seypat

If you talk to your kids, they will tell you, "You gotta keep um separated."

I apologize. It was just there. I tried to resist posting it, but it overpowered me. Please forgive me.

redlude97

OTOH going north they are the only thing preventing some cars from constantly parking and waiting in them and they still find a way into them. Going south at like 9am i still think they are useful for the mom headed to work on the cruiser at 15mph braking the whole way whereas I take the lane at 30mph+ and keep up with cars. Just gotta calibrate to the purpose like we discussed with MUPs

RedBullFiXX

Guess we get post about bike lanes on a slow day at the Tour eh

DOS

But the ones they are building here are not safer. They provide a false sense security to inexperienced riders who are afraid of traffic, akin to an Ostrich sticking its head in the sand. Being less visible, having no bail out options, and not being able to see what traffic is doing as you approach intersections are all bad design features of the kind of separated bike lanes they are putting in. I agree that they get more people riding but that is not a good thing if they are not safe. I am an experienced road cyclists.I stay out of those lanes not because I cant ride as fast as I might like but because I don't feel safe. That less experience rider do feel safer is bad because they are not.

the problem is the roads are not wide enough to accommodate both dedicated bike lanes and parking but no one wants fewer parking spots.

redlude97

Do you have stats to back that up or are you basing it off of your feeling?

Seattle Forrest

But Dexter is a hill, and a block away there's a flat bike lane by the lake. I mean that one's a cluster**** too if you're a roadie, but if you were a new cyclist, why would you take Dexter unless you worked at that pot shop?

redlude97

Plenty of people live and work along that corridor, that used to be my daily commute route so I'd see all types of cyclists riding it including moms with e-cargo bikes and kids. I still take that route semiregularly if I need to pass through greenwood or along aurora for groceries at central market on the way home up north. For the most part I don't think hills stop a lot of riders in seattle especially with the e-lime and e-jump bikes that make hills less of a problem.

surak

I agree with redlude, separated lanes are infrastructure that encourages more riding by people who perceive riding in urban environments to be dangerous. I'm also in the camp that having more biking leads to more safety and awareness by drivers and pedestrians, which is why I'm fine with the trade-off of more people riding bikes over the annoyance of dockless bike share bad behavior. Behavior can be corrected over time, but what other methods realistically can get more people out riding? I'm pretty sure the stats on the 2nd Ave bike lane usage are positive, something like over 30% more trips YoY when the lane was installed.

redlude97

Also, IMO the only thing that will legitimately change how safe cycling is, in Seattle at least, is driver's attitudes, more bike lanes and advocacy won't really if drivers continue to break laws and not be courteous to cyclists. You know who isn't going to be the one to change driver's opinions of cyclists? Me, the roadie in lycra. You know how might? The driver's neighbor who finally decided to try a bikeshare because there is finally enough infrastructure to get somewhere in a somewhat safe manner. The number of cyclists out in normal clothes, without helmets(gasp) with a smile on their face that look more like the normal PNWer the better for us all.

DOS

Thats a fair point, I wish I had data. The county recently did survey about what type of bike lanes folks wanted on a particular stretch of road, advocating the kind of separated lanes I have concerns about. I asked if they could provide data that they were safer but none was available. So absent that, I am basing my concerns not on feeling but on visibility. Being visible, having a wide field of view on roads and trails free of obstructions are, I think, established and recognized characteristics of safe riding conditions that are inarguably absent when riding these tunnel like bike lanes. But there is no doubt that inexperienced riders feel safer riding concealed by parked cars they cant see over so the county is achieving the goal of getting more people riding. I will be happy to admit that the narrow concealed lanes my county is building are better if ever the county shows me the data. Until then, I will chose sight.

Seattle Forrest

I have a good friend who's owned a condo right off Dexter for a couple decades. We hike together. He complains a lot about the traffic problems the bike lanes have created. I remind him that traffic has been getting worse for many years and it's not because there are too many bikes on the road.

E bikes seem to have really taken off here in the last year, maybe year and a half. They built bike lanes on Dexter several years ago. They make more sense now with the lime e bikes, and the jump ones too.

Seattle Forrest

I'm not sure which comes first. But I got waved down by an e cyclist on the ship canal trail (through Interlake, south of Ballard) who wanted to know the bike route to where he was going. He said he knew how to get there in his car, but he was taking his bike instead.

I don't have any data on this, but I started riding because it's fun, I stuck with it because it's fun, and I take my bike instead of my car whenever possible because it's fun, and parking isn't.

But there's obviously a great deal of benefit to all of us from more people riding. And this infrastructure does help new cyclists feel safer, and cover ground most of them probably wouldn't otherwise.

bianchibike

Why not? Don't be selfish

KraneXL

Downtown LA

DOS

These are the types of lanes they are putting in where I live...Washington DC and Arlington, VA...and if they looked like the ones in the pic from LA, I would have far fewer concerns about lack of visibility and safety. But they don't. We don’t have the wide hashed lane with bollards as a buffer between bike lane and parked cars, just narrow lane between curb and cars, which creates a tunnel effect that is very unpleasant. The one in LA look quite nice in the pics.

Sillyak

What's a bike lane? I exit my house and bike about 60 km in a perfectly straight line to the next town, which has about 300 people.

