Here’s something that I may not get a lot of agreement on, but I feel is a significant problem – not just in the realm of cycling: People walking with friends or others in a group, and spreading out & taking up too much of a lane – whatever that lane may be.

Hey, group of four, do you have to walk four abreast on the shared use path? Family, do you have to spread out across the hallway? Hey group of three, must you walk three abreast in the ferry unloading walkway? (they seriously need a fast lane in the ferry unloading walkway – must be something about just having taken a boat ride that puts folks in a very relaxed state of mind. It shows in walking speed). And people usually act like you are a jerk if you speak up and say excuse me to get them to scoot aside.

I know, I know, it’s human nature. I guess I’m just plagued with the tendency to consider others.

Does anyone know of a particularly effective bike bell or horn? Seems I can ring the snot out of my bell and most of the time, conversation-engrossed folks will just not wake up.

Thanks

“Of course, shared use trails are nearly everyone’s favorite bike infrastructure.”

I’ve seen way more bike-bike and bike-ped collisions and injuries on shared-use trails than I’ve seen bike or ped collisions on streets, although I mostly ride on streets. The reason is largely that shared use trails designers don’t follow the same engineering principles they would use to design a motor vehicle roadway – I’m talking principles of design, not design standards.

Although a new shared-use trail is supposed to be 12 feet wide, designers bend the rules all the time when it’s inconvenient to meet that rule (i.e. when they might have to spend over 3 or 4% of the cost per lineal foot of path that is spent for roadways. ) Consequently we have trails with narrow widths, inadequate shy distances (clearance from objects next to the traveled way), and so on.

When we design a two-lane roadway, it’s common to put a yellow dashed line down the middle, and illegal to cross it except when safe to do so. No such lines are usually provided, and no such laws prevail in the minds of most trail users. Consequently the separation between opposing traffic streams is far less than we would expect.

Bike riders on a bike path in the middle of their unmarked 6-foot-wide virtual lanes (assuming no one is riding side by side) have a width from their bike centerlines of about 1 foot, so this leaves a bit less than 4 feet between them. Try driving a car so that your car is less than 4 feet from a car going the opposite direction and see how it feels. Except remember, cyclists don’t have airbags, a ton of metal cocooning them, or 4 wheels to eliminate unintentional wobbling. Yes, they do go slower mostly, but not when hills or serious tailwinds are involved. The width of trails usually doesn’t increase when hills result in increased speeds, because trail designers don’t think about it, or because the politicians approving budgets think everybody on a bike is a ten-year-old going eight miles per hour.

Throw in pedestrians, and tragedy is waiting. The death of an 85-year-old woman on the Cedar River Trail in Renton last year (I understand she moved abruptly at right angles to the trail axis while being passed by a bike rider, and was knocked down) led the City of Renton to post 10 mph speed limits thoughout the trail’s length within the city limits. That could have been anybody who died – you fall and smack your head on the pavement, all bets are off.

Sight distance is another corner cut in design of shared use trails. Underpasses of motor vehicle bridges along the Green River Trail in Tukwila and Kent have far less sight distance (distance one can see oncoming traffic) than good engineering practice would dictate. This is common practice – if it costs more, just don’t do it. We would never allow new motor vehicle roadways to be designed in this way.

Of course, trail designers aren’t the only ones who cut corners. The new bike lanes along South 154th Street in Tukwila, built as part of the Sound Transit Light Rail project above the road, are only 4 feet wide where it suited Sound Transit to save some money. The downhill lane weaves away from the motor vehicle roadway in a manner and with radii entirely unsuited to the 35 mph speeds a coasting cyclist can obtain on the downhill – I wouldn’t use it even at 20 mph.

Another negative of multi-use trails is the city transportation departments’ idea that all trail traffic has to STOP for a driveway or a low-traffic neighborhood street. Yes, car drivers can’t see the bikes coming. So, make it a YIELD for bikes, not a stop, so we don’t have to lose all our momentum. Many or most of these crossings can be ridden safely at 12 or 15 miles per hour.

The one good thing is that most trails around here are converted railroad beds, so they have the flat grades underpowered vehicles like bikes deserve for efficient travel. But look at newer trails – there is no commitment whatsoever to making bikes a choice by giving them a flat route. Sound Transit’s Light Rail took over the Rainier Avenue right of way – sorry bikes, no room for lanes for you – so what did the planners do? Routed the bikes up and over Beacon Hill. Some planner had the audacity (better to say mendacity) to suggest at an open house that this would be just as good for bikes. More likely, Sound Transit didn’t want the competition from a lower cost, greener transportation choice.

I’l take a place on the streets with no roots poking through the pavement, no untrimmed tree branches whapping me in the face, no untended blackberry thorns grabbing at my calves, anyday over a multiuse trail full of unpredictable 6 and 60-year-olds with I-pods who ride a bike once or twice a year. Give me a 2-lane road with 17-foot lanes, unmarked with a bike lane, so the occasional motor vehicle curb-huggers will sweep away the glass bits, and the SUV drivers scared to pass don’t get upset because I am in “their lane” instead of “my lane” while going downhill at the speed limit avoiding the glass pitched into the bike lane by oinkers in cars.