Slate went looking for the dumbest bike lane in America and the winner turned out to be right in nearby Silver Spring:
That is pretty dumb. An awful lot of bike lane creation seems to have been done with the common sense switch in the off position.
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Stupidest Bike Lane
02 May 2008 11:42 am
Comments (33)
I liked the fine touch of the broken window on the phone booth in the middle of the bike lane. It conjures up quite the image.
Wow, a tourist attraction right in my neighborhood! I hope it doesn't drive up my rent. Is there a plaque yet?
Off-topic Matt, but can you tell the tech people at The Atlantic that the Showtime ad for "This American Life" doesn't close when you click "close", blocks the tabs for you and the other bloggers, and is otherwise exceedingly annoying. Plus that dork's glasses belong on the L-Word.
Thanks.
"...nearby Silver Spring"
Thank you for using the singular!
I commute everywhere by bike and I'm not a big fan of "good" bike lanes anyways. Drivers use them as right turn lanes at the damndest times, stupid bikers don't ride single file in them, some idiot walks in them and then the cars get ticked that you have to go into the road to get around said idiot -- I'd far rather just see cars better aware how to handle bikers on the road (and I support beating the crap out of adult bikers on the sidewalk).
Bike lanes can really make the bike commute more hazardous even when "thought through." I remember Berkeley made lots of "bicycle boulevards" -- putting bike lanes and signage on roads paralleling the major, light-controlled roads through town, presumably with the idea that you didn't actually want bikes on those major "car" roads. The downside of course being that you'd have to cross major, busy roads in places where there was no controlling light. So I just stuck with the old routes.
Hey, cool! It's two blocks from my house in Silver Spring! Unlike renter Jake H. above, since I'm an owner I hope our celebrity status drives property values up like a rocket.
To put a damper on the chuckles, however, I have biked up Cedar Street at Wayne Avenue many times (you can get down to the Sligo Creek Park bike trail that way), and it's a perfectly adequate bike route although I admit it's certainly no bike "lane."
You cyclists are getting soft. Just look at those dumb bike lanes as another challenge, like climbing up a hill, or avoiding a semi.
It's placed decently well, but the lime green bike lane on Henry Street Brooklyn is pretty dumb. Did I mention it's lime green?
Instead of just painting bike lanes along parked cars on the side of the road, which, of course is stupid because of the aforementioned door problems and dumbasses driving in them (I reward such people with a swift kick to the door), it would make far more sense to put the bike lanes between street parking and the sidewalk. In toerh words, instead of traffic lane, bike lane, parked cars, sidewalk, it goes traffic lane, parked cars, bike lane, sidewalk. A curb between the parkign and the bike lane would be nice, but not strictly neccessary.
An awful lot of bike lane creation seems to have been done with the common sense switch in the off position.
I don't think this is the explanation.
Rather, I think it has to do with municipalities expanding bike lanes at very little cost. There is increasing pressure from cyclists to increase the number of bike lanes, but it remains hard to do in the absence of real political will and some money. Putting them in useless spots allows municipalities to claim they increased bike lanes by x%, without accounting for the fact that much of that expansion is actually useless to cyclists.
Ride Offensively!
Allow me to defend the Wayne/Ceder bike lane. Yes, it invites cyclists onto on-coming traffic, which is bad. But Ceder isn't an especially car-heavy street -- much less than Wayne Ave. And Ceder quickly connects you to other, safer streets that run parrallel to Wayne. I see that bike lane as a gateway to a refuge from the Wayne Ave. madness.
Sanjay is absolutely correct!
I ride all the time, and bike lanes contribute little. The best place to bike is simply on less busy roads. The biggest problem for bikes is developments where there are lots of dead ends and cul-de-sacs with no way through except on busy, dangerous, high-speed roads (see Matt's recent post about Tyson's Corners). Riding on big roads can be dangerous even if there is a bike lane.
All in all, I wish they'd take some of the money they spend on bike lanes and use it to really crack down on bike theft.
There is a distinction between a "bike lane" and a "bike route". The green sign indicates the street is used as a "bike route" which is, probably, connecting two trails together. These signs are used extensively along the W&OD trail in Virginia where various county and city trails feed into the larger trail.
Ride through Falls Church, VA and you will see these signs in lots of places throughout the neighborhoods.
Not trying to defend the stupidity of dumb "bike lanes" which are, clearly, prevalent around the world.
Really, though, I think this is the stupidest bike trail:
http://failblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/11/cycleway-fail/
Just a question:
Why is Slate so concerned about bike lanes anyway?
Is this another phony 'pork expose' they can tut-tut-tut about while ignoring the big spending / deficit problems? And who wants to offend big interests? So who is afraid of the Big Bicycle Lobby?
Putting them in useless spots allows municipalities to claim they increased bike lanes by x%, without accounting for the fact that much of that expansion is actually useless to cyclists.
McKingford- You got the first part right but this part is too cynical. Municipalities aren't going to unstripe the pavement or even go back with a marking crew- they just wait until the road needs repaving and they add a bike lane at that point.
