The leftt turning arrow that allows drivers AND CYCLISTS to turn left onto Nantucket Road in Dartmouth is weight activated and a girl on a bike is not heavy enough to trigger it. Last week I waited two lights for a car to arrive and activate the arrow. Frustrating. This city needs to get its act together to support cyclists.
—I Love My Red Bike
This article appears in May 21-27, 2009.
There’s a “sweet spot” right above the magnetic detector that should trigger the light for a bike. Of course, you have no idea where it is because the city hasn’t marked it– marking the spot, usually with a small “T” to show where to put your tire, or with the word “bike”— is common practice in more bicycle-friendly places. Not here, tho.
yeah, those turn lights are magnetic sensors not by weight. A trick many motorcyclist use is to put a few strong neodymium magnets on the underside of their motorcycle. These can be purchased online. A few of these magnets about two inches in diameter should do it. A disc shaped neodymium magnet 2 inches across is insanely strong and will hold itself onto the metal frame.
Motorcycles, much like bicycles have a very low magnetic signature compared to a car. This should help with triggering the light.
Note – regular “fridge” magnets won’t work since they are not strong enough. The neodymium magnets ( aka -rare earth magnets ) are cheap to buy. Lee Valley has them in all shapes and sizes. Princess auto also has them but they are the tiny button sized ones and are too small for this application.
Petition your MP for some bike paths safe for you to travel on and you’ll never have this problem again… and hurry up would ya? It drives me crazy to coast at 3 or 5kph (my speedometer doesn’t even go that low) behind your stupid bike. Get off my road. I have to pay to use it. You don’t. Fuck off.
Cripes, is keith channeling through kay?
I don’t know a Keith. I’m just pissed because the government produces all this extra cash to stimulate the economy and, among other things, the brainiacs behind NS spending are going to remodel a goddam library with it. Bike riding is a real green alternative and, in this town, it’s a real dangerous prospect yet not a penny of this stimulus money is going towards this kind of infrastructure planning. Maybe if I piss off the bike riders with my two cents of logic and keep running them off my road they’ll bark up the right tree with their bitches and actually induce some kind of change.
I find the notion of “cars pay for roads, bikes don’t” interesting.
Roads predate cars by about 10,000 years, if not more. They’re public thoroughfares, open to the public. The world couldn’t work without them. (Imagine trying to get from your home to work by arranging permission to pass from each private property owner in between.) The only reason roads cost so much nowadays is because heavy vehicles (cars and trucks) use them, so of course those heavy vehicles should pay for the increased costs.
Also….road money comes from tax money…so, any cyclist who pays taxes is contributing. Fuel taxes contribute to the costs of roads, but I don’t imagine they cover it.
Hey Kay- Library’s promote EDUCATION. They also promote a safe place for youth to participate in programs, or just hang out with friends, whilst staying out of trouble.
Tax payers are also paying an increase in taxes that are going toward metro bus, we ALL pay taxes, and as Tim mentioned, what’s going to do more damage to a road, creating a larger cost in repairs. Heavy vehicles. (This however, isn’t me saying that heavy vehicles should stay off the road, just a point to take notice of)
O and on my first point, I don’t think education, especially for youth, and a place that goals to promote a decrease in the youth crime rate, is a bad thing for our economy.
how come bikes have to be on the road (with helmets) and not these electic wheelchairs / scooters (no helmet) i’ve seen them go pretty fast, they take up alot more room and most drivers are rude because your in their way on their sidewalk. I would rather move out of the way for a bike at least they are small.
“keep running them off my road” Do you own the road now? I agree with miles, some cyclists do actually pay taxes too, so they also contribute to the care of the roads as well as every other tax paying citizen out there
“Library’s promote EDUCATION.”
Oh, the irony…
“Library’s promote EDUCATION.” They do not stimulate economies. If they do, I’d sure like to know how. It stimulates my desire to borrow another book and that’s about it.
I pay to train, I pay to test, I pay to be licensed and pay again and again to renew said licenses. I pay for annual inspections, I pay at the pump, yearly I pay to register my vehicle and my government doesn’t even permit me to drive a cheap piece of shit (can you say the same for your bike?). Oh, and I’m taxed on ALL of these “services” as well… just to drive my car. These one-way revenue streams pay for the roads. Cops use roads, army does, ambulance, etc… sewers run down roads so if you’re on a bike and you get hit it’s okay with me that the ambulance use MY road to take you to the hospital (even bike riders pay tax and have a right to health care) even though you contribute nothing directly to this infrastructure and can’t even prove you know how to use it. But you tell me, when you do something really fucking stupid like fall off your moving bike right in front of my moving car, who should pay for the damage to my car since you, bike rider, are not required to have insurance, a license, an annual inspection, etc? And where’s you big fat red “slow moving vehicle” sign? You don’t belong there. Admit it.
I’ve got the problem solved here and listen to you bitches. I even told you where to get the money. There’s a place for bike riding in our lives, just not on the road.
Tim, you know what we call those 10,000 year old roads nowadays? SIDEWALKS.
About those scooter thingy’s.. it’s a real problem because cops don’t want to enforce the bylaw of slow moving vehicles on roads without a red sign on the back…. and they don’t want to enforce the riding on sidewalk bylaw. They just don’t enforce. How’s that grab ya? Build an infrastructure of bike paths and that won’t be an issue either.
Vote for Kay.
She’s got the problem solved, bitches!
Can I be your campaign manager Kay?
I do like Kay’s “big red sign” idea. If we made cyclists wear those there’d be way less of them in the middle of the road with the “I’m a vehicle too attitude”. It just doesn’t jive with the Lance Armstrong look.
Really, neodymium magnets (at least 2 inches in diameter) work on motorcycles? This I gotta try. Should be cheaper than the eventual red light ticket I’ll get.
