Originally Posted by
BlazingPedals
Different yes, but I'm not too sure about the "safer" part. It moves the bikes out of the car driver's line of sight during right turns. Plus it forces the bikes to take a circuitous route through (every?) intersection. As the article said, maybe it'll appeal to the frightened-of-cars beginner though.
My thoughts exactly. The problem with this kind of intersection and "protected" lanes is that they may make the beginner feel safer (they aren't really) but those of us who aren't beginners are relegated to the same protected lanes that put us out of view of cars. Denver has recently installed some protected lanes that are impassable when it snows. First the city doesn't have plows for the protected lanes and the snow off the main street gets shoved onto the lane.
One of the lanes is a "floating lane" where the bicycles are between the curb and parked cars where the cars "float" about 8 feet away from the curb. Business owners along this lane shove snow off their sidewalks onto the lane. Snow also gets piled up on the lane at intersections where crossing is dicey at best. And most of the lanes have been installed on the north side of buildings rather than on the exposed south side of the buildings. Snow that gets shoved into the lane soon becomes ice that lingers for a very long time.
Finally, all of the lanes that I've seen in Denver so far have deep flaws that are unrelated to snow. One of the lanes has been installed on the left side of the left travel lane. Bicyclists are normally on the left side of traffic...it renders even high mobile helmet mirrors almost useless. The "floating lane" has several intersection crossings where the rider is hidden behind cars at their most vulnerable point which is crossing an intersection.
The "Dutch lanes" linked to above aren't all that great in use. I've ridden something similar in The Netherlands a couple of years ago. The bike lane was tied to round-abouts and the bicyclists were forced to swing way out past the travel lane, cross 2 to 4 lanes of traffic including cars turning off the round-about. I'm not a huge fan of round-abouts for bicycles anyway but having to move outside the travel lane puts the cyclists out of mind to the motorist. I eventually just started riding through the round-about like a car and felt much better...even if I did get "Nee! Nee! Nee!" yelled at me by other cyclists.