Sharing v. Segregation

[MCL1981]

You would need more real estate and more money. Two things that do not exist. So I see this idea as a great non-starter.

[Mark Blacknell]

@MCL1981 22070 wrote:

You would need more real estate and more money. Two things that do not exist.

That’s not true at all.

[DismalScientist]

I’m not a fan of segregated facilities. Mark correctly noted the theory–segregated facilities encourage drivers to think that cyclists no longer belong on the streets. Even on segregated bike paths, there are still issues with cyclists traveling at different speeds. I’ve noticed on MUPs that cyclists are perfectly able to bollix things up within a pedestrian in sight (passing with no room, etc.). Personally, I generally prefer riding on the streets than on the trails (when the streets offer a reasonable alternative).

IMHO, the segregated facilities in this area are poorly designed and don’t seem to work very well. Drivers make U-turns across the Pennsylvania bike paths. Pedestrians seek shelter in the bike lanes at traffic lights. No one seems to understand bicycle traffic lights. Two way cycletracks on one way streets mean bicyclists are running in the opposite direction of most motorized traffic. This causes conflicts with turning vehicles, especially when drivers don’t look both ways when turning. This is a similar situation to the Custis Trail in Rosslyn. This problem is endemic with parallel bicycle facilities with lots of crossing traffic.

As for bike lanes, these are often obstructed. Obstructions generally don’t bother me, but drivers who won’t let me use the “normal” lane to get around them do. Bike lanes, particularly those incorrectly painted, encourage right hooks. Bike lanes are often in door zones, a danger drivers in the “normal” lane do not understand. Bike lanes can be too close to the curb: see the new ones on Washington Blvd, already filled with gravel.

I would propose more use of sharrows. Call Key Blvd a bike boulevard after putting up some more signs. (I wouldn’t actually restrict driving on it.)

[jrenaut]

I think we need a mix of both. Dismal makes a good case for shared, but there are many people who simply won’t bike without separate, and I want those people comfortable biking, too.

[mstone]

There’s a pretty good segment of the population that, for various reasons, can’t get to where they want to go on a bike if their only option is to ride on a route 50 or a route 29. I consider it fairly selfish to argue against building facilities for those people because it might (only might!) interfere with someone else’s ability to ride there.

[5555624]

@jrenaut 22076 wrote:

I think we need a mix of both. Dismal makes a good case for shared, but there are many people who simply won’t bike without separate, and I want those people comfortable biking, too.

Those people can drive to a MUP and ride. (Yeah, I know, I’m being blunt — sorry.) I know some people like this, people who will not ride on the road — not today, not a year from now. This includes people who will not rid in a bike lane and tell em the sidewalk is safer.

My biggest issue is the same one that Mark and Dismal point out — “segregated facilities encourage drivers to think that cyclists no longer belong on the streets.” Expanding on that, segregated facilities will also not go everywhere, so when you do need to ride on the street, drivers won’t think you belong. Very little of my commute is on a trail and only one block — if I take a side street in the afternoon — is on a street with a bike lane.

A couple of times a week, I do get up to Ballston, so I do get to ride a couple of blocks in the bike lanes on Fairfax Drive and then, on the way home, Walter Reed Drive. I’ve had a driver stop, while I am waiting to make a left off of Walter Reed and tell me that I belong in the bike lane. (I think making a left turn from a bike lane is akin to making a left turn from the right lane.)

The existence of segregated facilities will also limit new riders, because they will think that’s where they belong. We had a new employee start last summer and he wanted to bike to work. His problem was there were no bike lanes or trails the first mile or two and he thought that’s where he was “supposed” to ride.

Personally, I’d like to see a coordinated effort to get cyclists off the sidewalks. (No, not just because I spend a fair amount of time as a pedestrian and have too many close encounters with sidewalk riders.) I think the more bikes that are on the road (and obeying traffic laws) will get more people to realize bikes belong on the road. Too many people — cyclists and drivers — don’t know that.

[DismalScientist]

@mstone 22079 wrote:

There’s a pretty good segment of the population that, for various reasons, can’t get to where they want to go on a bike if their only option is to ride on a route 50 or a route 29. I consider it fairly selfish to argue against building facilities for those people because it might (only might!) interfere with someone else’s ability to ride there.

