CB HI

Your claim would only be correct if VC proponents were now demanding that paved roads be removed.

I-Like-To-Bike

Check your spelling. That's the WSJ Onion page, doncha know?

squirtdad

In San Jose there is a combined bicyclist/pedestrian citizen advisory committee. They don't seem to be too much in conflict and San Jose is pushing to increase ridership with a goal of 5%.

B. Carfree

Back to the topic of marking out lanes. In my town, we have a "community collector" mini-arterial with door-zone bike lanes on each side, 9.75 foot travel lanes and a 25 mph speed limit; median traffic speed is 33 mph. Twenty blocks south of there, a traffic planner changed a road so that the travel lanes have 19 feet but no center line, which works out to 9.5 feet per lane. The traffic engineer has received hundreds of complaints about these "narrow" lanes by motorists who contend they can't pass another seven-foot wide car with their seven-foot wide car in those nineteen feet. This has led to a median speed of less than 25 mph.

I don't think the three inch difference in "lane" widths is what has reduced the speed here. Maybe there really would be a substantial benefit to removing the lane stripes.

By the way, there are also bike lanes, one of them a dzbl, on the street that no longer has a center stripe, so this isn't really what the author was calling for. Also, the 9.75 foot wide lanes are going to be widened to 11 feet this month; at least we will get improved bike lanes as part of this deal.

njkayaker

That makes sense.

Jseis 

Great article.

Like most older western communities our communities (where I live) were platted in the late 1800's when steam trains, carriages, horses, walking were the most common forms of transport. Thus we ended up with 20' alley ways, 40' streets, 200' x 200' blocks with 8 50' x 100' lots. Variations on this layout occur but that block/lot/street layout was the pretty common one all over the west.

Where it got weird was highways connecting communities. They were either railroad rights of way, logging roads, farm roads or purpose built roads and their width is all over the place. State rights of way routes can very in width from 30'-35' to 120'-200'. Actual paved width varies but 11-12' travel lanes are common. Shoulder width (right of fog line) varies from 0' to 6'-8'. Not unusual to go from wide shoulder to a 6"-2' shoulder for a mile, back to 5' for a mile, then 0' for a mile, then 2', etc.etc. and that makes cycling very interesting.

Those connecting highways were mostly built post 1915 when the rise of autos was rapid and communities wanted auto vehicle connectivity. Bicycle or horse carriage use between communities 25-50 miles apart was basically non-existent as that traffic was handled by passenger ferries due to many available waterways. Local roads in the communities were low use so everybody co-existed, still today (I'm in a pretty rural/resort community area). That being said....there's a strong push for better trail access between communities as the connecting highways are busy, narrow, with 45-55 mph traffic and the push is for separated paths connecting communities or wide shoulder paths 6'+.

njkayaker

You did here!

?? You aren't being clear. That's your problem.

You keep saying that some states have such a law but you haven't indicated one state that has such a law.

While there's some ambiguity with what people mean by "lane splitting", it appears (from research I did a few years ago) that the most common meaning of "lane splitting" is to (basically) ride on the white line separating lanes (straddling the white line).

"Lane sharing" is when two vehicles occupy the same lane within the white lines delimiting the lanes. Some states allow motorcyclists to share lanes. Cars can't practically share lanes (because, obviously, they are too wide). What all states allow for bicyclists is like the "lane sharing" of motorcyclists ("lane splitting" is something different). The laws appear to treat "lane spitting" (if they address that at all) differently than "lane sharing".

This makes no sense. They allow it as an exception. The traffic laws are rife with exceptions to the general rules.

You aren't making sense. And you are dissembling. I didn't claim you "advocated" it. You said that it was required, when (as I said) it clearly isn't required.

If you want it dropped, then you should drop it. Bizarre.

3alarmer

....................

RobertHurst

In Colorado and California and the midwest, there was a great deal of acrimony between the farmers and the cyclists who rolled out of the cities into the countryside. The wagon traffic tended to make two smoothish tracks in the middle of the road, while the sides remained chunky and muddy. The cyclists wanted to ride the smooth tracks, the farmers wanted the smooth tracks. Conflict ensued. Neither felt they should move for the other. It's unclear how much of the conflict resulted from cultural differences (urban-rural, affluent-struggling, recreation-work), and how much from basic competition for road space.

The wheelmen lobbied for Good Roads indeed, but also fought for their own separate path infrastructure, including sidepaths, because they wanted to escape the never-ending conflict with the cart drivers.

CB HI

I have had to fight motorist on who gets to stay on the bike path while the other leaves the path to give way. Most of the rude motorist are political sign wavers (a Hawaii thing) who think they can drive on the bike path to access illegal parking.

jon c. 

Roads existed before bicycles.

My dad was reading something recently at his local historical society (Rochester, NY) about the bike boom in the 1890s. There was great hue and cry over the large number of bicyclists zipping through the downtown area scaring horses and pedestrians alike. The end result was a move for speed limits to control the irresponsible bicyclists.

The wheelmen lobbied for Good Roads indeed, but also fought for their own separate path infrastructure

The same article discussed the recent construction of a 15 mile toll bikeway connecting Rochester with a neighboring town. It was described as gravel construction, so I don't know how smooth it was. But probably a lot better than the dirt roads they'd otherwise be riding.

UberGeek

Gravel bike paths aren't too bad to ride on, even with 700c's

RobertHurst

Similar paths were constructed all over the country, and they were very smooth. Private and public. Several were left half-finished when the auto craze took over.

In any case I doubt the Vehicularists will mention in their uberlong blog posts about how the cyclists had the rights and responsibilities of vehicles on public roads, even before motor vehicles came along, but were scrambling for their own separate paths anyway.

CB HI

Because back then, the roads were really MUPs. As bad as unpredictable pedestrians can be, skittish horses can be worse.

bshanteau

Thanks for your kind words. I (with the help of my colleague Dan Guiterrez) put a lot of effort into that article.

I'm thinking of directing my next article to traffic engineers (of which I am one) about their lack of a concept of operations for travel lanes means that they don't give any thought to how ALL road users, including bicyclists, will be using the streets and highways.

Bob Shanteau
Consulting Traffic Engineer
Seaside, CA USA