Originally Posted by Bekologist
i'm with diane, bicyclists deserve roadway accomodation so as to maximise expedient traffic flow for all users without conflict. when a speed differential approaches 2x for the average cyclist, roadway accomodation should be encouraged to provide maximum roadway expediency by all users.
I've always supported the principle that improved passing facilities should be prioritized where passing is most common and its ease most desirable. This is the reasoning behind Cary, NC's current standard of incorporating wide outside through lanes into all new and improved arterial roadways. (The old standard was narrow outside lanes.) Adding passing space to busy, higher speed roads makes more sense than adding it to low-traffic, lower speed roads.
However, the public is unwilling to pay enough to obtain an infrastructure where no delays occur. There will always be places where drivers of some vehicles are delayed by drivers of others. The question is, how do we want to characterize this situation? Who is not accommodated by the imperfect facility - the person traveling slower, or the person wanting to travel faster? Does the road lack a "slower vehicle" lane, or does it lack a "faster vehicle lane?"
As drivers of slower vehicles, I believe that it is in our interest to promote the paradigm that the road supports slow vehicles by default, and that passing improvements are optional facilities to serve the preferences of drivers who wish to travel faster with less delay. From this viewpoint, all users can get to their desired destinations regardless of vehicle type, and the drivers of faster vehicles can get there faster depending on the availablility of passing facilities.
The alternative assumption, that travel by slower vehicles is illegitimate or impractical without special slow-vehicle lanes, would appear to limit the destinations available to cyclists.
The historical use of ordinary roads by slow-moving vehicles, and the simple system of vehicular rules that has worked reasonably well for low-speed vehicles, seems to provide a good model for the use of ordinary roads by bicycles. The addition of passing facilities to those roads where passing is most useful is all well and good as long as it does not imply illegitimacy of slow travel without such. The passing facilities might or might not be striped a separate lanes and might or might not have different widths from the lanes used by the slowest vehicles depending on the statistics of the vehicle sizes. But I think it is preferable to be considered by default to be a driver of a slow moving vehicle on a generic vehicle facility rather than a non-driver of a non-vehicle that must be kept out of the way of "real" vehicles.
-Steve Goodridge