Vehicular Cycling (VC) - Calgary's Bike Lane
Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.
Have a look at the first "article" and photo on the site. http://www.elbowvalleycc.org/
I have several thoughts about it, but I'm not going to say anything. I'll just let the rest of you discuss it as you choose. :)
I would like them to move the bike lane all the way over to the other side of the street.
Then have parking, then a lane. Considering getting hit puts me into a fence.
Contra is a great thing. Makes cycling easier to get around the auto scale.
I might not ride on it for long, just get me to a street I need.
Nearly every street in my town, and most highways in my state, are "contraflow": traffic on one side moves in one direction, and traffic on the other side of the street moves in the other direction. Sometimes there's a paint stripe separating the traffic, but sometimes there's not, and yet vehicles crossing center and hitting head-on is a very, very rare event.
But I wonder in the above example: How do they sign the intersections?
"One Way" would indicate to cross traffic that one need only scan for traffic in one direction. No "One Way" signs would indicate cars could turn down the street.
TCS
The question is how does it contend with intersection? At any point, does it cross driveways?
The picture neither shows intersections or driveways, so if the bike lane is only one block long and they keep it swept, it would be a reasonable short cut for cyclist. With intersections and driveways, it would be dangerous.
Also note that the lane is not maintained: "Unfortunately the lane markings have faded which might confuse drivers going south on this oneway street."
It's 3 blocks long. Crosses one intersection, and the second intersection's road just goes off to the left so the bike lane doesn't cross it. The entire thing looks to be about 500 metres long.
Bekologist
06-17-07, 04:48 PM
i bet Calgary could do a LOT better with their bike facilities.
That's boring. Here is a better one:
http://www.fleischerfoto.com/tmp/marintunnel2.jpg
A tunnel in Marin, just north of San Francisco. One car lane with direction alternating every 5 minutes and two bike lines.