Do you know the percentage of the $600 billion/year federal transportation budget spent on bicycling infrastructure improvement/maintenance? I calculate it at .004%. Considering their are 1/3 as many cyclists as motorists, this 4:10000 ratio is ridiculously unbalanced. Ultimately, you won’t see many cars anyway. Who on minimum wage or unemployed during this recession will be able to afford the average $7500/year total expense motoring represents?

I just attended latest RI TAC meeting. Of incoming federal TIP dollars, 50% pays for debt interest. By 2015, 100% will go strictly to debt maintenance. Automotive roadbuilding is therefore not sustainable. There’s already talk of abandoning highways rather than maintaining or plowing. Most of RIDOT’s personnel have already been diverted to dealing with bridges, many of which are ready to collapse because of unfortunate lapses in washing and upkeep. All bicycling improvements not already earmarked for 2008 have been postponed indefinitely.

So, stripes on Blackstone Blvd is just a silly diversion compared to magnitude of state’s problems.

http://www.danenet.org/bcp2006/bike_lanes.html

————-

From *Ryan Conrad*

[Don Rogers wrote]
> - In general, in the event of motorist-cyclist crash where the
> motorist is clearly at fault, is it more likely that criminal law
> enforcement will prosecute the motorist if the rider was using a bike
> lane as opposed to a similar crash on a similar road without bike
> lanes?

You can’t be serious, bike lanes improving the legal status of cyclists? Even in states w/o mandatory bike lane laws, bike lanes can at least strengthen the side-of-the-road law. Watch out for legislation that may get passed to make bike lanes mandatory after a network of them gets installed.

Consider Oregon’s legal baited trap with regards to bike lanes: bike lanes are only required if they are deemed safe after review by a means of a public hearing. In other words, if you’re riding on a road with a bike lane in DT Portland (almost always a DZBL) and choose not to use that bike lane because it’s dangerous, you can still get pulled over by a cop for
failure to use a bike lane. You can fight the ticket, but it’s up to the public hearing to determine if in fact the bike lane was safe to ride in. The jury is usually comprised of non-cyclists, so it’s unlikely they’ll empathize with you.

Consider another scenario: you’re riding in one of Portland’s deadly “blue bike lanes” that takes you through extremely dangerous conflicts with turning motor traffic. You get hit (and survive) and proceed to sue the city for installing a dangerous mandatory traffic control device. The state and city can just as easily say the use of the facility was voluntary (they would never admit to installing a dangerous mandatory facility, no jurisdiction will
willingly allow itself to be sued), so you recover no damages.

Oh, and Oregon’s law requiring motorist’s to yield to cyclists in a bike lane is rarely enforced (is a very strange requirement for motorists, basically elevates bike lanes to the status of crosswalks), so there’s no point in relying on that either. I think PPD is just as confused (or just prejudice against cyclists) by that law as are motorists. It’s a band-aid law with no basis in traffic engineering, so in many cases the yielding action is very
difficult or humanly impossible for a motorist to perform.

Although Oregon is somewhat unique with it’s complicated bike laws, it is easy to see that bike lanes are not and never were intended to protect cyclists’ safety or legal standing. They force a cyclist into a catch-22 dilemma with no legal protection whatsoever, all for the convenience of motorists. That’s “bicycle friendliness” I guess. I personally choose to avoid dangerous bike lanes and risk ticketing, since legal protection does not exist anyways. It’s sad how the safest, most efficient form of riding is illegal, but that’s life.

-Ryan
Portland, OR

Here’s [John Forester]’s take on it from http://www.danenet.org/bcp2006/bike_lanes.html:

–

6) Bike lanes help define liability in case of an accident.

“I see no circumstances in which this definition would aid a cyclist.
In the one case in which it might be relevant, the motorist who comes up
behind a lawful cyclist and hits him, the motorist is at fault
regardless of whether or not there was a bike lane.

If the road surface is defective and causes an accident to a cyclist,
the road authority is liable, regardless of whether or not that
particular portion of the road surface is part of a bike lane.

Consider motorist intrusion into a bike lane. Everybody knows that
motorists have to use bike lanes; on streets with bike lanes, they can’t
get out of their own driveways without using the bike lane. If a
motorist exits a driveway without yielding the right of way and hits a
cyclist, it makes no difference whether or nor a bike lane exists. If a
motorist makes a turn without yielding, and thereby hits a lawful
cyclist, it makes no difference whether or not a bike lane was present.
Because everybody understands this situation, in case of dispute both
judges and juries will follow the law.

