Originally Posted by joejack951

From what I recall of the Texas study, bike lane stripes were added to existing roads without adding any new width; the outside lane was already wide enough to accomodate a ~4 ft. bike lane and a reasonable width traffic lane (I want to say about 11 feet but I don't remember the exact details). My point here is that this study wasn't looking to show the safety of widening a road to add a bike lane or to make a WOL. It simply looked at adding bike lane stripes.

Also, from what I remember from the conclusions, one of the "safety" increases they cited was that motorists were less likely to change lanes when approaching a cyclist riding in the road margin. The authors mischaracterized a safe lane change with no other vehicles around as a "swerve" to attempt to bolster their safety argument for which the only other justification was cyclist riding about a foot further left from the curb. Of course, no mention was made of the much lessened passing clearance being given by motorists nor was any mention made about the effects of the bike lane stripe at intersections. All conclusions and supporting photographs were taken from midblock observations. As far as I know, the streets used in the study had no prior record of significant collisions.