Before we start a battle cry to remove bike lanes, lets remember that Dana Laird was killed by a motorist not paying attention, not from the paint on the road. Parallel parking is a danger for cyclists and its quite possible that she would be riding there anyway. The evidence that bike lanes are more dangerous vs. no treatment at all is just not there. A study of Valencia Street in San Francisco showed that after one year, bike/car crashes increased by 20%, however the number of bike trips on Valencia street increased by 144%. While I do not have statistics for Philadelphia, I do know that we more cyclists and fewer bicycle fatalities than we did in the early 1990's and we have more bike lanes than any major city in the country. Cambridge is going to get sued anyway no matter what they do. If they remove the bike lanes and someone dies they are going to get sued. Bike engineering is an evolving process and we must learn from this crash. John Boyle Pottstown has a interesting mitigation to this problem, they are using reverse angle parking;that is you have to back in to the parking spot, that way when you pull out you have full view of the traffic and the bike lane. You may have heard by now about the tragic death in Cambridge, MA. Dana
Laird, while riding in a bike lane, was doored and fell under a passing bus.
The Cambridge Civic Journal, at http://www.rwinters.com/ , has an article
about the dooring, as well as pictures of the bike lane.
The driver who opened the door has been ticketed for opening a door into
traffic. But I feel, as do many people who have spent a very long time
studying bicycling infrastructures, that a bike lane that is in dooring
distance of parked cars is an accident waiting to happen. It's a horrible
design that encourages people to bicycle in a manner that can result in
serious injury and death. Ms. Laird was apparently experienced at city
riding, but rode within the bike lane. This sort of lane design is what
engineers refer to as a "single point of failure" design. If the driver does
not check before opening his door, there is very little a bicyclist can do to
avoid the door as the event happens too quick and an accident can occur from
this one instantaneous mistake by the driver. If the bicyclist rides outside
the "door zone" this can't occur. And no single action of a driver will
result in hitting the cyclist when the cyclist is not riding in a door zone.
It takes multiple mistakes by the auto driver and often the bicyclist for an
accident to result. Additionally, riding so close to parked cars makes it
difficult for cars crossing the street to see the bicyclist. A bad, bad
design overall.
I also feel that such bike lanes actually increase the probability that the
driver will open the door without looking, as he knows he has a buffer
between his door and auto traffic. That has been my experience in observing
drivers opening their doors. Unfortunately, as far as I know no study has
been done to see if bike lanes make a driver more or less likely to open a
door without looking.
The City of Cambridge and their bicycle facility organization will probably
be liable for this sad event.
Until today, I did not realize that Philadelphia had this design. I normally
ignore bike lanes while riding due to other dangers that they induce. But
today I noticed that the Spring Garden bike lanes are of exactly the same
design as the one in Cambridge that caused the fatality. Properly parked cars
are almost against the inner stripe of the bike lane and car doors open into
the lane. The lane is only about 40 inches wide as measured by my bike
wheelbase. This is about the width of the door of a four-door sedan. I
observed the wider door of a two-door car open almost fully across the lane.
The only safe place to ride in these lanes s slightly to the left of the left
bike lane marking.
I assume there are other lanes in the city like this.
These lanes should be modified or removed immediately before the city is
liable for a similar death.
Sincerely,
Peter Rosenfeld
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