Negligence more relevant in crash cases.

This car versus car case in the LA Times report, on a possibly unfair conviction, is laced throughout with an exposition of more prosecutions, in driving crash cases, where participants end up with fatal injuries. The reporter writes that acting with negligence can get manslaughter charges. I wonder what a bicycle or pedestrian crash specialist attorney would say? Looks like cyclists and pedestrians want a finding of negligence or gross negligence from the drivers actions, relative vehicle speeds, and likelihood of injury from the vehicle types. If any of these factors play into the definition of negligence. The article says that crash based "criminal prosecutions is rising, in part because the state has aggressive legal standards and in part because, prosecutors say, advances in accident investigation technology allow them to more precisely understand the causes of fatal accidents."

The article unfortunately disproves that statement and Ralph Vartabedian the writer exhibits quite a bit of hyperventilation implying that everybody can be in a crash and get prosecuted; contrary to the overwhelming data from NITSA, DMV, and insurance institutes which says that crashes are caused by negligent drivers who are characterized as having two or more points against them. The rescheduled Pedestrian Safety & Advocacy Conference will be discussing issues like this- see Challenge Area 3, 7, and 8.

Standing out from the mostly maudlin crap in here, "one veteran accident investigator Robin T. Harrison said. "I have spent my life doing accident reconstruction, and the police regularly lead the charge in lousy accident investigation."" So maybe this would be good piece to talk to the local police chief about too since crashes and driving (gasoline) make up a big portion of their underfunded budgets.

Caltrain Bicycle Master Plan, bumped bikes.

The Joint Powers Board for Caltrain heard the Bicycle Master Plan report. In it Caltrain reported that bikes were 8% of ridership. Drive and parked car was 27%, Drop off pick up was 9%, Walking was 29%, transit was 19%, and the free shuttle was 8%. There was no sense of 21st century issues like the cost, co2, pollution especially PM10, and congestion burden for each of these modes.

For example Caltrain maintains 300 spots at its Belmont and San Carlos Stations at a cost of $15.7M dollars that cannot be developed for other uses like mixed use housing and retail which could bring revenue into the agency. This is relevant because the agency receives public dollars to offsets a huge loss in fare box recovery.

The public benefits for the subsidy are that
- transit users reduce congestion (Someone on the JPB once said that 10% ridership on all the transit properties was what was necessary to relive congestion on the roads.)
- transit users reduce pollution to help CCAG meet its air quality requirements and qualify for federal funding through.

Both MTC and ABAG have said we cannot meet out PM10 goals by 2035 even after the most stringent alternatives for vehicles and fuels have been adopted. And clearly with 55% of CO2 coming from transportation primarily single occupant vehicles something needs to happen.

So setting aside the $15.7M cost fixed internal cost for a parking lot, which is clearly not recouped at the $1/- per day rate in the poorly occupied parking lots (with the free shuttle about 75 cars use the lot in Belmont), and the $5k cost of 25 bike lockers and racks, one has to look at the other benefits in the shares of the modal groups getting to Caltrain.

At 8% of trips the bicycle groups far outpaces the other modal shares except for walking. This means that only 37% of trips come from low cost, low CO2, zero congestion, and zero PM10/pollutants modal shares. That means for the transit authority two out three trips have a huge public non-benefit only one of these trips meets the purpose of Caltrain funding.