Bike lanes in MA, dangerous bike lanes and a possible news story

wrote:

On Aug 15, 12:26 pm, Dane Buson wrote:

http://www.bikexprt.com/massfacil/ca...one/laird1.htm

Classic bike lane as car-door lane fatality.


"Classic?" Really?

Are you suggesting that people don't ride in the door zone on streets
with no bike lanes?


Of course they do. But they are not lured to ride there, unlike as with
door zone bike lanes, which also may be mandatory to use. And, if not
mandatory by law, motorist coercion compels their use.

Wayne

(Bill Z.) wrote:
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.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
What is a gutter pan?

wrote:
http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

The dippy condescending white paint logo makes it 'desirable', right?
We'd never willingly ride over that crap otherwise. With the logo we're
supposed to persevere and be grateful for the indulgence of the Powers
That Be deigning to give us Our Own Lane with our own tax dollars??
--
Andrew Muzi, who rode on a Bike Path . . . once.
www.yellowjersey.org
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

Just got the latest issue of "American Bicyclist," published by the
League of [same], and it contains a photo of a line of helmeted
cyclists carefully riding single file...in the door zone adjacent to a
line of parked cars.

Nice.

--Karen D.
life member, not ready to resign so I stay out of bike lanes

A Muzi wrote:
(Bill Z.) wrote:
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.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
What is a gutter pan?

wrote:
http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

The dippy condescending white paint logo makes it 'desirable', right?
We'd never willingly ride over that crap otherwise. With the logo
we're supposed to persevere and be grateful for the indulgence of the
Powers That Be deigning to give us Our Own Lane with our own tax
dollars??

JFTR I've never seen a bike lane like that around my area. (I think there
might be a few cases that used to be and have been fixed quite nicely,
however.)

On Aug 15, 7:41 pm, Wayne Pein wrote:

Are you suggesting that people don't ride in the door zone on streets
with no bike lanes?

Of course they do. But they are not lured to ride there, unlike as with
door zone bike lanes, which also may be mandatory to use. And, if not
mandatory by law, motorist coercion compels their use.

Even if one feels compelled to ride in the bike lane, it doesn't mean
you have to ride in the door zone, because some portion of the lane is
outside the DZ. I agree that NO portion of any bike lane should be in
a door zone (and in places like Seattle and Denver new bike lanes are
outside of the doorzones in their entirety). It is not a bike lane
stripe that 'lures' people to ride in the DZ, but ignorance about the
DZ. This is shown by the simple fact that some people ride in the DZ
whether there is a 'door zone bike lane' or not.

If doorings are what concerns you, you should advocate for bike lane
striping that compels riders to remain outside of the DZ (like the
striping of new lanes in Seattle and Denver), rather than leave the
street unstriped and leave unsuspecting novices to their own devices.
So is it really doorings of unsuspecting cyclists that has you
concerned, Wayne?

Robert

John Forrest Tomlinson writes:

On 15 Aug 2007 09:20:11 -0700, (Bill Z.)
wrote:


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.

What is a gutter pan?

The concrete area on the side of some roads that allows rainwater
to run to a drain. The asphalt ends where the cutter pan
starts. We have these in our area. When installed, the connection
is flat and smooth. After a decade or so, weathering causes a gap
between the two, parallel to the direction of travel. It's the sort
of thing that can trap a wheel, if not completely, at least enough to
require a quick correction to get out of it.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

"Bill Sornson" writes:

A Muzi wrote:
(Bill Z.) wrote:
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.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
What is a gutter pan?

wrote:
http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

The dippy condescending white paint logo makes it 'desirable', right?
We'd never willingly ride over that crap otherwise. With the logo
we're supposed to persevere and be grateful for the indulgence of the
Powers That Be deigning to give us Our Own Lane with our own tax
dollars??

JFTR I've never seen a bike lane like that around my area. (I think there
might be a few cases that used to be and have been fixed quite nicely,
however.)

FYI (I thought I pointed this out but it isn't in the quoted text),
the lane I mentioned was removed shortly after the bike lane stripe
was painted, and re-installed after the problem was fixed (either by
cutting back the gutter pan or by restriping the other lanes so the
bike lane could be put in in accordance with state standards.

We have a few very old bike lanes that are a bit two narrow, being
some of the first installed in California, so they went in before the
design standards existed. These are being fixed over time.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

A Muzi writes:

(Bill Z.) wrote:
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.

John Forrest Tomlinson wrote:
What is a gutter pan?

wrote:
http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

The dippy condescending white paint logo makes it 'desirable', right?
We'd never willingly ride over that crap otherwise. With the logo
we're supposed to persevere and be grateful for the indulgence of the
Powers That Be deigning to give us Our Own Lane with our own tax
dollars??

This is fundamentally a silly statment - the picture shows a bike lane
stripe to the left of a gutter pan. From the picture, I can't tell
the width of the asphault in the bike lane - to meet standards, it
should be 3 feet in width or more. The logo is a standard symbol that
is required every so often. It is not to impress bicyclists - drivers
are supposed to stay out of bike lanes unless turning across them
(in which case they must be within 200 feet of their turn before
merging into the lane, yielding to any bicycles already in the lane).
Similarly there are rules governing bicyclists. So the logo is
there so that you don't have guess what kind of lane it is by
being able to tell a 3 inch shoulder stripe from a 5 inch bike lane
stripe (both solid white stripes) reliably.

There is no requirement that the logo has to be totally on the
asphault.

--
My real name backwards: nemuaZ lliB

aka Carl Fogel wrote:
...
http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

A true bicycle farcility (sic).

--
Tom Sherman - Holstein-Friesland Bovinia

--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com

On Aug 15, 7:42 pm, wrote:
On Wed, 15 Aug 2007 19:35:54 -0400, John Forrest Tomlinson

wrote:
On 15 Aug 2007 09:20:11 -0700, (Bill Z.)
wrote:

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.

What is a gutter pan?

Dear John,

http://motorman.org/wp-content/gutterpan_02.jpg

Cheers,

Carl Fog

Only high skilled cyclists can ride on this kind lane.