Who wants to play Mode Choice Choose Your Own Adventure?
It's 7am. You're getting ready to head out to work, and you face your first major decision: do you drive a car or ride a bike?
There's a twist though: the goal of the game is to not endanger anyone's life (including your own) on your way to work.
We depart via the most popular mode in 12 hours.
OK, looks like we're taking the bike.
Great choice! The weather's lovely, and getting a little exercise before work feels really good. Plus, we're saving a ton on parking.
We load our stuff on to the bike, strap on a helmet if that's our thing, and head out. After a block of easy pedaling, we face our next decision...
#ModeChoice #ChooseYourOwnAdventure
#transportation #biketooter #games
...We can continue straight to take the most direct route, out of the neighborhood and onto the 5-lane arterial that runs right downtown. It's the shortest distance, only 2 miles to work. There's a sidewalk, but no bike lane.
Or we can turn right, wending our way through neighborhoods. This route's half a mile longer and we'll still hit the arterial eventually, but we'll avoid a super sketchy intersection.
#ModeChoice #ChooseYourOwnAdventure
#transportation #BikeTooter #games
We have overwhelmingly chosen the longer route, avoiding a dodgy interchange between two multi-lane urban arterials.
We hang a right and reach our next decision point -- a stop sign on an uphill across a low-traffic road. Do we sacrifice our hard-earned momentum and come to a full stop, or do we roll through after carefully checking that no one's coming?
j/k we are rolling. This is not a decision worth pondering. We have bigger fish to fry...
After slow-rolling the first stop sign, we continue on until we reach our next decision point: another four-way stop, but this one's in a construction zone, next to a brand new apartment building, covered in security cameras.
There's a car behind us, but no one's coming from the other directions.
We are NOT in an #IdahoStop state.
Are we willing to roll this #StopSign too, with witnesses and video?
#ModeChoice #ChooseYourOwnAdventure #BikeTooter #Games #BikeNite
This one could have gone either way!
If we stop, we would give ourselves a bit more time to check and make sure the intersection is safe to proceed through (construction sites are notoriously unpredictable, after all). We would also be reminding the driver behind us what stop signs mean.
But we know from experience and data that rolling through is probably the safer choice, even if it means getting branded a #ScofflawCyclist ....
So we check, double check, and we roll on through. Probably a good call, since the driver behind us was looking at his phone.
For the next block we actually have a #bikelane but it seems there's always a few construction vehicles parked in it, and which means there's nails and other stabby stuff in it. So even though there's a car behind us, we're opting out of the bike lane TYVM.
We round a bend in the road and...
...find ourselves parallel to a 5 lane divided highway running smack through the middle of town.
We thank our prior selves for choosing the neighborhood route, meaning we don't have to navigate crossing this beast's on- and off-ramps as a vehicular cyclist.
Instead, we get this: a two-stage signalized pedestrian and bicycle crossing. Yay!
It's got major design flaws and can be punishingly slow...
...but it was built with good intentions.
We have to cross this highway here. Our first stage involves a traditional traffic light, as it's where a side street into the neighborhood intersects the highway.
We push the beg button and wait. It's rush hour, so lots and lots of people in cars whiz by us on the near side, from left to right. A few veer into the right turn lane (it's just inches from where we're patiently standing)...
...to whip around us and into the neighborhood.
Cars from the other direction are stacking up in a center turn lane, their drivers waiting for a chance to turn left into the same side street. Eventually enough of them stack, and the light changes.
The cars on the near side--the side we want to cross first--see yellow and then red, and stop. Our walk signal finally comes on, and we proceed into the crossing...
...HOLY SHIT a driver just flew through the intersection right in front of us, missing our front wheel by inches.
#RightOnRed is legal here, after all, and the intersection design hardly forces drivers to slow down to make this right turn. So we've got to expect this to happen. We chastise ourselves for letting our guard down for a split second. That was a close one!
We look up and see the countdown timer says 7 seconds already...
#ModeChoice #ChooseYourOwnAdventure #BikeTooter #Games #RTOR
...and realize that scofflaw driver stole most of our so-called protected crossing time. We stomp on the pedals and make it across all 37 feet of travel lane and to the refuge island just in time.
Here, we encounter our next major dilemma. To get a walk signal here, we have to push another beg button. Drivers, rather than facing a traditional traffic light, have a pedestrian hybrid beacon, as diagrammed here:
Car traffic on this far side can be clumpy, even during rush hour. There are often good sized gaps in traffic, meaning we could easily roll on through without pressing the button, and get to the other side long before the next wave of car traffic gets close.
