Nick,
Those are great! They make a good point and the humor seems weirdly appropriate.
I was in Pittsburgh all this week and had an opportunity to walk down Liberty Avenue from Bloomfield. That's the stretch upon which the City put the bike lanes. Further up the hill through Bloomfield and Friendship Hill is where they put the bike-and-chevron markings without striping them in.
Here's the layout for the bike lanes:
Total roadway width: 36 feet Right hand bike lane stripe distance from curb: 6 feet Left hand bike lane strip distance from curb: 10 feet. Bike lane width: 4 feet. (Note: 10 + 4 = 14 = wide lane!) Remaining motor lane width: 8 feet.
That stretch of Liberty Avenue is a straight hill all the way down to Penn Avenue. Achieving speeds of 35 mph just coasting down on your bike is easy. There is a bike lane on both sides of the road. Cars park on both sides of the road. The bike lanes are right in the door zones! That's almost tolerable on the up hill where cyclists can't go fast. However, when I saw the bike lane on the downhill side, I cringed. While I was walking down the hill, I saw 3 cyclists come up the bike lane. One, following a bus, got hemmed in behind it and cars on his left at every bus stop. I watched him speed up and then have to wait at every intersection until the bus let out and took on passengers and then moved on. Without the bike lane, the cyclist could have been in the roadway and proceeded on his merry way.
As I walked along, I didn't see a cyclist coming down the hill and I was relieved. Then, as I was about to cross the street at a corner, it happened. A college age kid on a mountain bike with a book bag on his back came cruising down the hill in the bike lane. I'd guess he was going about 25 mph. A big car came from a side street (37th) to the intersection, slowed down, looked both ways, and pulled out right in the path of the cyclist. I could see that he didn't see the cyclist coming from his left because the cyclist was in the bike lane and obscured by parked cars. If he had been out in the lane, he might have been seen. My heart was in my throat. Fortunately, the kid's reflexes were good. He locked up the rear brake and slid a good 20 feet and would have hit the car if the car hadn't cleared the bike lane by the time the cyclist slid into the intersection. I was impressed that he didn't go down. In my opinion, the bike lane caused that catastrophe and had the cyclist hit the car, the City of Pgh was liable.
BTW, who's seen the new bike lane in front of the Augusta? I'm wondering how that got there when we've been waiting since February to see a bike-and-chevron appear on any Morgantown street.
Frank
director wrote:
Good evening, I came across these links on one of the HPV forums where I lurk. They are probably funny to a NYC sense of humor, but I also think they drive home the perils of bike lanes. My own preference is that we campaign for 14ft wide curb lanes, these can be paid for with regular road funds and would probably garner support from all road-users.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/poster2.pdf
http://www.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/poster1.pdf
Nick Hein
Bikeboard mailing list Bikeboard@cheat.org http://cheat.org/mailman/listinfo/bikeboard