At left, victim Rachel Fletcher after being struck by a motorist on Thanksgiving Day. At right, her working as a bicycle messenger. Both photos were provided to me by Fletcher.

Another ugly chapter in the ongoing battle for the road between motorists, cyclists, pedestrians and the law was the focus of a story I wrote for Metro yesterday.

A few days after one of their own suffered serious facial injuries in a hit-and-run crash, city bicycle messengers upset with what one courier describes as “rising anti-cycling sentiment” are rallying at LOVE Park this evening. Read the rest here.

Staff writer Brian X. McCrone contributed to my reporting and helped pen the final product. Below I share how I got the story and a lot of other reading in this increasingly heated fight.

Metro’s Web site isn’t built for real interactivity. The international paper is much more interested in its free print product, so I very rarely see comments on the stories I do for them.

Yet, this story has already garnered nine meaty reader responses, including someone claiming to have witnessed that the bicyclist was drunk and many others testifying to seeing more bad motorist behavior than bicyclists. All those cases make me wonder why newspapers aren’t leveraging the contact information they can collect via comments. As a freelancer, I don’t have access to who those commenters are, but editors could.

One commenter left a link to a YouTube video that showed how few drivers entirely stopped at a stop sign near Rittenhouse Square Park in Center City, suggesting that increasing police enforcement of bicyclists obeying such street codes was unfair. See that video below.

For disclosure’s sake, I avidly use my bicycle to commute in Philadelphia, though I also love a good walk and have been known to use an automobile or two in Center City. Still, it’s perhpas important to note that I’ve expressed my frustration with increased bicycle enforcement.

The story, as it ran on Page Two of the Nov. 30, 2009 issue of Metro-Philadelphia. Click to enlarge.

Here’s some interesting reading on this fight in Philadelphia:

• As bicycle ridership grows, Phila. tells scofflaws: Stop!‘ in the Inquirer
• Stu Bykofsky: If bicyclists want rights, they should follow rules‘ in the Daily News
• Bicycle Coalition of Greater Philadelphia makes clear the details of the new bicycle legislation
• There’s too much wrong with Council’s proposed bike bills in the CityPaper
• The Philadelphia Parking Authority is creating bicycle parking out of recently decommissioned parking meters
• Thirty-nine bicyclists and pedestrians died in Philadelphia in 2007

In a trend that I hope continues, I was tipped late Saturday night to the storyas posted on Web forum Philadelphia Speaks. After garnering the interest of my editor, I first put a public call out on Twitter for sources. I got a primary contact that way and was sure to offer thanks for it — and then promote the story later.

“We just want to give the perspective of being a cyclist in this city,” said Jorge Brito, who was friendly with the victim and organized yesterday’s rally. “That’s not happening now.”

Update 11/22/09 @ 12:06 p.m.: Signs of this enforcement from Philebrity and the Inquirer.

Philadelphia police are introducing a bicycle enforcement campaign beginning tomorrow in Center City.

Forgive the lack of a direct focus on journalism, the future of news and my clips on this, but, as someone who uses bicycling transport fairly regularly (to save money and get exercise, something any freelancer would understand the value of making habit), it’s an issue I take seriously.

If you’re down, read some of my perspective and watch a video about police officers in another city using “discretion” with such bicycle street-law enforcement.

Anyone with any interest in urban dynamic will dig the debate, at least. The short of it is that there’s an increasing dependence on the bicycle to commute in Philadelphia — a walkable city and much maligned mass transit agency perhaps adding to the push grown out of other elements — and that’s putting bicyclists at odds with what had been for the past half-century a very dominant car culture of suburban commuters driving into Center City and driving home.

Now, with this new campaign, enforcement of myriad of driving code violations — from running a red light to traveling on a sidewalk or rolling through a stop sign — would ostensibly be taken as seriously with bicyclists as they are with car drivers.

On the Greater Philadelphia Bicycle Coalition blog post about the new campaign, I read a few great points with which I agreed and synthesized, so I thought I’d share them.

1. Motorized vehicles and man-powered bicycles are very different. It seems outrageous that the negative externalities of motorized transport will be ignored in so that bicyclists will be penalized the same as a car driver breaking code.
2. There are absolutely roadways that are unfriendly to bicyclists but have large yet unsused sidewalks — take a trip down Roosevelt Blvd. and much of Frankford Avenue north of Fishtown. Does that not seem outrageous to be fined? If every road has a bike path, then fine, but they don’t. (This campaign mentions a focus on Center City but is it wrong to think it will extend elsewhere if a cop wants to do so?)
3. Let’s reemphasize the difference between a one ton piece of steel that goes no less than 25 mph on city roads and all of 150-200 pounds that can’t exceed 7 mph.
4. What is the enforcement like, as Brendan said. Am I going to be arrested for not having ID and then feeling less than enthused about being forced to give out my name. [Update: City Council man Frank DiCicco has introduced legislation to require a one-time $20 registration fee for bicycle plates.]

