A Masterclass in Urban Cycling Safety - CityLab. We spoke with a riding instructor for advice on how to navigate the city streets with confidence. Biking in the city can make you feel like being a kid again: It lets you explore, hang out with your friends, and turn workaday chores like commuting into adventures. But urban cycling can also be terrifying. But fear not, for every street-winding speed-demon started from the same curb and lived to tell the tale. To explain how to survive the city streets, we called up Doug Smith, an Everyday Bicycling Coordinator with the Washington Area Bicyclist Association who teaches an adult city biking workshop, to give us a few pointers in the art and practice of safety-minded cycling.
Think like a car The rules of the road were not written for cars alone: they protect cyclists, too. “You’re basically driving your bicycle,” Doug tells me. Cyclists must remember to have the awareness of someone steering an automobile. 1. Be prepared. So no bell-ringing endorsement of the Idaho stop—that’s a drag. 2. 3. How Protected Bike Lanes Save Lives. A new study shows how cities with separated cycling infrastructure saw big safety improvements and higher ridership numbers. Several weeks ago, painted lines and flexible plastic lane dividers began materializing on Maryland Avenue, one of the major north-south arteries that connect downtown Baltimore to the residential neighborhoods above the city. The resulting 2.6-mile route is called a cycle track, one of the city’s first examples of fully protected bike infrastructure.
This new two-lane bike highway eliminated a lane of automobile traffic and 15 parking spaces, to the disgruntlement of many motorists who used the rowhouse-lined thoroughfare as a means of bolting downtown. But it’s a been something of a godsend to bikers, especially those (like me) weary of juking through traffic on a narrow, bus-intensive city streets. The transformative virtues of protected bike lanes have been the focus of much research lately. Want a Bike-Friendly City? Get Ready to Fail Until It Works.
So you want to build some bicycle infrastructure for your city. Good for you. Cycling is good for the planet as well as your citizens’ poorly-nourished, ill-used bodies, and studies show more people are willing to ride if cities provide infrastructure to support them. Protected bike lanes not only make cyclists feel safer, but halve their risk of injury. More infrastructure means more comrades-in-wheels: The folks at Portland State University found that when five major US cities added protected bike lanes, ridership rose 20 to 170 percent. But maybe you’ve heard: Building any infrastructure, anywhere, is a pain in the neck.
Don’t despair just yet. If your city can afford some paint to outline bike lanes (less than a hundred bucks a bucket), plastic bollards to protect them (about $150 a pop), and planters (roughly $1,000 each) to separate them from traffic, you can join them. Cycling advocacy group PeopleForBikes lays out the trend in a recent report. Cyclists loved it. Fastcoexist. When Chicago brags about its recently added bikeways, one item on the list is sharrows: By late 2015, the city had nearly 50 miles of streets painted with a bike symbol and arrows pointing down the middle of the lane, in a space shared with cars. They also have protected and "buffered" lanes, regular bike lanes, neighborhood greenways, and off-road trails. But what do the sharrow-covered streets do? They don't necessarily keep cyclists safer or convince more people to ride bikes. Preliminary research from a PhD student at the University of Colorado found that although bike lanes encourage more ridership and reduce the number of crashes, a street with sharrows doesn't seem to do either.
"Sharrows have always been interesting to me," says researcher Nick Ferenchak, whose paper is under peer review now. It's possible that they might serve other purposes, he says. Despite no evidence they really help cyclists, sharrows are increasingly popular in cities across the U.S. 'Floating' Bus Stops Separate Transit Traffic From Bike Lanes. It’s one of the most disconcerting interactions on urban and suburban streets: the uncomfortable, out-of-sync dance between bicycles and buses traveling in the same direction. Often, the person riding a bike will have to leave the bike lane and go out into car traffic to pass a bus that has pulled into a stop—only to be quickly passed again by the bus driver, who then has to pull in for the next stop just as the cyclist is coming up from the rear again. These two vehicles, because of their average speeds, relative sizes, and stopping patterns, are uniquely unsuited to share the same space.
It’s scary for the person on the bicycle and the bus driver alike. The need to solve that problem is the impetus behind a piece of infrastructure known as a floating bus stop. In this design, the bus stops at a raised concrete island, while the bike lane veers to the opposite side of the island. The bike lane flows gently and seamlessly in and out of this protected area. Protected Intersections For Bicyclists. Pedestrian and Cycling Advocates Are Disappointed By Plans to Make a Car-Free Zone in Central Brussels. When Brussels announced plans to pedestrianize a big chunk of its downtown last year, many people were thrilled. Beset with congestion problems, Belgium's capital can sometimes be a grimy, gridlocked mess.
Supporters hoped that booting cars off the city's main boulevard axis could make the urban center a greener, cleaner, and more pleasant place to be. Fast-forward a year, however, and the plans have proven far more controversial than expected. The most vocal critics are not just car lobbyists and local businesses, but also pedestrian and cycling advocates. Brussels' answer is disappointing. It gets worse. What makes this plan yet more short-sighted is that it comes just as the Brussels Region (a different body from the city) is planning 10,000 new park-and-ride places at suburban transit terminuses as a way of encouraging locals not to drive into town. To be fair to the city, none of this is a done deal. Top image via CC License. Bike RulesCommunity Builders. Here’s a bike: And here’s a car: And here are some pedestrians: You seeing what I’m seeing here? They’re so…different. Its true: Bikes are not cars, and cars are not bikes.
And bikes and cars aren’t pedestrians and—you get the picture. And yet, when it comes to bikes and cars, in the eyes of the law the distinction is not so clear. So if bicyclists are so different from cars and pedestrians, why do the laws that apply to cars also apply to bikes? Because here’s the thing: biking is on the rise. As long as our roadways are built the way they are and as long as cyclists share the road with motorists, there need to be specific rules for interaction—that much is obvious. At the risk of becoming a pariah with my bike buddies, I’ve made a list of rules I think ought to be adopted. Here they are: Rule #1. Rule #2. Rule #3. Rule #4. Rule #5.
