genec, can you point to any study that shows 'door zone' bikelanes are worth the hysterics?
As far as I can read the conclusions of the researchers, streets with bikelanes are safer than streets without. Anecdotes about cyclists in door zones don't count.
from wikipedia ......
Originally Posted by wiki
The authors of a 2009 meta-study on cycle infrastructure safety research at the University of British Columbia similarly conclude that "in comparison to cycling on bicycle-specific infrastructure (paths, lanes, routes), on-road cycling appears to be less safe."[8] In direct contrast to the claims of vehicular cycling proponents, Jennifer Dill and Theresa Carr's research on bicycle transportation in 35 U.S. cities also suggests that "higher levels of bicycle infrastructure are positively and significantly correlated with higher rates of bicycle commuting."[9]
Despite the hysterics and the fearmongering about the dreaded kryptonic door zone of death, bikelanes to AASHTO minimum are effective on several criteria.
The door zone lives and breeds on crowded city streets that have no bikelanes. In my experience in several cities, operating a bicycle in an AASHTO minimum bikelane in the crowded downtown core of a large american city is usually an express route in (relative) safety past the congestion and the traffic. Take a similarly congested street in the same city that has no bikelane, and the cyclist is weaving and darting in and out of stopped traffic past doorzones of parked and idling cars, squeezing thru the narrow spaces riding a street that presents a gratingly low level of service for the vast majority of american cyclists.
Specious expectations that cyclist traffic can be correctly destination positioned at every point a car may turn to the curb or turn right is wildly unrealistic when it comes to a discussion of how to plan for roadway bicycling. Speed differential is real.
Cyclists, of course, still need to keep their wits about them. bikelanes do not absolve bicyclists from paying attention while operating in traffic.
Bicyclist activism to increase the door buffer for bikelane standards established by the MUTCD is valid. Fearmongering about current facilities coupled to absolutes - give bicyclists bufferzones or make them share the lane - simply isn't realistic.