######################################################################
     /__/   ==       
      /_____/       BICYCLING IN AUSTIN NEWSLETTER
  ___/ \  _/ \___   covering bikes as alternative transportation
 /  /\  \/___/\  \ 
 \___/   &   \___/  bluejay@mail.com  *  michaelbluejay.com/bicycle

  Michael Bluejay, editor                              April 10, 2000
######################################################################

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[Please visit our website:  http://michaelbluejay.com/bicycle ]


 FORGET ABOUT WORLD PEACE, VISUALIZE USING YOUR FREAKING TURN SIGNAL!
######################################################################
#### C O N T E N T S :
####
####   FROM THE EDITOR:  Calendar of Upcoming Rides & Events
####   
####   CITY: Two cyclists appointed to City's Transportation Commission
####
####   JUSTICE:  Update on Ben Clough / Lauren Robishaw case
####
####   POLITICS:  Cyclist Gandy in runoff for U.S. Senate tomorrow
####
####   ROADWAYS:   City Council to decide fate of Lamar Bike/Ped bridge
####
####   CLASSIFIEDS:  Used bikes for sale
####
####   Publication / Subscription info
####
######################################################################


======================================================================
 FROM THE EDITOR:  Calendar of Upcoming Rides & Events
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Lot of stuff happening this month.  Don't forget to vote for Charles 
Gandy in the U.S. Senate runoff tomorrow.  See our interview later in 
this issue with him.


*04/11 Tue   -     Charles Gandy in runoff for U.S. Senator from Texas 

*04/13 Thu  1:30   City Council decides on Lamar Bridge

 04/15 Sat 12:00   Human Power Parade (State Capitol -> Waterloo Park)

 04/17 Mon 10:00   Clothing-Optional Ride (Wheatsville, 3101 Guadalupe)

 04/17 Mon 11:59   Full Moon Midnight Ride (Ozone Cycles, 32nd & Guad.)

*04/20 Thu  9:00am Trial for Ben Clough's killer (Courthouse,10th/Guad)

 04/23 Sun 11:30am Ruta Maya Sunday ride (218 W. 4th)

 04/28 Fri  5:00   Critical Mass ride (UT West Mall, Guad. near 23rd)


All times are P.M. unless otherwise noted.  There are related articles 
in this issue for items marked with a "*" above.  For more information 
on the other items, see the website at: http://michaelbluejay.com/bicycle


======================================================================
 CITY:  Two cyclists appointed to City's Transportation Commission
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Amazingly, the City's Urban Transportation Commission (UTC) now 
includes three strong bike advocates -- not just people who are 
friendly to the idea of bikes as transportation, but three full-blown 
bike ADVOCATES.  New commissioners Tommy Eden and Mike Dahmus join 
Patrick Goetz, who was appointed to the UTC last year.  At the same 
time, cyclist Michael Zakes is retiring from the UTC.

The UTC is kind of like a committee of the Austin City Council.  Its 
members are citizens appointed by city councilmembers. The UTC 
considers all kinds of issues relating to transportation in the City. 
It has little decision-making power in and of itself, but the City 
Council usually adopts policy which the UTC recommends. Issues of 
concern to cyclists that the UTC has considered include banning cars 
from parking in bike lanes (implemented on certain streets), adding 
bike lanes to certain streets, and requiring downtown businesses to let 
bikes use drive-through windows (not successful).

Tommy Eden has been one of the most tireless bike advocates in Austin 
for the last several years.  One of the original Critical Mass riders, 
he regularly attends government meetings to persuade officials to fund 
bike projects, and writes a column for Cycling News (a monthly 
newspaper published by the Austin Cycling Association).

Mike Dahmus, a relative newcomer to the local bike advocacy scene, does 
not seek government support for bike projects meekly or with apology, 
but rather maintains firmly that the city MUST consider cyclists as 
part of its transportation planning.  Dahmus is especially interested 
in improving bike access in the suburban areas of the city, since those 
areas are not nearly as bikable as the central city.

Patrick Goetz served on the Triangle Transportation Committee in 1998, 
trying to ensure that the controversial Triangle development project 
served the needs of cyclists and pedestrians.  He also was an organizer 
with the League of Bicycling Voters who worked to repeal Austin's 
unpopular bicycle helmet law.  (The law was not repealed, but was 
amended to apply to only children under 18.)

