Bekologist

no. i had no intent for this to become a seperate thread so all the "I'm-so-vehicular" chestbeaters could dissect this stretch of road.

take it at face value and adapt.

Roody

So it was just one of your rhetorical tricks to hijack another thread?

Did the moderator ask your permission before making this into a separate thread? Do you think she should have?

EDIT: I do see your point that this thread is veering into a discussion of "should this be a bike lane?" instead of "how would you ride this bike lane that already exists?"

Furthur edit: The chestbeater insult didn't help me to see your point. It put me off and threw me off.

joejack951

Adapt to what? A picture of a short stretch of roadway showing a two way bike symbol? Do you want this east coast boy to learn anything from your high-tech west coast bike lanes or not? If this is such a good idea, why not let us see the whole road so that the design can be copied in other areas?

Bekologist

*chest beat* me* proud *biker.* give it a rest, east coast riding neophyte. you might bruise your pecs.

joe, donna started this thread using one of my posts.

as an adaptive cyclist, if you were riding along the street, and sudennly came onto this, one way road, with a two way bike lane, and you had to go in the direction the photo is being taken, what would you do?

donnamb 

Mod note: I didn't ask Bek's permission. The OP of the thread it came from wished for this.

I think this is a great first example for AC, and Bek, I'm glad you mentioned it. This is real life, just as Roody points out in his Hume's Fork post. This is how things are sometimes. So you've got a weird bike lane on a weird one-way stretch. How would I ride it? I guess it would depend on traffic conditions. Do cars respect it or drive in it sometimes, all the time, never? What's the bike traffic congestion like? Am I riding during rush hour or not? Where was I before I got on this street and where will I be leaving it? Really though, I suspect it would be just fine. Just ride on through. I'd be bearing right, just as though this were a street for bikes.

sbhikes

I kinda wish they could put in a bike lane like that on Highway 101 at the Gaviota Tunnel. Anything to avoid going into that Tunnel. Put the two-way bike lane on the other side of the freeway, on the side that doesn't go into the tunnel.

That's what I imagine is going on here sort of. For some reason the other half of this road is a death trap or something, so better off having all the bike on this half?

Roody

I guess that to me it's so obvious that you would ride on that bike lane and you probably wouldn't ever have a problem there because the sight lines are good, there are no intersections or even driveways to worry about, and traffic is probably never very heavy. Whether there was a bike lane or not, this would be easy riding.


Why they decided to put the bike stencil in is anybody's guess--maybe just velo-bragging rights or they may have had some federal alternative transit funds to spend. It's just a former two-way road that was changed into a one-way road, probably to facilitate the flow of motor traffic in the general area. Rather than go to the expense of restriping the road, they used the existing double yellow line and threw down a bike lane stencil. Then they threw down another stencil to make another arrow, and called it done. I don't see the big deal--just municipal corner-cutting that probably won't help or hurt cyclists one bit.

sbhikes

Roody, you don't live in the area so you're just making stuff up.

Seems to me you would need the double-yellow line so that drivers wouldn't try to ride on the left. The bike lane would indicate they should ride on the left, so the double-yellow line prohibits that.

There has to be something about the other side of the road that doesn't make it safe for cycling. Bek said something about a draw-bridge. I'm not sure what a draw-bridge is (unless you're talking about castles and moats), but it does sound like something that could have a surface or some other feature making it treacherous to ride a bicycle on.

Better to have some lane indicators than to let some happless bicyclist figure it out by chance, and fall into the moat in the attempt.

chipcom 

John C. Ratliff

I would probably ride in the center of that lane. There is no one around, but if I saw someone, then I'd head right (assuming this is using USA riding rules).

I like this concept, as having the whole lane for bicyclists makes a lot of difference. Chip is asking about a much narrower lane, and I feel that the narrower, the worse it would be. I like wide lanes. We have a bike path up over the Portland West Hills that meets Chip's criterion, and I'll try getting some photos this weekend. But it is much wider in most areas (exact measurements will come later). The path is a combination of paths beside Highway 26 and roadways. Here's a map that shows the path in purple:

https://www.portlandonline.com/shared...e.cfm?id=90495

John

sggoodri

I'm more interested in what cyclists here would do if they are headed toward the camera on that road.

I would operate on the right hand side of the roadway, in the lane shared with cars, so that I would know what to expect when I reach an intersection.

Roody

Based on what you can see in the picture (low traffic, great sight lines) I would have no qualms about riding either direction. The question is, how does the lane begin and end? Bekologist has decided that we're not to know that--maybe because the information wouldn't support his ideological (non-adaptive) stand on bike lanes?

Bekologist

I had no intent of this becomming a thread for discussion it the first place.

Most riders have no problems using this lane. If I'm making a right at the end of this stretch, and I'm travelling opposite the camera, i'll use the bike lane until time comes I need to move right to make a right hand turn. Adaptive cycling.

Josef Taylor

I live in the area (Seattle's University District) and Roody is exactly right. Google: NE 40th St and University Bridge, Seattle, WA
The road was once two way, but SDOT apparently wanted to restrict traffic through the Dormitory complex to the east (the direction photographer is heading) and so cut off car traffic into and out of said complex. The westbound lane remains as part of an offramp from the University Bridge.

The West end of the bike lane ends with a barrier at a five-way stop, directing flow onto a bike trail, or into the car lane to enter the intersection. The East end becomes a divided two way street for bicycles and cars (no through car traffic though) and the end of a long 270 degree offramp.

Cars get confused when they come down the offramp (towards the Westbound land here) and see bikes approaching from the east that don't merge, but stay in what must appear to be an oncoming lane.

