What about the stop sign law? How will motorists like it if a club ride cues up single file and each one skootches up to the stop line, stops, looks both ways, then goes?

SF Cyclists To Protest Stopping At Stop Signs With ?Stop-In? « CBS San Francisco

I think most people just want traffic that flows smoothly and safely.

I thought we were talking about one guy riding to work not a group ride.

Mark.

In cyclist congested places like the Wiggle in San Francisco and any number of similar streets in Seattle, Portland and Minneapolis, people just commuting becomes effectively a group ride just from sheer numbers.

Ok, I just hear a lot of bicyclists complaining that we should have the same right to the road that the cars have, but then we want to not have to go by the same laws, that's all I'm saying.

Mark.

Nah. I'm OK with being banned from the Freeways in the cities. Would be cool if, in exchange, we could have Idaho stop law.

I used to ride through downtown Portland to and from work. Luckily most of downtown's N/S routes are set up with a "green wave." Most of the lights are timed at 14 mph or so. Typically I only stopped once or twice heading through. I dunno what I'd do if I had to ride through 11 miles of fully signaled grid if it didn't have a green wave.

Here in Boulder County they have installed some type of video system at all the traffic lights. The lights that I always ran because they didn't respond now work as if I'm a car. I was still running them when I started to notice the system was tweaked to see bikes. It works very well. I suppose the system also helps with car traffic congestion by clearing out bottlenecks such as left turners dynamically instead of fixed time intervals. Hopefully this is the future because no matter what anyone claims, many of the old loop sensing systems simply don't detect bike traffic.

That was a staged event orchestrated to intentionally cause disruption, and doesn't represent reality. As to a club ride, as a group they will still be a rolling roadblock to following vehicles, and as individuals the delay to cross traffic would actually be less.

I know.

Better for cross traffic, yes. Catastrophically worse for anyone behind them going the same way. And if LEOs insist on this type of left turn behavior by group rides, it could mean the end of group rides as we know them.

That's not necessarily a bad thing under some circumstances.

Most group rides take place where liberties taken go unnoticed and/or have no meaningful impact on other road users, and will most likely continue to be ignored.
On the other hand, once in a while routes are chosen poorly where such behavior is disruptive, and pace lines are simply inappropriate.

I almost always stop now because I can't see well enough or there is just too much traffic or people watching. My previous commute there were a couple of lights that were completely pointless and I would roll through those if I was caught by them. On my commute now I don't pass any roads like that, but I have taken a route where I hopped on the sidewalk at a T, and I do that if there is a light from a pedestrian crossing and I see the pedestrian has already passed.

By the way, some of you have very few lights to go through.

I'll blow a light if I don't see anyone coming but my judgement for "someone coming" takes into account my own somewhat pathetic acceleration and the sheer number of moron drivers that don't know what the stalk on the left of the steering column is for. As a result I usually end up stopping anyway, even if it isn't for the whole light. Heck, around here I've found it's safer to cross against the lights. Car drivers just don't pay attention to small traffic on the right when they're turning.

Do you want to be in the middle of the loop or tangent to the side of the loop? (And if re-paving obscures the layout of the loop, then you're SOL)

FWIW I stop at all red lights except for when the intersection is straight-ahead + left only, so that the bike lane is not in danger or in the way of any traffic. I'm also scrupulous with arterial stop signs, purely residential stop signs not so much.

On the circular ones, I like to make a chord with my bike's wheelbase. Most repaves will involve loop replacements, chipseal or other surface treatments often obscure the cuts, though.

I usually slow down for the red lights. If the cross traffic is clear then I speed up and roll through. I try not to take too many chances. If there are any cars that could potentially turn in front of me, I'll just stop and at least wait for them to clear through.

It depends on the shape of the loop. Most of the loops in my area are figure 8 (three lines in the pavement) or square (two lines in the pavement). On figure 8, roll the wheel directly over the center leg for as long as possible. For square, I roll the wheel over either leg for as long as possible. There are only a couple of places in Denver that use the round loop but I've never found them to be any less sensitive. If anything they seem to be easier to trip by simply riding over the loop at any point.

