Separated Cycle Paths: Who Asks the Cyclists?

Jan Heine's latest blog post:

Separated Cycle Paths: Who Asks the Cyclists?

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Permalink Reply by Kevin C Dormant on August 16, 2013 at 9:25am

Hear-hear!

Cogent.

Well-reasoned.

Insightful.

Thanks.

Davis Moore said:

Because lord knows, turning everything into a zero sum game and dropping large groups of people into boxes always helps things.

Vehicular Cycling, Separated Facilities: they both have merits and flaws, they both have glassy eyed zealots in their camps and at the end of the day they're both promoted by people who are trying to get more people to bike safely.

[snip]

Oh, but right, that's no fun on the internet and doesn't draw web traffic to your blog...

Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein on August 16, 2013 at 9:47am

Regarding the intersection argument, perhaps this is the answer?

Permalink Reply by Davo on August 16, 2013 at 10:45am

That looks promising but I can already hear people complaining how their left hand turns take too long or not liking the swerve for going straight. I think that would work though.


Adam Herstein (5.5 mi) said:

Regarding the intersection argument, perhaps this is the answer?

Permalink Reply by Eli on August 16, 2013 at 10:59am

I don't understand how the left turn works. Is there a separate light for bikes turning left than for through traffic? If not, it seems much more difficult than using a turning lane; you have to cross both directions of through traffic rather than just one. Or do you do a "box turn" and wait at the far corner for the light to change every time you want to turn left?

Permalink Reply by John C. Wilson on August 16, 2013 at 6:11pm

Hello Davis Moore

I will skip the big blockquote of your text.

I have been a vehicular cyclist, no caps, for over 50 years. You have no idea. You have safety in numbers right now. You do not remember the days when you walked into an LBS as an adult to purchase bike parts for yourself, not your kids, and the shopowner just could not understand your existence. And wasn't sure he was willing to take your money. At best you were a neighborhood nutjob he could do without but more likely you were a homosexual he didn't want in the store at all. That was the welcome you got at the bike shop. Out in the street it was worse.

You do not remember the days when every car/bike incident was held to be entirely the fault of the bike. For being in the way of the car. Wouldn't matter if the driver fell over dead drunk while the officer was writing a citation for a bleeding cyclist. It was the bike's fault. End of story. No appeal. No recourse. What the hell were you doing on a bike anyway if you were old enough to have a drivers license?

Obviously I could go on in this vein for quite a while. And I will say that Chicago was always better than most as a place to ride. Within the city limits people were mostly just too busy to bother with bikes. They might casually try to run you off the road or toss the occasional beer bottle out the window in your general direction but it wasn't anything like the 'burbs or farm country. The only safe places for bikes in the US were  NYC and San Fran.

When I ride now I feel visible. I know that most of the cars see me. It's a good feeling and it's a new feeling. It is safety in numbers. You just do not know what it was like when the majority of drivers could not see cyclists because it was completely outside their mental horizon to imagine  they might be sharing the road with a bicycle. Most people do not brake for hallucinations and we as cyclists were hallucinations.

Maybe the new riders you are thinking of (the new riders I am thinking of just keep coming and don't care what you or I think) would feel safer if we just quit harping on how damn dangerous biking is. It is not. Educate people to believe cycling is safe. It is. I've been doing this since before you were born and have done more miles than you would believe. The only injury I ever sustained that is remotely worth mentioning happened on a one-way bicycle path. I met a salmoning Post Office truck. It was not legal or reasonable or plausible that truck should have been there but it was there. And I still kick myself because I could've avoided that one too if I'd been less surprised. I rode the bike home from the ER. I've sustained worse injuries while walking.

Come to Church Street in Evanston and see our lovely new protected cycle lanes. The only place in downtown Evanston you will see a total absence of bicycles is in those lanes. Will the advocates ever admit that one is a big mistake? Will the advocates ever understand they are not useful? I doubt it. They've got another meeting to go to where they will plow straight ahead with more of the same.

I ride on bike paths. I was on the Green Bay Trail today. If you have a real plan for a real path that does not rely on wishing fantasy right-of-way into existence I would support it. If you are dreaming you are in Holland I'll just keep riding my bike. I'm sure you like to ride your bike too. Enjoy your ride. Seriously. Being out there enjoying yourself is leading by example. I want you out there creating safety in numbers. Enjoy your ride.

Permalink Reply by Tom Dworzanski on August 16, 2013 at 9:33pm
Superb design. This should be the norm.


Adam Herstein (5.5 mi) said:

Regarding the intersection argument, perhaps this is the answer?

Permalink Reply by Hannah Bass on August 17, 2013 at 1:30am

As a winter cyclist, I wonder how many of these protected bike lanes will be plowed when the snow comes, or if they will be completely neglected, and bikes will not be able to get where they're going during that entire season...

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on August 17, 2013 at 2:02am

Read some of the early posts in the thread about the Dearborn PBL.  The city apparently has the specialized equipment they need (small bobcat-based plows, etc), but during the period soon after the PBL was opened building maintenance crews clearly sidewalks often shoveled/plowed snow back into the lane after the city plows had already been through the area. Hopefully, this coming winter the situation will be better.

