About Bike Lanes...

[gnarwhal]

In my town there is a contraflow bike lane which is only for bikes going towards the oncoming traffic, it's on a one way road going down hill as the cars go uphill. it's got blind corners and parking on it and it's scary as anything.

Unless you can see all round and you're in a specifically marked contraflow lane NEVER ride against the traffic always always ride with it.

[Geonz]

One of the things I learned pretty quickly in this fair town was NOT to assume that traffic planners made bike lanes with bicycle safety in mind. We've got some very new lanes down the middle of the road in a new development that have more design errors than Carter has pills. Gosh, nobody uses the lane, which is a good thing... anybody foolish enough to use 'em would probably not have the wherewithall to sue the folks responsible for putting htem there if something happened...

And of course there are our campus bike paths, famous in picture and story.

Most cyclists around here avoid the routes that have bike paths because drivers do express their indignance when we don't use them - and I can't blame them, really. You can't tell on a driveby unless you're a traffic engineer.

You can write your town council people.

[Bron]

I'm not real familiar with bike lanes - so I'm wondering - if there is a bike lane on one side of the street only - is that for use by cyclists going in both directions or only in the direction of traffic?

Here in neighbouring Germany you cycle in the direction of the traffic unless there is two-way arrow sign under the blue bike-lane sign (bother, can't find a picture). As far as I know, this is the same for all of West Europe. Last week the police here were stopping people who were cycling the wrong way and fining them.

Bron

[CorsairMac]

I have a question; more pretaining to a lack of bike lane then the presence of one;
If the bike lane 'runs out' say in front of a small bridge or some such, and the 'Bicyclists on Roadway' sign is there, I know technically Oregonian cyclists are fully allowed to take to the lane (some suggest even taking the entire lane for safety reasons, so cars don't pass where they wouldn't have room to safely do so, etc)
BUT
how is one expected to do that when on a bike where your max speed can top out around 16-18 mph without honestly getting run over/beaten/abused/etc? I'm asking now because if I get either of my prospective jobs now, I'll be commuting over such a bridge 2x/day, and I don't want to get killed on my way to work, and I don't necessarily trust most local drivers, either.

Most drivers will allow you the time to get over/around whatever and get back into your bike lane. The bike lane I ride to work every morning has been littered with sand traps and debris from the rain we've been getting and I have to ride in the car lane. In the past 4 wks +/- I've only been "buzzed" twice, both times by pickup trucks. All the rest of the cars just let me ride there and pass me when it is safe or just stay behind me until I can move back over. I can't speak for any area but mine but I can say - I've had more experiences with Nice drivers than with lousy ones.........it's just the lousy ones you hear about!

Hmmm - maybe we should start a thread about the Nice Driver Experiences we've had!