My paper presentation for "The Bicycle and the Geography of the United States Roadscape" took home second place and won me 100 bucks at a regional American Association of Geographers conference.
Up against many heavy hitters from the midwest ivies, took them down with a look back at a slice of history few people even remember- when I asked the room - a room full of geographers and professors - who had heard of the Good Roads movement - only ONE PERSON raised their hand!
BetterBicyclingBureau
Friday, November 21, 2014
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
The Bicycle and the Geography of the United States Roadscape
The
Bicycle and the Geography of the United States Roadscape
By Mike T. Beck
Better
Bicycling Bureau
©2014
Mike T Beck
Abstract
The history of
bicycling is interwoven with the shaping of the geography of the United States
of America. The impact of the bicycle has broadly affected the roadscape and
transportation planning policy. By the end of the 19th Century, the
bicyclist-led Good Roads movement reshaped the nature of domestic travel. The
bicycle expanded the reach of local roads, led to uniform traffic regulations,
put folded road maps into favor, and brought progressive transportation tax
policies to the country side. The bicycle led a contested dialogue about land
use and fundamentally changed how the public interacts with geography. During
the 20th Century, the automobile rose to prominence and subsumed the
bicycles’ earlier impact on the roadscape. In the 21st Century,
federal to local governmental policies increasingly mandate the inclusion of
bike traffic in roadway design. The bicycle continues to alter how the public
interacts with local geography. Through a survey of the literature, the
historical record, the popular press and current transportation planning
standards, this paper will clarify the influence of the bicycle on the
geography of the United States. The findings contribute to the academic
discourses on transportation planning and urban form with a detailed
consideration of the impact of the bicycle on the geography of the United
States roadscape.
Keywords: Bicycle, geography, roadscape,
urban planning
Sunday, September 21, 2014
contributing opinion column Sept 21, Lansing State Journal
My column made it into the Sunday state capital newspaper in the opinion section, with a headshot. Bring driverless car testing to Michigan, develop a national Michigan Standard for driverless car testing.
My column made it into the Sunday state capital newspaper in the opinion section, with a headshot. Bring driverless car testing to Michigan, develop a national Michigan Standard for driverless car testing.
Friday, September 12, 2014
The Michigan Standard
"Michigan should let the cars drive. Michigan should
take the lead on developing national testing standards for driverless
vehicles. If a piece of driverless
vehicle technology cannot pass the rigors of navigating a northern Michigan
winter, that equipment is not ready for delivery on a nationwide basis.
Development
of a "Michigan Standard" for testing would bring business to the
state and set the bar for the national good. The National Highway Traffic
Safety Administration is actively seeking guidance on protocols for testing
more advanced driverless technologies. Michigan should provide some of that
guidance. Michigan would draw driverless vehicle technology developers to
Michigan to test their vehicles. With rapidly advancing computer technology,
soon even small startups will be able to contribute. Innovation can as easily
happen in a Gladstone garage as the Google campus in Mountain View.
Google’s
spring 2014 release of their prototype vehicle has captivated Americans, but in
a May Associated Press article, Google was not confident their vehicles will
work in inclement weather. The cars have never been driven in snow. In California, Google's driverless car
testing relies on a network of predetermined route information, a ‘supersized’
map imagery database far more detailed than what’s available for the rest of
the country.
Michigan
autonomous vehicle testing continues to develop, with a driverless car campus being
built in Ann Arbor, a fleet of connected cars plying the highways downstate,
and MDOT snowplows collecting automated plowing data. Michigan need not fear
driverless technologies. Backup proximity alarms and ABS braking are examples
of lower function autonomous technologies many of us have in our cars and
increasingly rely on. The more advanced cars being tested today are already
proving to be safer than human drivers.
Developing
a public test track, traffic corridor, or an entire region for autonomous
vehicle testing in northern Michigan would bring driverless vehicle testing to
the state for real-world American winter conditions. What city in Upper Michigan
will be the first to declare itself “driverless vehicle testing ready” and welcome
these vehicles citywide?
The
question of who's at fault in a collision should not delay testing to a
Michigan Standard. The 2014 Brooking Institute report "Product Liability
and Driverless Cars" took an in-depth look at the issue, and concluded
liability will be cleanly handled and assigned in a manner similar to standard
product liability for other developing technologies. Fears of vague legal
provisions regulating autonomous vehicle liability should not deter their
testing and propagation in Michigan.
These cars need to be tested somewhere- why not
northern Michigan’s winters? The country's vehicles and passengers will be
safer because of it. We drive in snow like nowhere else, Michiganders owe it to
the rest of the country.
Michigan can
choose to either take the drivers’ seat - or be the backseat drivers - in the
driverless cars of the future. Michigan has little to lose lobbying NHTSA for a
"Michigan Standard" for driverless cars, and everything to gain, by
leveraging our automobile heritage and our northern winters for the good of the
nation."
© 2014 mikeTbeck ARR
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