ISO Example: Staggered Crossing of Arterial Street
 

I am working on a ~4 mile bike route proposal that will use suburban residential streets. Most of the arterial crossings have traffic signals, but we have one complicated crossing. The east-west bike route streets are staggered and the crossing is about halfway between two traffic signals. I have placed some graphics below to show the area.

I’m looking for examples (both good and bad) on how this has been handled in other places.

Option A works pretty good right now. A cyclist only has to wait briefly for a hole in the traffic to be created by the traffic light ¼ mile away. That allows a move to the protected left-turn only lane, where again it is a short wait for a comparable hole from the other direction. The disadvantages are that it adds about 400 feet to the route length and it is not clear how it could be signed/painted/communicated. (I’m hoping to find some examples.)

Option B would be more of a traditional crosswalk approach. Crossing there now “vehicularly” is difficult because there has to be a hole in the traffic both ways.

Usage of this route probably will not warrant a traffic signal and more expensive options like a bridge or tunnel are not viable.

Thank you for your help.

https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...04932aac24.jpg
Plan view of the staggered crossing area.
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...170c22f251.jpg
Looking north at the western residential street intersection. Note that the concrete curb on the right hand side of the left-turn only lane only extends about 40 feet. Total length of the left-turn only lane is about 150 feet.

I like Option B. It places the rider (and pedestrians) in harm's way for a shorter amount of time than Option A. Also, with Option B cyclists are perpendicular to traffic making them more visible.

Add some signs, or possibly a crosswalk with a light triggered by hand.

So the goal is to get cyclists across the N-S street from one E-W street to the other, and it doesn't matter which E-W street on the right it is?

Seems to me Option A would be better. Shorter distance (both safer this way as Bobby mentioned, and less likely to be circumvented by lazy cyclists anyway). Why would they need to be in the left-turn lane at all with this scheme, though? Why couldn't they go across the gap to join the traffic lane? (Couldn't they wait in that space in the middle for traffic on the other side to open up? Or, where I live, it's legal to pull into the left-turn lane to wait for space to clear-- you just have to be stationary as you wait.)

For Option B, is it legal where you live for a vehicle to travel in the turn lane? Where I live it is not-- you get into the turn lane at the point you need to just before your turn, but you can't just drive in it, and I imagine bicycles are held to the same rule.

(And do your left turn lanes really require drivers to go over a low curb to use them? Am I completely misunderstanding that? Where I live, it would be painted lines... and any sort of curb would be a signal that it is NOT a lane to drive in... I can't imagine going over that on a bike...)

This is what our City did to cross a major 6 lane road. I've ridden it several times. It works great!

There is a button on each side of the road - and each side of the median.

There is also a feature that benefits the drivers: if a cyclist presses the crosswalk button, the traffic light upstream stays green longer to allow backed up traffic to clear.

That is correct. Further to the east, both streets require a jog to continue eastward. Using the south street adds about 400 feet of length to a 4 mile route which is pretty small.

This road does not have a continuous middle lane. There are 100-200' long left-turn only lanes which have concrete curb on the left side, and paint on the right side until 40 feet from the intersection. The last 40 feet is the rounded concrete curb you see in the photo. (I've clarified this in the original post.)

Thank you and am very interested if you have some real-life examples.