randya

no, I don't think so, since he clearly states a preference for 'proper' bike lanes

Bekologist

i think you confuse the 'vehikularists' with the A team bicyclists here, randy.

A team are riders that are advanced, not anti- bike facilities. Most bicyclists i talk - and I talk to hundreds of bicyclists every week that are daily or experienced traffic cyclists - are realists about this bike infrastructure stuff after all. They understand the value of a well placed and spaced bikelane and the progressive bikelane treatments we are getting around town.

randya

OK, just so we are clear, are we talking about the same Crosscut article? If so I'm not sure why they would prefer bike lanes over sharrows, although I gather that they might have a legit complaint about inconsistencies regarding the sharrows already in place, yes?

Bekologist

there's a lot of legitimate concerns about sharrows. bicyclists in seattle recognize the value of the well provided bikelanes by and large.

i think, bluntly, that he is demanding more official road space for bikes over the sharrows treatments popping up on rather busy corridors too far right, etc...

as i have explained in the thread to those unfamiliar with sharrows on busy roads where speed differentials and ADTs remain high is continued provincial motorist behaviors and ambiguities.

there is statistical analysis of roads that show wether a desired treatment is a shared lane or a bikelane. BCI indexing and BLOS analysis of a roadway.

placing a sharrow squat dab in the middle of a neighborhood street with parking along side is a quite different placement than a sharrow in far right of the outside 4 feet of an 11 foot wide, 40,000 ADT 35MPH+ roadway.

his opinion is that sharrows are not the answer where there is width enough for a road diet or slimming traffic lanes to add bikelanes- currently in the AASHTO design guidelines as a way to rework road space for bicycle traffic. Indeed, when traffic speeds and volumes get high enough, even vehikularists recognize the value of a separate striped preffered class lane. the FHWA has outlined this quite extensively in their well founded bikeways design guidelines.

i think he IS confused about sharrows. they ARE a good treatment for roads identified as bikeway networks that are too narrow to put in a bikelane or wherebike speeds approach motorists. I suspect any bonifide daily transportational bicyclist -even that essayist- here in seattle understands the value of the climbing bikelane on stone way and the sharrow treatment downhill.

Steve and johns bluffery about bikes and cars deftly and pleasantly sharing marginally wide lanes of high ADT, 35 + mph traffic is an affront to american bicyclists, traffic safety, and human nature.

to everyone, who is "the design bicyclist?"

why does the federal highway administration recognize that building and growing bicyclist rider share while enhancing safety is THE policy directive for pedestrian and bicyclist transportation planning?

the goals and techniques to achieve them will be further codified and standardized by the FHWA in the next few years as health and environmental benefits of influencing transportation patterns are taken into consideration in federal transportation policy.

John Forester

This is clearly not the case, because the FHWA's program is not directed at preventing the crashes that occur to cyclists, be they car-bike collision or otherwise, in a way that would be appropriate if the goal of the program were to reduce crashes. Study the types of crashes, prioritized in a reasonable way, work out how and why they occurred, and then work out methods of preventing a large proportion of those within the type. That's the way that safety programs are operated; the FHWA has done nothing of this, also its sister organization, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration developed and published the car-bike collision data thirty years ago.

Bekologist

THAT'S a hoot.

danarnold

Apparently that passes for an argument in the world of Glenn Bek.

randya

now you're just trolling. happy with yourself?

:Rolleyes:

sggoodri

I have always said that some cyclists will find high ADT arterials less pleasant than lower traffic/speed roads, and 14' arterial lanes less pleasant than 16' lanes or 16'+ bike lane/travel lane arterial combinations. I sometimes belong to this category myself. Please don't misrepresent my statements. I have consistently supported providing greater destination accessibility via pleasant low ADT/speed roads, and wider usable pavement (in relation to resulting passing distances without lane changes) for more pleasant cycling conditions on arterials.

You and I differ on where and how the wide lanes on such roads should be split into bicycle-specific lanes and narrow travel lanes. My opinion is that bike lanes should not be used on lower speed roads with numerous locations where riding near the right edge is unadvisable, or on very low ADT neighborhood streets, but they may provide operational benefits between junctions on high speed high-volume arterials with few access points or to the left of RTO lanes if they are swept frequently enough.

