bragi

I rode deep into the heart of Bellevue, WA today. It's a large suburban city near Seattle, where I live, and though it's not culturally hostile to bicyclists at all, I still found it to be a rather daunting environment. This city basically didn't exist until the 1980's, and the development that's taken place since then is pretty much entirely car-centric. It has typical suburban street layouts: clusters of residential housing (i.e., dead end streets) connected by high-traffic, rather high speed arterials. If you want to cross this city, and the local MUPs don't go where you want to go, you have to share the road with many, many cars going 45 mph+, sometimes on roads that do not have a wide curb lane.

In some respects, it was awesome, but the big negative, for me, even more than traffic volume, was car speed. I don't have a problem mixing it up with cars going 20-30 mph, which is typical for surface streets in Seattle. When cars are going 40-50 mph,though, it gets a little intimidating; drivers have less time to react if there's a problem, and the consequences above 40 mph are invariably fatal for cyclists.

Most people in the US live in environments more like Bellevue than like Seattle, which may explain why LCF is a mainly urban phenomenon. Yet there are still many, many people who ride bikes through such car-centric hells. My question, and I ask it with the greatest respect, is what do you do to manage to navigate through an environment clearly not intended for a person on a bicycle?

no1mad 

You adapt. You explore different routes. And some will flame me for this, but you figure out when/where VC works and then take to the sidewalk/grass in those areas where/when VC doesn't work.

You mentioned the residential areas that are basically riddled with dead ends. They were designed that way in effort to keep through traffic low, primarily in an attempt protect the kids playing in the streets/riding bikes, and probably to discourage break-ins. Yet, almost all of those developments will have a couple of streets that are wider and designated bus routes, possibly even leading to/from an elementary school. Other than the school rush, they make for great routes to by-pass the major arterials. Sometimes doing so adds roughly a mile or so r/t, but under normal circustamces that is not a major concern.

lasauge 

I live in such a place - I deal with it through a combination of searching out back routes and shortcuts that avoid the busy arterials when possible, and steeling my nerves and putting my legs into race-mode when I can't. Making a left turn that requires merging across three lanes of 50 mph traffic to reach a center lane that may or may not be occupied by a line of cars waiting to turn does require a good deal of rider confidence, which is precisely why very few people here ride. I actually get a very positive response from riding everywhere, I've had quite a few people people tell me they would love to leave the car at home and enjoy the great scenery and 300+ sunny days per annum, but they've tried and it's just too intimidating to have to duke it out on 4 and 6 lane roads to go places unless you're already fast, fearless, and on a quick road machine (another barrier to entry).

Chesha Neko

+1. Use Google Maps or similar to work out alternate lower-traffic routes. Minimize left turns. Put a mirror on your glasses or helmet. Confidence.

ctg492

I am too timid or smart to ride the 55 mph congested roads. I however ride the 55 mile an hour country roads leaving my country sub, to get to the city. Those roads are more like 65mph people think. I find alternative routes for every place I have to ride. When I get to the city I have googled every side road to my destination. Funny I gave my son directions to the store the other day as he was driving me there. Turn here, turn there was we went along.When we got there he told me I gave him biking directions, not driving directions. He has now told everyone Don't let mom give you directions, unless you are on a bike.

krobinson103

I live in a totally cycling hostile environment in the suburbs of Seoul. Narrow one way streets conjested with too many people and cars. The major routes have cycle lanes in the richer areas but not where I live. It means I share the road with cars traveling at 40mph+ and usually a lot of buses and trucks that won't wait for anyway let alone a bike. You adapt. It helped that I'd ridden motorcycles for 7 years before that so it wasn't that much of a difference.

To be fair there are awesome cycling paths quite close to where I am... they just don't go to where I need to go.

wahoonc

I do that all the time! I was staying at a hotel in Summerville, SC and a couple of guys asked where to get a good dinner, gave them directions to a local diner a couple of miles away. They looked at me kind of funny when I told them go start by going behind the Walmart...the best part was where they had to cross the rail road tracks, I completely forgot it was pedestrian crossing only and the nearest car crossing is 2 blocks further down.

