Dangerous bike lanes in D.C

[pfunk12]

I had to drive to work today (ugh). When I commute by car, I drive through Washington, DC to get home. I eventually get on 15th street downtown and drive through Mt. Pleasant to hook up to 16th street. A few years ago, they created a bike lane on a one-way stretch of 15th street - near Meridian Park. But the problem was that they had 2 lanes of traffic merging into one lane (right where the bike lane starts). Yet there were no signs or markings on the road to let you know which lane had to merge. So drivers would gun their engines and speed to get ahead and in front. Even before I started biking, I thought it was a dangerous situation for cyclists. So today I'm driving home (first car commute in a long time) and I notice that they finally painted lines and arrows on that stretch of road informing drivers about the merge. That's good...it's progress! They repainted the bike lane and they added more paintings of cyclists. Again...good. But not only is there a bike lane on the right side, they added a bike lane on the left side. Is it just me or isn't that dangerous?! You have 2 lanes of traffic merging to form one lane and you could potentially have cyclists on both sides of you while you are driving. And maybe I'm more aware now that I am a cyclist but I was imagining myself cycling on that stretch. I noticed that at some point, the bike lane on the left side ends. It just ends. If you're cycling on the left side and the lane ends, you have to merge into traffic. Isn't this dangerous? Who came up with this pattern?!

[Eden]

We have a lot of bad bike lanes out here - lanes that end suddenly, lanes too close to parked cars, confusing markings...

We've also discussed it extensively on a local cycling forum. We've learned that traffic engineers do not generally have to have *any* cycling or pedestrian specific training to graduate.

Someone likely designed that lane thinking it was helping. It sounds like they found out it wasn't working well and tried to cludge together a fix that may have made it worse...

Personally I tend to not like bike lanes. I don't see enough really properly thought out ones and they tend to make motorists think you must travel in them (which is untrue in this state - though not every where). I prefer an unmarked wide lane or shoulder myself.