"Protected" bike lane on Church Street in Evanston

Sorry, I don't have a picture, but there is a new "protected" bike lane on Church Street in Evanston.  Some of it is fine, but there is one stretch near Maple where they retained the parallel parking, but moved it away from the curb.  So you have: curb, bike lane, narrow painted buffer, parallel parked cars, traffic, center line.

I see two huge problems with this.  One, we have a hard enough time with bikies getting doored while passing parked cars on the left.  Does anyone think passengers are going to be more thoughtful when exiting their cars on the right (where there is usually a curb)?  Not to mention that people exiting said cars will have to navigate through bike traffic to reach the curb.  Two, what the heck happens when the bikie reaches an intersection and a moving car wants to turn right?  What are the chances that said driver won't even know the bikie is there because parked cars obscure her?

Am I completely missing something?

Skip Montanaro

wondering what's wrong with Evanston's "traffic engineering" department, in Evanston

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Permalink Reply by Bill Savage on October 18, 2012 at 3:07am

Skip

That is how protected bike lanes are engineered in Chicago, and most of the rest of the world too.  Curb, bike lane, parked cars, moving cars.  Separates bikes from moving vehicles, but you are totally correct about passengers rather than drivers being the dooring risk.  The right turn area for vehicles is an interface not much different from what happens on normal streets, but cars veering to make a right turn might have less visibility to see cyclists in the bike lanes due to parked vehicles (especially large SUVs).  Two reasons I avoid these lanes.

Permalink Reply by John Wirtz on October 18, 2012 at 3:35am

I think the buffer is a little too narrow in the areas with parking.  It looks to be about two feet (I haven't measured), but should probably be at least three.  There are signs and markings at the intersections to alert drivers to the cyclists in the bike lane.  It might be nice to see some green paint too, but otherwise these look okay to me. 

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on October 18, 2012 at 4:02am

In the case of Evanston, I fail to see how the small amount of lost revenue caused by removing parallel parking would be worse than the potential for an increase in the number of accidents caused by this reconfiguration.  When I get a chance I'll try to navigate through that stretch of Church Street and see what things look like.  Yesterday, I was just a passenger in a car.

Thanks for the responses.

S

Permalink Reply by Tricolor on October 18, 2012 at 4:05am

These lanes are a bit narrow for any bike to share with a car door let alone someone getting in or out of the car.  But then Evanston's traffic engineering department's been a terrible mess for years, narrowing Chicago Ave for for a crummy housing development that spilled over the old sidewalk, putting in these bike lanes and a series of misleading 'stop for pedestrians' signs along Sheridan Road, complete with little flags for people crossing to carry like it's 1893 again.

The bike lanes along Sheridan are not too bad, though.

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on October 18, 2012 at 5:47am

OK, I'm struggling to see the silver lining here, but with protected bike lanes (vs. door zone bike lanes to the left of parked cars), if you get doored by a passenger, you'll fall onto the sidewalk rather than under a moving bus, which is some consolation.  And with protected bike lanes, you won't get rear ended or sideswiped or pinned against parked cars like you might in a left-of-parking "standard" unprotected bike lane.  But yeah, intersections are a challenge if you don't want to get right hooked.  Well designed protected bike lanes end the parking zone early, yards before each intersection, so bikes can merge left and right turning cars can merge right, and visibility for both can be improved.  But at this point, I'm not prepared to beat up any municipality that provides any bike infrastructure at all, no matter how flawed, considering how many places have zero bike accomodation.

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on October 18, 2012 at 5:54am

One other aspect of this particular bike lane that I find troubling is that since Church is one-way eastbound in this stretch, the parked cars prevent cyclists from merging to the left to set up for left-hand turns.

Permalink Reply by Thunder Snow on October 18, 2012 at 6:00am

Yep, quite right.  Either get out of the bike lane and merge to the left travel lane at the previous intersection, or do a "box turn": ride straight across the intersection, stop, turn 90 degrees left and go straight in the bike lane of the cross street.

Skip Montanaro said:

One other aspect of this particular bike lane that I find troubling is that since Church is one-way eastbound in this stretch, the parked cars prevent cyclists from merging to the left to set up for left-hand turns.

Permalink Reply by John Wirtz on October 18, 2012 at 3:27pm

The sharrows on Sheridan are placed incorrectly.  They are in the door zone.


Tricolor said:

These lanes are a bit narrow for any bike to share with a car door let alone someone getting in or out of the car.  But then Evanston's traffic engineering department's been a terrible mess for years, narrowing Chicago Ave for for a crummy housing development that spilled over the old sidewalk, putting in these bike lanes and a series of misleading 'stop for pedestrians' signs along Sheridan Road, complete with little flags for people crossing to carry like it's 1893 again.

The bike lanes along Sheridan are not too bad, though.

Permalink Reply by John Wirtz on October 18, 2012 at 3:28pm

Do you remember the debate over removing two parking spaces on Benson in front of the EAC for bike parking corrals?

Skip Montanaro said:

In the case of Evanston, I fail to see how the small amount of lost revenue caused by removing parallel parking would be worse than the potential for an increase in the number of accidents caused by this reconfiguration.  When I get a chance I'll try to navigate through that stretch of Church Street and see what things look like.  Yesterday, I was just a passenger in a car.

Thanks for the responses.

S

Permalink Reply by Bob on October 19, 2012 at 1:56am

They're doing the same thing in the city, with poles to separate.  Have they thought about how they're going to plow the snow?

Personally, I think that separated bike lanes are a bad idea, and simply create a two-tiered road system that reinforces the notion that bikes aren't equal partners on the roads.  I'd rather have painted lanes on all streets and equal awareness...

Permalink Reply by Lee Crandell on October 19, 2012 at 2:58am

I haven't see this particular protected bike lane yet, and those are valid concerns. Every design approach is going to have some kind of weakness or drawback -- there is no solution that is perfect for everyone. But the fact is that when other cities have implemented protected bike lanes, they have seen a significant reduction in traffic injuries on the street, which I think is an appropriate goal. I expect we'll see the same in Chicago when crash data starts to come in for the new protected bike lanes. That said, there is still room for improvement with protected bike lane design, especially considering how new it is to the Chicago region, but I think we're headed in the right direction.

Regarding passenger-side dooring, consider that every car has a driver, but not every car has another passenger (only about half do). So risk of dooring is much lower, and as Thunder Snow pointed out, you won't be knocked into traffic if you're doored in a protected bike lane.

Permalink Reply by Julie Aberman (Hochstadter) on October 19, 2012 at 3:38am

good point Lee.

Lee Crandell said:

Regarding passenger-side dooring, consider that every car has a driver, but not every car has another passenger (only about half do). So risk of dooring is much lower, and as Thunder Snow pointed out, you won't be knocked into traffic if you're doored in a protected bike lane.

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