One cyclist retiring from the UTC is Michael Zakes, owner of Waterloo 
Cycles.  Zakes, who was appointed by Willie Lewis in 1998 and served 
for two years, pushed the UTC to help make the city more bike-friendly, 
including getting cars out of bike lanes on Duval (where parking was 
previously allowed).


======================================================================
 JUSTICE:  Update on Ben Clough / Lauren Robishaw case
----------------------------------------------------------------------
The trial for Lauren Robishaw is scheduled for this Thursday at 9:00am 
at the Travis County Courthouse (10th & Guadalupe), for the 299th 
District Court.  Because court dates and times are highly subject to 
change, check the website for updates:

   http://michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/justice/clough.html

Better yet, call the District Clerk (473-9420) and ask for the status 
of case #99-0982.

To clarify what we reported last time, the prosecutor needs witnesses 
who saw the collision and can estimate the speed of the car. The known 
witnesses saw the collision but did not see the car long enough to 
estimate its speed; the prosecutor tells us that the jury may be 
unwilling to convict the driver of a felony for accidentally running a 
red light, unless some additional negligence was involved, such as 
speeding. If you were a witness or know a witness, please contact 
Michael Bluejay at (512) 494-9226 or at bluejay@mail.com.


======================================================================
 POLITICS:  CYCLIST CHARLES GANDY IN RUNOFF FOR U.S. SENATE TOMORROW
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Normally, bicycle advocates spend much of their time begging government 
officials to spend a tiny fraction of our tax money on bike lanes and 
other bike facilities instead of spending 100% of our transportation 
money on roads and highways.  But it's a heck of a lot easier to get 
support from the government when cyclists are A PART OF the government. 
 We've noted here before how one thing that greatly helped cyclists on 
the local level was several cyclists getting appointed to city 
commissions, with the power to help determine how our transportation 
tax dollars are spent.  (See related article above.)  Now we have an 
opportunity to send a cyclist to the United States Senate.

Charles Gandy is running for position of Senator from Texas to the U.S. 
Congress.  He's in a runoff tomorrow (Tuesday the 11th) with fellow 
Democrat Gene Kelly, to determine who will be the Democratic candidate 
on the November election ballot.  In November, the winner will face 
incumbent Republican Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison.

If elected, Gandy would likely be the most pro-bicycle congressperson 
this country has ever had.  Gandy led the Bikes Belong Campaign to win 
Congressional funding for bicycling and walking in the federal highway 
bill, (TEA-21), and organized and launched citizen-based advocacy 
groups for walking and cycling in thirty states and metro areas. He 
also founded and served as the first Executive Director of the Texas 
Bicycle Coalition (TBC) (from 1990-1994).

Gandy also has experience in politics.  From 1983 to 1985, he 
represented Dallas in the Texas House of Representatives.  (Gandy 
currently resides in Austin.)

There has been some confusion about who can vote in the runoff, so 
let's clear that up.  You CAN vote in this democratic runoff if you 
voted in the Democratic Primary, or if you didn't vote at all.  You 
CANNOT vote in this democratic runoff if you voted in the Republican 
primary.

Gandy found time today (the day before the runoff) to talk to us about 
his positions on bicycling and other issues.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
ON YOUR WEBSITE, YOU LIST YOUR FORMER WORK ON TRANSPORTATION ISSUES AND 
BICYCLE ADVOCACY PROMINENTLY IN YOUR BIOGRAPHY.  YET TRANSPORTATION IS 
NOT AMONG THE NINE ISSUES YOU LIST ON YOUR POSITIONS & ISSUES PAGE 
(EXCEPT FOR SOME RELATED COMMENTS UNDER "PROTECTION OF OUR NATURAL 
RESOURCES").  SHOULD WE TAKE THIS TO MEAN THAT WHILE YOU ARE CONCERNED 
WITH TRANSPORTATION ISSUES, THEY WON'T BE A MAJOR FOCUS ON YOUR 
CAMPAIGN, OR YOUR TENURE IF ELECTED?

    Not at all.  I'm "out of the closet" as a bicycle and walking 
    advocate. We've been building this campaign as we've been running 
    it.  In the last three months, I haven't had time to do anything 
    other than to respond to people who ask questions, so the positions 
    on the website reflect the questions that have been asked by 
    various constituent groups.  I've been working on promoting 
    bicycling and walking professionally for the last ten years, and 
    I'm fully committed to improving conditions for cyclists and 
    pedestrians, and to do that through a variety of tools available
    to me as a U.S. Senator.  So my silence has more to do with
    focusing on winning the primary and responding to various 
    constituency groups out there.  And if I win this race tomorrow, 
    then I'll have the ability to respond to those issues and others on 
    the website.

