Originally Posted by noisebeam
The later where BL is on roadway where cyclists can ride outside the lane, while not preferred, is not terrible like BLs that go to right of right turn lanes, BLs that extend all the way to the intersection, BLs that abruptly end where the road narrows, BLs that don't have inductive sensors, BLs that direct one onto a sidewalk - all of these and other bad examples I encounter daily on roads that have been designed relatively recently (in last 3-10yrs, I live in a relatively young city) and have recieved 'bicycle frieindly' awards from LAB. I have this sense that even good intentions, work done to define 'good' (not in the Serge sense) lanes, still result (espeically after re-modelling as happens here in rapidly growing city) in terrible designs. I am not just considering the design rules, but the sytems as a whole, what must be done to prevent these terrible designs from being implemented.
Al
Agreed... the best solution is to put the road engineer that lays these out on a low powered moped and tell 'em... "OK, You try riding them."
It is the blanket following of rules made up in some back office that does not address the situations that we really face out there... Otherwise, no one in their right mind would ever put a BL next to parked cars and then come up with rules that expect the cyclists to ride the left stripe to avoid the doors. The suggested governing document,
the MUTCD shows bike lanes next to parked cars... and it is documents like this that are referenced by traffic engineers.
But unless there is other collective guidance, those engineers know nothing else.