Kay,..what about the many cyclists who also own cars and pay all those same ‘user fees’ you talk about but then choose to ride a bike more often then they drive their cars. Maybe they should get a rebate since they contribute less to road wear and tear.
We’re a community, not a collection of individuals with an atomized relationship with their singular government.
That is all.
Kay, you are saying for all the bikes to get off the road…well the only alternative is the sidewalk…now you take ALL those people currently riding on the road, jam them onto a sidewalk, what do you think is going to happen? You’ll be writing a bitch about how all the bikers should get the hell off YOUR sidewalk, after nearly plowing you down.
What do I think is going to happen? Riding on the sidewalk? No. I expect someone who rides a bike in the HRM and wants to do it safely will get their MP’s attention… get that stimulus money stimulating more than our reading skills. In the meantime the road is still not a safe place for bikes.
Because people like you keep trying to run them off the road. haha
I totally agree that there should be bike lanes, but it’s not going to happen any time soon so we need to just respect each other. I bike AND drive by the way.
Kay says: “who should pay for the damage to my car since you, bike rider, are not required to have insurance”
Cyclists are insured under their house or tenant insurance. I know from experience. Kay, so if a biker pricks your sweet car, don’t worry about it (unless, of course, said biker is homeless or is living life on the edge sans home or tenant insurance).
or dead… under my car.
Hmm, if we’re going to take the “I’m more entitled then you fuckheads on bikes” attitude, I’m with hfx_taxpayer. I as well do both.
Then you too should make your MP stand up for you and create a safe place you to ride your bike. The money’s comin’…
Oh and Fart, such insurance is not REQUIRED to ride your bike on municipal highways nor is training nor proof that you know traffic law.
Who gives a shit if it’s required or not, you’re still insured.
Do you level similar arguments against pedestrians? Roller-bladers? Police horses?
Your argument is ridiculous.
I’m still insured so who gives a shit if an uninsured “vehicle” causes damage to my car? Who says I carry collision insurance? I’m required only to carry liability and for good reason. The biker has no such condition nor is required to carry insurance of any kind.
Pedestrians belong on sidewalks and within crosswalks. No argument.
My argument is that on the highway with cars is NOT a safe place for a bike regardless of the highway traffic act definitions.
Just what exactly is ridiculous about citing bike paths as an appropriate place for bikes and suggesting bikers do something to improve all this bitching? You’d have a place to skate too!
Uhm, well it isn’t ridiculous, but not every street in the city is going to be able to have one, first of all, and secondly, where are they supposed to build them? Take up your parking spots? cut into people’s yards? Every option is going to piss someone off.
good thing they have BILLIONS to spend to stimulate a shit load of work for Haligonian’s huh? I propose we mandate community developers to allocate space for the bike path in each and every new community. Making room downtown could be tricky but we’ve got a real interested planning committee who could be forced to include such a plans into the fold.
I’m just happy to hear that there’s one cyclist out there that actually obeys the traffic lights!
I’ve been commuting by bicycle in halifax for ten years, spring, summer, fall, and even in the winter when it’s nice enough. Ten trips a week through rush hour traffic. I’ve never even had a close call. I ride carefully, and I avoid pissing contests with drivers who wouldn’t hesitate to run me off the road if they were sure they could get away with it. The “cycling is dangerous” argument is overplayed. It’s a rationalization used by drivers who just don’t want to share the road with cyclists. Sure, there’s an element of danger to cycling, but it’s only really dangerous to idiots.
The bike path argument is overplayed too. There’s no way any network of bike paths is going to be comprehensive enough to meet the needs of people who use their bikes for transportation rather than recreation. Bike paths would be great for recreational riders, but bicycle commuters are always going to be on the road a good deal of the time.
I agree totally.
kay,
please re-read lovinglife’s comment. The OP’s bitch applies equally to motorcycles.
Not that I agree with your ‘not contributing to roads’ argument against bicyclists, but anyone with half a brain can see that it CERTAINLY does not work for motorcyclists:
I paid to train (more than car drivers do).
I paid to test.
I pay to be licensed and pay again and again to renew.
I pay for annual inspections.
I pay at the pump (less than car drivers do, but only some of that is tax).
I pay to register my vehicle yearly (and I believe it’s BI-annually for cars).
The government needs to make sure its traffic sensors work for all road vehicles. …simple.
Of course, rather than rip up roads everywhere to access the sensors, they could just hand out those strong magnets. I’ll expect mine in the mail.
Until then, they had better not even think about giving tickets for running red lights after waiting at them for 2 minutes (if there is no-one around).
By the way, does anyone know if there are any automatic red-light cameras in town?
Dogma, what are you going on about here? Who said anything about motorcycles? We didn’t mention trucks either but I think we can all assume we’re talking bikes (as in by-cy-cle) versus motor vehicles.
No Dogma’s comment was perfectly relevant to the original post, which was about bikes not activating the sensor at the intersection. Nothing to do with “bikes versus motor vehicles”. Then someone hijacked the thread to get on a soapbox about bikes on their road. Just sayin’.
kay,
Who said anything about motorcycles? I did. Here’s why:
You tried to say that the OP’s complaint wasn’t valid because bicyclists do not pay as much as motorists do.
In your world, the traffic detectors work properly for those who pay all the taxes and fees, and they don’t for those who don’t pay (all or any).
I brought up motorcyclists because they are people who DO pay all the taxes and fees but for whom the traffic detectors DO NOT work properly.
Therefore, your ‘pay or don’t expect to get a green light’ argument doesn’t fly. Was that so hard to understand?
BTW…thx Walking Girl.
Where the fuck have you been ND.
A girl not heavy enough to activate it….in Dartmouth. Impossible! I’ve seen those big ones.