They just dont know.

[noisebeam]

Except on my very best days, speeds of 45 - 55+ are indeed faster than my average speed on the bike:)

Thus all traffic is faster than I. To take the lane would involve weaving in and out of traffic, and near continuous attention to the rear. I just can't imagine why anyone would want to do that with other clearly safer and more practical options available, unless of course political obstinance is the objective.
It makes sense on light to moderately traveled roadways with sub-car width shoulders. One rides in primary lane, see a same direction car approach, move right (or very often they move left before you even need to move right)
But when traffic is heavy the gaps between vehicles are too short to make this practical or even possible, so one (or at least I) just stay to the right.
Now with a full car width shoulder, the benefits of being highly visible are diminished. Sure a driver may swerve over fog line, but it would have to be a very significant swerve (still possible)
What I would probably do (assuming good surface condition) is ride on a band 6" to left, to 6" inside fog line, and move right when faster vehicles approached - you would still be in zone of some driver attention. If a continuous stream of fast vehicles, then I'd stay 4-5' outside fog line (leaving 4-5' to pavement edge) Again assuming good road surface.
There is actually a median divided road like this I ride. The shoulder is about a car width. SL is 65mph, cars travel at 75mph just to right of fog line is a 12" scarrified asphault. Traffic is often quite heavy. I always just stay in shoulder as going over scarrified asphault band is very unpleasant and vehicles are frequent enough that one would be going over this band every 30s or so.

Al

[Helmet Head]

To be more conspicuous to traffic approaching from behind.
(but riding in this car width BL is no different than riding in the rightmost NOL of a multilane road that is not used by motor vehicles)
There is one huge difference - traffic is expected in a NOL, it is generally not expected in a BL, regardless how wide it is.


To take the lane would involve weaving in and out of traffic, and near continuous attention to the rear.
How often are the gaps, and how long are they? How often are the intersection, even minor ones?

What's the road name, address and nearest cross streets so we can look on google?

[noisebeam]

There is one huge difference - traffic is expected in a NOL, it is generally not expected in a BL, regardless how wide it is.

How often are the gaps, and how long are they? How often are the intersection, even minor ones?

What's the road name, address and nearest cross streets so we can look on google?
Of course about first point.
As to map, webist may want to share, but its gonna look like a lot of brown scrubland with a few scratches of road. Beautiful land when you are standing on it.

http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=31.741015,-110.250549&spn=0.960002,1.277161&om=1

(ok, a good number of roads, the areas is getting quite developed)

Al

[webist]

When cycling through a neighborhood or on collector streets, I ride in the middle of the lane and move aside only if the lane is wide enough, no cars are parked and the area nearer the right is clean, and, I choose to do so. Neighborhood street speed limits are 25 mph by default or are posted lower. Keeping up to legal traffic speeds is generally not a challenge. Collectors are normally set a 35, but usually have extra lanes. Again, no problem.

The highways around the town though have clean and marked wide lanes marked conspicuously as bike lanes. In my mind that makes them traffic lanes for vehicles called bicycles. It is similar in my judgement to lanes in other cities on the left side of the road which are HOV or carpool lanes.

There are several intersections, all major and involving collector streets. There are no "minor" intersections. All intersections are served by right and left turn deceleration lanes. Bicycle lanes are marked between the through traffic lanes and the right turn lanes.

Again, I cannot see any reason to travel down the middle of the motorized vehicle lanes where traffic is moving at at least 45 mph other than to cross those lanes to make a legitimate left turn, which I also do routinely if my chosen route calls for it.

There are two other cross-town 45 mph routes which are also divided 4 lane roads. These are curbed streets with no shoulders, no bike lane and an MUP on only one side. On these roads I ride in the right lane and expect traffic to pass. These are also generally much more lightly traveled by motor vehicles.

Truth be known, I've sort of lost interest in the answer to my original question. I will continue to ride as I do now in any case.