Last night I observed a silver Mercedes driving down the L St bike lane. Not the part you pull into for the turn lane, but literally coming from the turn lane on the 16 to 15th St block and continuing down all the way to 14th St in the bike lane before turning left. The driver seemed to see it as an access lane. This of course confused another driver who tried to turn left from two lanes into the road. Thankfully there were no cyclists on it at that point.
So the confusion is still there and I really think the signage isn’t adequate given the plethora of other signs dotting the road. At the beginning of the block they should probably move a plastic bollard in perpendicularly (one would be sufficient) to indicate that this is not a lane. Or consider some sort of new sign that makes it more obvious.
At this point I decided it was interesting to walk up L and observe for a minute or two. The second large problem I observed is one we’re familiar with in intersections already: blocking the box. The difference being that going around the vehicle is fairly hazardous in rush hour times because you either have to go left risking a hook from cars turning left or around the car into traffic which now expects you to be in the bike lane. Compounding matters is that the person blocking the bike lane isn’t looking backward for bicyclists, they’re only looking at the car in front of them knowing that other cars won’t be approaching from their left (UNLESS of course it’s the idiot mercedes driver, which they should worry about).
Anyway, it may be worth taking some photos/video to show to DDOT as an explanation of these problems so they recognize potential simplistic ways to fix it. For instance, riding in I noticed some idiot had parked knocking over one of the bollards and I was tempted to move it half a block to run just a hard perpendicular indicating cars can’t drive down the bike lane. Wish I taken photos last night!
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Yes, that’s me you met on Penn 