And we are presented with just such a tempting gap upon our arrival in the median refuge island.
Do we go for it?
In the end, we choose not to wait. But before we ride blissfully through our gap, we have one last decision to make.
Heads: We push the button anyway, knowing that we'll be 30 seconds away by the time the light changes and traffic (theoretically) stops.
Tails: We ignore the button altogether and just go.
1....2....3.......
TAILS IT IS!!!
We glance toward the button, give a little snort, and ride safely through to the other side. The drivers coming toward the crossing will never know about the nice thing we just did for them by not sticking around just to make them wait for us.
But that guy in the silverado on the other side of the road? He saw what we did, and he's pissed. "Damn scofflaw cyclists," he mutters.
The next part of our ride is fairly uneventful. Just a lovely half mile through shady neighborhood streets. We smile at the dog walkers and little old ladies out for a stroll.
It'd be nice if there were sidewalks so we wouldn't have to bike down the absolute middle of the road to avoid getting trip-wired by a bichon on a retractable leash though.
This is a good chance to catch our breath, because we're about to hit The Hill.
Our quiet neighborhood route eventually dumps us back out on the 5 lane arterial, at the bottom of a very long hill. This was always going to happen, so time to suck it up.
It's about 7:45 am, and car traffic up the hill is pretty heavy. The speed limit is 35mph, but local PD routinely clock people going well over 60.
There's no bike lane ("oh but look at the lovely wide outside lane!" they say), and the sidewalk is in crappy shape, overgrown, often muddy, and heavily used by pedestrians and people waiting for the bus. The good news is there are almost no driveway connections until we get to the top of the hill, so very few conflict points aside from the road itself.
Here's what we're up against, friends
And here's our next big dilemma...
Do we take the sidewalk, narrow though it is? There's a good chance we'll get stuck behind a pedestrian, and the lack of curb cuts is going to make it harder for us to hop onto the road and back off again.
Or do we take the road? It's a wide lane; there's room, but getting punished passed huffing up a half-mile hill in a town named for this very hill doesn't sound pleasant.
The lack of curb cuts means we're stuck with whatever we choose.
Well, here it is -- the 5-lane arterial and the hill. Nothing for it but to do it, so here we go. Well, here we wait for a gap in traffic big enough we feel comfortable pulling out and immediately turning uphill.
After about 20 seconds, we get the right gap. We take a breath, steady our nerves, and start pedaling.
The hill's not so bad at first and we beat out a steady rhythm...at least until the first #PunishPass
We surprise ourselves with how much lungpower we have to yell our profanity of choice at the truck that punish passed us. We make note of the company logo on the truck and keep pedaling.
It's going ok; even with the wide outside lane most of the drivers are changing lanes to pass us.
The hill sucks, but at least we're going faster than that woman on the e-bike who opted for the sidewalk...
...stuck behind two pedestrians with earbuds in.
We keep pedaling. The traffic light at the summit is in sight. We pray a silent prayer to the traffic light gods that the light turns red on our approach so we have an excuse to sit still and catch our breath.
As luck would have it, it does!!! Unfortunately, we are first to the line and it's a right turn lane and right on red is allowed.
Drivers are stacked up behind us.
#ModeChoice #ChooseYourOwnAdventure #BikeTooter #Games #RTOR
And thus we face the penultimate dilemma of the game:
We have a red light. We have signaled our intent to turn right, and it's legal to do so on red here.
There's also a walk signal for pedestrians to cross the road the are turning on to. We can make it without causing a conflict with them if we go quickly enough.
There are 6 cars waiting to turn right behind us....
Do we avail ourselves of the legal permission to turn right on red here and go?
Or do we stay where we are, catch our breath, and wait for the light to turn green?
We take a few seconds to catch our breath and let the pedestrians get safely out of our way, check all directions for other vehicles, and then make a right on red. We may not be totally happy with it--we've seen the studies and we know that the original rational for allowing right on red (that it saves gas) is bunk.
We also know that conditional traffic rules like legal right on red create hazards for bikes & pedestrians, but...
...our experience tells us it's probably best to just go. Plus, we're starting worry about the time. It's almost 8 and we were really hoping to have time to address the helmet hair situation before our first meeting!
We're now on the final stretch of our journey to work, by the way. It's a half mile 2-lane road through a university campus. Because it's an old university, the road's pretty narrow.