It's cheap- but the problem is that the lanes are added willy-nilly.
Shocu John, that's an amazingly terrible idea: urban planners, don't do this.
Consider -- you got a row of parked cars -- maybe nice tall SUVs -- between you and the traffic. Someone goes to take a right: you can't see him, he can't see you. You die.
I also really, really hate my fellow bikers when they don't take pedestrian safety seriously (see above about, bludgeoning bikers who ride on the sidewalk). And your idea protects the biker at the cost of a nasty risk to peds.
Just get rid of the damn bike lanes! Don't "fix" them.
Having ridden regularly for about 15 years now, with experience in both the US and Germany, I can say that bike lanes are mostly useful when the road that they parallel is a high-traffic, high-speed (50+ mph, 80+ kph) road, like a state highway or Bundesstraße. On normal city streets, not so much. But then I've never ridden in places like Boston or New York City with their über-aggressive drivers, so take that with a grain of salt.
A few words in favor of on-road bike lanes.
--They work well where there isn't on-street parking. Personally, I'd rather have a little piece of the road to myself than compete with traffic. Of course, such lanes should be one-way.
--They keep bikes away from peds.
--On the road, they should get swept and repaired at the same time as the road.
--Bikers cross intersections next to cars, so they benefit from the same traffic lights and street signs. Actually, it would be possible to do better than that: in Dutch cities there are often light cycles just for bikes. Probably not going to happen here: not enough bikes (yet?)
What's really useless is a "hiker-biker path" away from the side of the road, fairly common in the Md suburbs of DC. It mixes bikes and peds; it crosses every driveway; it's too narrow for even commuting speeds; it is often not maintained; it is likely to go from nowhere to nowhere; and drivers and local politicians think that bikers ought to be using it. It is a waste of asphalt and space.
My home street has bike lanes, which I use fairly extensively both for commuting and for recreation. But, having attended the hearings that resulted in their installation, I can attest that the interests of bikers played only a partial role. The traffic engineers paid some interest to the needs of bikers [notably by making the lanes five feet wide, which helps greatly with the "dooring" threat], but one of their chief concerns was with making the street narrower--apparently doing that slows down traffic, and it certainly makes it easier to cross what had been a pretty wide street [That attracted a lot of support from people like my next-door neighbors, a couple with two young children]. And while I generally like the lanes, they become virtually useless four blocks down, where the combination of a small university campus and a retail strip has made them attractive to double-parking students and delivery trucks. No enforcement--even though one of the retailers is a convenience store that serves as the de facto neighborhood precinct house.
As a full-time bicycle commuter, I've got to say that elimination of bike lanes to solve the problems inherent with bike lanes would be a disaster. I am an agressive rider who feels confident mixing it up with traffic on a regular basis. The part of my commute that goes through downtowm Portland, Oregon is a blast for me because I get to go toe-to-toe with the cars and beat them. I feel confident doing this, but only because I've been riding for a number of years, and have figured out the dynamics of operating a relatively slow self-powered vehicle in the close proximity of big, fast motor vehicles, AND because in Portland, our rate of ridership is so high that motorists are alert to bicycles. The reason we have such a high percentage of bikes on the road is because Portland has made a significant investment in many types of bike infrastructure: bike lanes, bike boulevards; boxes at intersections; and dedicated bike paths; mixed with good laws that give us our rights to share the roads with cars. Most people will not ever start riding unless they feel that they are protected from cars at first; then they gain confidence to use the roads in other ways. The so-called philosophy of "vehicular cycling" - which says we should be fully integrated into the road without any separate facilities - has done nothing to increase ridership, but HAS done plenty to intimidate people into not even trying to take up cycling. Bike lanes, for all their flaws, get people out on the roads, where they gain experience and learn how to share the road better. It leads to a visible bike presence, which makes drivers more alert to other riders, and creates a positive feedback loop that leads to greater ridership still. Hey, we must be doing something right here - we just got awarded Platinum status as a bike-friendly city.
Cars double-parked in the bike lane are best dealt with by use of your handy U-lock, which you should always keep in your back pocket. I understand auto glass breaks in a way which cannot puncture your tires.
Sanjay,
going to have to disagree with you here. There is alredy no parking the last number of feet before a corner. The bike lane becomes the turn lane when this happens as it is (at least in Chicago). Thus, there is a bike and turning car problem here already. Secondly, I think you misunderstand. I don't want the bike lane on the sidewalk, I want it on the street, just inside of the parked cars, possibly separated by a curb. The bike lane would be street level, but partitioned off. I've seen this done in Japan.
Next, and I know I have few fans in the cycling orthodxy on this one, riding on the sidewalk is in many cases preferable to riding on the street. It seems to me the odds of a car killing a cyclist on the street are vastly greater than a cyclist killing a pedestrian on the sidewalk.
"I have biked up Cedar Street at Wayne Avenue many times (you can get down to the Sligo Creek Park bike trail that way),"
How does that work? I've been looking for a way to avoid Wayne going up from Sligo to downtown SS.
