Sometime over the last storm ravaged day a bike box got painted at the corner
of State and Johnson, westbound.
I know that the City was planning to install...or at least test...some of
these, but State Street seems kind of a strange choice since it is already a
bike priority street.
Anyway, my first impression was that, unless I worked in the bike/ped field, I
would not know what this was. In part this is because I don't think people
know what bike boxes are...but also, the design on this one is kind of lacking
in my opinion. There are no colored pavement markings, so the underlying old
markings show through and the box doesn't jump out. If I were in a car, it
would not be clear to me that I wasn't supposed to drive over the box.
Honestly, when I first came upon it, I thought it was graffiti (maybe it is).
It brings up a point, which I struggle with in my own work...how do we educate
people about new facilities? Bicyclists, yes, but motorists too. Putting info
on a web page really isn't enough. And obviously, there's no money to run a tv
ad for everything that comes along. All I can think is newspaper ads and
earned media newspaper and tv stories. Other thoughts? A recommendation of the
Platinum Committee was a PR campaign, but I don't know the current status.
Things like bike boxes ought to be part of that kind of thing. Is there a plan
to educate the public about bike boxes? If so how and when?
-Dar
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