a streetcar named danger
I was particularly struck by one paragraph in this article about the hazard to bikes presented by the new streetcar:
"Any time there's a bicycle around, we're extra cautious," said Paul Warner, a streetcar operator for King County Metro Transit. Warner said he has seen a couple of cyclists fall during train testing and that he allows extra stopping distance behind bicycles in case one gets pitched.
Anyone with a clue about interface design can tell you that users saying they need extra caution in a routine situation is (a) evidence of a serious design flaw, and (b) a guarantee that at some point the human vigilance will fail and the anticipated disaster will strike.
I emailed the city about this on the weekend, but have not yet had a reply. Ordinarily I'd be a little more patient with them, but the streetcar opens next week so one would hope they'd have some sense of urgency about this. Meanwhile, there's a protest planned for streetcar opening day. I can't help but feel that the city's sticking two fingers up at cyclists, especially when the streetcar project manager gives us bullshit like telling us we can't have a safe road because "it's a multimodal system", even though a proper design could easily have accommodated streetcars and bikes like Portland manages to do quite successfully.
"Any time there's a bicycle around, we're extra cautious," said Paul Warner, a streetcar operator for King County Metro Transit. Warner said he has seen a couple of cyclists fall during train testing and that he allows extra stopping distance behind bicycles in case one gets pitched.
Anyone with a clue about interface design can tell you that users saying they need extra caution in a routine situation is (a) evidence of a serious design flaw, and (b) a guarantee that at some point the human vigilance will fail and the anticipated disaster will strike.
I emailed the city about this on the weekend, but have not yet had a reply. Ordinarily I'd be a little more patient with them, but the streetcar opens next week so one would hope they'd have some sense of urgency about this. Meanwhile, there's a protest planned for streetcar opening day. I can't help but feel that the city's sticking two fingers up at cyclists, especially when the streetcar project manager gives us bullshit like telling us we can't have a safe road because "it's a multimodal system", even though a proper design could easily have accommodated streetcars and bikes like Portland manages to do quite successfully.