The Seattle Times had a big article on bike safety and infrastructure yesterday. The focus was mostly on the danger cyclists face from traffic turning right at intersections — see collisions #3, #4, and #5 at BicycleSafe.com for drawings. This is the danger that killed Bryce Lewis in September last year. It looks like the city’s taking a few experimental steps to deal with these types of issues, including some Green Lanes, known as Blue Lanes in other civilized portions of the world, at a few intersections. Great news says I, but why so slow?
According to the Times we’ll be getting 4 Green Lanes to go with the dotted line bike lane markers on Stone Way:
The sites are southbound Dexter at Denny Way, both ends of the Fremont Bridge, and North 145th Street where Shoreline’s new Interurban Trail meets the city limits.
Presumably the city will be monitoring these intersections to see how much of an improvement (if any) the new lanes are. The article notes that Portland, which has been using blue lanes for more than 15 years, noted that the lanes have changed motorist and cyclist behaviour but not always for the better.
City officials videotaped traffic and found that motorists yielded far more often to bikes in marked blue lanes — and that cyclists glanced at cars less often, a problem. Still, drivers and cyclists said the streets seemed safer.
I’ll be interested to see the results of the investigation, and it sounds like the Eastlake and Furhman intersection is next on the list for improvements.
It’s great to see that the City’s taking action here, however embarrassing it is that we’re more than a decade behind our sister city to the south on this front. The optimist in me wants to believe this is the first of many improvements from the Bicycle Master Plan, and that things will move along quickly. But for the pessimist in me, the word that stood out most strongly in the times article is ‘gingerly’. I can appreciate a a prudent approach, especially where one risks making things worse through change. I’m not sure Seattle runs that risk.
More lanes are great news
Any sane cyclist uses a bike lane and treats EVERY intersection as hazardous - whether he has the right of way or not
Ride safe
Oh Will, you are opening a whole can of worms on that one. One of the problems with the bicycle advocacy groups is that we can’t settle in on what really is the safest place for bikes.
There are many in the bike community who feel that bike lanes (especially as implemented in Seattle- within “dooring” range of parked cars) are actually less safe than simply riding as part of traffic. This is part of the reason that we have ended up with a mix of bike lanes, “sharrows,”, mixed use trails, and nothing.
Personally, if there is a bike lane on the road, I ride in it, but that doesn’t always mean I feel safer in it.
Somebody please remind the city to put sand in the paint for these green pathways. Wet street paint might as well be ice when you’re starting off from a light.
Why so slow? you ask. Just peruse the reader comments of that Times article (or any article on a Seattle paper’s website that remotely mentions bicycling).
There are a great number of disgruntled taxpayers and road users who are convinced to their very marrow that we cyclists are scofflaw parasitic menaces who deserve nothing less than a painful death.
I don’t know how representative of the population at large these commenters are, but they really really really hate us.
I lose hope for humanity when I read the comments in the Times and P-I; I should probably just not read them.
Humanity? What about the bicycle scofflaw MONKEYS? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQgAMkMmsfg
JAT — yeah, better not to read them. There is a cadre of conservative commentators who seem to have little else to do besides monitor the P-I and post inflammatory comments on Sound-Offs about a variety of topics, including cycling and transportation. I used to try to read and respond, but I’ve been a lot happier since I stopped.
Sorry, Moderator — one more, please?
I think that being on the road and riding and being seen is a much more powerful statement than one can make on an on-line forum. And there is nothing, absolutely nothing, that the anti-cyclist keyboard jockeys can do to counteract that statement. So, ride on, JAT!