As for safety, we don't have enough overtaking collision data on WOL or edgeline striped roadways to say anything conclusive about safety benefits of striping. We certainly don't have enough data in Cary because of the lack of overtaking crashes in either facility. This is a good thing. We have lots of junction collisions, however, including devastating right hooks, and that makes it important to first do no harm at those junctions by indicating less effective positioning for cyclists than best defensive bicycle driving practices indicate.

Bekologist

i see.

we are in agreement about a few things, steve.

communities should plan for bikes using the roads, and bikelanes should not be used on very low ADT, low speed neighborhood streets. HOWEVER, when traffic speeds increase, ADT goes up, alternate treatments other than a shared lane is indicated.

you agree with the FHWA and my position about shared lane space when you make admissions by omission like below.

conversely, you support bikelanes when traffic speeds are higher, traffic ADT is higher, or when bikelanes DON'T interfere with vehicular bike operation for A teamers while improving a cooridor for street bike use by B&C design bicyclists.

I see.

bikelanes on those collectors like chatham parkway don't meet his rejection criteria so they are apparantly okay by steve. (he just has a hard time riding there something about difficulties ) Since they serve as on street routes without acceptable alternates, traffic planners had even more reason for a bike lane stripe on those types of collector avenues.


remember, steve, it is NOT JUST 'overtaking collisions' bikelanes mitigate..... bikelanes help to mitigate sidewalk cycling, improve a cooridor for bike use for 95 percent of the bicyclists, and have been shown to reduce wrong way bicycling and reduce intersection conflicts even when striped solid up to the intersections and bikelanes emphasize bike traffic in a more visible road position on roads with parking.

so what are the design limitiations of sharrows?

Low ADT, low speed roads. and what else?

sggoodri

I could; the devil is in the details.

I don't know of a "Chatham Parkway" (perhaps it is an error on a map) but West Chatham Street is pretty low volume, low speed in my experience. It's posted 35 mph, which is faster than most of the other collectors, but I don't encounter much speeding on it. There are few driveways and intersections on this stretch, and no traffic signals in the bike laned area.

If you look carefully at the aerial views of West Chatham Street, you may notice that in addition to a bike lane, there is a yellow-striped shoulder ont the other side along the median. The total amount of pavement was always more than enough to ensure abundant passing distance without the stripes.

On a few steep downhills, I ride in the middle of the travel lane to obtain a safer margin from the right side. There are also some trees whose limbs tend to sag down to head-height over the bike lane in spots. Cary has been very responsive to cutting these limbs when I have called to ask them to. There is more debris in the bike lane now than in the same area before the striping was added. I often ride on the stripe to stay out of the debris. The inside shoulder provides enough room for drivers to still pass me at safe distance.

The bike lane stripes on West Chatham Street create minor inconveniences but no serious problems. I don't perceive any operational benefit from the stripes. There may be a marketing benefit. Therefore I neither endorse them nor oppose them. I do prefer this current cross section over an alternative cross section that was proposed in the past, i.e. making the road 4 narrow lanes.

Sharrows 5' from the gutter would be an alternative configuration acceptable to me, if marketing correct-direction roadway cycling was a goal. There was no harassment on the "naked" roadway prior to bike lane striping, so the sharrows won't provide any improvement in motorist behavior compared to a naked roadway. This two-lane road is inherently pleasant for cycling regardless of markings.

invisiblehand

Only if you cherry pick your studies.

Bekologist

regardless of cherry picking from a modicum of studies,

the FHWA has some guidelines on this 'shared lane versus bike lane' planning you might want to look into

danarnold

Yes, if you can't trust your Federal government, who can you trust?

Why is it I constantly hear workmen say, '... good enough for government work?'

Bekologist

???

wide curb lanes versus bicycle lanes: an overview

research right out of the University of North Carolina
Highway Safety Research Center, in steve's neck of the woods. i suspect he's familiar.

"...Wrong-way riding and sidewalk riding were much more prevalent at WCL sites compared with BL sites... "

there's also the BCI and BLOS rating and evaluation system that allows statistical analysis that helps indicate either bikelane or shared travel lane depending on various characteristics of the roadway & traffic paterns...

this has already been brought up in this thread but someone's not doing the background reading....

danarnold

Here's a quote from the overview:

"Significantly more motor vehicles passing bicycles on the left encroached into the adjacent traffic lane from WCL situations compared with BL situations."

