Bicycle Austin forum

MichaelBluejay

Webmaster

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-26

Posts: 1,466

Website

Safe Passing and Complete Streets bills die

Here's a legislative update.  Bike Texas is the group that lobbies the state legislature for bike-friendly laws (among other good advocacy work).  For years they tried to get the legs to enact a Safe Passing law that would require drivers to give at least three feet of space when passing cyclists, but the Texas lege has historically been very unfriendly to commonsense and uncontroversial ideas, so that effort kept failing.  Then four years ago, luck was on our side and the lege actually passed the law!  It then went to Governor Perry for his signature, and he promptly vetoed it.  So no safe-passing law for Texas.  But after the Texas lege failed to act, Austin passed its own law, so at least in Austin, drivers must give three feet of space when passing cyclists and other vulnerable road users.

In this session, Bike Texas again tried to get a safe-passing bill passed, but the deadline passed for the bill to be heard.  Ditto for the Complete Streets bill.  The bill to ban texting while driving is still alive, and it's possible that either Safe Passing and/or Complete Streets could get tacked onto No Texting While Driving as an amendment, but it's a longshot.

A big thanks to Bike Texas for trying to get legislation passed to make us safer.

bizikletari

Member

Registered: 2009-03-18

Posts: 223

Re: Safe Passing and Complete Streets bills die

Piggybacking on this post, I found that APD's famous 3-foot safe pass crackdown on drivers with undercover agents will be followed by a 6-month crackdown on cyclists (although some people complained already that the cyclist-targeting season has started ahead of schedule)
I am trying to think of a sensible reason for the disparity, but I can't.

http://www.kvue.com/news/Austin-Police- … 47121.html

dougmc

Administrator

Registered: 2008-06-01

Posts: 631

Re: Safe Passing and Complete Streets bills die

I saw that disparity in times as well.

The crackdown began last week and will continue through the end of the year. In late June or early July, the operation will switch its focus from drivers to cyclists.

... though this does look like the sort of thing that somebody might have gotten confused about, and so I wouldn't get too upset about it until APD confirms that this really does mean what we think it means.

On the bright side, they've probably *finally* made the number of tickets written for violating the vulnerable road user ordinance well into the double digits!  Only took a little more than three years!

damicoaustin

Member

From: Austin, TX

Registered: 2008-05-27

Posts: 143

Website

Re: Safe Passing and Complete Streets bills die

The cops sure are having fun nowadays. Used to be that they had to dress like prostitutes to catch Johns on South Congress. Now they get to don bicycle attire and ride around all day. As well as the infamous PESTs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVF6zn85Mlc

AusTexMurf

Member

From: South Austin

Registered: 2008-11-21

Posts: 439

Re: Safe Passing and Complete Streets bills die

The cops sure are having fun nowadays. Used to be that they had to dress like prostitutes to catch Johns on South Congress. Now they get to don bicycle attire and ride around all day. As well as the infamous PESTs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVF6zn85Mlc

I heard our bike police called 'copsicles' today, kindly, in the context it was used.....
Kind of funny.