I can say that bike lanes are mostly useful when the road that they parallel is a high-traffic, high-speed (50+ mph, 80+ kph) road
There's nothing like the thrill of riding a bike while cars are whizzing past you at 50mph a few inches away. It's especially fun at night, right around the time the bars close. I'm surprised it's not more popular.
I should point out that contra-flow bike lanes are relatively common in Europe-- as we just found out in England when David Cameron was 'caught' riding against the flow, it's a common and safe practice.
Also, I should say that even the worst lanes featured here are decent as they allow novice bicyclists (or those learning the local streets) a way to acclimatise. As soon as you know where you're going and how to get there, it's a free-for-all! And that's what's so great about cycle-commuting!
I've commuted by bike, and I hate bike lanes. They provide no real protection - anyone who is going to ram into something directly in front if him is not going to be deterred by a line of paint. Getting rammed by a car while sharing the lane is pretty much the least likely kind of accident. If the curb lane is wide (i.e. the same width as a regular lane +bike lane, just no paint) there is little danger. It's intersections, turning maneuvers, and changes in traffic patterns that kill. Bike lanes typically provide a false sense of safety in the least dangerous part of the trip, while suddenly disappearing at the most dangerous spot - the intersections. That stripe of paint encourages people to ride and then takes them straight into danger.
The solution to mixed bike/auto traffic safety is wide curb lanes (to allow lane sharing) and training. Vehicle operators need to know what to do in the situations they face, and they need to know what other vehicle operators are going to do. Traffic laws need to be enforced with a focus on safety, not revenue generation, and licensing requirements need to be upgraded to ensure all vehicle operators know the law and safe procedure.
Re: Next, and I know I have few fans in the cycling orthodxy on this one, riding on the sidewalk is in many cases preferable to riding on the street. It seems to me the odds of a car killing a cyclist on the street are vastly greater than a cyclist killing a pedestrian on the sidewalk.
There are several safety problems with riding on a sidewalk:
1. There may be pedestrians on the sidewalk
2. Sidewalks are generally less maintained than streets and roads. Hitting a bad bump or pothole on a sidewalk (wheret hey are also less avoidable because of the narrowness of the walk) can send you head over heels with potentially serious consequences.
3. Sidewalks often intersect driveways and streets several feet back from the road. Drivers rarely stop or look before proceeding through the sidewalk crossing to the edge of the main road. Moreover if you are riding against traffic, even a cautious driver may not look your way since the traffic on the road is from the other direction.
There are times and places where sidewalks may be preferrable (but at low speeds and great caution). On the whole you're better off riding in the road where drivers will see you and there are far fewer obstacles.
JonF:
As against orthodoxy as it is, I agree that sidewalks have their uses. They are somewhat useful for very new riders, who eventually get tired of the inefficiency and get on the road once they get some experience in.
Togolosh:
Although bike lanes have their issues, they are better than nothing. Claiming that paint doesn't protect you is a little dishonest, because then I could say the only thing preventing head-on collisions is two stripes of yellow paint. Obviously, there's more to it than paint. It's a combination of enforcement, education, and habit, which should always accompany any new lane striping.
The bike community in my town has made our police force accountable to enforce bike lane violations, and it's got to the point that there is a social stigma attached to failing to yield to bikes.
As an experienced rider, I know when to leave the bike lane and take a car lane. But I am glad I have a space to retreat to when the speeds get too high. And there's no substitute for alertness, wherever you ride.
It seems to me the odds of a car killing a cyclist on the street are vastly greater than a cyclist killing a pedestrian on the sidewalk.
Tough.
After having had one broken wrist and one sprained ankle in separate accidents, the first when a courier passing a bus swerved to avoid the people crossing the street in front of me and hit me instead and the second when an idiot decided not to slow down when going past a bunch of storefronts whose doorways had nonexistent visibility, my degree of caring about the safety of cyclists has dropped to something like "give people cash awards for hitting them with bats".
I'm still young enough to heal. My mother, who was behind me the second time I was hit, has severe osteoporosis and isn't.
I confess that I ride the wrong way down this block of Cedar Street, and find it a reasonably safe way to avoid nearby streets with heavier traffic. BUT, I ignore the bike path and enter the street near the center where I can see down the length of the block. I ride down the block being alert to traffic entering from the other end, knowing that I must be prepared to yield to oncoming traffic on this one way street. I know cycling the wrong way against traffic is generally a bad idea, do so only in very unusual circumstances, and know I must take responsibility if something goes wrong.
The bike lane has cyclists entering the street from a blind spot where they cannot see and assess oncoming one-way traffic, creates a false sense of security for novice cyclists, and gives an official sanction to cycling the wrong way on the street. Dumb.
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Heads in the Sand
Ha ha, I like that Dutch lane, a foot (or less) wide and right next to a canal. It really places a premium on good balance!
Posted by Peter | May 2, 2008 12:06 PM