Letter to Ray LaHood

[Tricia Kovacs]

I wrote to Ray LaHood to ask him to withdraw his support of the NACTO
guide. I got a letter back from Gabe Rousseau who told me that the
AASHTO guide is a guide, not a federal standard like the MUTCD. He said
that the treatments like bike boxes and cycletracks are governed by the
MUTCD. This confuses me because there is less guidance on bicycle
facilities in the MUTCD than the AASHTO guide. He also referred me to
this webpage:
http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/bicycle_pedestrian/guidance/design_guidance/mutcd_bike.cfm
which confuses me even more about what is allowed. It looks to me that
cycletracks are OK because they are not a traffic control device. How
could that be, isn't a bicycle considered traffic? There are no FHWA
experiments in progress on cycletracks. Why wouldn't there be? I wrote
to Gabe for clarification.
Tricia Kovacs
Columbus, Ohio

[Wayne Pein]

The problem is very few people speak Govfuscation.

Wayne

[Tricia Kovacs]

Dear BicycleDriving,
I thought you might be interested in the letter I received from Gabe
Rousseau regarding the AASHTO/MUTCD guides. Has anyone else on this
forum corresponded with FHWA regarding the endorsement of NACTO? Did you
receive any response? Is my letter from Gabe a form letter?
Tricia

[John Forester]

Cycle tracks are not a traffic control devices, but are transportation
facilities for cyclists.

The NACTO designs are the result of allowing bicycle advocates in
certain cities to jump into the highway design standards process. The
AASHTO standards were an attempt to design according to accepted traffic
principles and traffic laws. With the exceptions listed in the FTR and
BL laws, the combination pretty much allowed operation according to the
standard rules of the road. The biggest violation was, of course, having
bike lanes that encouraged incompetent cyclists to overtake on the
right-hand side of right-turning motor traffic. However, NACTO designs
apparently are based on the principle that incompetent cyclists need
painted guidance (or physical guidance in the case of cycle tracks) at
all times, so that the designs often violate standard traffic
engineering principles and rules, without the designers having expressed
any concern over these violations. So the politicians, not having any
traffic expertise themselves, are left with conflicting "standards"
whose conflicts they cannot evaluate.

--
John Forester, MS, PE
Bicycle Transportation Engineer
7585 Church St. Lemon Grove CA 91945-2306
619-644-5481 fore...@johnforester.com
www.johnforester.com

[Eli Damon]

Hi, Tricia. This isn't exactly what you asked for, but I did write to
Ray LaHood a few years ago about general strategies for promoting
bicycle transportation. I also received a pretty lame response from Gabe
Rousseau. You can see it here.

http://cycles.eli-damon.info/2010/03/24/letter-to-secretary-of-transportation-ray-lahood.aspx

Eli