This is consistent with the Harkey study. On roads without bike lanes, cars give cyclists more distance by moving farther to their left and thus encroaching on the inside lane.

"Proportionally more bicyclists obeyed stop signs at BL sites; however, when a stop sign was disobeyed, the proportion of bicyclists with both "somewhat unsafe" and "definitely unsafe" movements was higher at BL sites."

You consider this an advantage of bike lanes? Seems like the opposite to me, but then, I forget this is your religion and not open to reason.

Bekologist

** hum, you can dissect the minutae all you want, there's an abundance of well vetted federal guidelines for this type of stuff, danarnold.

look for improvements and bikelanes coming soon to your neighborhood

Bekologist

another hybrid roadscape encompassing 4 variants, two types of bikelane striping and two different sharrow configurations.

hybrid roadscape- climbing bikelane into sharrows

perhaps, coming soon to a neighborhood near danarnold, so he'll get a chance to actually ride some

The Human Car

We now have proof that bike lanes make you ride slower.

Only kidding, two comments; I hate post intersection bike lane dashing. The location where the driver used the bike lane as a accelerator lane we put in a cross hatched area in the parking area: https://maps.google.com/?ie=UTF8&hq=&...94.52,,0,30.64 crummy photo but you get the idea.

Bekologist

steep hill, slow rider

post intersection dashing is generally counterproductive except when a bicyclist is carrying considerable speed thru an intersection downhills, but moving the stripe restart back from the intersection a bit also works for this.

Seattle uses dashing at bus stops but it doesn't do the bicyclists any good whatsover (doesn't let bikes pass buses safely, its design is to prefer a bus to cross the stripe to get to a bus stop) seems it would be easier to just educate the bus drivers how to negotiate in the midst of bikes!

cross hatching to provide a virtual chicane works to some degree but motorists can get conditioned to them, esp residential traffic using an intersection daily. physical chicanes work better than hatching but complicate the roadway so should only be used in intersections in need of a dedicated fix. sometimes, a pedestrian geared narrowing at intersections to provide safer crossing can also provide traffic calming.

Some of the chicaned intersections i see nowadays, wow! transportation planners on acid! refugee islands are one thing, these beasts are quite another.

The Human Car

+1000 Now how to get that to the NCUTCD-BTC

elihu23

The advantage of "sharrows" is that they can be applied everywhere! Bike lanes are expensive and mess up traffic. It's elementary really. The only problem has been the recreational cyclist mentality and a general agreement in America that bikes are recreational, not utilitarian.

Bekologist

thats the only problem? a recreational cyclist mentality? bike lanes mess up traffic for who? NAmamachari cyclists along 50mph arterials with their kids in a trailer?

elihu23

I'm not sure I understand all your questions, but for starters America has a car culture--I don't think anyone disputes that. The AAA is a very powerful lobby and organization, as is the auto and oil industry. So far so good, right? This will never be Copenhagen and it doesn't have to be for cycling to make its mark. The meat of cycling's expansion lies in commuting, but everyone has to commute so the roads have to be shared. It is unrealistic to expect major bike infrastructure everywhere, not only because of traffic, but because of expense. Biking with children in rush hour traffic is dangerous. Bike lanes are all about separating bikes from cars--there's a definite limit to this. Separate lanes for bikes are associated with safe, family, recreational biking, not commuting. Cyclists would do well to acknowledge that the problem is not principally, motorists or automobiles, but the internal combustion engine, which can be changed. This is a big country and most Americans do not live as locally as Europeans do. We have to get used to traffic and cars have to get used to us, and no, I do not think we should follow all the rules of traffic, but we need to show consideration to get some.

elihu23

[QUOTE=Bekologist;9826888]

Seattle uses dashing at bus stops but it doesn't do the bicyclists any good whatsover (doesn't let bikes pass buses safely, its design is to prefer a bus to cross the stripe to get to a bus stop) seems it would be easier to just educate the bus drivers how to negotiate in the midst of bikes!
QUOTE]

Buses are the absolute worst and most dangerous vehicles on the road! I get no mercy from them on the road! It's very disturbing.