The first part of this road is also fairly bendy, with blind curves and heavy traffic. There are only a few places with enough visibility for a driver to safely pass a person on a bicycle.
Yet, drivers being fallible humans who are notoriously bad at calculating risk in the moment, the growing line of cars behind is weaving and revving like nascar drivers warming up their tires before the green flag drops.
So, we're not leaving it up to them. We're taking the lane, riding smack down the middle of it. We've seen far too many impatient drivers try and pass us here, only to nearly crash head-on into someone coming the other way.
Is taking the lane a controversial choice? Probably. No doubt we're going to piss off the line of drivers behind us.
But this is a risk we're willing to take, because the consequences are too real.
For those of you who are understandably not comfortable with this choice, I get it. If you'd rather, there's a well-worn path just behind the curb on the right that you could use to get past this sketchy part. There's also a brick sidewalk on the left side.
Neither alternative is ideal, but if you're not comfortable holding your ground in the middle of the lane here, getting off the street for now is your safest course of action.
Y'all, we have almost made it! We're well into our university campus environment now, one of the only places in the state where people walking and biking outnumber people in cars. Now that's we've made it through the sketchy bendy stretch, it's smooth sailing. We've got other people on bikes all around us, and we strike up a conversation with a geography professor, comparing our kid-on-bikes set ups.
And now we reach our final dilemma.
Do we park our bike at the uncovered rack 10 steps from our office door, or walk around the corner of the building to the secure, covered bike parking, exchanging 30 seconds of our time for the guarantee of a dry bike seat for our ride home?
No poll here; you decide for yourself how you want to use your reward of free parking just feet from your office door.
And that's it! We did it! We made it to work in one piece, got some exercise, got some fresh air. Our brains are warmed up thanks to running a few thousand monte carlo simulations in our heads trying to figure out the best way to navigate infrastructure that was decidely built to punish us.
Now we're got just enough time to lock up (and bring our #ebike batteries in! It's gonna be hot today!), run some fingers through our hair...
...and stride into that 8am zoom like the rockstars we are.
Yeah, we pissed some drivers off, but let's be honest, we'd have pissed them off just the same had we been driving.
Your zoom attendees arrive, and you settle in to spend the next hour explaining how most people on bikes aren't selfish jerks with no regard for laws, but are just humans trying to get somewhere safely, same as everybody else.
The End!
Thanks to all of you who played along! I spend a lot of time in my day job trying to figure out how to explain to drivers, engineers, and fellow planners what every seasoned bicycle commuter intuitively knows: that getting more people to feel safe riding a bike means designing infrastructure that's built to priortize our needs....
...rather than expecting us to shoehorn ourselves in on the margins of roads built to prioritize the convenience and speed of people in cars.
Running this game has taught me a lot about the wide range of ways people navigate their crappy infrastructure environments, and I'm so grateful for the insights y'all have shared along the way.
I had a blast, and hope you got some entertainment out of it as well.
Happy riding!
Wow! A real blast from the past!
In 1972 when I was 16/17 and still at school studying Maths A-level, I was one of six girls (in a class of twenty) who opted to learn to program computers.
The first program I wrote (in FORTRAN) was to use the Monte Carlo method to estimate the value of pi.
My turn to say WOW! A simple one-line command!!
When I think of all the coding sheets, punch cards, and continuous feed listings I sweat blood over back in the day!
Not forgetting the bus ride from school to Cardiff University and back every Thursday afternoon to access data prep to convert coding sheets to punch cards and then to scrounge a run slot on the University’s mainframe…just the one mainframe for the whole University, if I remember correctly 🤔
I LOVED it ❤️😂
Terrifying video 🤦
In the UK it’s a traffic violation if a driver crosses double lines (white in the UK) in the middle of the road.
The UK has recently introduced a requirement that drivers pass cyclists as if they were a car which seems to have had an effect with most drivers 🤔
Is that not the case where you are?
@TCMuffin Here, drivers can cross double lines to pass a cyclist if they deem it safe to do so; they just can't go all the way across.
I'm always intrigued at our local drivers' apparent preference to pass me with a super wide berth (yay! thank you!) even when that means nearly causing a head-on collision.
like...what? Why???? Why did you do that? I just don't get the thinking.
Tab Combs
somcak
Jayne 
🇪🇺🏳️🌈
Trouble
Niels Franck
Joe Steinbring 
Connie Szabo Schmucker
Robyn
suquamish