However, this is not true for cyclists who are to the left of a bike-
lane stripe. Consider the cyclist who is setting up for a left-hand turn
at the next intersection and has left the bike lane. A motorist exits a
driveway from the cyclist’s left and makes a left turn, hitting the
cyclist. The cyclist has severe injuries and can’t talk for a time. The
accident report will list the cyclist as at fault for not being in the
bike lane, in violation of 21208 (California Vehicle Code number). The
motorists’ attorney argues, with specious accuracy, that had the cyclist
been in the bike lane where he belonged, his client would never have hit
him. If the cyclist can’t talk, or can’t remember the accident (a
regrettably frequent event), in a legal sense he is done for. Even if he
can explain that he intended to turn left, he is open to the argument
that he put himself in danger by leaving the bike lane unnecessarily
early. Motorists never have to make similar arguments; cyclists have to
make such arguments because, in the context of American motoring
society, the bike-lane laws were advocated, written and enacted by
motorists to make cyclists do just that.

Words that appear to express the fair notion that the roadway is
fairly divided between motorists and cyclists were actually intended,
and in fact are used as, methods of discriminating against cyclists.”

I use the Blvd quite regularly. There is more of a danger to cyclists avoiding the runners on the shoulder in the parking lane than of cars. And taking away the option to do paceline type training on the left hand shoulder would be a great loss of a resource in the city.

Adding a bike lane would be a waste.

Install a bunch of 25mph speed bumps with the money.

Add extra law enforcement on the path.

Do ANYTHING to slow the cars down. The only problem are the drivers who insist on using that road at 40+ MPH. Cars going 25-30 mph are generally much safer for cyclists than those going 40.

One lane of traffic will not significantly slow the majority of traffic unless you have enough ‘pace car’ type drivers. I do actually make it a point when traveling in a car on the Henderson bridge or the Blackstone BLVD to go the posted speed limit. And am absolutely amazed at the antics and the speeds of those flying past in an aggressive and dangerous manner.

Adding a bike lane to the blackstone blvd would be a blow to the cycling community. Put a bike path down the center, or allow cyclists to ride on the ‘running’ path at slow speeds and you would then have a nice solution for everyone from the slow recreational cyclist to those who commute or ride a bit faster.

I haven’t read much on this topic or really considered it before today, but my initial thoughts are:

1. It’s unlikely that there are detailed statistics on this topic from any source - there’s barely anything useful out there on more general bike transportation, and this is a pretty specialized question.

2. If there *is* any positive effect, then there is a sharp negative corollary. That is, if a rider has legitimate reason to ride outside the bike lane on a road that has one, due to pavement or traffic conditions or other valid reasons, and then they are struck by a motor vehicle, there is surely a significant weakening of their defense position in legal proceedings.

3. Personally, I think no force, including boundaries of paint, can stem the tide of the motor-centric bias in our country, in law enforcement and otherwise. I’ve read quite a bit on this topic, much of it from the knowledgeable and well-spoken attorney Bob Mionske (see his book Bicycling and the Law), and it seems a pretty impenetrable force.

That said, I sent out a feeler question to the Chainguard discussion list, which is full of articulate folks who have strong, sometimes conflicting, opinions about the best means of supporting cycling as Just Another Mode of Transportation. I’ve quoted *all* of their comments to date in full below. Most of them are of similar opinions as my initial thoughts above.

One nugget I’d like to point out specifically that strongly informs the abstract side of Mark’s question is a lengthy Velonews post from Bob Mionske about the ubiquity of law enforcement and media bias against cyclists. You can read it here:

http://www.velonews.com/article/13637

At the very least, check that out for some really thought-provoking commentary.

Here is the summation of the comments from the Chainguard list:

—— Forwarded Message
Subject: Fwd: [CG] Do bike lanes give a stronger legal posture to cyclists?

From: *Don Rogers*
To: chainguard@yahoogroups.com

I’m currently involved in a discussion centered around the addition of
bike lanes to a local residential boulevard that is already excellent
for all traffic including cyclists. My question is not about the
appropriateness of bike lanes, but one of the participants in the
discussion has asked an interesting question. It is informed by a
variety of recent events here in southeast New England in which
cyclists were injured or killed by inattentive motorists (text
messaging, using cell phones, etc.) and the fact that local law
enforcement has been extremely soft on the motorists. That is, no
criminal charges (i.e., criminal negligence, etc.) were filed in any
of the cases. Here’s the question:

- In general, in the event of motorist-cyclist crash where the
motorist is clearly at fault, is it more likely that criminal law
enforcement will prosecute the motorist if the rider was using a bike
lane as opposed to a similar crash on a similar road without bike
lanes?

