Peter Rosenfeld
Wed, 10 Jul 2002 08:25:38 -0700
> From: John Boyle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > 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. > First, We are talking about a particular type of bike lane: a narrow bike lane build next to parallel parking such that the lane is entirely within the zone where car doors are going to open into. These types of lanes are found in Philadelphia and should be removed or modified. As I explained before, I can think of no other designed traffic facility that, used as intended, allows a momentary mistake by a driver to cause a serious accident. Normal traffic engineering tries to design facilities that minimize such situations. These lanes are the antithesis of normal traffic engineering. >Parallel parking is a danger for cyclists and its quite possible that she would be riding there anyway. > Should facilities be built that institutionalize such dangerous bicycling behaviors just because they might do it anyway? Your argument makes little sense to me. Why in the world would one want to encourage this behavior by putting in a set of stripes that indicate "this is where you should ride?" This is negligent. There is no other word for it. Any knowledgeable bicyclist knows it is too dangerous to bike within the door zone. Those who do it do so , I believe, either because they feel they must to avoid inconveniencing drivers by being in their way or because they are novice bicyclists who are not aware of the danger. Why would you want to encourage these behaviors? Dooring is a major cause of serious accidents on streets with parallel parking when bicyclists ride too close to the doors. A study used by the San Francisco Bike Plan found it to be the single largest category of car/bike accidents (22%) in that city. Studies show that these types of accidents result in injuries that are as serious as in any other car/bike collision. The local statistics for this type of accident will of course vary based on what percentage of the roads have parallel parking and how wide the travel lanes are. I'm sure Center City has a high rate of these accidents. Knowing how common such accidents are, why would you want to encourage them? And as I said before, I and many other experienced bicyclists believe that these "dooring" bike lanes may even increase the probability of dooring as people parking cars next to them know they have a safe buffer from traffic to open their doors into. Even though this is illegal, you certainly don't want to set up a situation where a facility encourages a negative behavior and the only way of preventing an accident is law enforcement. > The evidence that bike lanes are more dangerous vs. no treatment at all is just not there. First, we aren't talking about all bike lanes. We are talking about narrow bike lanes built smack against parked cars. The hazards are obvious. Secondly, putting in bike lanes, in general, when the best you can say is that studies don't seem to show negative safety impacts is a discussion for another time. >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%. > The Valencia Street reference you give has nothing to do with the issue of narrow bike lanes against parked cars. Valencia was made into a bike boulevard by "traffic calming", adding turn lanes, putting in a medium and restriping to convert it from four lanes to two. The added bike lanes are very wide. As far as I know there are no narrow bike lanes next to parallel parking on this street. This has nothing to do with the issue I raised. >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. > As you know, there have been downward trends in traffic fatalities that have nothing to do with bicycle facilities. This can be a dangerous "this, because of that" logical fallacy to be discussed at another time. Again, this has little to do with the issue at hand: a particular type of dangerous facility. You can't justify the safety of one type of facility by saying fatalities in general are down. Dooring accidents are common but luckily not often fatal, as is the situation for most car/bike collisions. One needs to look at an accident database, not at the statistically inconsequential fatalities, to determine what is going on. In Cambridge, they are so aware of the problem of people getting doored in these bike lanes that, as a bizaare solution, when car owners renew their parking permit they are handed stickers that they are suppose to glue to their side mirror that say "watch for bikes". > 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. > "Learn from this crash?" Yes, what you can learn from this crash is that traffic engineering is not a game for amateurs. People get seriously injured and killed due to these errors. Most so-called "bike facilities" are not designed based on traffic engineering principles. Most bike lanes are designed with a flawed model of what causes car/bike accidents. Again, an issue for another time. But a bike lane in the door zone has an obvious design flaw that anybody can understand, regardless of their model of car/bike accidents. Such accidents are entirely predictable and common. Philadelphia's bike facility program has been told so repeatedly in the past by many people who have devoted decades to understanding safe bicycling. I have yet to understand, from your statements, why these narrow lanes against parking were put in. What is their motivation? What possible purpose, other than political, can they serve? -Peter Rosenfeld ---- You are receiving this because you are subscribed to the Bicycle Coalition of the Delaware Valley list named "bike." To subscribe or unsubscribe or for archive information, see <http://www.purple.com/list.html>.