4 lane roads with frequent side streets, businesses, residences & speed limits upwards of 30mph aren't safe for
anyone. They cause accidents, and even for people with SUV airbags, those accidents can be life altering events. I blame no one on a bicycle, motorcycle or e-bike, or even in a car, for avoiding them like the plague they are. Furthermore, the suburban landscape they create is more or less doomed. Charles Marohn's first book "
Strong Towns" describes why- simply put, because of how municipalities like Portland are allowed to levy taxes (based on real estate value and
not maintenance costs) those roads (called "Stroads" by Marohn) and the neighborhoods around them are dead weight. If we were allowed to charge them what it costs to maintain the roads, sewer infrastructure etc in taxes... they never would have been built!
Their continued existence is incompatible with any true vision zero mindset- I have sworn to fight them until the last one has been ripped out.
Nonetheless, the findings this article mentions are frustrating- I do think that edge riding on roads like those that often have sharrows is much more dangerous that taking the lane, and I've considered them a good tool to indicate that, to cyclists & drivers alike. I've always thought of them as a temporary measure, because all "stroads" must go & be put on road diets as soon as they are re-paved, but, since they don't require much investment, potentially worth the cost of the paint. However, if they don't work & everyone just keeps doing what they're doing, there's no point in wasting the money on paint.
If you have to fight for any infrastructure treatment one street at a time you're bound for failure- I believe that's at the root of the problem faced by advocates everywhere- eventually we miss something, burn out, lose an election or move away, and progress stops. They need to become the default, baked into the technical manuals & simply the way streets are re-constructed, in a way that would take years to begin to undo.
Thanks in part to advocacy from members of PBPAC, Portland's
Technical Manual (section 1, page 16) now references the NACTO separated bikeway design guide, and, even better, the
Mass DOT separated bikeway guide- (a resource I believe to be much better for a northern city such as Portland than the NACTO guide, which doesn't really account for snow & has
terrifyingly insufficient daylighting requirements). I think the most pertinent example is
Park Ave- it may meet the NACTO guidelines, but falls short of the Mass DOT ones. I think, if it was maintained and the Mass DOT guidelines were applied, it would be far more popular.
No one person (even executive members such as myself) represent PBPAC unless we're authorized to do so through a direct vote at our monthly meeting, on a specific issue. I would look at our
official letters &
meeting notes to gain a true sense of the organization, not just this google group, however significant it might be structurally.
~Winston