunity to go for a ride I wouldn’t have done myself this evening.

So we rode, mostly without any tangles with traffic. I’ll admit I rode partly because I’m still nervous about my grown-up kids contending with the streets of the big city. I saw Thom to his front gate. We talked for a couple minutes, then I turned my wheels back north to Berkeley. A couple minutes after I got in the door, the phone rang. It was Eamon, calling to say he and Sakura were back home. After we hung up, Kate and I took the dog out for his late-night walk.

Coming in just now, I had what I wanted most but would never have known to ask for on Father’s Day: the feeling that everyone I care about is happy and home safe.

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Father’s Day: Instant Retrospective

Father’s Day: I talked to my own dad, briefly–back in Chicago, which once upon a time didn’t seem like so far a distance. But he sounded good, and then Kate talked to him while we drove over to a brunch we’d been invited to.

The brunch: Our friends and neighbors Piero and Jill invited us out to Piero’s laundromat in East Oakland. The building has an enormous lot behind it, and Piero has turned it into an urban farm: olive trees, tomatoes, potatoes, corn, beans, peppers, zucchini, and some more exotic stuff. A few Lombardy poplars. Jill and Piero’s kids were there, and some other Berkeley friends and neighbors, and some of Jill’s family.

We were out there at least a couple of hours, then headed back to shop. Our son Eamon and his wife Sakura were coming up from the South Bay. The plan was a Father’s Day barbecue, preceded by a viewing of the last episode of the second season of “Lost.” We stuck to the plan. Our younger son Thom showed up after he was done at work, and just as I was starting to talk about coffee. That prompted Eamon and Sakura to tell me I ought to open the box wrapped in “Happy Holidays” gift paper that they had brought.

It was an espresso machine. Wow. I have thought of these as only slightly less exotic and difficult to operate than a nuclear reactor. But after a trip to buy some beans, I fired the machine up and actually managed to make some cappuccinos. Then we sat around and talked for awhile. Eamon and Sakura left on their drive back down toward San Jose. And I got ready to ride my bike with Thom back to his apartment in North Oakland. He had ridden over, and I grabbed the opportunity to go for a ride I wouldn’t have done myself this evening.

So we rode, mostly without any tangles with traffic. I’ll admit I rode partly because I’m still nervous about my grown-up kids contending with the streets of the big city. I saw Thom to his front gate. We talked for a couple minutes, then I turned my wheels back north to Berkeley. A couple minutes after I got in the door, the phone rang. It was Eamon, calling to say he and Sakura were back home. After we hung up, Kate and I took the dog out for his late-night walk.

Coming in just now, I had what I wanted most but would never have known to ask for on Father’s Day: the feeling that everyone I care about is happy and home safe.