I can’t think of many areas in the inner suburbs that are not accessible by bikeable streets (except perhaps bridge access) With the lack of through side streets, many areas of Fairfax are a disaster for biking. The arterials likely need to be widened for any bicycle-friendly treatment of the road, but the question is whether to put in bike lanes or call the wider lanes sharrows. Claiming that anti-segregated facility cyclists are against making bike friendly investments is disingenuous.

[KLizotte]

I agree with DismalScientist that a fair amount of the cycling infrastructure is poorly designed but a lot of it is relics from the past or simply repurposed badly (the bike trail running down the length of Independence near the Lincoln Memorial for example).

However, studies here and abroad have consistently shown that cycletracks, well-designed bike lanes, etc. help bring out the indicator species, namely women and older people. The more women you see biking, the more the overall population gets on a bike because of real and perceived safety. And the more bikes there are on the streets, real safety for cyclists goes up.

Yes, in this country drivers get confused if they see cyclists on roads with or without bike lanes and much of that can be remedied via education (for drivers and cyclists). I’m sure that when traffic lights were first installed that drivers disobeyed them too. Our culture is still trying to figure out what cycling infrastructure works and what doesn’t; it doesn’t help that each city seems to be using different signage, norms, colors, etc. Driving behavior has been codified and normalized in our society over many decades so that when someone does break the law, we all recognize it as such. For example, most people don’t recognize a bike box so they don’t know how to act appropriately or how to pass a cyclist at an intersection where there is a bike lane (I only learned this fairly recently). The Penn Ave cycletrack is problematic because it is legal to make a U-turn mid-block unless explicitly prohibited from doing so; this is the norm most anywhere you go. Unless we paint the Penn Ave cycletrack and make all of society understand that a vehicle moving into the painted areas is a major no-no, we will always have U-turns on Penn Ave unless they put in physical barriers.

Accidents will always occur between moving objects and in a car <> bike accident, guess who loses, even if you’re on a motorcycle. That is why I’m in favor of segregation in areas where cars are moving fast (at minimum). I also want kids to be able to bike safely without their parents around. I don’t want to breath in exhaust fumes or listen to car noise. There is a reason we have sidewalks – we don’t expect people to walk in the street because of the danger; we even segregate the sidewalks by putting in curbs. Why do we think sitting on a few flimsy pieces of metal and rubber is going to protect us more than pedestrians? Would you walk in some of the roads you bike on? Or conversely in light of the death of the elderly women on the MUP yesterday, why should peds think they are safe from cyclists? There were even injuries associated with a cyclist pile-up at the Crystal Ride on Sunday where the road narrowed. It’s all about risk mitigation.

The reason the Netherlands has built so much segregated cycling infrastructure is because there was such a public outcry over the number of cyclists being killed on the roads; people didn’t like seeing photos of mothers and children dead on the side of roadways. It’s taken over 40 years to get where they are and they are still making improvements every year. There is also an important but subtle change in policy over the years (including in other places like Denmark and Germany) that drivers should be at the bottom of the priority list when it comes to transportation. Their convenience must come after other road users are taken care of.

Ultimately, we need to put cycling on par with other transport modes, including metro, roads, buses, etc. and change the distribution of funding and emphasis. That will only occur if the general public supports and pushes for it.

As a last note, I think sharrows confuse drivers since it seems to imply that cyclists should only be on roads with sharrows. I still can’t figure out what the “End of Sharrows” asphalt signage means on Madison Ave near the Washington Monument. It seems to imply that cyclists are supposed to get out of the road at that point.

[KLizotte]

@5555624 22080 wrote:

I think the more bikes that are on the road (and obeying traffic laws) will get more people to realize bikes belong on the road. Too many people — cyclists and drivers — don’t know that.

