30th Street Bikeway Lawsuit Article

[F Lehnerz]



Hi Brian,

I came across your CBS8 article, San Diego official's family takes legal action against city after bike lane crash. 

For one, it’s a good article and video but contains a major flaw - calling it a “bike lane.” 

Your article’s repeated use of the term “bike lane” in this article is technically inaccurate and legally misleading. 

While “bike lane” is a colloquial term used to describe a variety of types of bike infrastructure, there’s an unusual legal definition in California for what constitutes a bike lane. Given all the confusion and controversy surrounding a bicyclist’s rights and duties on California roads, including from and by other bicyclists, this is perhaps pedantic but a necessary point to understand. 

Under California Vehicle Code (CVC)  21208, a “bike lane” refers specifically to a Class II bikeway—a painted lane on the roadway established pursuant to CVC 21207 and built in compliance with design standards in Streets & Highways Code (SHC)  891. 

However, the facility on 30th Street in North Park, often colloquially called a “protected bike lane”, is a Class IV separated bikeway. Class IVs are physically separated from motor traffic by some sort of vertical separation such as plastic bollards, curbs, or parked cars. These were haphazardly created by a different legislative process (AB 1193) with different design standards.

This distinction matters because CVC 21208 only mandates that cyclists use bike lanes under certain conditions if those lanes meet the statutory definition under CVC  21207. 

Since Class IV facilities do not fall under that definition, CVC 21208 doesn’t apply. Cyclists who understand the hazards of “protected” bikeways often don’t use them, instead opting to ride in the general-use traffic lane instead. However this brings up animosity with other road users who do not understand why the cyclist is not using the “bike lane, and may cause confusion with law enforcement or the courts. 

Referring to such a facility as a “bike lane” without clarification obscures the legal and functional differences and may inaccurately suggest that the rider had a legal obligation to be there—when in fact, under California law, they did not.

I do wish you could have found some of San Diego’s long time cycling safety veterans (Jim Baross, Pete Penseyres, Karl Rudnick, Judy Frankel, Keri Caffrey, Serge Issakov, John Eldon to name a few) who are generally skeptical of the safety claims of such designs. 

Caffery wrote an article, How to ruin a buffered bike lane, which discusses issues with San Diego area “protected” bikeways. I also discuss the bigger picture of the entire “protected” debacle in columns in the Denver Gazette and FreeStateColorado. (I’m a former San Diego resident who moved out of state) 

Not only are the installation of “protected” bikeways a controversial story in the San Diego area (see Encinitas/Cardiff, Vista, etc) but they do little to nothing to reduce the risk of the most common types of car-bike crashes- most notably right hooks, left crosses, drive outs, and pull outs. This, of course is also missing from your reporting. 

Thank you, 

Frank Lehnerz 

Sent from my iPhone