Are those totally bogus?

I take seriously giving the right of way, but I absolutely cross red lights and stop signs, something that as a bicyclist I feel more able to do because of my far slower rate of speed. Stop signs and stop lights and the roadway system has been developed over the last 50 years for cars. That doesn’t make sense for a bicyclist, so isn’t there room to let some of this go?

Now, if this is just meant to be an enforcement campaign on the books so that those who drive or ride dangerously can be penalized, then sure, I have nothing to fight about that. But I can’t say that in my four years of riding pretty heavily in Philadelphia that I have too often seen bicylist behavior that warranted $120 fines.

Below watch a video made for Portland, Oregon police department to talk about using “discretion” in enforcing its code.

Standing with Sean Blanda and his brother Brian in Zurich, on the dock described in my Inquirer story below.

A personal journey essay of mine appeared in today‘s Sunday edition of the Philadelphia Inquirer.

If I keep my hand steady long enough, I just might get a photograph of me racing down the steepest hill in Zürich on a bicycle. But I’ll have to settle for the shot of me standing on a dock on Lake Zurich, shadowed by the yellow sun, framed in crystal blue skies, as I peer at the Swiss Alps, not 20 miles away. Read the rest here.

See related video, another photograph and read some details on the story below.

I offered to edit some video to accompany the story online, but no takers. Here’s the full video that I was willing to trim down.

But I was happy to get what I suppose I can consider my first professional travel story accepted.

I pounded out the essay. I was reminded of the story and wrote the 500-words in no more than 45 minutes. Then I spent another half-hour editing it, with the help of a friend. After submitting it, an editor approved it, then reviewed it, calling me for clarification on a few points. Then it went through copy editing and ran in today’s Inquirer, an edition with more than 350,000 subscribers.

Not much work at all to forever cast a very special few hours with friends on Oct. 16, 2008.

On my rented bicycle alongside Brian Blanda, my college buddy's brother in Zurich.

Larry Rosenthal is an old man. Tired hands and worried eyes. Worried eyes and a wrinkled forehead. He was once young and awfully worried. He wasn’t worried anymore, but his forehead, his eyes, they only knew how it was. He had been inside for thirty-three years, long enough for him to not seem so dangerous anymore. His life was taken a long time ago. Thirty-three years is an awfully long time to live in a cage.

I might have met Larry Rosenthal. Seen his hands or eyes or everything else that holds them in place. But he was inside and I was outside and keep your eyes on the road when you’re passing the Fairhill Projects. So, formal introductions, you see, were indefinitely postponed.

I ride a bicycle everywhere in the 135 square miles of Philadelphia County. But mostly I ride on 11th Street, between trolley tracks and side view mirrors. I ride to save the $2.60 for a round trip subway fare. I ride to exercise and make good time and because I’ve never been able to keep from smiling when I pedal around City Hall.

In North Philadelphia, I ride past the Blue Horizon and the Church of the Advocate and down Ogontz Avenue so fast that Olney can’t stop me. I ride mostly on 11th Street, between trolley tracks and side view mirrors, but I never look up to try to find Larry Rosenthal. Of course, he wouldn’t be there, but I don’t know that.

It is dark sometimes when I want to save $2.60. I ride just as fast, contemplating real estate and chasing black alley cats. There are many black alley cats to be chased. Sometimes corner boys are out hiding from rain underneath sneakers strung up in power lines, and they ask me what I want. Other times the corners are empty. Gangsters have to sleep, too.

My life holds the fluidity of freedom. Larry Rosenthal, of course, doesn’t speak of such things. You can be happy to know, though, that he forgot years ago what that would feel like. He wears the same maroon uniform everyday, the same as everyone else, but he was allowed to choose his own shoes. A man should choose his own shoes.

There are an awful lot of Chinese stores these days. People go in with money but never seem to come out with lo mien or dumplings. Larry Rosenthal didn’t like dumplings either. That is how maroon became his least favorite and most worn color.

He was smart, had two hands, insightful eyes and, from the beginning, a determination to be independent. Anyone can see he was too capable for his neighborhood to be anything but a dismal failure in society. Larry Rosenthal, his friends used to joke, is so black he is blue. But I wouldn’t know any of that.

A man I respect once told me that you should never trust a white man with a beard or a black man without one. Larry Rosenthal didn’t have a beard, but, then, he seems now to be awfully fresh-shaven. As if his reliability had been unquestioned until this morning. As if everything changed this morning. Like I rode up 11th street in the narrow strip of pavement between the trolley tracks and side view mirrors and didn’t see Larry Rosenthal this morning. Not that I would have been looking.

As submitted to Philadelphia Stories in May 2007. See the publication here.