Originally Posted by
Korina
The dotted lines are everywhere on bike lanes when approaching intersections, and everyone generally gets the point. I think ELRs would be a bit like roundabouts; when my city was proposing to put them in, "concerned" citizens were certain they would cause crashes, chaos on the streets, people would die! There was a learning curve, but now everyone negotiates them like they've always been there.
As for sharrows, I'd rather have "bikes may use full lane" signs or paint. Less opportunity to interpret it as "bikes stay out of my way".
As a cyclist, if I see those dotted lines approaching an intersection, I'm absolutely getting out of that bike lane and taking the traffic lane, just as I would at any other intersection where a right hook is likely. I wouldn't care what the " legal" rule is, I'm not hanging out on the most dangerous position in the intersection just because someone put a lane in a stupid place. Anyway, dotted lines on US roads generally indicates a division between lanes, not "you can slop over here a bit if you need to".
I don't think the comparison to traffic circles makes any sense at all. They don't involve putting two vehicles heading in opposite directions in the same lane, and don't use lane markers in a manner that doesn't conform with their general use. Given that ELRs are only suitable for a very small category of roads, I think having eccentric rules contradictory to general practice is bound to be confusing wherever it's employed. We get used to traffic circles because all cars driving in the same direction is very easy to grasp the first time you see it. If there's any thing more than very, very low levels of traffic (where markings probably don't matter much either way), I don't see the markings on an ELR providing any clear guidance at all.