On 9/21/2017 5:04 PM, Bertrand wrote:
From StreetsBlog SF:

"Urban planners, at least when it comes to bikeway design, are still trying
to undo the damage caused by vehicular cyclists in the 1970s and 80s ..."

http://sf.streetsblog.org/2017/09/19...mal-for-bikes/

"Protected" bike lanes lose their protection at every intersection,
including intersections with driveways. The speakers tout the usual
"solution": magic paint. "We'll paint it green, and it will be safe.
Oh, and this is a hotel parking lot, so we'll paint it with khaki
paint!" And when this hasn't worked, they increase the kludge factor
with warning signs, flashing lights, extra traffic light delays and more.

(Hasn't worked? Yes, like the barely-legalized bike boxes in Portland
that increased the right hooks they were supposed to prevent. Like the
two-way cycle track in Columbus Ohio that recorded 15 car-bike crashes
in its first year on streets that typically had seen one or two annual
car-bike crashes.)

And as Jay has said, "protected" bike lanes become cattle chutes
infested with pedestrians. Here's one cyclist's method of dealing with
that problem: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ehh8ZdIMMj4

Here's a cycletrack in DC: http://vimeo.com/23743067

The author blames vehicular cyclists for delaying the currently
fashionable vision. But here's what vehicular cyclists really did:
First, they learned the laws that already existed and how they applied
to riding bicycles. Second, they determined that those laws actually
worked, when the cyclists knew how to properly ride; so they learned
then taught others how to ride properly within those laws. Third, they
determined that a lot of the hare-brained schemes designed to get
cyclists out of the way of motorists actually increased danger and/or
made cycling much slower and more frustrating. (Example: Multi-user
paths shared with pedestrians that lost the cyclist's right-of-way at
every driveway or intersection.) So they rejected the gospel that every
bike facility is a good bike facility. And finally, they rode, safely
and legally, to wherever they wished to go. They didn't wait for some
fantasy world to become real.

The bike segregation advocates pretend that it was vehicular cyclists
who wrote the design manuals that discourage their fashionable
fantasies; but instead those were written by traffic engineers who
understood the interactions of traffic and the limitations of road
users. Those traffic engineers took the radical step of saying, for
example, that a straight-ahead bike lane should NOT be placed to the
right of a right turn lane. Segregationists seem furious about that -
but where in hell does it make sense to have a straight-ahead vehicle's
path crossed by a turning vehicle? Traffic engineers also strongly
recommended against two-way bike lanes on a road, for reasons they
explicitly listed; but American segregationists are making those the new
fashion, even though it's now essentially forbidden in places like
Netherlands.

Worst of all, in my opinion, is that the bike segregationists are
promoting the myth that one cannot ride a bike safely until there are
separate but equal facilities everywhere. They don't say what cyclists
are supposed to do until their fairy tale becomes real. They don't say
what a cyclist is supposed to do when an 8 foot truck comes up behind
them in a ten foot lane.

Bike segregationists promote fear and ignorance in service of their
fantasy of a parallel universe of bike facilities, one where anyone can
bumble to every destination on a bike with no interaction with motor
vehicles.

Vehicular cyclists enable and enjoy bicycling, safely and efficiently,
in the real world.


--
- Frank Krygowski