It’s time for the weekly Bike News Roundup! First up, you know how the 2nd Ave bike lane is commonly considered the worst bike lane in Seattle? Well, here’s the tweet of the week:
One reader's take on the Second Avenue bike lane story. #seabikes pic.twitter.com/7YAVBqLl2c
— Michael C. Lindblom (@MikeLindblom) June 26, 2013
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Pacific Northwest News
- School Road Safety – English Survey – Have you taken the city’s school road safety survey yet (geared toward current parents and students)
- DPD to Double Required Parking for aPodments | Seattle Transit Blog
- Vancouver’s Bike-Sharing Conundrum (And Three Simple Solutions) | HUSH Magazine – Mentions Seattle’s idea of making helmets a secondary offense for adults (more about that here)
- Winslow (Un)Paves the Way | Crosscut.com – If only they had also included a quality bike lane…
- Racing to catch up with Seattle’s bike culture | Opinion Northwest | Seattle Times – The Seattle Times ed board continues to see the light.
- Victim of high-profile crash: State’s DUI bill doesn’t go far enough | Politics Northwest | Seattle Times – It’s something, but we owe Dan better.
- Sprocketts Recycled Bicycles | Home of the true recycled bicycle – Now open at 21st/Thorndyke.
- Man with cane critically injured in apparent hit-and-run | KOMO News
- Urban Adonia: Does Culture Matter In Urban Design?
- Car Warrior Orcutt: “Sad” When Bikers Die, But What About the Drivers? | Seattle Met – Yeah, what about drivers? They deserve complete streets, too!
- Brent Toderian: Tear Down Those Viaducts, Vancouver – Vancouver, which famously does not have urban freeways, is now considering removal of two road viaducts that are about as close to freeways as they’ve got.
- An update to that Sound Transit bike ad campaign: Now the cat is on a bike, too, Familyride points out:
- Capitol Hill’s first parklet — trading parking for park space — coming in August | CHS Capitol Hill Seattle – A solid trade.
- BikePortland.org » Crater Lake official: Make carfree Rim Drive an annual event – The biggest reason Crater Lake isn’t higher on my list: I hear biking around it is not super fun when it’s packed with cars.
- SDOT Seeks Comments on Aurora BAT Lanes | Seattle Transit Blog
- Commercial Real Estate: Developers capitalize on the rise of cycling’s popularity – Puget Sound Business Journal
- BikePortland.org » 94% of bike riders wait at red lights, study finds
- BikePortland.org » Downtown Portland bike theft reports plummeted 60% last year
- Introducing The Magazine – Bike Hugger
- Bicycle Urbanism Symposium Bits ( #UWBikeUrb ) (with images, tweets) · AndreaLearned · Storify
- Imagine If Seattle Were a City-State | Slog – Perhaps a bit rosy, but seriously. Come on, Washington State, throw us a bone here.
- Hooray!
The Burke-Gilman Trail to be de-bumped @ Google! Soonish. By Quadrant (?) b4 the city takes over upkeep #SEAbikes pic.twitter.com/psRrPcCFVw
— familyride (@familyride) June 24, 2013
- BikePortland.org » Dispatch from Disaster Relief Trials in Seattle
- Two injured critically when van speeds past stop sign | Seattle Times
- Nanny pushes child in stroller to safety before car strikes her | Seattle Times – Wow. She deserves a hell of a raise.
- “Bodies were flying:” Girl watches as little sisters are run over | KATU.com Portland
- Cyclist viciously beaten by skateboarders in downtown Seattle | KOMO News
Halftime show! Here’s a video about US cycling infrastructure, narrated by a dry, unimpressed Dutch person:
National & Global News
- Highway Expansion Encourages More Than Just Driving – NYTimes.com
- US cycling from a Dutch perspective | BICYCLE DUTCH
- The Dutch Prize Their Pedal Power, but a Sea of Bikes Swamps Their Capital – NYTimes.com – What a great problem to have!
