Chris of life cycle had a rant the other day about idiots in the Gold Coast City Council who keep designing bike lanes which position the cyclist on the left of left-turning traffic
. Chris makes no secret of his opposition to dedicated bike facilities like this, but alas for him I doubt that his local council is paying much attention.
I happily admit to being a fence-sitter on the matter of bike lanes in general, but I'm firmly with Chris when it comes to crap bike lane design: it does more harm than good.
Case in point: Elizabeth Street
I've recently swapped from Swanston St to Elizabeth St in making my north-south progress through the central business district of Melbourne. That is, I've swapped a busy avenue with no marked bike lane, where cyclists jostle for space between trams and parked delivery vans…
…for a wider boulevard that includes a bike lane between parked cars and the traffic flow.
Take a look at these photos and see which you think is more dangerous for cyclists. (Note that the yellow line on the Swanston St photo indicates a dedicated tram lane to the right, not a cycle lane to the left.)
On Swanston St the danger is patently obvious: you have trams clattering up behind you on the right and on your left blokes jumping out of white vans and taxis pulling in and out of the flow.
So Elizabeth St is safer because it has a dedicated bike lane, right?
Totally and completely wrong. A bike lane as narrow as this lulls unsuspecting and inexperienced cyclists into a false sense of security—while forcing them right into the door zone. It is impossible to ride in this bike lane without being in the door zone.
So I don't.
Better off out of it
I have no idea if the incidence of doorings is higher on Swanston St or Elizabeth St, and it's probably not a simple side-by-side comparison anyway. But I do know that in the five years that I've been riding on Swanston I never saw a dooring or even a near miss. (This isn't to say they don't happen: Bicycle Victoria reports that there is a crash every 27,000 trips
past Flinders St Station, most of which are doorings.)
However within days of swapping to Elizabeth St, I've seen evidence of a substantial risk of such collisions in the bike lane there: I was riding along just outside the bike lane when the door of the car adjacent to me was flung open to the full width of the bike lane. If I'd been doing the "right thing" and riding in the bike lane there would have been no time to brake—and I'd be lucky to have been discharged from hospital by now.
Did the driver look first and see an empty bike lane? I think not: the stunned-mullet, "where the f•ck did you come from?" look that he gave me suggested that until his door had swung right back on its hinges I'd been completely invisible to him.
I've got to say, I'm pretty happy with my decision to ignore the bike lane.
Flak?
But do I cop any flak from motorists for this flagrant breach of the road rules? In general, no. Possibly because they can't argue that I'm holding them up, in fact cars in Elizabeth St often hold me up!
Oh, I was honked by one taxi driver, who surged past only to get halted at the next set of lights (where I overtook him and left him behind for good). And I was somewhat bemused and annoyed by the driver who squeezed me out in his rush to get past so that he could brake heavily at the next intersection. (Incidentally, he had no answer when I asked him why he was in so much of a hurry to get to the red light. And I left him behind too.)
But in general, the ride along Elizabeth St is quieter and more pleasant than Swanston. And the risk of being doored is lower too—provided you ride outside the bike lane.
Bush lawyer
Australian Road Rule no. 247 says:
The rider of a bicycle riding on a length of road with a bicycle lane designed for bicycles travelling in the same direction as the rider must ride in the bicycle lane unless it is impracticable to do so.
Listen to your bush lawyer here. I argue that the bike lanes in Elizabeth St (and others like it) are so narrow that they force cyclists to ride in the door zone, therefore:
- they are not
designed for bicycles
, and - it is
impracticable
to require cyclists to ride in them.
So cyclists are not obliged to use them and I'll continue to ride outside those bike lanes with impunity.
Are they listening?
In April 2005, BV reported:
We have been campaigning for a number of years for safe and attractive routes in and through the CBD (rather than petering out at the edge of the city centre).
That's an admirable objective.
Bourke St and Elizabeth St have had 'shoulders' installed to provide a channel for cyclists to use between the parked cars and the travel lane.
But these unsafe 'shoulders' should not be endorsed by Bicycle Victoria and should be removed by Melbourne City Council.
I wonder if anyone will listen to me? Probably about as much as the Gold Coast City Council listens to Chris…
That clarification is duly noted and updated in my introduction to this entry.
It's really a separate discussion, and possibly a topic for another entry, but I think advocacy groups are motivated (at least in part) towards very tangible outcomes: it gives them something to point to (especially when it comes to recruiting new members) and say "look what we've done for cyclists". It's helpful if those tangibles are things that beginning cyclists will find attractive.
As for the "impracticable" defence, I honestly don't expect to be stopped by police for riding outside this particular bike lane, but if I am my opening question will be to politely ask how familiar the officer is with road rule 247…
I would like BV to campaign (and I would join them) for a dotted door line to be painted alongside any of these 'bike lanes', to indicate the new cyclist where it is actually safe to ride. I got doored on St Kilda Road a few years ago, and since then have decided in general that it is unsafe to ride within 1.5m of a parked car, and I am sure all cycling guidelines would agree. Therefore, a bike lane in a door zone is impractical, Mr Bush Lawyer.
Now that's a pretty sound suggestion: if we're going to have bike lanes to make new riders feel safer, let's design them in such a way that they actually encourage safe riding.
Frankly, I shudder ever time I see a rider cruising along in the door zone, and more so when riding on one of those rare bike lanes that are wide enough to keep you clear of most doors.
Closing comments due to excessive spam received on this entry.
I can't imagine why, but there you go…
Comments
I'll just make one minor point of clarification. I'm not necessarily opposed to dedicated "facilities" per se -- even if I've learned to live without them. I do, however, have a problem with poorly designed facilities, as you do. It has been my experience, however, that the vast majority of dedicated facilities are indeed poorly designed, usually without any consultation with the cyclists who are expected to use it.
Until people start listening to experienced cyclists who are out there dealing with these issues day after day (and unfortunately many so-called "advocacy" groups are just as bad as councils in this respect), the situation will not get any better. Consequently, I'll continue relying on the "impracticable" clause in the legislation, but doing so quietly in case someone decides it should be removed.