I've used this method in 47 of the 50 states and never had a problem tripping a light if I could see the loop as I clearly stated above. Even repaving doesn't necessarily mean that you can't find the loop, however. On new fresh pavement, it is impossible. But if the pavement is a couple of years old, often times cracks will develop over the loop lines. Often I can see long linear cracks in the pavement and I know that is where the loop is. My success rate with those is a little lower but not by much.

How'd that double trailered-truck get there?

There is often a truck or work crew parked over there but in the 250+ times I've been through that intersection I've yet to see a vehicle go through past my green path. There's good visibility so if I did see someone I'd stop. I just treat it as a T intersection.

I think I see what he means is, what path could a double-trailered truck take to end up there? I'm guessing they don't back up so well, so he must have come off that bottom cloverleaf making as wide a left turn as possible to rest at the curb.

But what is that stump even for? There's a left-turn lane, why does traffic need the 'jughandle' (as we called them in NJ)?

Good on you, Philly PPA is the bane of every driver in an otherwise generally awesome city. Have a Yuengling's for me next time you partake, if you do.

That bottom section doesn't come off the main road, it's a side road coming from another area.

https://goo.gl/maps/0P7xu

It looks like when they built the highway they cut off access to the property (an animal shelter?) on the south side of the highway at the bottom of 80 St., so that spur for the moment only serves that property.

I've found that it's best to ride predictably, and if this means queuing up with cars at a red light, then I'll queue up. Switching between being a vehicle and being a pedestrian is also a good way to confuse drivers and annoy pedestrians on the sidewalk.

OP: In urban situations, I'll ride in the lane with the cars (I can easily keep up with the general flow of traffic, about 15-20mph in Lancaster), waiting at red lights if I come across them. The lights in Lancaster are timed, so if you can maintain a good speed, you'll hit all greens anyway. Lancaster also has zero bicycle infrastructure. I know that Philly is getting a lot of bike lanes, so it's probably best to act as the locals do.

As far as triggering lights, usually there are plenty of cars to trigger them for me, but I've had good success with lining my bike up directly over one side of the loop, so both wheels are on top of the metal. They're upgrading a lot of our intersections to be camera-based instead of induction loops in the ground, and these pick me up 100% of the time.

In DC there are a lot of cyclists who blow through red lights. I usually stop at most of them because riding through red lights rarely buys me enough extra time to be worth it. At most of the red lights heading east through National Mall, there's too much car traffic for cyclists to roll through safely - I usually catch up with the same cyclists I saw rolling through red lights earlier.

The only red lights I roll through all the time are on 4th St NW, the last north/south street on the National Mall on the east side - those red lights are there to allow tourists to cross, but in the morning rush hour, there's typically nobody there to cross the street.

My behavior depends on the time and neighborhood. Sometimes I even ride on the sidewalk.

What about 4-way stop signs? When I come to one with a decent shoulder and I'm going straight I'll come up adjacent to the lead car (if he's not turning right ) and go at the same time he does.

See if you can find out what the local culture is and what law enforcement is like. The police started to give tickets to cyclists for running red lights a couple of years ago. But it's a big city, and the police can't be everywhere, so most people don't stop at lights most of the time. I'm a very cautious cyclist, so I go slowly at red lights, and I'm careful (1) not to inconvenience anyone with right of way and (2) not to scare anyone. But I do break the law. Enforcement is very spotty. I have even broken the law in front of cops in hopes of getting stopped, but I haven't been stopped yet. I even once rode while drinking from a beer bottle. Nothing, but there were no cops around at the time.

Let me say to folks in the western US who think what I describe is deplorable. When in Rome, do as the Romans do. You have no idea how chaotic things are here. We have a different attitude towards law and order here. Your way works for you. Our way works for us.

I do that all the time, I think of it as using the car as a 'shield'

Why would you hope to be stopped?

It would be nice to know that the police are there to protect us. They have more purpose than just giving citations.