- Bicycle Revolutions | Worldwide Cycling Atlas – Things are changing everywhere…
- Bear vs. Bike: Cyclist Hits 300-Pound Black Bear : TreeHugger
- Bike Helmet Legislation In Canada Did Not Reduce Head Injuries | Systemic Failure
- TheWashCycle: In Defense of Sharrows
- Open house held for N Street bikeway project – KLKNTV.com – Lincoln, Nebraska is planning a downtown cycle track.
- 10 Brilliant Pieces of Bike Infrastructure – Sarah Goodyear – The Atlantic Cities
- Bike Law University: Mandatory Use of Separated Facilities | League of American Bicyclists
- Stolen high-end bikes auctioned online even before theft – The Japan Daily Press – Incredible.
- Ban bicycles from our main streets | Editorial | Edmonton Sun – Sigh…
- Andrew Gilligan: Figures show why we must invest in cycle schemes – London Evening Standard
- Sun reporter gets an understanding of cyclists | Toronto Sun – This is great.
- A Helmet That Automatically Steers You to the Nearest Bike-Share Station – John Metcalfe – The Atlantic Cities
- Madrid’s bin men told to wear cycle helmets – Telegraph
Comments
13 responses to “Bike News Roundup: A dragon in the 2nd Ave bike lane”
I noticed those paint marks on the BG trail in front of Google this week and was hoping that’s what it meant. On my commute between Ballard and UW that’s by far the worst-maintained section, so this is really great news.
I know statistically it’s irrelevant, but when they say 94% of bicyclists in Portland “wait at red lights”, they don’t actually mean “wait at red lights until the light turns green”, which would be the normal meaning of that phrase. (An impressive 89% actually do that.)
Boo frickin hoo..
The one and only time I used this bike lane — it sucked and ended up crashing in the curg due to a car that decided to make a left turn in front of me. I’ll never ride in that bike lane again. Besides, the crash, I’ve never had so many potential casualties waiting to happen.
The worst part about the 2nd Ave bike lane is that its very presence seems to lead some drivers to be furious if a cyclist does the only safe (and legal) thing: taking the full adjacent auto lane. I daily choose to do this rather than ride the tight-rope between turning cars and opening doors, and it’s the one place in the city where I consistently have negative interactions with drivers (i.e. honking, yelling out open windows, throwing things at me on one occasion, passing/swerving illegally, and other dangerous or threatening behavior).
Note that I’m generally pacing the flow of traffic when these things happen — the hill allows you to go at a pretty good clip. So the animosity and intentional recklessness some drivers display is difficult for me to understand.
I ride all the way over to the right in the bus lane. Nobody bothers me over there. Of course I’m also turning right down Madison so it makes sense. That bike lane is a death trap.
That’s also my usual strategy, but it doesn’t work well in non-peak times when the bus lane becomes parking :-/
I often move to the right as well, but not all the way into the bus lane. I ran into someone at a SBAB meeting a few years ago who had gotten a ticket for riding in the 2nd ave bus lane. Note that the signs there, unlike other bus lanes in the city, don’t indicate that bikes are OK.
So it becomes another issue for drivers, who think I should move to the right, even though that would be illegal. This type of catch-22 is one of the best arguments for sensible infrastructure downtown: clarifying expectations makes everybody get along better and behave more safely.
This lane sucks. End of Story
It could be the worst, I hope they would come up with plans to make this lane fix, even in a bit.
I think one of the strangest, if not worst, pieces of biking infrastructure to me is the spot just north of the University Bridge, where a nice wide bike lane turns to a green painted bike lane (good, though somewhat scary because of merging vehicles) then suddenly goes away entirely for about 30 feet (bad) before turning into a fairly narrow bike lane again (okay). Crazy. http://goo.gl/maps/WLMyF
I asked SDOT about that back when the lanes opened. They blamed a lack of funds to move the island curb. I would hope it is on some deferred maintenance list somewhere, but probably not. Could be worth bringing back up.
Wow. That Edmonton Sun opinion article seems like something from The Onion.