[dplasters]

@baiskeli 94003 wrote:

Sooner or later you’re bound to encounter a kitted up kid.

[ATTACH=CONFIG]6568[/ATTACH]

[dplasters]

@cyclingfool 93664 wrote:

It was so hot yesterday I MADE it rain on me. (as in water bottle “rain” through the helmet vents)

If you want to spend $60 for a similar effect, apparently, you can buy this: http://www.spruzzamist.com/

I much prefer the hilarity of this product.

[dplasters]

@Boo Boo 93626 wrote:

Did not beat the rain home. Felt great, though!

It was so hot yesterday I was praying it would rain on me.

[dplasters]

You: Metro bus 2A
Me: The cyclist flagrantly drafting in your massive wake

Lets do that again some time. You make Lee Highway a nicer place to ride.

[dplasters]

I’m genuinely blown away that he doesn’t understand that shoaling has nothing to do with fish and everything to do with sandbars. From the BSNYC article he even freaking links to:

On a busy day, this accumulation results in sort of a shoal of cyclists which juts out into the middle of the street like a sandbar of idiocy.

At that point you just have to write off his article as a stream of clickbait vomit. He doesn’t know anything.

[dplasters]

@Steve O 93452 wrote:

I am bringing this discussion over from the “Found Connections” thread.
=====================

Easy. A driver who doesn’t want to wait for the cyclist will pass the cyclist on the left and then turn right. The wider the road, the more space they have to do this.

Being at the right side of the right turn lane is ambiguous. Are you going straight or turning right? Drivers cannot know this.
If you are in the middle of the right turn lane, it is also ambiguous: are you going straight or turning right? Drivers cannot tell.
There is no recognized hand signal for “straight.”

Blocking cars turning right is good. It’s much more dangerous to not block the right-turning cars, because they may pull alongside you, edge in front and then turn right across your path. I’d rather block them for 3 seconds and make them turn right behind me (which is legally what they should do anyway).

If you are at the left edge of the right lane, you are signaling intent. Although it may still be somewhat ambiguous, you are far more likely to be seen as going straight than either of the other positions. Riding right on the line makes it even clearer that you intend to go straight. Cars can then move around you on either side without creating turning conflicts.

As you clear the intersection your position is perfectly aligned with being at the right side of the continuing straight lane, which is where you want to be. Also, you are farther from the right side of the intersection, giving you more visibility and time to react to cars that may be turning right from the other road into your lane. If you are over in the right-turn lane, those cars, too, may not see you or may not understand your intent to go straight.

Essentially this is what you are doing, but without the painted infrastructure:
[ATTACH=CONFIG]6511[/ATTACH]

I had a hand in this but my approach is – take the right most straight lane. Cars can pass on the left lane. If a car wants to turn right they are able to use the right hand turn lane when it comes up. Someone can always be a jerk pass on the left and then swerve across you no matter what position you put yourself in. But if I’m in the middle/right tire area of the lane I have a lot more room to maneuver to avoid them.

If I see a cyclist in the middle of or on the right hand side of a right turn lane, I fully expect them to turn right, unless they are signaling their intent to get left and merge back into straight traffic. I don’t approach that with any ambiguity.

I think you are speaking to a strategy where there are two lanes and then there is no dedicated right hand turn lane. You simply have the ability to turn right from the right most lane of traffic. The example that you post has a clear right hand turn lane. You being in that lane as a cyclist clearly means (to me) you intend on turning right. Now if that right turn lane didn’t exist and cars had the option of going straight or turning right from the right lane, then I can see what you are going for.

The guy I was riding with would get into every single dedicated right hand turn lane and then ride on the left side of it. I find that odd.

[dplasters]

@MattAune 93441 wrote:

If the road is 2 lanes going straight, and one lane turning right, why would any cyclist want to be at the far left of the right turn only lane? You are just going to have to merge back into the straight lane, and you are now blocking the only lane for right turning cars.

This is my thinking on the topic, but I could be wrong, or my original description was confusing. It was also at 6:20am. I generally get passed by 3-5 cars my whole time on the road. So its not exactly busy. Some mornings I have Lee Highway all to myself. It is always fun to have your own 36′ wide bike path.

I will however break my own arm patting myself on the pack (on topic part of the post). When I started my new job and got access to the locker room I had never seen a single bike on the rack. Yesterday the rack was completely full and someone had to lock their bike up to the railing in the parking deck. I choose to believe I am the sole reason for this. No room for any others. Big found connection to all the people in my office building biking these days. Although I gotta talk to the person who used a bungee cord to “lock”… “secure”? their front wheel… That’s not really doing much.

[dplasters]

@dbb 93267 wrote:

As I was heading into town this morning, I happened upon this gent.

He was pretty stoked about his street strider.

What speed can be obtained by one of these… contraptions? I’m assuming you could ride it in the bike lanes?

