From: rlewis@muskwa.ucs.ualberta.ca (Robert Lewis)
Subject: Re: Bicycle lanes!
Organization: University Of Alberta, Edmonton Canada
Date: Thu, 10 Sep 1992 18:53:30 GMT

pete@aix1.uottawa.ca (Pete Hickey) writes:

[deleted section]

>Good news and bad news for cyclists in the city of Hull Quebec..

From what I can see it is bad news.

>The city of Hull appears to be setting up bicycle lanes on lots of
>the major streets.  For example, on Cite-des-jeunes, they've set
>up about two meter wide lanes on each side of the street.  Was that
>last sentence ambiguous?  Did I mean that they set up two lanes,
>each a meter wide on each side of the street?  Or did they set up a
>single lane two meters wide on each side of the street?  Well, I don't
>know which one it is.

>They've painted messages (`wear your helmet' and `Be visible') on

In other words what they are doing is saying "Be visible" on the street
while making a facility which puts cyclists in a position where they are
not.

>the lanes which are upside-down on the left side message, which 
>indicates that they are bi-directional lanes.  It looks like this:

>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   | Bikes | Bikes |  Cars    ||  Cars    | Bikes | Bikes |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   |   |   |  /|\  |    |     ||   /|\    |   |   |  /|\  |
>   |  \|/  |   |   |    |     ||    |     |   |   |   |   |
>   |       |   |   |   \|/    ||    |     |  \|/  |   |   |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |

>To me this seems weird and unsafe.  I suspect that maybe they
>just told some worker to go out and paint the messages without
>giving instructions.  Maybe I'm wrong, and maybe this is a safe
>way.

As I understand it this is similar to the system set up in New York
City, and abandoned due to the threat of law suits due to the remarkable
increase in cycling accidents they occasioned, and similar to the system
set up in Montreal.  It is unsafe, and runs counter to the 1981 AASHTO 
Guide.  Sorton, A., Walsh, T, and Williams, J. (1990:405) emphasize that:

     Make sure bicycle facilities conform to the 1981 AASHTO
     Guide of other current guidelines.  Failure to meet the 
     guidelines has led to multi- million dollar judgements 
     against agencies. Here are a few important tips from the 
     current AASHTO Guide:

     (1) Don't put two-way bikeways on one side of a street. 
     Such facilities cause serious conflicts at
     intersections and driveways.  Two-way bike lanes use
     has led to a number of fatal head-on collisions.  And
     such facilities encourage wrong-way riding.

It needs to be pointed out that the AASHTO Guide is best understood as a
guide to avoiding law suits.  While, when it finds a facility design is
unsafe you can be sure that it is unsafe, the fact that it recomends
other facitlities simply means that those implementing such facilities
are reasonably safe from law suits brought against them, not that those
facilities actually make things any safer (much less convienient) for
cyclists (they often don't).

>Now, on some other streets (Mount Bleu)  They've done something
>even more weird.  The cars ride in the street as usual, but the
>cyclists ride between the parked cars and the sidewalk.  There is
>about a meter-wide strip.  It looks like this:


>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   | Bikes | parked|  Cars    ||  Cars    | parked| Bikes |
>   |       | cars  |          ||          | cars  |       |
>   |   |   |       |    |     ||   /|\    |       |  /|\  |
>   |  \|/  |       |    |     ||    |     |       |   |   |
>   |       |       |   \|/    ||    |     |       |   |   |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |
>   |       |       |          ||          |       |       |

>This type of scheme seems like it would cause lots of door
>opening injuries since passengers are not used to looking for
>cyclists when opening the doors.  Again, I may be wrong.  Is
>anybody else familiar with these types of bike lanes?

This design is essentially a sidewalk without (in theory) pedestrians
(ha, ha).  Further they state (Sorton, A., Walsh, T, and Williams, J., 
1990:405):

     (2) Don't designate sidewalk bikeways.  These also
     cause serious car-bike conflicts at intersections and
     driveways, as well as conflicts between bicyclists and
     pedestrians.  Eugene, Oregon, and other cities have
     found that sidewalk bikeways have extremely high
     accident rates.

The problems here, besides that of openning car doors, are 1) that 
these bike lanes will be treated by pedestrians as extensions of the
side walk (see the experience of the same in Montreal, you can be sure
that the police will not be handing out jay walking tickets here), 2)
cars turning right or left from paralles streets will not be able to see
cyclists in these lanes (due to parked cars) and cyclists, while they 
will sometimes (depending on what size of vehicles are parked near the
intersections) be able to see cars in parallel lanes will not be able 
to see if they are signalling turns (for the same reason) and so 
will have to stop at all intersections (this will probably become 
required after a few accidents in any case), 3) cars crossing the 
bike lane will be forced to block those lanes, even assuming that 
motor veheicles are required to yeild the right of way (again, 
bikes will end up having to yield to motor vehicles after there are 
a few accidents), after yielding to bicycles in the lane, they will 
need to pull across the lane and stop in order to see if the crossing 
road is clear to cross or turn onto, 4) at bus stops pedestrians will
spill unexpectedly across the bike lane as the exit from the bus, 
5) any other problems which others have seen?

Problems 2 and 3 can be solved if the city is willing to ensure that
there are no driveways intersecting the bicycle lanes and that all
intersections are controlled by lights with seperate phases for motor 
vehicles, bicycles, and pedestrians (though I suppose that pedestrians 
could have a single phase for all crossings), i.e., a phase for motor 
vehicles in one direction, another for those in the other (bicycles 
and pedestrians in both directions being stopped), a phase for bicycles 
in one direction, yet another for those in the other, and yet another 
(or two others) for pedestrians.  As right turns are illegal in Quebec 
(or they were when I was there) this will not have to be changed, where
right turns are legal this will need to be changed.

>P.S.  The real test of the city's acceptance of cyclists will
>come this winter:  Will they plow/maintain these lanes????

Whether they do or don't (they probably won't, see Montreal), the lanes
won't be very good to ride on.  One thing which winter riding, in cold
climates found in cities like Ottawa and Edmonton for example, shows is
that while the snow plows get most of the snow off of the roads the
process of taking it off to the pavement is done by the passing of motor
vehicle traffic, roads which are cleared by snow plows but not by motor
vehicle traffic become ice arenas as the passage of bicycles and
pedestrian only serves to compact the snow into irregular sections of
crusty snow and ice.  While such lanes could be kept clear if the city
would be willing to spend the money to have crews dedicated to getting
the snow off of the lanes before it can be compacted (i.e., within the
first few hours after any snow fall) and to remove any remaining snow
and ice by hand, I seriously doubt such will come to be.

I would say that a lawyer with a good knowledge of personal liablity
matters should have a good time in Hull in the next few years.


Reference

Sorton, A., Walsh, T, and Williams, J. (1990).  "Liability
     aspects of bicycle environments:  bicycle facilities and
     roads", Institute of Transportation Engineers, Compendium of
     Technical Papers, pp. 402-406.
Newsgroups: rec.bicycles.misc