Better Burque’s Bicycle Sensor Project Team (BBBSPT) has taken to using trench warfare as analogy in describing its incremental progress via 311/SeeClickFix to ensure that all signalized intersections have loop detectors set at sensitivity which detects cyclists/bicycles.

Trench warfare isn’t a very apt analogy; we’re not in a war. It’s nothing like that. Nothing. We only use the trench warfare allusion to indicate the slowness of the progress. We probably should use “effects of climate change” or “geologic time” instead, but “conversations” between BBBSPT and 311/SeeClick Fix like that below do give one the sensation they have been in a muddy trench, one filled with the undesirable remains of long-term human standing/sitting/sleeping/etc., for quite some time:

The “conversation” above is a recently typical back and forth and around and back and forth and “resolved” between reporters (including those not from BBBSPT), observers, and 311/SeeClickFix’s “311 Citizen Contact Center.” Readers will note Better Burque didn’t say these conversations were necessarily exciting, particularly to those with only casual interest. We’re in a trench, remember. For a long, muddy/disgusting time. It’s not exciting.

Unless.

Unless you’ve been in the trench long enough to note that statements like “Sensitivity increased slightly to help detect bicycles” is an important, fundamental evolution (and yes, the slowness of evolution would also be a better analogy) in 311 “resolving” reports of inadequate loop detection sensitivity.

Really! This is exciting! Honest!

Okay, maybe it helps if you stand in this muddy/disgusting trench along the bike infrastructure “Maginot Line” for a few weeks/months. Which is to say that one checks 311/SeeClickFix obsessively over the course of a long enough period of time to eventually feel sheepish while alternating between extreme exasperation and indefensible joy.

Hmm…maybe playing a video game is also a better analogy than trench warfare.

And just as nobody wants to hear about how you got to Level 242 on Candy Crush without paying for “cheats,” Better Burque totally understands if you, even you cyclists out there, really aren’t thrilled to read statements like “Sensitivity increased slightly to help detect bicycles.”

But there may come a day when you’re on a bicycle riding along New York Avenue southbound and you want to cross Central Avenue, and you get to the light with no cars around coming down New York to trigger the loop detector and you’re sitting there and sitting there deciding whether you should do the dangerous waddle over to the beg button but you don’t have to do the dangerous waddle because of “Sensitivity increased slightly to help detect bicycles.”

Ha Ha! Then you’ll care! Ha Ha! Ha Ha Ha!

No, long-term continued exposure to 311/SeeClickFix has not made the Better Burque BBBSPT team crazy or irrational. Sure it’s muddy in this ditch, but we’re keeping it together. Speaking of “together,” the BBBSPT is always seeking recruits for its effort. You won’t go crazy or anything. Promise.