[dplasters]

@dasgeh 93251 wrote:

As you get onto the ramp, there’s a sign saying the speed limit is 20mph.

Not that it’s enough signage, but it’s not nothing.

Oooo I missed it. Although it isn’t a speed limit, its a speed advisory sign. Lots of lovely ambiguity in those. Although most people assume they are speed limit signs, but then most people don’t pay attention to the limit on those signs anyway.

But for the sake of everyone involved:

An advisory speed limit is a speed limit that is recommended by a governing body, but is not enforced. Advisory speed limits are often set in areas with many pedestrians, such as in city centres and outside schools, and on difficult stretches of roads, such as on tight corners or through roadworks. While travelling above the advisory speed limit is not an offence, liability for any accidents that occur as a result of traveling above the limit can be placed partially or entirely on the person exceeding the advisory speed limit.

Source (Good Old Wikipedia)

[dplasters]

@Terpfan 93225 wrote:

Approaching curbcut right before Key Bridge where GWMP exit ramp is located, I looked right and no cars there. Right before I enter intersection I check again and a young girl driving a black toyota suv is flying up like she’s merging onto another highway. So I skid-stop and she does as well. Then I decide to go again and she starts to move forward before stopping a few inches from me. She’s lucky I slowed her down as she would have come flying onto the road way too fast hitting traffic. I don’t know sign markage there, but now I’m going to check since she seemed oblivious to the notion she was leaving a limited access highway.

Otherwise beautiful ride in.

I’m always curious about the intersections in that area, so I was bored and went about on streetview. Not defending the driver at all, but there isn’t a single speed limit or recommended speed sign on that ramp and then the whole way into the city on the bridge. That seems like something that should be fixed (assuming streetview isn’t so old it already hasn’t been fixed. Particularly given the blind uphill curve of the ramp.

[dplasters]

Got poured on yesterday afternoon. Again. But I wore super light mesh shoes. So I didn’t have any water to pour out of them. So I got that going for me, which is nice.

My belt drive makes me happy.

[dplasters]

See I’m torn, I have a found connection. I actually rode Fair View Park Dr with another cyclist yesterday. But at every right hand turn lane he would get out of the lane we were in and then ride along the very left edge of the right hand turn lane, then merge back into the lane when the turn lane ended.

So I’m both happy and wildly confused by his riding. Particularly when its a 4 lane road, so you know.. the cars can pass you on your left whenever they would like. Plus the last right hand land takes you onto 495 North. So I’m not really trying to weave in and out of that bad boy.

We clearly need a mixed-feelings connection thread.

[dplasters]

Big rain drops hurt my face at 25 – 30 mph.

Got home and poured a good half cup of water out of each shoe. Nice.

[dplasters]

@dasgeh 92943 wrote:

You’ve pretty much summed up a major debate going on in cycling advocacy for the last… as long as I’ve been paying attention. Both sides have valid points, but I think it boils down to critical mass*: when there aren’t a lot of cyclists on the road, and aren’t a lot of these sorts of protected infrastructure, drivers aren’t going to know how to act around them, so being as much like a car as possible is probably safer. Once there are a lot of cyclists on the road and a lot of these sorts of protected infrastructure, drivers will get used to driving around them safely, and the infrastructure helps protect cyclists against the most egregiously dangerous driver behavior (staring at a phone while driving, and not seeing the cyclist in front of you).

In my opinion, the catch is that we won’t get more people cycling unless we have more protected infrastructure. So you have a little bit of a chicken/egg situation. But, bikeshare has done SO MUCH to get more butts on bikes, so I think we’re getting to the point where protected infrastructure is better in places with lots of cars (there may be other caveats, like few driveways). Sharrows/bike boulevards seem appropriate on neighborhood streets.

*Like how I didn’t turn this into a KIDICAL MASS ARLINGTON advert…

I love the idea of them and complete agree with your philosophy. In my head though that stretch of road does have a few more non traffic lighted intersections/curb cuts than I would love for a cycle track (but I have no better solution and my head is wrong a lot). Out in the boonies of Fairfax it seems like there are curb cuts every 50 feet, but we have the added benefit of generally not having to provide street parking. Thus eliminating the dooring/visibility issue. Huzzah, a future possible benefit of bike lanes on Lee Highway.

I’m going to make passive aggressive references to those lanes since they were suppose to be there.

[dplasters]

I’ve never had the pleasure of riding in/on? something like that. A concern I can imagine is that at small intersections with parking lots or smaller side streets cars will start pulling out into the bike lane to see around the cars that are parked. This could lead to the reason I avoid sidewalks like the plague. Cars that pull out into where cyclists are traveling without looking or caring because all they are looking for are cars.

I have a strange love of sharrows since it keeps me directly where cars are almost always looking.

Having said all that I’m wildly jealous and want one in Fairfax.

[Author]

Posts