I appreciate any information related to this question; it’s an interesting
one.

Thanks,

Don Rogers

———-

From: *Michael Poplawski*

Sure, if the collision occurs with cyclist and motorist travelling in
the same direction.

Unfortunately, the vast majority of collisions are due to turning and
are from the side and/or head on.

Bicycle lanes will put cyclists in worse positions to be seen and for
their maneuverability at intersections.

The result is that cyclists will get more opportunities to argue their
legal position to your law enforcement system which has a poor record
in dealing with cyclist/motorist collisions.
–
Michael Poplawski
Victoria, BC Canada

———-

From: *Keri Caffrey*

Here is an article which might give you some ideas on this:
http://www.velonews.com/article/13637

The bias against cyclists won’t be mitigated by infrastructure, and
our culture’s tolerance for motorist negligence won’t either.

Social dysfunctions need to be addressed as such. Attempting to
compensate for them in the built environment is futile.

Keri

———-
From: *Ken O’Brien*

I think the more interesting question is: if a proper-riding
bicyclist, ignoring (as he/she generally should) the
bikelane lateral width and riding within the normal travel,
is hit and injuried by a motorist at fault for the collision -
will the motorist’s punishment be more likely to be insufficient;
will the bicyclist have a harder time getting awarded correct
compensation?

I think when the bad bikelane design is combined with
foolish mandatory bikelane usage, the very likely answer
to this question helps point out why bikelane design should
not be used, and mandatory bikelane usage law should be fought
as a near-primary effort of bicyclist advocates, anywhere such
outrageous law exists.

Ken

———-

From: *Michael Graff*

To be complete, you’d have to ask the converse. What if the cyclist
left the bike lane for one of the spelled-out exceptions (prepare for
a left turn, avoid debris, etc.)? Is that an automatic free pass for
the motorist?

I suspect there are no statistics either way, just anecdotes.

If the goal is to more likely prosecute at-fault motorists, that’s
really an enforcement question, not an engineering question. It’s
something that needs to be enforced on all roads, not just on the
fraction of roads that have bike lanes.

Besides the extensive motor code designed to control momentum of heavy metal being thoughtlessly driven, RI bicyclists must obey an ADDITIONAL 16 laws, which makes it the most over-regulated personal activity in existence. Driving is a privilege. Biking is a RIGHT, the right to be motile, to get to school, places of worship, shops, work. This is a direct result of motoring lobbyists, who want you to drive instead of bike. Nevertheless, bicycling is BY FAR the safest form of transportation (”only” ~700 fatalities/year nationwide 3 sigma vs. billions of trips, in contrast to 44,000 for motoring and ~6,000 for walking, despite what bikeway advocates, cycling clubs, and grumbling activists would lead you to believe.

If you install a Rt 99 for example, you need to bridge Reservoir Rd to Albion somehow without cyclists having to ride AGAINST TRAFFIC ON Rt 146! Where was the bike sense in this actual mess? Next fiasco… Apponaug.

The “turf war” here was already won by automotive lobbyists in blatant illegal defiance of federal and state statutes. Cyclists could contest every instance of road ban and win, yet bureaucrats continue to add lanes without widening roads at the expense of everyone’s safety.

Motorists have no idea that every time they pass too close or force a cyclists off road or, in 150,000 cases each year, actually hit one.. they are absolutely, positively, 100% to blame. They’d have to prove extreme negligence on the part of the cyclist to win their case. Motoring fosters impatience, but that’s just too bad. This is why I motor less than bike each year.

In RI, cyclists have every right to the right 1/3 of the TRAVEL LANE on every road except where specifically banned (interstate highway, mainly). They don’t have to get out of way, go into the shoulder, get on sidewalk (which is illegal), or hurry. The shoulder acts a safety valve into which bikes can stray momentarily just to keep traffic fluid.

Of much higher importance is “connecting the routes” upon which bicycling is encouraged. Cities must not plan signage for short, discontinuous stretches, neighborhood networks, that lead nowhere. What cyclists REALLY need are pass throughs instead of obstacles, like bridge bans, huge malls, industrial sites, long unbroken stretches of highway and railroads, and unspanned brooks and streams. Statewide zoning ordinances must be written to demand bikeway plans in any land development including residential. Otherwise, soon you won’t be able to ride to every point in state without leaving it entirely. You already can’t legally ride from Bristol to Tiverton without reversing course through Fall River, MA. What kind of madness is this?

Bike paths should be left to trail conversions and redreational facilities. Putting in a bike lane just seems to fan the fires of the roadway turf war.