ChrisM2097

I've noticed several streets in Downtown San Jose have been reduced from 3 driving lanes to 2, and there is odd striping on the road. Nothing indicates that it's actually a bike lane, and if it is, I think the design should have been changed to put us closer to traffic, and further from the door zone. But any bike lane is better than no bike lane.


Click to enlarge.

Anyone seen lanes like this?

Timothy

New to me. It looks like you could ride the dotted line and be out of the door zone and still have plenty of clearance from traffic.
Hopefully they are not intending it to be a two way bike lane.

dimachka

Bike lanes are to keep cars out, not to keep bikes in. Ride in the striped area if you think its safer. That looks like an extremely bike friendly road to me.

ChrisM2097

Very doubtful, since most of the streets in downtown are 1-way for vehicle traffic, and wrong-way riders wouldn't be able to see the traffic lights.

Understood - but sometimes road stripes are painted on very thick, so riding here would be like riding on a washboard. Personally, I take the lane when there is no bike lane, if for no other reason than to avoid the door zone. Agreed that this is definitely a very good improvement over what was there before (3 vehicle traffic lanes and a 'parking' lane).

I've only seen this on a few roads so far. Hopefully the city is going to expand this improvement.

CommuteCommando

This is a typical section of a very popular bike route on old U.S. 101 in the community of Leucadia. about 25 miles north of San Diego.



There are plans to reduce it to one lane each way, and add diagonal parking and bike lanes. Fortunately, it isn't just bikers that it benefits. The "traffic calming" effect of the changes is also favored by local merchants, because slower traffic encourages more to stop for business, and through traffic that would not other wise stop, is encouraged to take the nearby interstate. This reduces congestion, making the area a more attractive destination. I just hope they don't do something confusing, as San Jose appears to have done.

Google it yourself at 33.062634,-117.301730

genec

We have bike lanes like this, but they only exist on a 65MPH road here... the buffer area was added locally due to the fact that two experienced cyclists were killed in under two years on this bike lane... so something had to be done to make it more obvious that there was a bike lane... and buffer zones were added, pavement was improved, and green bike lane boxes were added... all so motorists could go 65MPH while "sharing the road." (of course the real irony is there is a freeway about a 1/2 mile away... but that didn't matter.)

For the specific BL in the pic, the buffer zone seems unnecessary, and there is a greater hazard of the door zone. I too would tend to ride this right at the left edge of the BL, right at the stripped buffer.

dynodonn

Nah, that buffer zone is a great asset, especially when there is a door zone present. The buffer zone lets the cyclist ride far left in the bike lane with less worry about being tagged by a mirror or motorist drift, especially given the narrow adjacent lane width.

mcrow

We have these in Minneapolis. According to the city website they are meant as buffer lanes. You can ride in the striped area to pass or avoid opening car doors but it is suggested you stay in the right lane.

ChrisM2097

Agreed. If this is in fact a bike lane, the buffer zone is overkill and will confuse drivers who think they can't legally cross the solid lines in order to park. Most, if not all of downtown SJ is 25mph (maybe as high as 30mph in some less condensed areas). Hopefully they're not completely done with the road and will put some kind of indication as to what exactly this lane is.

Andy_K 

On the plus side, you won't get doored by a passenger in a moving vehicle!

My guess is people will see it as an invitation to double park.

dynodonn

No way, even at 25 to 30 mph, the buffer zone vastly helpful, Look at your posted picture, remove the buffer zone, make this street into a two way with the same lane widths, make that left turn lane into parking, have bike lanes on both sides of the street, add 35 to 40mph traffic ranging from compact cars to semi trucks carrying over sized loads, and you have our latest BL install. I would never call any BL buffer zone overkill, and in the picture, there's plenty of motorists that figured out that they are allowed to park their cars.

Bluish Green

I haven't seen a roadway like it, but it looks good to me. That is better than a significant portion of my current commute. Good on the city for providing such nice bicycling infrastructure.

PatrickGSR94

Even without the buffer zone, that bike lane is huge. Appears to be almost as wide as the parking area. I think some of the new ones in Memphis are like that.