As far as the suburban hell, all they seem to build around here are the lollipop subdivisions, one way in and one way out with no connections between them. The roads they dump onto used to be country roads, now they are carrying 120% of design capacity traffic and when the traffic is light they are traveling at 10mph-15mph over the posted. Even VC can't protect you in that situation. The road I live on went from an average of 1 fatality a year to 7 a year over the past 5 years as the population has increased, they are going to be "improving" part of the road in the next several years, the only allowance for cyclists is a 2' wide strip

Aaron

FenderTL5

I live in the Bellevue community in TN, it's a suburban area inside the city limits of Nashville TN.
It is very much exactly the way you described it. I commute from Bellevue into downtown, usually multi-modal (it's 16+ miles 1 way with lots of hills).

I have one road where the posted speed limit is 45, yet the avg speed is closer to 55mph. There's insufficient width for sharing the lane, no shoulder (at all in spots), and certainly no bike lane. It is on the city's short term plan for the addition of a bike lane but there's no time-table given. I have learned how to position myself in the lane of traffic to enter with a string of cars and control the lane. When I first started riding, I tried hugging the white line. I was brushed twice (literally had mirrors hit). Cars would move over to pass, but with oncoming traffic and insufficient width, they'd swerve back. Now, I just deal with the grief for the short amount of time I'm on that road, controlling the lane. I then turn off as soon as I cross a bridge/river into neighborhood streets and wind through parallel.


I ride through neighborhoods, parking lots, on the shoulder where it exists, and of course in a bike lane where provided. I use three rear lights/blinkies, three up front and wear a reflective, hi-viz vest in the burb. Most of that is unnecessary downtown unless it's dark or raining.
So far I've not ridden sidewalks for two reasons, First, there's not one on my route. Secondly, it is a traffic violation in the city limits.

wolfchild

I live in the suburbs and it's not that bad actually, I really enjoy living and riding here. Lots of new developement has created roads and residential streets which did not exist 25 years ago. I have learned to avoid most of the high speed high traffic roads. Yes it's possible. I have spend a lot of time looking at maps of my area and finding different routes and linking up everything together... after I study the maps I go out for a ride and see what it's like, have been doing that for few years now and I have everything figured out. I can get anywhere I want to on my bike within a 35 miles radius of my home (70 miles roundtrip) and still be reasonibly safe about it. My daily average mileage is only 16-18 miles roundtrip, but if I have to go out further out beyond my city limits I can easily do that.

gerv 

Two points about your post. The likelihood of you surviving a crash with traffic > 30mph is not good. So your survival instincts are sound!

Other thing is that you are in an unfamiliar area. Were you a resident of the area, you'd probably find some alternate routes.

But I agree that bicycle transportation in the US is a lot easier in a city that provides either dedicated bicycle infrastructure or has been designed for low speed car traffic.

Such a pity too because frequently you could modify city streets in the suburbs to provide adequate bicycle routes. It isn't impossible,

Mobile 155

I have lived in Seattle, Everett, Bellevue, Kenmore, Bothel, and Kirkland and I liked Bellevue the best. But I had family support in Bellevue. I was also found of my friends neighborhoods on Mercer Island. You simply learn the shortcuts and how to live with faster traffic.

But your concerns are simply different than the concerns of Suburban Cyclists. At least in Southern California the city offers little that the suburbs can't provide. With Zoning chances are you live close to the industrail areas. Supermarkets, Malls, strip malls, theaters, are more than likely not more than 3 miles from your house. My area has a small town feel about it. Ex farming, ranching, fruit growing area. It is set up in a grid pattern much like graf paper. It has a small "downtown" area basically set up on a east west two lane road running into the next small town with a small buffer of unincorporated area between the cities. Yes there are higher speed roads Boxing the outside edges north, south, east and west. Zoned to seperate shopping, housing, and industrail. We have two expressways running east and west with speed limits in the 55 to 65mph area. Both expressways have bike lanes about 6 feet wide with rumble strips next to the bike lane.

