ChipSeal

What happens when a wide outside lane has a bike lane painted on it? How do conditions change for cyclists? Are they better off or not? Here are some before and after videos that explore this question.

degnaw

this hardly seems fair;

1. someone in the right tire track will obviously get more room than someone at the edge. An 'assertive cyclist' (like you, i assume) will likely ride in the right tire track regardless, and will probably see no difference.

2. maybe it's just me, but the bike lane clip seems to be sped up. Either that, or the cyclist needs to learn to shift and the cars sped up a lot.

The Human Car

Do you have measurements of the lanes? It looks to me as if the bike lanes is 4' wide excluding gutter pan. AASHTO calls for at least 5' bike lanes on closed sections like this (excluding gutter pan,) so skimping on AASHTO is naturally going to feel cramp. And if we could get engineers to go with the recommended 6' bike lanes ,things wouldn't have to be this bad.

Also note for being VC they are riding much closer to the curb with bike lanes then without. Is the a case against bike lanes or Vehicular Cyclists who are intimidated by paint? I mean if they are "accustomed to riding assertively" then keep it up when you need to and take the lane.

We really have a safety issue when the VC's start riding in bike lanes, maybe we should offer a course for them to take and tell them to ride as if there is no stripe. Naw, that would never work.

ChipSeal

From the first comment on that article:

"Mills Ave is a real tragedy. 15 ft of space in which a bicyclist could choose lateral position with impunity based on personal preference has now been partitioned into what looks like 3 ft (less than a sidewalk) “for” bicyclists and 12 feet for motorists."

The point of the before and after demonstration is that cyclists are afforded more clearance by overtaking traffic when there is no bike lane. Since the addition of a bike lane on that street has negative consequences for cyclists, why do bicycle "advocates" demand them?

"If you want to chase people away from cycling, bike lanes on a busy road are a great way to do it. Nothing will reinforce a person’s fear of traffic faster than luring them into a compromised position like this. Heck, it scared the crap out of me and I’ve ridden safely and comfortably on this road!"

The Human Car

First and foremost 3' ain't no bike line, it's a gutter area.

What is show is what happens when DOT give motorists AASHTO+2' and cyclists AASHTO-2', ya it stinks for a bike lane and could very well be a lawsuit waiting to happen. But you are not supposed to ride in the gutter.

genec

"No bike lanes" on a 55MPH multi-laned road will also keep people away.

The only folks that will ride like those shown in your videos are CYCLISTS... not "people."

Sure, I ride like your videos and you ride like your videos, and Bek rides that away and noisebeam rides that way... but we represent a tiny minority of a tiny group... "cyclists" of the larger group "people who ride bikes for transportation."

I didn't notice one bike riding student (by far the largest group of people who ride bikes for transportation) in any of the presented videos.

Find a better solution for "people who ride bikes for transportation" and you'll have a real winner. BTW most of the the people riding bikes in places like Copenhagen and Finland and Amsterdam are simply "people who ride bikes for transportation," I bet very few of them consider themselves "cyclists."

gcottay

I was unable to find the bike lane.

ChipSeal

Because of line-of-sight problems with junctions and intersections, the riders were riding as far to the left as the bike lane allowed, thus obscuring from the camera the bike lane stripe.

Bekologist

No doubt.

Vehikular cyklists like chipseal for some reason want keep rider share low in america. They suffer from pipedreams about riders en masse controlling the lane on high speed roads, versus planning transportation infrastructure to facilitate biking's speed differential with motorized vehicle traffic.

That bike lane in that video should be wider. I didn't really see any problems except the substandard width of that bikelane. those videos were vehikular cyklist propaganda about 'controlling the lane' and trying to damnify bike infrastructure.

blech.

I ride assertively and vehicularily, and have found in several states many miles of wide, accomodating bikelanes along high speed arterial roads that can be ridden in vehicularily by even the most ardent vehikular cyklist.

genec

The problem with that vision (in bold above) is that as long as the ordinary citizen has to graduate to "cyclist" to use the road, there will never be an "en masse" situation.

While I have no problem using the road in that manner, and certainly there are plenty of roads that require riding in a strict vehicular manner, and taking the lane... the public that might ride a bike will never chose to do so as long as the roads appear to belong to motorists.

On top of all this, there is no history to show that vehicular cycling will increase the numbers of cyclists anywhere... all increases in the number of people riding bikes for transportation, have been the result of both accommodations for bicycle riders, and some form of restriction on the unlimited use of the auto (be it fuel or other wise).

Anyone that thinks that people (other than dedicated "cyclists") will voluntarily take to the streets (especially high speed roadways) and ride "en masse" in the manner shown is deluding themselves.

Yet the opposite is true... given accommodations for cycling, and minor restrictions on the unlimited use of the auto (fuel, parking, etc) people will take to the bicycle for transportation... and surprisingly, may not even consider themselves "cyclists."

High Roller

To answer the original question, my experience when bike lanes have been painted on roads that already had a wide shoulder:

- More debris on formerly clean shoulders, so I tend to position myself farther into the lane than I did before the white paint was applied. I find this somewhat ironic.

- More harassment from motorists when I need to position myself outside the bike lane for safety reasons.

I position myself as if the white paint were not there, based on the presence of parked cars, sight-lines to cross-traffic, velocity and density of overtaking traffic, and my destination at intersections. Sometimes that puts me in the bike lane, sometimes not.

I personally have not observed an increase in ridership when bike lanes have been painted on roads that already had WOLs.

sggoodri

We have a lot of low-speed roads here in Cary, NC that have recently been converted from two 16' travel lanes into 11' defacto-you-better-be-in-a-car lanes flanked by 5' debris lanes.

Harassment by motorists is up when moving away from the curb, such as when preparing to turn left or to not get right hooked. Dog-walking in the roadway instead of on the sidewalk is up. Wrong way cycling is way up, for reasons I am not sure of. Total cycling volume appears unchanged; there have always been lots of cyclists on these roads because they were enjoyable for cycling before.