Much better than the poor@$$ excuse for bike lanes near my office. They took the existing 2-lane 2-way road with center yellow line and concrete curb/gutter on both sides, and painted a white line about 2 feet from the edge of the concrete gutter. So you have 2 feet of asphalt and 18 inches of (lower) gutter, and they call that a bike line. A whopping 42 inches. I ride with my tires barely on the right edge of the asphalt, not in the gutter, and my handlebars always hang out past the white line. Very, VERY bad design.

sauerwald

I live in San Jose, and objected to the designs of the new bike lanes on 3rd and 4th sts. Both 3rd and 4th are one way streets, and for most of the length have on street parallel parking on both sides of the street. The redesign reduced the number of 'travel lanes' from 3 to 2, and put a bike lane on BOTH sides of the street. In some parts of the street, they have buffers as shown in the photo. I wrote to the traffic engineer and expressed concern that with the placement of the buffers they would encourage cyclists to ride in the door zone, but the traffic engineer wrote back indicating that he did not feel that dooring was a concern. I also expressed concern about the potential for wrong way cyclists using the left side bike lanes. My preference would have been to remove the on street parking from the right side of the street, and replace it with diagonal parking on the left - which leaves a similar number of parking spaces, and prevents the problem of motorists hunting for a parking spot swerving across the road to get to a spot on the other side of the street from where they are.

Now that the infrastructure is in, I object to it less (although I still don't like it). Cyclists in the bike lane tend to ride on the left side of the lane, away from the doors of the parked cars.

They have done similar treatments to 10th and 11th Sts, and are in the planning stages for something on Hedding between 17th St and the Guadelupe River Trail - there is a meeting to discuss that one tonight - details at the Silicon Valley Bicycle Coalition Web site/

ChrisM2097

Thanks for your clarification. On my commute from Milpitas, I enter & exit the downtown area on Maybury, 17th, and Julian / St. James, and was pretty much oblivious to the changes to the other streets. I happened to be heading back to work from Smoke Eaters @ Santa Clara & 3rd when I noticed the street redesign.

The city really needs to focus on making the East/West streets more bike friendly. I know at least Julian, St. James, and Santa Clara street have no bike lanes in/around downtown. At least they're making some progress, though. And with the economy the way it is, I'm assuming they realize that more and more people will be traveling by cheaper (human-powered) transportation.

ChrisM2097

Looks like they finished the lane on 3rd St.



and, yes, it is an invitation to double-park, as you can see up ahead. But I certainly can't complain. The city pretty much gave up an entire vehicle lane to get this done, and at least here, it shouldn't have much impact on traffic, since I don't usually see a whole lot of cars traveling on 3rd. 2 lanes is plenty. If I stay just inside the striped area, I find I've got plenty of room between myself and parked cars, so I'm not so concerned about the door zone.

PatrickGSR94

man that's super nice. Even the center of the bike lane is out of the door zone. And the truck up ahead isn't parked, it's probably loading or unloading, and does appear to have a safety warning cone behind it. Almost looks like you could go to the right of the truck.

SlimRider

Bicycle lanes should be to the right of parked cars, just left, but next to the sidewalk.

We should have our own 10 second turning indicator. Enough time to move to the left when turning left, without causing any confusion. This will also prevent getting cut off by motorists, turning right, as they will have to yield, whilst we turn right.

This way, there's less worries about injuries that could possibly result from parked car doors opening, or traffic.

PatrickGSR94

I don't know about signals, but there's only one place in my area I know of that has bike lines between parking and the sidewalk (move North button around 180 degrees to see both sides of the street better, street view doesn't show the bike lanes yet): https://goo.gl/maps/5jKvZ Pretty good design IMHO... now just gotta watch for people walking from between the cars up to the sidewalk.

jsdavis

San Francisco has some type of setup where the bike lane is next to the sidewalk, but the bike lane tends to be used as staging area for cargo and a place to smoke and joke. There are some sections where the road isn't wide enough so parking is removed and people end up parking dozens of cars in the bike lane even if 300 ft away is, I kid you not, a mile of unused parking.

When there are special events, like marathon or something, and shipping containers are brought in for supplies a week ahead of time...you guessed those containers will be placed in the bike lane and since they're 8 ft wide and the bike lane is 6 ft wide with a 3 ft buffer, it sucks big time because it's necessary to stop then figure out how to move into the automotive lane; nope parking is not removed to ease movement of bicycles.

For some reason pedestrians don't seem think of the bike lane as active roadway. In some sections that are downhill, I can get up to 25 MPH fairly easily. I've had a lot of people arbitrarily step into the bike lane from the sidewalk on that particular stretch of road the times I've used it.

https://www.sfmta.com/cms/bproj/JFKCycleTrack.htm