What Grinds my Gears

In the blog post "Austin: Where 150 pounds is equal to 2000 pounds", Lenitie Carter discusses the problems that plague cycling in Austin.  It appears that her main argument is why the law requiring cyclists to ride on the road with motor vehicles instead of the side-walk is no good.  She references to some cyclist laws and provides anecdotal evidence to support them.

One of her arguments was in regards to the law that requires motor vehicles to provide a 3 to 6 foot buffer and how useless it is.  An example she gives to back up her reasoning is when a cyclist cut her off while she was going 40 mph and how the buffer law didn't help.  While I would agree with her that the buffer law doesn't help in that situation, I also question as to whether or not it was meant to help in that situation.  People break rules of the road all the time, be it as a cyclist or a motorist.  People breaking the rules don't necessarily negate the effectiveness of the rule when followed properly.  What was the law meant to help with?  That may be up for debate, but I think it was meant to keep vehicles from passing cyclists to closely or tail-gating them.  Both those situations could easily cause serious accidents and even death.

Later, she questions Austin's cyclist friendly culture and whether it makes sense for cyclists to be taking up the road, slowing down traffic.  First off, I don't think Austin is exactly as friendly to cyclists as she states.  I have ridden all over Austin, and it can be very challenging to find routes that aren't going to get me killed.  A lot of roads in Austin are without shoulders or even side-walks, forcing cyclists to brave traffic.  Is it fair that I may be slowing traffic?  Maybe, maybe not, but sometimes there are no other options.

She makes a note about the law requiring cyclists to follow the same rules of the road as motorists and then proceeds to state that she's seen cyclists breaking these laws.  I honestly don't know what her point here was.  Was she making an argument that since people break the laws that the laws are useless?  Again, motorists break the laws too, how does that negate the importance of the laws?

There are multiple references to the weight ratio between a cyclist and a vehicle.  Her argument seems to be that in a collision a vehicle will always win and that is reason enough to get cyclists off the road.  While I understand that argument, I don't necessarily believe it's the weight ratio that she's concerned about, otherwise she would have problems with motorcycles, mopeds, and semis, all of which have varying magnitudes of weight ratio to an SUV with similar outcomes.  I think it's the speed that is her real issue and the inconvenience she incurs because of it.

In conclusion, I agree that the current laws or even new laws aren't going to make cycling any safer.  Infrastructure is the only real answer to safety concerns.  It would also help with alleviating the inconvenience that motorists feel when getting stuck behind cyclists.  More bike lanes/trails around the city would help tremendously. Of course, then you get into the another debate on who is going to pay for that infrastructure.

Doing What it Takes to Pretend You’re Not in Texas

In case you haven’t heard, Texas is in a drought, and it’s a pretty bad one.  Droughts in themselves are nothing new to Texas, but there are some experts who believe that we are headed into a very long drought period, possibly hundreds of years.  This could lead to desertification, where Texas is made even more desert like than it already is.  Keeping all this in mind, it is essential that we put in place water use guidelines that will help us face this challenge together as a community.  Currently, Lake Travis and Buchanan are reaching record lows and these lakes supply Austin and surrounding areas with drinking water.  In order to assure this precious resource is conserved the City of Austin has put in place water restrictions to keep people from wasting water.

If you’ve ever had the chance to drive around some of the more affluent neighborhoods in Austin, you’ll notice how amazing a lot of their yards look.  You can safely assume that they are pushing their watering privileges to the max.  But for a lot of these home owners that just isn’t enough.  They want their lush vegetation, vibrant green lawns, pools, and whatever else they think will help them keep up with the Joneses.

To get around the water restrictions there has been a recent surge in homes having wells installed on their property for the sole purpose of having the freedom to water whenever they desire.  The City can’t stop them or even keep track of them, since the permit required to install a well is a state permit.   These wells can cost upwards of $30,000 dollars and are tapping into the Barton Creek watershed north of the river.  The watershed south of the river is protected from drilling, requiring a permit.  In my opinion this needs to happen north of the river, as well.

Water is becoming a very important and seemingly scarce natural resource that we need to do our best to preserve.  With the population of Texas growing so fast, water is going to become even scarcer. It’s time people accept the fact that we are living in a climate that is trending towards dry, desert like patterns and we can’t be wasting water.  In order to do this the first thing that will need to happen is for the local government to take control of people who think they can dump thousands of gallons of water onto their lawns.

Protest the Protests!

My commentary is on the blog post “Blog #5 Texas State and Local Government”.  This blog’s driving point seems to be a concern that protesters fail to engage their critical thinking skills before engaging in protests at the capital and that they are just being riled up by media coverage.  The author does not provide their name, but from their profile information I find that they consider themselves a staunch conservative and are studying Agriculture at Texas A&M.

I found his commentary level headed and reasonable, with little to no inflammatory language.  He seems to have a genuine concern for his topic, and quite frankly I agree with almost all of his post.  I would say his target audience is probably conservatives, but I can see almost anybody from any stance agreeing with him.  The only blatant political leaning was in the example he used where he specifically targeted people opposing the bill.  From what I can remember, there were protesters from both sides of the debate that were there protesting, and to single one out as being more ignorant of the topic than the other is shortsighted.

One of the underlying tones of the post that I found a tad naive is the thought that these kinds of protests are something new.   I would argue that if you take the time to look back on history you’ll see that this is anything but out of the ordinary and that our lack of protests in recent years is actually what is out of the ordinary and in fact more worrying.  I was personally ecstatic that people finally felt impassioned enough to get off their couches and go make them selves heard.  I wish more people would get this involved on topics other than the few that the media decides to cover.  Even if they are not that knowledgeable to begin with, the act of being involved will often times produce self education.