Bike Lanes on Streets

Since I've been riding for over fifty years - I started in the late spring of 1954 - I've watched, with interest, how motorists and cyclists interact and coexist. For me, this has intense practical meaning - it is, after all, my own general safety and ease that is at stake here.

One development that has attracted my attention has been the introduction of bike lanes along the side of streets. As long as it is clearly understood that although the lane is the usual spot for a bike, the cyclist is not absolutely restricted to it, but may (and should) move out as intentions differ, such a lane is not a bad thing, in itself.

In our community - Victoria, BC - a number of these have been established, and I've been trying to see if there is a rationale for the successful ones. I think I may have found a couple of factors that make a set of lanes successful.

One - a primary one - is relevance. It must start where people will start riding, or the need for such a lane begins, and go where people who ride are going. A second is continuity - it has to go all the way. Both of these are hard to achieve, when a lane is being established, as such work has budget limits, and so needs to be done over several years. It does require restraint, on the part of the scoffing cyclist, to wait for the rest of the project.

Another criterion is the suitability of the street. here, I'd cite a perfect case match. Blanshard St. is the major thoroughfare into the city from the north. It takes most of the traffic to and from the ferry route over to the mainland of BC, from Swartz Bay. When this road was homologated, in the early 70's (I recall being in Victoria on our honeymoon, in the summer of '72, and parts of it were still being constructed.) it was build 6 lanes wide, with slip lanes for all turns, right and left. Most of the cross-streets were blocked, or diverted. Consequently, all the "blocks" were at least three times the length of others around there. When bike lanes first came onto the public radar here, over a decade ago, Blanshard was the first thoroughfare to be equipped. In this case, fitting the lanes involved a slight narrowing of all lanes, to allow a full 5' of room on the right side, along with some rebuilding of the right-turn slip lanes, to separate them from the bike lane. As such, it has worked wonderfully, forming a major arterial route for cyclists into and out of town.

One cross-route (Finlayson St.) was later established, along a narrow residential street that was getting a lot of through traffic, because it formed a natural cross-connection. Here the work consisted of installing control islands in the middle of the street, to give some left-turn refuges, and putting in parking bays in every block, to keep some on-street parking, while placing a bike lane along the curb. Despite having a nasty little ridge to go over, this is an effective route, for cyclists, as it goes from the area near both the University and the Community College (and a major Mall) to both the Blanshard route, and roads and paths along the harbour (as well as another Mall).

However, its layout illustrates another facet of bike lane planning. In this case, the road was already an important arterial street, but could not be expanded to carry four lanes of traffic. To increase its capacity, while not driving away local residents, on-street parking was banned, except in the new bays. The Left-turn refuge islands made it possible for the (relatively) small amount of turning traffic to be removed form the travel lanes. The bike lane was, as it were, an added bonus, to "absorb" the extra space left when on-street parking was abolished.

This system was also adopted along Fort Street, through a narrow little area that used to be known as "The Dardanelles" (Kinda dates itself, doesn't it - back to 1914-18). The area, between the intersection with Oak Bay Ave/Pandora St., (one and the same) and the head of Yates St. was too narrow for streetcars to meet and pass. When I first moved here, it had four very narrow lanes of traffic, with six intersecting streets, at most of which both right and left turns were permitted. The result was that through traffic was compelled to jink from lane to lane, and back, to proceed - not conducive to smooth traffic flow. The improvement has been to reduce this stretch to one through lane each way, with a dedicated left-turn lane in the centre. What to do with the half-lanes left at the right sides? The improvement was a wide bike lane on each side, almost wide enough to park a car in. This allowed cars turning right to be out of the through flow. The result has been a street that it is comfortable, again, to drive along.
So - from my point of view, bike lanes make sense if they go to and/or from places people wish to be. They have to follow (reasonably) normal traffic patterns. there is (or may be) one further criterion for a workable path - grades. When I first came to Victoria, a route had been established between beacon Hill Park and just north and east of the city boundaries, at Camosun College, near the University. As a concept, for a purely recreational route, it almost made sense. it had, however, several flaws: 1) It failed to go all the way to the University. In fact, that end of the route was at the very crest of a steep hill, involving a right turn into heavy climbing traffic, on a street that allowed no improvement (Lansdowne Ave., in front of Camosun College). The route was neither convenient to exit, nor enter (involving a left turn across those two lanes of heavy climbing traffic, with similar traffic bearing down behind you). 2) Crossings of other arterial streets, like Shelbourne and Bay Streets. were arranged away from traffic signals. This would be a definite deterrent to novice cyclists. 3) The route managed to climb up, and descend, the same side of a hill at least twice, before it managed to cross it, and was directed, between streets, along the one block that had a sharp little nubbin of rock in the middle to climb - in short, too many hills, for not enough result. 4) Finally, in its passage of the edge of the down-town core, along Vancouver St., it was built as an off-street bike way, beside the sidewalk. The result of this was that it became merely an extension of the sidewalk, with all the detriments of that - every driveway is now an uncontrolled intersection, and, because of the pedestrian use, drivers did not look to see cyclists there.
The route was not only useless. In parts, it was positively dangerous - definitely so to one who, like myself, rode his bike as if it were motorised. So - grades are acceptable - land goes up and down, and I must accept that, or give up riding altogether - but there is no need, unless one is on a training regimen, that one seek out and climb every hill - preferably several times - on the way to one's destination. Again, a route that is one cars and trucks use is likely to have as few hills on it as is possible, practically.
Ultimately, the bike lane is just an adjunct - a pleasant one, yes, particularly for those who are not hardened sinners on the road, capable of looking out for their own skins, and comfortable with that - to an already acceptable route. It can serve to get people who wish to ride for more than just pleasure, but need a bit of structural help, out there, so that they can learn to cope with traffic, and make their routes where they need them to be. It is not the best possible solution, and, poorly conceived, it is not even a good solution.
There are other things we need - training and enforcement come to mind - but those are matters for another comment.