Open letter urges PM, Minister to improve road safety for cyclists

Source: Yahoo Newsroom

An avid cyclist has written an impassioned open letter to Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew, repeating a growing call for a 1.5-metre lane to be set aside for road cyclists.

“My friend is dead,” wrote Stephen Choy, referring to 48-year-old Freddy Khoo who was killed after a lorry hit him and two other cyclists at Loyang Avenue at about 6.50am on Saturday.

“If, only if, I had written this letter earlier, Freddy might still be able to cycle with me in the next Ironman race,” the member of cycling group Team Cychos said.

In a 10-paragraph open letter addressed to Minister Lui and which has also been emailed to Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Choy implored the authorities to take an “urgent re-look” into the issue of cycling safety with the increase in accidents involving cyclists in recent years.

Choy, who shared his letter on Facebook on Sunday afternoon, said he had “chanced upon the wreckage” on Saturday without knowing that the victim was his friend Khoo, whom he described as a “good, gentle man” and “a good husband and a doting father to his 5 year old son”.

In his letter, which has been shared over 1,600 times to date, Choy repeatedly called for the setting up of a 1.5m bicycle lane on the roads for cyclists to ride safely in.

“Dear Minister Lui, I am appealing to you as many before me did... From 2008 to 2011, there were a total of 70 cyclists killed. That is a horrifying average of 1.46 cyclists killed a month. Sadly, that is not enough to spur your ministry into action to make the roads safer for cyclists,” he wrote.

Referring to a recent article, the letter also dismissed recent claims by the Land Transport Authority that demarcating road cycling lanes might give both cyclists and motorists a “false sense of security” which can lead to an increase in accidents involving cyclists.

Choy, who said he “was flabbergasted by this flippant and dismissive response”, wrote, “Shame on you. Shame on you for taking the easy way out. If NParks is able to build 300km of park connectors (by 2015), surely the LTA is capable of painting a 1.5m lane on our roads. This is merely the width of 2 carton boxes. Are cyclists not worth that?”

He added, “Isn’t that the purpose of a cycling lane? To remind cyclists to stay within the allotted 1.5m and for motorists to be aware of cyclists within this lane so that we all can be safe.”

He suggested that “if having cycling lanes islandwide proves too daunting a task”, then a pilot project to paint only the more popular cycling routes could be carried out, before singling out roads such Neo Tew Avenue, Mandai Road, Upper Thomson Road and West Coast Highway.

A second letter to PM Lee on Sunday evening, penned by cycling group LoveCycling Sg, echoed Choy’s thoughts and asked that cyclists be allowed to “coexist in peace as road users”.

Recognising that “both cyclists and motorists have a part to play in making our roads safer for all”, both letters suggested that motorists be educated that cyclists, like pedestrians, have a right to use the roads.

This is not the first time cyclists in Singapore have penned letters to the authorities calling for greater road safety.

Earlier in May, LoveCycling SG had also written to Lui in hopes of getting the Ministry of Transport to initiate a “serious investigation… to improve road and junction design in favour of human life over slight speed gain of car movement".

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In response to the above...

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Goverment seeking views on cycling safety on roads
Published on Aug 22, 2012
By Jessica Lim

Cyclists, drivers and pedestrians are to be asked for their views on road safety in a public consultation announced on Tuesday.

The move comes after a 48-year-old bank worker died on Saturday when a lorry hit his bicycle, in a case that prompted calls for better anti-accident measures.

Parliamentary Secretary for Health and Transport Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim told The Straits Times that the consultation could lead to pilot projects, but stopped short of calling it a policy review.

He added that Transport Minister Lui Tuck Yew had told him to take a fresh look at the issues of road safety and cycling, which were both priorities.

A model example...

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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/08/22/nyregion/most-new-yorkers-say-bike-lanes-are-a-good-idea.html

Bicycle lanes may be little more than painted stripes on concrete, but in New York City, they have become the stuff of lawsuits, neighborhood squabbles and tense debates over the proper role of government.

Bicycle lanes may be little more than painted stripes on concrete, but in New York City, they have become the stuff of lawsuits, neighborhood squabbles and tense debates over the proper role of government.

Now, six years after the Bloomberg administration began its controversial campaign to edit the city’s streetscape, adding 255 miles of bicycle lanes onto streets previously dedicated to automobiles, a hard-fought acceptance for the lanes may finally be at hand.

When asked simply whether the bike lanes were a good idea or a bad idea, 66 percent of New Yorkers said they were a good idea, according to a new poll by The New York Times. A majority in all boroughs said they thought the lanes were a good idea, with support highest in Manhattan.

Twenty-seven percent of residents called the lanes a bad idea, and 7 percent had no opinion or did not answer.

The poll results suggest that residents have gradually become accustomed to bike lanes, which have been frequent targets of tabloid ire and are already emerging as a flash point in the 2013 mayoral race.

But despite their enthusiasm for the lanes, most New Yorkers are not riding regularly. A third of adults in the city said they owned a bicycle, and nearly half said nobody in their household had one. Of those who do own a bike, about half said they rode once a week or more.

The city’s planned Paris-style bike-sharing network, a capstone of the Transportation Department’s efforts to encourage two-wheeled transit, has not generated much interest.

Bike-sharing is still a mystery to many: 40 percent of respondents said they had heard nothing about the new program, the opening of which was recently delayed until next spring. And more than half said they were not at all likely to use the service.

The bike-share network will initially be limited to Manhattan and parts of Downtown Brooklyn, and Manhattanites were more likely than residents of other boroughs to say they would use the service.

New Yorkers who said they thought bike lanes were a good idea cited environmental, health and safety benefits, as well as the addition of more space for bicyclists to ride. Some respondents said they were simply happy that the lanes had encouraged bicyclists to stop riding on the sidewalk.

The lanes make “for a cleaner, safer, more inviting, more interpersonal city,” Barrie Cassileth, 73, of Manhattan, said in a follow-up interview after the poll.

“Biking improves health; it is good exercise,” added Dr. Cassileth, who is the chief of an integrative medicine service at a hospital. “It will get rid of some of the pollution from automobiles and reduce the amount of automobile traffic.”

Among the quarter of New Yorkers who said they thought the lanes were a bad idea, the most commonly cited complaint was that the lanes hinder vehicular traffic. Some residents also described the lanes as creating dangerous street conditions.

Gloria Tingue, 41, an occupational therapist in Brooklyn, said she believed that many bicyclists ignored the city’s traffic rules. “Everyone should be going in the same direction, and if we’re stopping, they should also be stopping and not weaving and bobbing in traffic, because it is a hazard for everyone else,” she said.

The placement of the bike lanes, Ms. Tingue added, was not well thought out, particularly on narrow streets. “I know it’s environmentally sound,” she said, “but you have to think about how to do it so everyone can participate in a safe manner.”

Some respondents wondered in the follow-up interviews if the city would mandate helmet use for bicycles, a rule that has been opposed by the Transportation Department. Others spoke approvingly of the exercise that comes with riding a bike.

Not every fan of the lanes actually uses them.

Dr. Cassileth said that she doubted that she would use the bike-share network, but that her husband, an avid bicyclist, was looking forward to it.

“I’m very tempted to try it myself one of these days,” she said.

The poll of 1,026 adults, conducted Aug. 10 to 15 using landline phones and cellphones, has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus three percentage points.

Marina Stefan contributed reporting.