F Lehnerz <flehne...@gmail.com>: Jul 30 12:56PM -0700
Hi Folks, I came across the following comment on AzBikeLaw blog (worth the follow, IMO). It’s several years old and the link to the “Staying Safe in Protected Lanes” is now invalid and since it was posted on someone’s Dropbox, it’s not available in the Internet Archive. Google searches turn up empty too. Does anybody happen to have a copy of this article? > The column opens with this; > “One minute, I was cruising down 15th Street in Washington, DC. The next, I was sprawled on the pavement, four cops peering down at me.”… > Annotated article is linked in this CaD!thread. https://azbikelaw.org/cycle-tracks-are-nine-times-safer-than-roads/ Thanks, Frank Sent from my iPhone |
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"Frank J. Lehnerz" <flehne...@gmail.com>: Aug 01 05:45PM -0700
Hi Tricia, I don't see these facilities as really being any different from sidewalk riding except they're the "lipstick on a pig" equivalent with some fancy paint and posts and been given propoganda terms like "protected bike lane." The paint sometimes indicates a hazard area (despite often being green) and sometimes it does not. Here in San Diego we've seen a boom of separated bikeway construction, some of them two-way including on some grades. tThese are so new most are not yet in Streetview. Some intersections have bicycle-specific signals (J-Street and 6th Ave. <https://www.google.com/maps/@32.70944,-117.1557445,3a,75y,138.53h,81.86t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1s2dw4xbvqFHMRAU1x1Mjxcg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192>) (https://youtu.be/LU5hMbisU5o) and some don't (see image at bottom) My best guess for why is the cost and the source of the funding as we have either the City funding them or a local conglomeration called SANDAG who receives their funding from a county-wide sales tax. Either way the bureaucrats stay in their positions, the consultants get paid, and the activist/politicians get their wins. This J-Street two way path has been here since late 2018 or so if I'm remembering correctly and I checked our state's crash database for any bicycle crashes and so far none are found. But I highly suspect it's because crashes in these facilities are not reported as official traffic crashes due to their status of not being on the roadway as defined by the state's vehicle code. Much like the issue of dooring crashes not being considered crashes valid for inclusion in crash databases* this results in a distortion of the actual amount of crashes occurring. J-Street, fortunately only has one driveway, and it's for a large hotel but several intersections. The other separated bikeways in the area have several midblock driveways, and one of my closest calls *ever* while cycling has been with a turning motorist entering a parking garage. Frank *in CA [dooring crashes] actually are counted and compose of between 12-15% of car-bike crashes in large cities like LA, SF, and SD but this fact is largely ignored by the advocacy crowd [image: image] |