Having lived in Seattle and parts of LA and yes traffic is slower but they are also two feet off of your hip half of the time you are moving down the road. In most Suburbs the cars are not allowed in the bike lane and are are much farther away from you. Yes they pass you at a higher rate of speed but there are fewer of them. In the Suburbs a cable lock will work 90 percent of the time. In the Urban area you need a lock that is about as heavy as the bike, hyperbole free of charge. There are normally fewer areas to "avoid" in the suburbs, typically, and the crime rate is lower than the South Park area of Seattle. But it comes down to what you are used to and what you want out of a place to live. I expect to deal with traffic at a higher rate of speed but with fewer cars. I expect a crime rate below the national average and a chance to ride unmolested by people on the street. But a street wise urban dweller may feel safer with a higher crome rate and slower traffic. But I could live car free where I live now far easier than I could in LA. Except being married I have other limitations that would preclude car free even if I lived in New York. Here is the differernce in Crime rates between Seattle and Bellevue. And I am not talking just about South Park. https://www.bestplaces.net/crime/?cit...city2=55305210 It is one of the reasons my dad, aunt, and uncle moved to Bellevue, oh and one to Camano Island.

wahoonc

I loved the grid layout of many of the Midwest cities, it quite often gave you an alternate route a couple of blocks over. Those basically don't exist in this part of the country or the city center with the grid layout is very small with the suburban sprawl dwarfing it. I have seen some grid cities where they deliberately blocked some of the less heavily traveled streets with bollards that would allow pedestrian/cycle traffic but not car traffic. Great way to calm traffic! better than the stop signs every block.

Many towns could go a long ways towards making themselves pedestrian/cycle friendly for not very much money, but it seldom happens because pedestrians and cyclists are in the minority and they traffic departments' main concerns are parking and moving traffic through. But headway is being made...some places.

Aaron

JoeyBike

Man, I was lucky the suburbs I grew up in were grid after grid of streets with 20 to 30 mph limits. It was so easy to get around by bike and mostly avoid riding on the 35 mph 4-lanes. Maybe I would have to ride on a fast road to access a small bridge, but only a couple of blocks - just wait for a gap and sprint!

I wonder if I would have turned out the same if cycling was impossible growing up. It was so easy to bike that my parents forced me to take their old car - I returned it after two weeks of feeding that monster. Most get their first car and feel liberated. I felt like I was stuck in a tar pit.

fat_bike_nut

+1

That's what I do whenever I ride. Some streets work well for VC riding, and there are other streets where I wouldn't dare to ride in the street (narrow lane 45+ MPH arterials mostly), even if sidewalk riding was illegal around here. When I ride to places where sidewalk riding is illegal (like Newport Beach), I will only stick with routes that other cyclists ride a lot (like PCH and Bayshore Drive), streets with bike lanes, MUP's, or residential areas. I completely avoid narrow lane high speed roads whenever possible.

bragi

Riding in conditions you describe, especially the part about having to take the lane in a high-speed arterial just to stay safe, is certainly possible, but I'm pretty sure that this type of thing would make bicycling a little too harrowing and conflict-prone for most would-be cyclists to tolerate. You have to be a pretty experienced rider, or pretty ballsy in general, to make this a regular part of your day.

bragi

This isn't an original observation, but my own experience confirms it: development, even suburban development, built before about 1980 was largely grid-based, or at least involved a lot of through side streets that were roughly parallel to major arterials. I grew up in such a suburb, and safely rode my bike everywhere, sometimes to a reservoir 10 miles away from my house. Newer suburban developments involve dead-end clusters of houses that feed into a fairly small number of high-speed, narrow-lane arterials choked with traffic on the way to the mall. Kids basically ride their bikes in the cul de sac in front of their own house.

It should be pretty easy and inexpensive for cluster-based suburban communities to make bicycling a very effective and safe form of transportation simply by connecting the clusters with short bike paths or MUPs. Even car-obsessed people would get behind this once they understood that it would help reduce congestion.

zandoval 

Here in central Texas when I do ride the highways, or roads with cars blowing past me at high way speeds, I have to admit that many of the drivers are a little more considerate than they used to be... Often they slow down just to see what your riding...

ilynne

Wow, so much to say on this subject. I was in Alabama from 2002-2011. Car free really was not an option. I could get a bus to Biloxi to gamble, but not to Mobile to go to work. There was ONE bridge to get from Daphne to Mobile and it took you miles out of the way, was a tough climb, and had terrifying high speed truck traffic. I looked forward to the day when I would live in carfree-friendly Seattle again. I looked at the bike paths map and was so jealous. Actual bike lanes! Sharrows! Bike boxes! MUPs!

The fact that there is a BIKE LANE on I-90 is awesome. Yet I don't plan to ride it any time soon. My sister asked if I would move back to the eastside -- ugh, no. My brother lives on the eastside and is one of those charming individuals who intentionally brushes cyclists because they are the cause of the traffic problems.

