Bicycle boulevards – coming soon to a city near you. Portland, Vancouver and Seattle are creating a designated system of residential streets with low traffic volume and direct routes that prioritize bicycle utility and safety. These boulevards come outfitted with street markings that dominate the road (as opposed to segregated bicycle lanes), right-of-way that allows the free flow of bikes, and signage that creates a comprehensive system.
Check out what Berkeley has already done:
Portland is currently making progress on a campaign to expand their 30 miles of bicycle boulevards. Vancouver has built bikeways that traverse the city. And Seattle’s initial draft Master Bicycle Plan recommends a number of such routes. Bicycle boulevards may give a boost to new riders who are too timid to jump on arterials. They increase safety by putting cyclists in plain view on slower streets, where only 20 percent of bicycle accidents occur.
Dan
I’m a hard-core cyclist and when I went to UW as an older grad student I didn’t have a vehicle, I rode almost everywhere. But I’m hard core, I take the lane when I can, I dress in yellow and black, have lots of lights, a mirror, tell cars what I’m doing, have a healthy fear of cars from riding for years in Sacramento, and can track stand. Not everyone is this way and I guarantee you there will be a lack of connections in spots, forcing riding on busy roads. If you don’t couple this boulevard thing with a strong education and learning-how-to-urban-ride campaign, this won’t work and will lead to dis/malcontent. The Bay Area has lots of real riders (as opposed to people who spent some money on a bike they saw in an ad) and can handle this sort of thing. Disclaimer: Buckley is working on this very thing (we called it Safe Ways when I was there, don’t know what it is now). The street standards in my new town will have safe ways also (street trails is what I’ll call them here).
eldan
Reflexively, I worry about bicycle boulevards leading to cyclists getting harassed more by drivers when they are on the road anywhere else. But then I’ve never lived in a city which has a network like thisI’m just thinking of bitter experience in very bike-unfriendly cities that had a handful of bike lanes and a perception that cyclists shouldn’t be seen off themin somewhere like Vancouver [I’m skipping Berkeley because I feel like it’s a special case] has anything like that been reported?If the system only helps the people who Dan refers to as “real riders” then it’s a bit futile, because we can use the roads as they are, and would benefit more from a load of smaller changes that improve specific black spots. It really has to entice additional cyclists on to the roads to be worthwhile, but if it does make the rest of the streets a more hostile environment it won’t achieve that.
Deric Gruen
Everyone started somewhere. Baby steps: from the recreational path to the bicycle boulevard to the road. I agree this must accompanied by cyclist education, public awareness campaigns, and other initiatives. New riders need to feel the have a place on the road. Advanced cyclists generally ride fast, and would be less inclined to these calmed boulevards. Perhaps there will be some backlash for cyclists on arterials that parallel boulevards, but at least that backlash will be directed at the advanced riders who are accustomed to deal with the occasional errant driver.
dan bertolet
No doubt more bicycle infrastructure like blvds is a good thing, but regarding safety and education, I think we really need to focus the attention where it belongs, and that’s on the car drivers. I’ve been a bike commuter in Seattle for many years, the last two in downtown Seattle, and I know that if I get creamed it’s not going to be because I didn’t use a hand signal. It will happen because a driver is not paying attention, that is, because the driver is not taking responsibility for the fact that he/she is at the controls of a leathal weapon. Pretty much every day I see a car that isn’t bothering to use a turn signal. Where’s the outrage over that? It has become so normal for people to drive around in cars that it’s not surprising that we all tend to forget how dangerous it really is, and especially dangerous to those who happen not to be inside one of those big metal boxes, i.e. peds and bikers. Yes, it’s important for bikers to ride safe, but the reality is bikes aren’t even a blip on the radar screen when it comes to causing injury to others on the urban streets. More driver education and enforcement is what would make me feel safer.
Dan
Thanks, Danny, for pointing out what I left out of my comment. As usual. ;o)I absolutely have the adrenaline going harder than normal when I see a SUV with the driver on the phone. I absolutely think they are going to do something stupid and I take extra caution. Same with certain age demographics: the lowered Acura with the air dam and fat tailpipe, or the 1982 Ford pickup with a shell get extra attention too. Specifically to my point here, why are SUV drivers on the phone? It is our culture. Everyone is bombarded with advertisements that the best thing to do is drive an SUV and have a cell phone. We pretend we are so important that we have to be always connected and have to be somewhere, and so the two go together naturally. And we are told that we are a car culture and we are sold big horsepower to make us happy. I hope education campaigns reach these demographics, I really do. It would make my road time much better. Shorter Dan Comment: there’s more chance of educating bicyclists than 105lb soccer moms driving a 6000lb vehicle that is running late to Trevor’s recital. The spate of letters to the Editor around here complaining about the SUVs upside down on the side of the road and their idiot driving antics make me feel good about my little lunchtime rant, BTW. [/rant]
Matt the Engineer
Strange series of rants for this article.My thoughts:Re. boulevard bikers encountering real roads: I grew up in the suburbs, and knew that I was allowed to ride my bike in certain areas, but to walk my bike across the major roads. My point is that people will regulate themselves, and will have a healthy fear of arterial roads. Education is of course good, but may not be necessary.Re. SUV’s and cell phones: Yes, there are dangerous things in this world. This doesn’t mean we need to keep ourselves in metal cages all the time.
Dan
Re. SUV’s and cell phones: Yes, there are dangerous things in this world. This doesn’t mean we need to keep ourselves in metal cages all the time. Congratulations. You’ve overcome, here, today, the fear of hundreds, if not thousands of would be road cyclists with this simple phrase. Let’s hope you are successful in disseminating these little phrases widely so we can have more people out of metal boxes.
Dan Johnson
It should be known that the Berkeley Bike Boulevards are bullsh##. I admit it’s a good start, but it’s nothing more than paint, total lip service. Berkeley used a half million in federal grant money to put up new signs designating the routes, and stencils on the streets. They rebuilt several curbs. Other than that, nothing is different vs. Berkeley 10 years ago. There is no prioritization for cyclists. A Bike Boulvd. route may have stop signs every block, including some 2-way stops favoring not the Bike Boulevard but the car-heavy cross traffic. Cyclists pay the same fine a driver pays for running a stop sign, even on a BB in a residential neighborhood. Where the BBs cross arterials, cyclists are left to luck that an opening in four lanes of traffic will allow them to scurry across. Since the BBs are residential streets, there is no signal or stop sign at these arterial crossings. Traveling the BBs, a cyclist encounters continuous face-offs with drivers at 4-way stops, in which the driver invariably tries to beat the cyclist off the line instead of honoring the first-arrive, first-to-move code granted to other drivers.I’ve ridden 10 miles a day across Berkeley to my job and back for over a year. I ride the arterials with cars because I can get where I’m going as fast as I can ride, with a minimum of stops. If the BBs actually favored cyclists, I would ride the BBs. The arterials do a better job, because they’re designed to move traffic.I think the Bike Boulevards are a great idea, especially for people just starting to ride around town. If they don’t get killed crossing the arterials, by the good grace of drivers. I just hope Seattle has the resolve that Berkeley lacks, to inconvenience cars by favoring cyclists. Berkeley has stopped short of this. For all its progressive reputation, Berkeley is extremely overrated and surpassed in many ways by the Northwest.