[Edit] I ride this one all the time, and going WB, (with car traffic) I start out in the BL and merge into the car lane at my leisure if I am going through the intersection. Going EB, from the intersection, I have to enter against (and to my right of) the car traffic on this road, past a "Do Not Enter... Except Bicycles" sign, and then I keep right, or in the middle of the BL.

joejack951

Thank you for finally posting some worthwhile information about this street, Josef. Bekologist has often posted this bike lane but has never once described it at all, let alone in the detail you have provided. As suspected, the end result of allowing two way traffic in a lane that otherwise appears to be a single direction lane is confusing, and thus potentially dangerous, to any motorist or cyclist using that section of roadway. Nothing like using cyclists as pawns to restrict motorized traffic.

Brian Ratliff

^^^^
University bridge and NE 40th. I used to live near there, at 7th and 45th (which is a story unto itself in terms of intersection arrangements).

That place is a bit f'ed up with the weird intersection if going north towards 40th. The whole south end of the U district is one big kluge job because the grid is originally a N-S-E-W arrangement, and has to switch to a parallel-perpendicular arrangement near the waterfront where the grid contacts the frontage road. Then there is the University bridge which comes in at a weird angle and intersects the grid, not at the frontage road like any normal bridge, but at 40th, after sprouting off exit ramps to every other street it crosses over.

If you want an example of AC technique combining sidewalk riding with street riding, one can look at my bike route (and walking route if I had time), from my apartment at 45th and 7th. 45th street is a pretty busy, 4 lane arterial which, while rideable, is not terribly pleasant or even efficient (the cars get backed up and there is nowhere but the sidewalk for a cyclist to cut through the mess). So, I start out by going down 7th ave, against the traffic, on the east side sidewalk. I get to 43rd ave, get back into the street. Take 43rd until it terminates at Roosevelt, which is a 3 lane, one way arterial. I ride Roosevelt down until I hit 42nd street (which involves changing three lanes to get from the right side of the road to the left to prepare to get off on 42nd street. Then I take 42nd street to campus, where I cross 15th and hop up onto the sidewalk and integrate into the network of paths through campus.

I did this most every day for a year, but ended up getting hit once, on Roosevelt when I was making the requisit two lane changes on the short block and ended up in an apparent "gap" in the left lane which a parallel parked car chose to enter at that exact moment, despite my presence. I ended up uninjured, but totaled the frame of my bike and at least put some dents into the car's fender area.

(Yes, I was vehicular, yes, I should have had my head up, yes, I was wearing a helmet at the time, no, I did not hit my head, no, there was no bike lane. I had just changed lanes, which involved looking back for a gap in traffic in the left lane, and looked back forward to find a car pulled out into my path. I made an error, but the car was at fault though I was stupid and only got a name and phone number, which is not enough to do anything.)

Brian Ratliff

^^^^
How new is the pictured path? I was living in the area not 3 years ago and I don't remember anything like that.

chipcom 

Thanks JJ, but that isn't the point. This thing DOES exist, people use it and it isn't going to go away just because we wish it so. So the point of this thread would be to discuss how to use it, if you gotta use it. You say it's potentially dangerous, fine, point out the potential dangers and ways to mitigate them for those who either choose to, or a forced to, use the thing. Let's talk solutions to real problems faced by real people, not politics and shoulda, woulda, coulda.

joejack951

That's what I was attempting to do all along but Bek flat out refused to post a link showing the roadway. Josef did a fine job describing the situation and the potential areas for conflict. I should have ended my post after my first sentence.

chipcom 

It's cool...this takes some getting used to, especially with all of our history and especially when baited.

Scot_Gore

We have a similiar facility in downtown.

It's a two way bike lane in the middle of the road. Similiar to the one in your photo, but this one has strip down the middle to guide the bike traffic. This is one of our worst pieces of bike infastructure in town. There's 3 northbound vehicle lanes, then a northbound bike lane, then a southbound bike lane, then a south bound bus only lane. The cyclist's travel between the northbound cars and the southbound buses. both of them making left turns across the bike lanes at the intersections.

Where did this one come from? It's a poor concession to the elimination of a another bike right of way. A few years back one block East was (is) the Nicolet Mall. Only city buses and bikes (no cars, no trucks) were allowed on Nic. Mall. Well......the buses rolled over a couple of cyclist one summer so they banned bikes on the Nicolet Mall between 6:00am and 6:00pm M-F. The above facility was meant to replace the lost right of way. Not great. There's plans to extend the Cedar Lake in the next couple of years, it will paralel this section one block West.

For the northbound bike lane, it abruptly stops forcing riders to cross 3 lanes of traffic to get back right.

This is downtown, so there's a little bit of "anything goes" driving and riding and the speeds are not too high.

Scot

sggoodri

Does Adaptive Cycling allow for the use of the normal travel lane when traveling in the same direction as the motor traffic?

sggoodri

Here is an interesting article on engineering for two-way bicycle travel on roads that are one-way for cars:
https://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/faci...contraflow.htm

sggoodri

For those interested, here's the rest of John Allen's article, "Bike lanes in the middle of the street"
https://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/faci.../midstreet.htm

chipcom 

Of course. Remember Steve, the premise is that we provide solutions that fit the needs of the cyclist in the environment they choose or are forced to ride in. The road can be one of those choices, or in my case where there are few facilities, the only choice. We try to deal with solutions that are applicable to operating within the chosen evironment, whether that be a road or facility, not debate the merits of road vs facility.