My Stava rides are nothing but lines and squares lol

banerjek

I'm not convinced it encourages anything other than recreational cycling in confined areas.

Where I live, we have some separated infrastructure and a lot of bike lanes. If I ride in the hills on a weekend day, I'll encounter more cyclists on 40+mph two lane curvy roads with no shoulders than I do on major cycling corridors during rush hour where the lights are timed at 15mph or less.

A year or two ago, a map was published containing cyclist provided data about how safe they felt particular roads were -- the idea was to see where to build more cycling infrastructure. One pattern that I emerged that some of the roads that had the highest anxiety indexes were greenways, painted bike lanes, and other infrastructure in close proximity with ordinary roads which often had moderate anxiety numbers. In other words, some of the easiest roads with the slowest traffic and decent infrastructure were labeled as terrifying while "regular" roads looked fine.

Fear of traffic is a major deterrent for people to start cycling. But the focus needs to be on helping people understand what they're up against so they can manage situations so they can overcome that fear rather than provoking it further.

What passes for an "advocate" out here vehemently insists that the cycling is a dangerous battle and that the drivers. Words like "victimized" and "vulnerable" get tossed around. The mantra is all about repeating the worst aspects of cycling with the bonus that you're completely at the mercy of awful drivers. The entire premise that full separation is necessary is that cyclists don't belong on the roads -- it's hard to come up with a more anticycling message. Then they wonder why no one rides.

If I believed the garbage the advocates push out, there's no way I'd ride.

zacster

My guess is that volume and comfort has a lot to do with the results. The larger volume of people use the roads with decent infrastructure and the "regular" road riders were those not scared to ride in traffic in the first place.

When I lived in Seattle back in the 80s there were no bike lanes, only the Burke-Gilman trail and a few others. When I went back in 2012 with the intent of just riding, I saw all kinds of bike lanes, and I just thought it was crazy and not safe. And this is from someone that lives and rides in NYC. I need to go back to Seattle to recreate this vacation, maybe in the fall as I'm retiring in a few weeks! (I'll bring my Davidson this time too.)

NYC has its quirks for sure, and I'm sure a lot of people would be scared schitteless riding there, but it really is pretty good now. If only they could figure out the left turn problem...

Snowflake6

Separated bike lanes are a great idea... For people driving cars. They let drivers completely forget that there are bikes around, which means every place where bikes and cars *must* interact, it comes as a surprise to the drivers, and inevitably the drivers are all p*ssed off about the "crazy cyclists that come out of nowhere." And when you elect to avoid them and just ride on the road, you're constantly honked at and waved at by drivers trying to direct you into the segregated bike lane. Sorry, but a 1.5m wide bike lane isn't wide enough for the range of cycling abilities one sees on a daily commute.

The only dedicated bike routes I like are completely separate MUPs that don't follow the roads at all. One that runs along a former railway line, for example, away from cars and mostly flat or gentle grades. Sure, you have to stop at crossings, but where I am at least those are well marked for both cars and bikes in each direction.

Iride01 

The dedicated MUP's that are completely separate except for crossings are great. However many here are saying that because I like to ride fast when it's safe, I shouldn't be on a MUP. So I have nowhere to go but the road. So all this money being spent for leisure time cyclists that don't want to interact with motor vehicles and fast cyclist. What is being spent for me?

I suppose with the same reasoning, there should be separated roads made for motor vehicle drivers that are afraid to interact with faster motor vehicles or fast cyclists.

I still don't care for the physically separate paths described by the OP. They require too much awareness of others at every driveway, street and access point they cross. By the way my MUP doesn't have a published speed limit. It's just asked that everyone use it responsibly around others.

jitteringjr

I agree with all your points, but this one bothers me the most about these separated bike lanes. In Denver these are largely going in places where there is a parked lane between the car's traffic flow lane and the bike lane. Often big delivery trucks totally block the view from both sides. You are safer this way in the middle of a block but when you come to the more dangerous intersection the danger is compounded even worse because you can't see the cars and they can't see you. Before you even have time to crap your pants, a car going 30 mph can T-bone you from a left or right turn. Overall the situation is no safer and arguably less safe. And this is then taking away tax payer money that could have been used in better ways.

Chinghis

I liked the lanes separated by parking spots the first time I came across one in Chicago. Then they started putting them in downtown LA, and I changed my mind. I especially like the idea that they're really not about us, but about keeping motorists from having to interact with us.

And, if I understand it all correctly, those plastic bollards in the photos of LA up above will eventually be turned into concrete curbs.

redlude97

I dont think any money is well spent on our type of riding. If you want blocked off roads go ride fondos and road races with rolling road closures, or get a gravel bike. Thousands of miles and no cars and stop signs in sight

Seattle Forrest

This a new one on 1st Ave North in Lower Queen Anne. Plastic barrier, forces you up and down on the left. There's some debris next to the homeless encampment near where the used CD store used to be, otherwise they're isn't much to complain about except waiting for a red light to make a right turn.

Iride01 

I certainly don't want the blocked off roads or thousands of miles with no stop sign. I just want some of the money spent on education of both drivers and cyclists for how to share the road. I ride the roads with heavy motor traffic quite a bit and generally have no problems on the roads. I just think with all the bike "sidewalks" being put up along our streets that the motorist will forget about those of us that can't use the bike sidewalks.