As much as I agree that I have as much right to the road as a driver there is no getting around the fact that the driver is far more protected than I by airbags, seatbelt, two tons of metal, and insurance. Irrespective of the laws and how many cyclists are on the road, I will always be the more vulnerable of the two and I want an equivalent amount of safety. In many cases, that can only be provided by segregated facilities. Put another way, do you want your 10 year old daughter taking the lane on Clarendon, by herself, on the way to school? Your 90 year old granddad who has arthritis and bad vision? Going downhill at rush hour? We should be able to build infrastructure that allows these users a safe, convenient way to travel along the same roads as drivers. Just sayin’

[PotomacCyclist]

I wouldn’t mind a limited amount of separate bike trails, but I don’t think it’s likely to see them all over the place. That wouldn’t be practical and it’s unlikely because of space constraints and funding. (We’re not going to see cycletracks on every other block in downtown D.C., for example.)

My pie-in-the-sky dream is that a few separated bike paths get built along major highways that are unsafe for cycling. An actual Bike Beltway would be interesting. So would a bike cycletrack alongside the B-W Parkway. Admittedly, I wouldn’t use these that often, but it would still be cool.

I’d settle for NPS just widening the Mt. Vernon Trail. That would improve conditions a great deal. People could then pass without having to cross the yellow dividing line.

[mstone]

@DismalScientist 22082 wrote:

I can’t think of many areas in the inner suburbs that are not accessible by bikeable streets (except perhaps bridge access) With the lack of through side streets, many areas of Fairfax are a disaster for biking. The arterials likely need to be widened for any bicycle-friendly treatment of the road, but the question is whether to put in bike lanes or call the wider lanes sharrows. Claiming that anti-segregated facility cyclists are against making bike friendly investments is disingenuous.

Putting some paint on the street and claiming that just anyone can ride a bike next to traffic going 50+ MPH is disingenuous.

[MCL1981]

@Mark Blacknell 22071 wrote:

That’s not true at all.

That is the middle of an interstate highway. Not quite the same as local roads through the middle of a neighborhood. Unless you suggest the government imminent domain everyone’s lawn and bulldoze storefronts. The practicality is just not there to double the infrastructure.

[mstone]

@5555624 22080 wrote:

Those people can drive to a MUP and ride. (Yeah, I know, I’m being blunt — sorry.)

That’s not blunt, that’s selfish.

[jrenaut]

@5555624 22080 wrote:

Those people can drive to a MUP and ride. (Yeah, I know, I’m being blunt — sorry.) I know some people like this, people who will not ride on the road — not today, not a year from now. This includes people who will not rid in a bike lane and tell em the sidewalk is safer.

I’m not concerned about recreational cycling – there are plenty of nice places to ride near here that you can drive to (though I’d be happy to see more). My bigger concern is making it so people of all shapes, sizes, ages, genders, races, socioeconomic groups, etc, can and want to use a bike as transportation for things they do every day.

That means the safe bike routes have to start where people live, and go to the places they work or shop or everything else people do every day. I think in some cases, those routes already exist. In some cases, shared facilities like sharrows are all we need. And in some places (50mph highways, for example), segregated facilities are needed.

Education all around helps, too.

[Mark Blacknell]

@MCL1981 22092 wrote:

That is the middle of an interstate highway.

Lots of it is outward expansion – we’ve lost parkland and yards to it. The point is that there *is* the money and real estate, when people want it to happen.

@MCL1981 22092 wrote:

Unless you suggest the government imminent domain everyone’s lawn and bulldoze storefronts.

I’m not suggesting the use of eminent domain. There are loads of ways to accomplish reallocation of street space. Arlington’s Wilson & Clarendon Boulevards have been completely transformed in the past decade. I’m 99% sure none of it involved invocation of eminent domain.

@MCL1981 22092 wrote:

The practicality is just not there to double the infrastructure.

I don’t think anyone’s calling for the doubling of infrastructure, in a space or spending sense. But if you think that kind of doubling is impossible, I suggest checking out what the US managed in the last 60 years, wrt road transportation.

~

And thanks, all, for an interesting conversation so far. I look forward to seeing more of it. I just urge folks to talk *to* each other, and not *past* each other. There’s a surprising (for some) amount of diversity among cyclists in our core theories about cycling, and this subject tends to bring them out.

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