WHAT ARE THE TOP THREE ISSUES YOU WOULD FOCUS ON DURING YOUR TENURE?

    1. Campaign Finance Reform. We have way too much corporate special 
    interest money dominating political campaigns.  Middle class 
    families and small business have been squeezed out and have been 
    paying the price in higher taxes and poor representation in 
    Washington.
    
    2. Healthcare Reform. I support affordable medical care and 
    prescription drugs for all Americans.
    
    3. Education. Kids are not widgets.  We can't treat children as a 
    product to be produced.  We need to raise teacher salaries and 
    decrease the size of classrooms.

WHERE WOULD WE GET THE MONEY TO RAISE TEACHER SALARIES AND DECREASE 
CLASSROOM SIZE?

    We can simply close a few tax loopholes that have been created by 
    the wealthy for the wealthy.  If we quit doing things like, for 
    example, subsidizing Amway Corporation to the tune of $19 million a 
    year in tax breaks, then we can find plenty of money.

HOW CAN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT BEST PROMOTE BICYCLING AS ALTERNATIVE 
TRANSPORTATION?

    The Transportation Bill will come back up in the next Senatorial 
    term, probably in 2003.  There are two things that should happen 
    there:
    
    1. One is that we should return the power to local elected 
    officials and away from the highway lobby in Washington and Austin. 
    So we'd be giving mayors and county commissioners more local 
    control over how those funds are spent.
    
    2. We must give local governments more options in spending their 
    federal money.  So if they need to use those funds to connect the 
    state system to the local system, or to the federal system, they 
    could do that.  Right now there are restrictions on the ways that 
    money can be spent so common sense is ignored.  The highway lobby 
    would much rather get multi-million-dollar highway projects than 
    fill in the gaps or maintain the existing system.
    
    Of course, of we did these things, there would be lots more 
    opportunities for spending federal money on bicycle and pedestrian 
    facilities than we have now.

IF ELECTED, HOW OFTEN WOULD YOU BICYCLE TO WORK AT THE CAPITOL?

    Virtually every day.  Actually, I have a bike in Washington now, 
    and every time I'm there I use it as my primary form of 
    transportation, along with the metro.

WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON TAX REFORM?

    I agree with John McCain that we should burn the existing tax code 
    and start over.  Of the 43,000 pages, only about 50 of those are 
    necessary to lay out the tax code, the rest of it is exceptions to 
    the rule -- loopholes and favors to special interest groups.  It's 
    inherently rigged to accommodate a Republican-controlled congress 
    that's in bed with corporate special interests.  I do favor a 
    progressive tax system (higher rates for wealthier taxpayers).

WHAT IS YOUR POSITION ON MILITARY SPENDING?

    I don't think that the military should be a pork barrel spending 
    opportunity for Trent Lott and a Republican Congress.  I think that 
    we should be spending more money on training and recruiting talent, 
    and less on dubious technology.

[Reminder: The runoff election is TOMORROW, Tuesday 4/11.]


======================================================================
 ROADWAYS:  City Council to decide fate of Lamar Bike/Ped bridge
----------------------------------------------------------------------
                     by Mike Dahmus (mdahmus@io.com) & Michael Bluejay

Cyclists thought they had won a victory when the City agreed to build a 
bike/pedestrian bridge on Lamar to help non-motorists cross the river.  
But now the City Council is poised to make the bridge useless for 
transportation cyclists with a revised plan that would fail to connect 
the bridge to Lamar on the north end!  The Council needs to hear from 
concerned cyclists who want the bridge to be built as originally 
planned, to connect cyclists seamlessly with Lamar.  Here is contact 
information for the City Council:

Mayor Kirk Watson 499-2250 / 499-2337fax  kirk.watson@ci.austin.tx.us
Daryl Slusher     499-2260 / 499-3212fax  daryl.slusher@ci.austin.tx.us
Gus Garcia        499-2264 / 499-1887fax  gus.garcia@ci.austin.tx.us
Jackie Goodman    499-2255 / 499-1888fax  jackie.goodman@ci.austin.tx.us
Beverly Griffith  499-2258 / 499-1886fax  beverly.griffith@ci.austin.tx.us
Bill Spelman      499-2256 / 499-1884fax  william.spelman@ci.austin.tx.us
Willie Lewis      499-2266 / 499-1890fax  willie.lewis@ci.austin.tx.us

Written letters can be addressed to councilmember and sent to:
 P.O. Box 1088, Austin, Texas 78767-1088 

Even better, attend the Council meeting if you can.  The meeting is 
this Thursday, 4/13/00, at the temporary meeting location, LCRA's 
Hancock Building at 3700 Lake Austin Blvd., in the board room. The 
meeting begins at 1:30pm, but it's hard to say when the Lamar Bridge 
issue (Item #11) will be considered.

