Originally Posted by
Bekologist
i wonder if there's really any significant problems with these types of intersection striping patterns
that are FHWA compliant and position thru travelling bicyclists to the left of all right turning traffic,
with expectations of bicyclists use of the RTO lane for right turns and either changing lanes to make lefts, or the two step turn.
These types of North American 'best practices' intersections have pretty consistently ridden 'vehicularily' for me as a bicyclist, provided road space and have worked well for me, particularly along busier, higher speed roads, in many cities.
Maybe they aren't robust enough for the dutch guy. Fair enough. we've got a lot of work to do here.
The NACTO guide covers a massive array of roadway and highway design, not simply bike specific signal phase bike facilities or current FHWA pocket bikelanes.
The North American NACTO guide is really a clearinghouse document rather than an actual design guide. Its breadth and required brevity certainly expects a few generalizations about the 'best practices' of north american planning for bicyclists. The master reference matrix is where the real weight of the NACTO guide resides.
Bek proclaims that having bike lanes between straight-through and right-turning traffic is a wonderful idea. Why is that? Do they provide proper direction for right-turning cyclists? Do they provide proper direction for left-turning cyclists? Any cyclist who needs guidance from bike lanes is going to be misled sooner or later by the bike-lane stripe, while those who don't need such guidance don't need the bike lane stripe at all. Do we argue that only competent cyclists turn left or turn right, while incompetent cyclists all go straight? Or do we argue that the majority goes straight so we provide for the majority movement, leaving the other movements to be done by cyclists who have suddenly acquired the competence to turn right or turn left? The system has no rational basis.
But that argument is only rather basic; a more pointed argument is that against painting bike-lane stripes diagonally across other traffic to reach these sections of bike lane, as is commonly done. Such movements should be done by negotiation between the two parties, resulting in change in speed and in location of the crossing movements to accommodate safe operation. But if the cyclist is assumed to be incapable of such negotiation, by painting on the roadway the precise path he is to follow, then the cyclist just barges ahead into whatever danger there is. Thus putting the entire responsibility on the motorist increases the risk of collision. It is better, as always, to have competent cyclists than incompetent cyclists.