Rule #6. Rule #7. Rule #8. Rule #9. I admit that some of these may seem onerous to the hard core biking contingent out there. P.s. America’s 10 best new bike lanes of 2014. December 17, 2014 Michael Andersen, Green Lane Project staff writer Rosemead Boulevard in Temple City, California. Photo: Streetsblog L.A. What a difference a year makes. When we sat down to make the inaugural 2013 edition of this list, we had a few superstars up top: Chicago's transformative Dearborn Street, Indianapolis's spectacular Cultural Trail. But last year also had what sports fans might call a shallow bench. We're thrilled to observe, looking at our inventory of such projects around the country, that as of 2014 this is no longer the case.
This was the year that saw protected lanes pop up in Tempe, Arizona; in Athens, Georgia; in Pentagon City, Virginia. As we wrote in August, protected bike lanes have become as American as deep-dish pizza. After the last 12 months of traveling the country, quizzing the experts and tracking the news, here are our picks for the 10 best new bike lanes of 2014. 1) Polk Street, San Francisco Photo: Sergio Ruiz via Streetsblog SF. 2) 2nd Avenue, Seattle. When Adding Bike Lanes Actually Reduces Traffic Delays. A big reason for opposition to bike lanes is that, according to the rules of traffic engineering, they lead to car congestion. The metric determining this outcome (known as "level of service") is quite complicated, but its underlying logic is simple: less road space for automobiles means more delay at intersections. Progressive cities have pushed back against this conventional belief—California, in particular, has led the charge against level of service—but it remains an obstacle to bike lanes (and multi-modal streets more broadly) across the country.
But the general wisdom doesn't tell the whole story here. On the contrary, smart street design can eliminate many of the traffic problems anticipated by alternative mode elements like bike lanes. A new report on protected bike lanes released by the New York City Department of Transportation offers a great example of how rider safety can be increased even while car speed is maintained. After the changes, traffic continued to flow. The Curbee Invites Cyclists to Rest at Red Lights. Cyclists in Chicago just got a sweet new treat called Curbee, a streetside footrest and handrail that will make waiting for the red light much more enticing. Designed and installed by Steven Vance and Ryan Lakes, both active members of Chicago’s cycling community, the Curbee now lives at the corner of Milwaukee and Ogden Avenue. Though it's definitely inspired by biker footrests in Copenhagen, the Curbee is designed a little differently.
For example, where its Scandinavian counterpart features a circular steel tube, the Curbee uses a square tube in order to prevent vandalism via pipe cutters. And taking a note from Chicago bike racks—which Vance says have proven largely durable—the Curbee is mounted right on top of the sidewalk rather than buried within it. The finished product may look simple, but the actual process of getting the Curbee up and running was long and complicated. Initially conceived in March 2013, the rollout for this first Curbee took over a year.
$2.4 Million Settlement for Cyclist Sends Message in 'Dooring' Crash. "In a decision that local advocates say delivers a “strong message” to drivers, a Philadelphia jury awarded a cyclist $2.4 million in damages earlier this month for injuries she sustained in a 2011 collision," writes Streetsblog USA's Angie Schmitt. Randy LoBasso of Philly Now provides the details: "On February 23, then-24 year-old Temple student Ashley McKean was traveling southbound on Broad Street [which turns out to be one of "the top spots for crashes in the city according to Bike Coalition of Greater Philadelphia] — when a parked car’s door “flung open,” according to court documents. " The door hit McKean’s leg. Then, a van came up and crashed into her from behind, sending her seven-to-ten feet through the air, landing on the pavement.
She was subsequently run over by the van. Dan McQuade of Philly Mag describes the verdict. There is a message here to bicyclists that should not be overlooked: Transportation planners: Not all cyclists will follow the three foot clearance rule. Innovative Design Treatments. Safe Left Turns for Bicycles. EmailShare 80EmailShare Photo by James D. Schwartz / The Urban Country Left turns are one of the most dangerous manoeuvres to execute on a bicycle in North America. Of course, this doesn’t have to be the case. Many cities have engineered infrastructure to make left turns safe and comfortable for bicyclists.
But here in Toronto – and most other cities in North America – turning left legally is unsafe. Here’s why: In order to make a legal left turn on a two-way street in Toronto, you must first merge from your normal riding position on the right side of the road to the left-most lane. Next, you need to wait for oncoming traffic to clear before you can proceed with your turn. However, in many cases in downtown Toronto, you will not have the luxury of a turning lane – so you will inevitably be unnecessarily holding up already-frustrated motorists. A hook left turn could easily be accommodated with a tiny bit of infrastructure. Courtesy of City of Toronto bike box postcard James D. Portlandoregon. A New Bike Lane That Could Save Lives and Make Cycling More Popular | Autopia.
Nick Falbo designed a new type of bike lane that takes dangerous intersections into consideration. Nick Falbo His proposed plan has four main components: the corner refuge island, a forward stop bar, a setback bike crossing and better signal phasing. Falbo recently held a pop-up protected intersections in Minneapolis. The hope is that cities will implement the design at particularly busy intersections. <div class="slide" data-slide-id="1102281" ><img title="" alt="" width="650px" src=" data-image-width="1200" data-image-height="900" /><p class="caption">Nick Falbo designed a new type of bike lane that takes dangerous intersections into consideration.
<span class="credit"> Image: Nick Falbo </span></p><div class="desc"><div class="slide-counter"></div><div>Nick Falbo designed a new type of bike lane that takes dangerous intersections into consideration. Corner Refuge Island The Setback Crossing.