I was hit head-on by a car that was travelling 55 mph. It was on a curve (the jerk crossed a double yellow) on a rural road. I was lucky to survive. My confidence will never be the same.

I have very mixed feelings about the fact that it is legal to ride on the sidewalk in Seattle. It freaks me out to ride on the sidewalk, but riding in traffic can be pretty scary, too. It's very weird for me to adapt to using sidewalks.

I've noticed that Google maps bike directions does not know how to find the bike friendly routes. It always tries to route me over the Ballard bridge. Not riding that one again. The Fremont bridge is much friendlier and I don't care if it takes me out of my way. Google just does not grasp that the shortest route is not necessarily the most bike-friendly. I see bike lanes and paths marked, and Google Maps not routing me to them.

I notice that when I have to drive or give driving directions, I don't know how to find ANYTHING by car.

Until you discuss paying for it.

Drv1913

I prefer riding in the suburban area where I live to the urban area where I work. While the urban speed limits are lower, the streets and lanes are narrower, the traffic is all jammed together, and there is a lot more going on that I have to watch out for: pedestrians, horse-drawn carriages, motorists who stop suddenly to back into a parking space, etc. In the 'burbs, sure, there's 7 lanes of higher speed traffic, but there's a lot more room, and it's generally only me and the cars. That is a lot less stressful for me. I don't mind the higher speeds as long as the street has low to moderate traffic. I don't hug the curb, but I don't take the lane either; there's enough room for me and the cars. I admit, however, that I may have a higher tolerance for close passing than the typical person with similar cycling skill and experience probably does. It also helps that I use a rearview mirror to supplement my awareness of what's going on around me.

Also, as others have stated, even in the suburbs there are often alternate ways to get somewhere. I reserve early Sunday mornings for joy riding and exploration. I enjoy finding new shortcuts, residential streets, and back routes to places I want to go, and sometimes I even discover new places to go. When it's time for utilitarian riding, I cut through a lot of commercial parking lots and wind my way through a lot of residential pockets.

When I visit other cities, I am more likely to find myself on major roads that I wouldn't have chosen were I more familiar with the area, but I am usually able to avoid traveling during peak hours, so that helps. I just deal with whatever comes up, secure in the fact that I will never again encounter the motorist behind me who is cussing me out any given moment.

gerv 

I disagree. A lot of these cul-de sacs can be connected pretty cheaply and occasionally the cost is zilch as cyclists discover an "informal route"... this happens all the time. A vacant lot or an unoccupied swath of property become the bicycle superhighway.

Thus the suburb evolves!

prathmann

Have you sent your comments to the corrections site from Google's map routing page? I've found them to be pretty responsive to suggestions. Mine have mainly been about connectors to some of the MUPs in my area that were missing from their maps and some bike cut-throughs that were wrongly identified as not open to public travel. But I'd think their software could assign a relative penalty to the Ballard bridge vs. the Fremont so that routing would favor the latter if the distances are not too different.

prathmann

But much easier if the cut-through is designed in from the beginning before all the land is assigned to particular private lots.

Unfortunately even that doesn't always work well. We currently have a fight going on between two adjoining neighborhoods about such a cut-through path. One of the neighborhoods is short on available parking space so some of the residents are parking in front of homes in the other neighborhood and walking home using the path. So the other neighborhood has filed petitions with the city asking for the path to be closed off with a fence. If that's done then kids wanting to visit friends in the adjoining neighborhood will need to get there via the 40+ mph arterial.

Roody

So of course their parents will have to drive the kids to the other neighborhood, then make another car trip to pick them up again. This will only make the traffic situation worse in both neighborhoods.

I think there is some momentum among city planners to provide alternatives to more driving. I hope that residents from both neighborhoods will get together to put pressure on planners to come up with a better solution than blocking off the path.

ilynne

I haven't. I could try that, I suppose. I just work around it by getting direction to the Fremont bridge (or the Locks) and then to my destination -- and then I study the map to find the ACTUAL route.

ilynne

You know, even here in supposedly bike-friendly Seattle, I hear many more complaints about bicycles than positive remarks. The level of hatred for the Mayor and his attempts to make bike travel safer just astonishes me.