Here's what's wrong with the new design:  It drops cyclists down on the 
hike & bike trail (well, the part of it on the north side of Cesar 
Chavez), not on Lamar at all. So it doesn't serve those traveling by 
bicycle on the road, but rather serves only joggers and the people 
riding on the hike & bike trail. And it doesn't serve even them that 
well, because they still must cross the access ramps for Lamar in order 
to get to the underpass which allows them to rejoin the main hike & 
Bike trail on the south side of Cesar Chavez.

Basically, a transportational cyclist (or pedestrian!) intent on using 
this bridge and continuing north on Lamar would have to use the ramp up 
from Cesar Chavez to northbound Lamar to do so, and it's unclear how 
they would get _on_ this road going the proper direction. It's 
certainly _possible_, but incredibly inconvenient, since cyclists would 
have to ride along a trail to the one-way northbound ramp, get on it 
while watching for turning cars, go up the ramp, wait (sometimes 
interminably) for traffic to clear at the yield sign on Lamar, and then 
book up the hill on the narrow lanes of Lamar.

The effective conclusion is that transportational cyclists will 
continue to just use the old Lamar bridge, because the new one will in 
fact be harder to use as well as more dangerous, requiring that 
cyclists negotiate part of the dangerous section of Lamar and add 
several dangerous pseudo-traffic maneuvers in the transition from the 
bridge to the access road.  If cyclists won't use the new bridge under 
these circumstances, then what's the point of even building the new 
bridge?  The council must be convinced to build the bridge as 
originally planned, to seamlessly connect cyclists to North Lamar 
around 5th Street.

Here's a map depicting the area:

http://maps.yahoo.com/py/maps.py?Pyt=Tmap&addr=300+W+4+St&city=Austin&state
=TX&slt=30.267000&sln=-97.746000&mlt=30.266500&mln=-97.755000&zip=78701-391
9&mag=9&cs=9&newmag=10

Ignore the "300 W 4 St", which is just the address we used to get the 
map to show up.  The access road in question is "Sandra Muraida Way", 
and the redesigned bridge is supposed to drop people down into the area 
between that access road, Lamar, and Cesar Chavez.


======================================================================
 CLASSIFIEDS:  Used Bikes for Sale
----------------------------------------------------------------------

TREK 1400 RACING BIKE. 21" (54cm) Aluminum Frame, Shimano 105 
Components/Clipless Pedals. Excellent Condition. Perfect for upcoming 
racing season. $600 OBO. Brian Chen, brian_chen@mail.utexas.edu, 481-0816 
(1-24)


AD POLICY
---------
Ads for individuals up to four lines are free, and run for six months 
or until you tell me to remove it.  Ads are accepted ONLY through 
email at bluejay@mail.com.  This newsletter is geared towards people 
who ride for transportation; if you're trying to sell a $1000+ racing 
or mountain bike, it probably won't sell well here.

Commercial ads are $10 per insertion per issue for up to three lines. 
Email me to get an account set up.

We reserve the right to reject any ad or to suspend its publication 
for any reason.  Actually, we don't even have to have a reason.

  
======================================================================
 PUBLICATION / SUBSCRIPTION INFO            by Michael Bluejay, editor
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 
      http://michaelbluejay.com/bicycle    bluejay@mail.com
----------------------------------------------------------------------

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Before writing with questions, please check the Biking in Austin 
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  Bike Safety...........   michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/safety.html
  Back Issues...........   michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/newsletters
  Traffic Laws..........   michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/laws.html
  No Justice for Cyclists  michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/justice
  Yellow Bike Project....  michaelbluejay.com/yellow
  City's Bicycle Program.  www.ci.austin.tx.us/bicycle
  Tracking License Plates  www.publicdata.com
  Calendar..............   michaelbluejay.com/bicycle/calendar.html
  Amy Babich for Council   michaelbluejay.com/amybabich

Don't worry about copying, saving, and bookmarking 
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Thanks for reading this far.  Ride safely! :)  -MBJ-

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