Cars Allowed?
There has been a lot of buzz regarding the new bike lane treatment on the Eastbound side of 2nd street that runs through Naples Island. This could prove to be a successful facility, but in the meantime, I think we need some bold traffic signage for our motorist friends!
These pictures were taken by LB Cyclist Justin McKeever on his way home from work today
I just sent an email to our friendly Mobility Coordinator, Charlie Gandy requesting some traffic signage
I rode through Naples last night in the new fantastic bike lane…YAY!
There was a traffic alert sign at 2nd St. and Bay Shore. I agree that there should be more signs through Naples to help with any confusion since the lane just went in.
Thanks for the traffic alert sign update Jessica.
Is the whole lane really useful? Naples already gets soooo congested with cars. This “BIKE” lane will cause huge problems because it has problems. Too big & not well marked. Cyclists don’t need the same space as a car does… Belmont shore did it better with their sharrow’s. But all there needs to be is a big stripe. Not a whole 12′ lane! PATHETIC!
Agreed! Bike lanes are an inappropriate use of road real estate. Bikes should be fully in a lane of traffic as they are with (or without) Sharrows. The lane is a bike lane when there is a bike, and a normal (aren’t they all?) lane when there is no bike.
I haven’t bicycled this since they put it down — when I last went through, the old paint was gone — but I drove by last night and it looks good, with nice guidance on the east part where you go up the bridge and have to deal with the people coming up the curvy ramp and merging. I’ll see how it works better tomorrow and am looking forward to it.
I think Samuel’s comment shows the need for education that you were talking about. Clearly, he’s not used to seeing a bike lane that’s properly painted to allow bikes to be OUT of the door zone. And also, the idea that it’s just too congested for a bike lane. To me, bike lanes only make sense where it’s congested, in order to encourage people to drive their bikes rather than cars, and decrease that congestion!
My response is directed towards Samuel. I have worked closely with Charlie Gandy and many others to help make Long Beach more bike friendly. As a daily commuter averaging over 200 miles a week, I have to say the lanes are absolutely necessary. If you could put your ignorance aside for two seconds you might be able to comprehend why the lanes are needed. If automobile drivers obeyed the rules of the road and the police properly enforced them then the sharrows and bike lanes would be unnecessary. However cars do not give the needed space and cyclist continue to get injured and killed as a result of reckless drivers. This justifies the implementation for the bike lanes. Not that they needed to be justified to you in the first place.
You managed to get one thing correct. Cars are not the same size as bikes. Good job! The rest of what you wrote I can only assume is on par with the rest of the drivel written at the LB Post.
>Is the whole lane really useful? Naples already gets soooo congested with cars.
Exactly why it’s needed – to give people another viable option rather than just driving. You don’t get rid of car congestion by adding more cars into the mix. That small stretch of Naples also happens to be the main thoroughfare for many of LB’s cyclists trying to get to Seal Beach and Huntington Beach. Or pragmatically, the Sunday farmer’s market. Imagine how LESS congested the streets would be if the people that lived in Belmont Shore felt safe enough to ride their bikes the two miles to the farmer’s market, rather than driving taking up road space, causing congestion and taking up parking.
>This “BIKE” lane will cause huge problems because it has problems. Too big & not well marked.
Well, it’s big enough that you saw it – so atleast it has that going for it. Most bike lanes have real “problems” — being too big is the least of them. Often they are too small and place cyclists right in the path of opening doors. This big “BIKE” lane is actually just the right size and is well placed.
>Cyclists don’t need the same space as a car does… Belmont shore did it better with their sharrow’s. But all there needs to be is a big stripe. Not a whole 12? lane! PATHETIC!
If you have ever ridden a bicycle in traffic with 2000lbs of steel buzzing past your shoulder with inches to spare by someone on their cell phone, I think you would reconsider how much space a bike needs.
If motorists, such as yourself, knew that it was legal for bicycles to ride in the middle of the traffic lane, (any traffic lane), then we wouldn’t need all these special lanes and stripes, would we? But, alas, people don’t know that. Or if they do, they don’t respect that right. THAT – is truly pathetic.
That’s not a bike lane per CVC 21207 which references Section 890.4 of the Streets and Highways Code (C), which in turn references sections 890.6 and 890.8 of the S&HC which require local jurisdictions to follow the state standards, which for lane striping is the CA-MUTCD, which in turn does not allow a parallel set of 6″ wide stripes, since this creates a legal island per CVC 21651. The CA-MUTCD and HDM also require signage and symbols for a bike lane to be standard. Thus this facility in question is non-standard and who knows what is or isn’t allowed. Isn’t that simple! Had the interior stripe simply been left as a shoulder stripe (4″ wide) and the proper symbols added, then the facility would probably still be a legal bike lane. Also note that if the facility is treated as a bike lane then 21717 requires that motorists merge into it to make right turns, and CVC 21209 allows motorists to enter a bike lane to make turns up to 200 feet prior to the turn, so if the motorists in the image are preparing to make right turns, then their behavior would be legal. It does look like motorists interpret the lane as a narrow travel lane; such is the confusion that is created when non-standard facilities are built.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to just use sharrows and maybe some more green paint?
To John-Paul,
To call a league certified instructor ignorant is both disingenuous and tells us more about your character than anything about Dom and his knowledge (and I know from direct experience that he is a very skilled traffic cyclist and a good instructor). Furthermore, your assertions that motorists don’t give bicyclists space is simply an opinion, or maybe I should call it a fear, not supported by data. I’ve cycled this street for many years and shot a lot of video of it and many others like it, and roads much more challenging, which shows that motorists do treat cyclists as drivers when they act as drivers. What your words also tell me is that despite your mileage (and I’ve logged over 100k miles on major arterials so I’ve done decades of 200 mile weeks) you haven’t yet learned to act as a driver or be comfortable doing so. For more on this I direct you to our YouTube Channel, CyclistLorax, which has many videos showing lane control and legal and safe bicycle driver behavior:
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=CyclistLorax#g/u
I suggest you start with “The Rights and Duties of Cyclists” and watch the lane control videos, and if your are interested in seeing how this works on major arterials, watch the “Bicycle Driving on SoCal Arterials” video.
So rather than inuslt those who don’t like mandatory separation (in bike lanes via 21208) which is de-jure segregation, you might ask yourself why traffic skilled cyclists are not thrilled by bike lanes. If you can suspend your hostility for long enough, I ask that you look at a presentation Brian DeSousa, CABO VP and LCI, and I assembled and gave to the Caltrans D7 BAC, the Kentucky Statewide Bicycle Commission, and I’ll be giving the briefing in PA at their state bike conference in march. It shows how to properly support those like you, who prefer separation, while still allwoing those like Dom, who prefer integration, to choose the behavior they wish to use, rather than forcing everyone into one behavior or the other. It’s called “Equitable Planning and Design” and is based on the 6th E concept that I (CABO District 7 director and LCI) created and was adopted by the board of the League of American Bicyclists in their top level policy statement called the Equity Statement.
Here are the links:
Equitable Planning and Design:
http://www.cyclistview.com/equitablepdintro/index.htm
Equity Statement:
http://www.bikeleague.org/images/equity_statement_1-05-09.pdf