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Old August 15th 07, 05:20 PM posted to rec.bicycles.misc,rec.bicycles.soc,rec.bicycles.tech
Bill Z.
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Posts: 1,556
Default Bike lanes in MA, dangerous bike lanes and a possible news story

" writes:

Recently I engaged in a conversation over at ne.transport regarding
some inadequate bike lanes in the Newburyport, MA area. Shortly after
posting my reply, I got an email from a Boston area reporter. I don't
want to copy-paste the exact email in the interest of privacy, but the
gist was basically that she read my post and she's "heard other
cyclists complain of useless/dangerous bike lanes". She wanted to
know if there were any others that stand out as particularly
dangerous, stating that it may make a good news story for them if
so.

This seems like a good chance to try to get some public awareness, so
I figured I'd bounce the concept off of some other cyclists before
replying to her.


We've had a few dangerous lanes, but these were installed many years
before the current design standards were developed. The main issue
was a lane that was too narrow to safely pass a parked car - an
opening door could completely block the lane.

One lane was installed about 10 years ago by mistake (someone messed
up the design) - it put the lane stripe too close to the gutter pan,
and as the pavement deteriorates over time, you end up with a crack
parallel to the direction of travel, so you need enough clearance from
that so that a cyclist can ride in the lane while not getting too
close to the gutter pan. That lane was removed and is now back after
some major road improvements that eliminated the problem. A few
people complained about the bike lane being removed, but removing it
was the only reasonable decision, given the liability risk of having
a substandard design.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB
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