Lately, it seems like the only think UAPD cares about is "educating" cyclists about the rules of the road. There was an article in the Wildcat where bikers were made out to be scum of the earth. There is also the web page UAPD has linked to from a banner on their home page. And don't forget about UAPD's twitter feed, which uses 3 of its 11 tweets to remind cyclists they have to follow the rules of the road.

As part of their "Bicycle Safety & Education Campaign" UAPD picked four locations on five different days to set up shop. I decided to ride by this morning to see what it was all about. Today they setup at Highland and 4th.

This particular area has a bike route that takes you from the UA Mall south to Highland. There is a stop sign where the bike route and Highland meet. The stop sign is designed to allow cross traffic to make a left onto Highland from 4th street.

UAPD had three officers out there who were going to stop cyclists who didn't stop at the sign. According to the officer I spoke to they weren't going to be writing tickets during their education sessions. Although, he did say that after the education portion of their campaign was over on Oct. 1, they are going to begin stepping up their enforcement and start writing costly tickets.

I can see why they picked that area. Just in the few minutes I was out there talking with the officer, I saw several people blow though the stop sign and fail to yield to cars trying to turn left onto Highland. That being said, I also saw dozens of pedestrians who were also blocking the path of the cars despite the absence of a crosswalk.

That is the main reason UAPD's campaign is so frustrating. It is popular and easy to target cyclists, but it does little to actually solve the problems when you are only targeting one group. I asked the officer if they had any plans to educate pedestrians on campus.

He told me they were focusing on bikes for now, but eventually pedestrians would become their targets. It didn't sound like there were actually any plans to do so. I'll believe it when I see it. Anyone who has ridden on campus knows that pedestrians don't look when they step into the road and often walk down the bike routes despite the sidewalk that runs parallel to the bike lane.

One of the more interesting tidbits I gleaned from my conversation with the officer came when I asked the officer why UAPD doesn't cite pedestrians who walk down the bike lanes. Apparently UAPD lacks the jurisdiction to enforce laws on certain parts of the campus and that the enforcement actually falls to Campus Parking and Transportation.  If it isn't a public street, then UAPD has no authority to write tickets. Examples of these areas are the area around the mall and the bike paths that through campus.

It seems like the areas that cars are allowed on come under UAPD's authority, everything else is PTS's jurisdiction. It seems like and odd setup and I'd like to get a little more clarification.

My point that I keep trying to make to anyone who will listen is that enforcement needs to be a two way street. They'll get no respect from cyclists until they start enforcing the rules for everyone, not just cyclists. Until then, they are just pissing bike riders off, but as always there is very little backlash.

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