Permalink Reply by Steve Cohen on August 17, 2013 at 2:58am

Thanks, John C. Wilson, for an informative post.  Until this thread started I had never heard the term "vehicular cyclist", but I realize that that is what I've become over the years.  When I was younger I would go to the most ridiculous extremes to get on a "bike path" making "bike paths" out of sidewalks, going miles out of my way to ride on a short stretch of "bike path", anything, to get off those terrifying streets.  

Somewhere along the line I started commuting, and without even thinking about it, lost my fear of riding with cars, and generally will not take a bike path unless there is real advantage to doing so.  LFT in the early morning - sure.  LFT in the afternoon - maybe, maybe not.  Used to be, a bike rack was the first accessory I bought for a new car, and I used it constantly, just to get to bike paths.  Now, I maybe use a bike rack once a year, transporting a bike to a vacation spot.  I don't need to ride to bike paths, I can ride anywhere.

One caveat:  if riding in traffic you really should have a good rear-view mirror.  You do need to pay close attention to your surroundings.  It becomes second nature.

I also agree with you about the Church St. lane.  I don't get the point.  I rarely need to ride that way, but I'm hard pressed to say that Church works any better than Davis.

Permalink Reply by Adam Herstein on August 17, 2013 at 6:34am

peter moormann said:

Interesting model.

I like the idea of the "wide" left hand bike turn.

But it would eliminate right turns on red for cars.

Don't think that would fly with the general public.

But It would work great for intersections that dont allow right on red already..

Right on red should be banned anyway. NYC does not allow any right on red, so it's not like there isn't another American city that has them banned.

Davo said:

That looks promising but I can already hear people complaining how their left hand turns take too long or not liking the swerve for going straight. I think that would work though.

Separate lights with proper timing for walkers, bikers, and drivers make the left turn for bikes fairly quick. Besides, isn't a slightly longer wait worth the huge increase in safety?

Eli said:

I don't understand how the left turn works. Is there a separate light for bikes turning left than for through traffic? If not, it seems much more difficult than using a turning lane; you have to cross both directions of through traffic rather than just one. Or do you do a "box turn" and wait at the far corner for the light to change every time you want to turn left?

There is no separate left turn light for bikes. Only red/green. Essentially you just go though once there is a green and get stopped midway though the turn at the cross street's red. Generally, the lights are timed in a way to minimize waiting. So yes, it's basically a box-left, but with added protection (i.e. you're not waiting in front of a line of cars).

Permalink Reply by SlowCoachOnTheRoad on August 17, 2013 at 2:04pm

I do see the intersection danger problem if a separate lane must cross the road.  Thunder Snow says this is not much of an issue if a no right turn on red rule is in force for cars, which I do agree with, but not completely as cars would still be turning right on green just as your arrive and want to go straight.  I do like that feeling on Dearborn too of having my own space and not having to deal with cars at all (a nice mental break from the prior period getting there), BUT the other problem is that the city is not going to build them everywhere, which means cars who don't have to deal with bikes on some streets will be less prepared on those streets that bikes do appear on, or else it will be positively confusing for them to see no bikes for a few blocks and just put us out of their minds, and then suddenly see bikes up ahead when the separated lanes ended, rather than just expecting them at all times - surely that would be less safe for us, as mindfulness is the key to safety.  My mother lives in a small town in England (Kingston) where along many major roads for cars the bike lane is just painted on a wide sidewalk (sometimes many miles long), which is great.  But on the smaller residential roads the bikes and cars share but of course cars are going slowly on those.  When I bike in England during my visits to my mum, I am aware of how great and safe that feels, as it greatly reduces the dangers we must be constantly on the watch out for when on the big roads (in Chicago, imagine stretches of Halsted, Ashland, Western, North, etc having sidewalk painted near the edge of the sidewalk, with maybe room for trees or a grassy knoll between you and the road - obviously that wouldn't work as well on State, Clark or Michigan with all those people to watch out for).  I think that mindfulness at the end of a block if we were separated would be less of a burden than mindfulness at all times on the road with hundreds of cars whizzing around - just that many less bullets in the Russian Roulette!

Permalink Reply by Skip Montanaro 0mi on August 19, 2013 at 6:14am

I'm not sure where to post this.  I couldn't find any other obviously pertinent threads (all forum search tools suck, using Google doesn't allow you to organize by date), and since I have held up LFT as an "idealized" protected bike lane (perfectly separated from cars except at intersections), I figured I'd add this note here.

I rode in on LFT this morning for the first time in a few weeks.  I noticed two changes, maybe because they were new, but maybe just because I was looking for changes.  One, on the north side, most of the intersections where the path crosses an east/west street, now have these "state law" signs bolted into the street where drivers will presumably see them. Two, some of these intersections have typical yield signs for the bikes.  These might have been there before, but it's not something I remember seeing before.  One thing I did notice about them is that they seemed to be placed facing either the northbound bikes or the southbound bikes, but not both.  Not sure why that would be.

Can someone here who rides LFT more frequently than I do comment on these changes?  Are they really changes or was I just noticing them for the first time?

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