What's Wrong With This Picture?
 

Downtown Dayton visitors are parking wrong, blocking bike paths

Is this intentional or are people really this ignorant.

Not surprising that drivers would look for and park immediately next to the meters, not noticing what's painted on the roadway. It'll probably be a while before they get tuned in to the new arrangement.

Nicely designed, though, with a wide door zone.

Everyone is ignorant at some time or another. I once went in a public restroom at Brookley Field in Mobile AL and peed in the sink thinking it was a big round urinal for everyone. My bad. I was ignorant. But in my defense it didn't look like any sink I'd ever seen up to that point.

IMO, the bike path is on the wrong side. But I've never been anywhere they have them like that so I'd have to watch one for real and see how well it works or doesn't.

Works better that way if everyone parked against curb.

i dont see any utility service trucks parked nor any delivery vehicles with the flashers on? Is that it? That must be it. Otherwise, it looks too peaceful.

Maybe they should paint a car sharrow in the car parking spaces so the functionally illiterate motorists get the idea.

There's nothing quite like designing a system with total disregard of normal human behavior and then expecting that behavior to magically change.

Not a big deal, seeing that there seems to be no traffic. I've ridden in big cities before, such as Washington DC with heavy traffic, it's very easy to ride in the traffic, since they're so slow, by lights and such.

I'm not defending the drivers that park in the bike lane....just saying I come across much worse problems on the roadways....don't get me started on all the potholes in the DC area -- Another reason I live far away whence I hail



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Sums up everything about road design since the automobile took over the city.

Amen. Roland Avenue in Baltimore went from a roadway---de facto bike lane/door zone---car parking arrangement to roadway---car parking lane---bike lane/gutter (with no buffer zone between the driver's side of the car and the roadway, so that drivers usually parked halfway into the bike lane) to, finally, painting a wide, clearly marked bike lane between the roadway and a parking lane next to the curb.

Apparently each municipality has to go through its own fumbling attempts at mediating between bikes and cars independently of all the others.

Yeah, it's counterintuitive to think you'd park way out from the curb. And especially if uncertain, a person's probably going to play it safe rather than risk getting a ticket (or their car hit) by possibly parking "in the road." I mean, I get why they did it that way, but it's going to feel very awkward as a driver putting your car way out from the curb and hoping you're right that that's a parking space. They need better signage?

The article describes that as a "protected bike lane". I don't consider it protected unless there is a hard physical barrier separating it from the standard travel lane.

I've seen parking kiosks that are some distance from the parking space but I've never seen parking meters separated from the parking space like that. You better have some really good signage if you expect people to catch on.

They need a picture of a car in there parking area or a media blitz on how and were to park the car in this very complicated situation. This parking setup were you use the parked cars as the barrier between moving cars and humans is done elsewhere in the world and they appear to have figured it out. Perhaps an educational video or something like

easily fixed with a few rubbery poles, multi-space meters, and better signage. the basic design is very common. I’ve seen people willfully put their truck or service vehicle in these protected bike lanes around here, but I have never seen anyone unwittingly park there. the solid green surface helps too.


https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...890c013df.jpeg

And yet in Philadelphia behavior has changed since the same type of parking next to bike lanes was put in relatively recently.

Did you look at these pictures, though? There's no signage, just a pavement marking of a bike on a white painted lane. The parking meters are where the spaces used to be and the one marking indicating the change is easily overlooked (literally). And since when are bike lanes painted white?

How does Philadelphia mark off the bike lanes? Did they change the parking meter setup? Part of the problem here is it looks exactly like the setup we've grown accustomed to over the past 100 or so years, so you really need to hit people over the head with signs and indications this isn't the arrangement it used to be. A lot of cities have been getting rid of the single space meters as a cost-saving measure, that probably should have been coupled with the bike lane installation.
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https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/bikefor...31b844a020.jpg
Is this typical of the markings in Philadelphia? By comparison, Dayton appears to be engaged in magical thinking that drivers will just "get it" without instruction

Some places, Some places not. Even before putting up the white things people got it pretty quickly.

I think the "Parking/Bike Lane" signs might be about as important as the white things. I don't know if the Dayton block in the picture is typical, but not marking clearly where the pattern has diverged from 100 years of standard practice seems like signage malpractice.

I think it's hilarious, btw, that the Dayton handout image explaining it has the bike lane marked in green but they painted the lane white. Misguided cost-saving measure?

its not about making people adapt, understand, & be informed. Society needs to be left no other easy option. If a driver has no bollard to prevent parking across the bike lane, they will just park across the bike lane. "Oh dearrrrr... I didn't know, shucks! me promise to not do it again" [lies]

Put those door dingers up, it'll impede the cyclists some, but it'll make it obvious to the driver that they are not permitted to legally park/stand there.

Here in NYC, we have the same layout on many of our bike lanes, particularly the lanes on the long, north/south avenues. It works pretty well, for the most part. But there was an adjustment period, for sure.

It's a good layout, in my opinion. It puts a physical barrier between cyclists and the automotive traffic.

The linked story says the lanes are new in Dayton -- people will get used to them in time.

You are correct in your line of thought. Now all we need to do is change the thinking of the people implementing these changes. After many years of intentionally making it mostly imposable for the motorists in the Netherlands to drive or park in bicycle facility's, the motorists are so accustomed to bicyclists that they are removing some of the bicycle infrastructure in downtown areas and letting everybody mingle together. Because people are accustomed to bicyclists being there and agree with it, they get along with very little ill effect. One big difference between the US and some of the European countries is they are totally focused on prevention of car bike collisions to the point of making changes and spending the money to implement changes instead of victim blaming.

They do need a very clear sign that this is a different arrangement than the 99.999999% of places where the parking meters are placed this way and also probably the arrangement that was there for decades at that very same location. .

Again, I think this was signage malpractice, that's a really poorly marked bike lane and the parking spaces are not clearly labeled as such.

Once it's clearly explained and marked, it's a no-brainer. Definitely a very reasonable way to lay out a bike lane.

Does the bike lane-parking layout in NYC also include parking meters as shown in the Dayton layout?
Does any other city in the U.S. use such a non-intuitive layout, with a bike lane and a wide no-traffic lane between the parking meter and the its associated approved parking spot, with only paint (no physical barrier) to indicate the non-standard parking layout?

I can only guess how well this arrangement will work when there is any snow obscuring the painted lines.