Peter Rosenfeld - Thanks for your message. The Bike Coalition has developed a bike education program in partnership with the Phila School District. As it turns out, this will be a topic at the next BCGP board meeting in April. Although this project does not cover NJ per se, the educational principles are universal. We will certainly be discussing expanding the program as appropriate and feasible.
Regards, Parker Snowe, President Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia 252 S. 11th Street, First Floor Philadelphia, PA 19107-6735 Tel: (610) 565-4542 (h) Tel: (215) 898-5012 (w) Fax: (215) 573-3783 E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Peter Rosenfeld [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, April 11, 2002 10:50 AM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]; [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: Another fatality - this time a child So what's the take of the Coalition on this sort of tragedy? What's the remedy? I assume that emailing this out to the list members implies that the Coalition has some approach to the prevention of these types of accidents. The girl was killed while crossing Haddonfield-Berlin near the 295 overpass. I know this stretch of road well and ride it often. This is one of the better sections as congestion tends to keep the speed down, but there are a lot of high-speed intersections. Highway Department Engineer Karbach states that they are trying to put bikelanes onto the road. How in the word would bikelanes prevent someone from being hit while crossing the road? Is this the remedy that the Coalition supports? If not, I'd like to hear what it is. The lanes are a little narrow in places, so I would like to see some widening of the curb lanes for comfort reasons even though this might tend to increase the speed of drivers. But because of the complexity of the intersections bikelanes would be a definite problem on this road, increasing the intersection complexities and making them more hazardous. And you don't want to encourage people to ride on this type of road if they can't handle the intersections. But either action is unlikely, because the bridges would have to be widened to put in wider curb lanes or bike lanes in this area. And I doubt a lane reduction approach to achieve wider outside lanes would be politically feasible. And such widening really would do nothing to reduce accidents anyway. The only true remedy would be bicycling education. I feel the Coalition should oppose spending the money on bikelanes here and try, instead, to get the money directed towards education of the school kids in the area. The kids can easily be taught how to ride safely on this sort of road. This would be money truly spent on preventing future tragedies instead of wasting it on some symbolic facility. -Peter Rosenfeld ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the Bicycle Coalition of the Delaware Valley list named "bike." To subscribe or unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.
