personal safety & signed bike routes in residential neighbourhoods

[Eden]

I can't agree that the Second Ave bike lane in Seattle is an example of a good road treatment… granted 2nd Ave has *always* been bad if you were foolish enough to use the "facilities" put there, but the best option, as tempting as it is to pass by all of the traffic, is still to take a lane- the middle of it. Downtown especially, it is easy, super easy to move as quickly as any of the traffic. Lane control puts you in a position where you are visible and you have room to react.

The old configuration, I'll admit, was suicidal. It was a single direction left hand bike lane next to parked cars (2nd Ave is one way) that put cyclists at severe risk because no one was expecting cyclists to be passing them on the left, and passing is what they were usually doing as downtown traffic is normally quite slow. Problems arose when left turning motorists would turn across the path of cyclists proceeding straight. Problems arose with people exiting parking garages. Few people pulling away from the curb parking on the left ever expected fast moving cyclists to be approaching them from behind *and* because the driver ends up on the far side when parked on the left hand of a one way street their field of view can be severely limited - just what they can see in their right hand wing mirror and of course there was the door zone… It had an accident rate of about 1 person per month. It needed to be ground from the pavement.

Unfortunately the new treatment is really not much better. It is still on the left… now it is bi-directional and the parking has now been moved to the right of the "protected lane" The only good thing about it is that at very least users are no longer subject to the door zone or parked cars pulling out from the curb, which they were in the old configuration. There is probably some signalization to try to prevent conflicts at left turn intersections, but now motorists not only have to be aware of cyclists coming up from behind on their left, they also have to be aware of cyclists moving against the flow of traffic on the left too!… and not all turns are made at intersections, nor do all motorists follow the new signals - there has been a big problem with people still making lefts on red (which you can do from a one way street onto a one way street if it is not signed "no turn on red"). There have been more than a few cyclists hit while using this new "safe" lane - often from motorists turning into or exiting parking garages because visibility is poor. It's almost ironic… September with much cheers and lauding the new lane opens. October… the new *safer* lane is already undergoing reconfigurations because of a rash of accidents. So much for one a month and the illusion of safety.