And all those miles of bike lanes Seattle city government crows about? Please. More often than not, what passes for bike infrastructure around here is something like the godawful 12th Avenue bike lane in the picture above.

Thanks, but I’ll just take the lane.

To its credit, the city does have some projects in the works – like the Broadway cycle track – that look intriguing. And they had the good sense to do uphill bike lane / downhill sharrows when repaving the top few blocks of Pine a couple of years back.

The Seattle Bike Blog, in its post on this topic, linked to a recent Canadian study that examined the relative safety and appeal of different places to ride. Graphed out, it’s an interesting data set:

This is pretty consistent with my experience. Note the outlier of the cycle track; one of the most preferred and far and away the safest. Although I rode once on the new cycle track that runs down the center of Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. and it was a bit terrifying, given how the police seem to find it very convenient for passing and U-turns.

And how about major streets with parked cars? This is what most of my commute is like. There’s a preference for having a bike lane, but only a marginal improvement in safety. This is no doubt due to the visibility, “door zone” and reaction time problems that riding in a bike lane alongside parked cars causes.

Finally, check out multiuse paths (like Burke-Gilman). Very high degree of route preference, but also one of the most dangerous places to ride, thanks to high usage and speed/skill differentials between users. Further confirmation that I’m safer on the streets, mingling with traffic.

At least until we connect Seattle in a web of cycle tracks . . .

It’s a horrible thing, and something of an epidemic in the UK.  A study of London cycling deaths found that less-aggressive riders are actually at greater risk of death: Unwilling to take the lane, they will pull up to an intersection at the curb – putting them in position to be crushed when a larger vehicle that can’t see them makes a turn.  I see this riding behavior all the time on my commute, but fortunately Seattle’s infrastructure is not as dense as London’s and there’s usually someplace to escape to.

This video graphically illustrates the danger of hanging in the curbside blind spot (and don’t worry; no cyclists were harmed in the making of the video):

I guess Seattle’s always going to be in a hole compared to DC & Minneapolis when it comes to hilliness.

Having a fair bit of familiarity myself with the ins-and-outs of rating the intangible, I’m impressed with the thought that went into the Bike Score rating methodology.  For instance, check out how bike lanes are dealt with:

Bike lanes are divided into four categories: on-street bike lanes, off-street trails, cycletracks (separated bike lanes), and residential bikeways (a.k.a. bike friendly streets or greenways).

While examining the data, there were variations in how cities reported their infrastructure, especially with regard to residential bikeways. In cities like Vancouver, residential bikeways are bike priority streets with traffic calming, signage, and on-street markings. In some US cities, a residential bikeway might have very little infrastructure. Because of these, we collapsed the four bike path categories into two categories, on-street and off-street.

For a given location, we sum up the length of all nearby bike lanes. We apply a distance decay function to each segment, where no value is given to segments further than 1,000 meters from the origin. We weight off-street lanes 2X as valuable as on-street lanes. This creates a raw value that we normalize to a score between 0 – 100 based on an average of the highest Bike Lane Scores that we sampled.

Obviously there is a wide variation in the quality of bike lanes, and it’s great to see that the Walkscore guys are accounting for the differential between on- and off-street lanes.  However, seeing this recent tragic news out of Portland about a cyclist dying in a right-hook collision while riding in a bike lane, I have to wonder if on-street lanes should count at all – or if they should carry a negative weight.

The problem is that many urban on-street lanes are poorly-designed.  They put riders in the door zone, require swerving around double-parked trucks, dealing with buses crossing the lane mid-block to meet stops, and offer no bail-out options if a clueless pedestrian steps off the curb.  They also reduce visibility while simultaneously raising cyclist complacency that they are safe in “their” lane.

This is why I often don’t ride in bike lanes, preferring to take the whole lane for safety’s sake – and why I find that some of the lanes (like Pine Street downhill – photo above) don’t contribute at all to the “bikeability” of my city.

These streets are also notable for having uncontrolled intersections, many of which have “traffic calming circles” in the center.

(feel the calm?)

So, of course, I almost always take the lane when riding through my neighborhood. In fact, on many streets there’s really no other option unless you like being passed very closely while riding right in the door zone. Which I don’t.

While this doesn’t usually cause much consternation with drivers, I’ve had three occasions this week where I’ve been passed by drivers DESPITE my trying to take the lane (these were on some of the wider streets where two cars can pass abreast). In two of these cases, they passed in the half-block before getting to a “traffic calming” circle, forcing me to practically climb up their asses as they had to slow down to navigate around the circle.

While I still think taking the lane is the safest thing to do in most cases, it sucks when drivers won’t respect it – particularly when they pull off dangerous moves to get around.

And it’s also been a COLD one. 28 degrees this morning, and we had snow over the weekend. In what’s getting into late March. Sheesh.

Still, beats driving any day of the week.

And it was no big deal. I braked, pulled onto the sidewalk, put the chain back and on and was on my way.

But if I’d been a slave to fixie fashion? Without brakes, I would have been absolutely screwed. The only way to stop a brakeless, chainless fixed gear bike going downhill is to lay it down or run into something. Chain derailment may be less common occurrence when riding fixed or single speed than it is with a geared bike, but it can easily happen.

Drivers, you’re welcome.

EB Pine at Boren:

Pine adds a right-turn-only lane at Boren, eliminating the bike lane in the process. A cursory sharrows before the intersection suggests taking the lane in a *shrug* sort of way. So I always take that turn-only lane, but not to turn – it’s just my bike box. And here’s where I’m doing drivers a favor: Pine onto Boren is a very dangerous right turn, because with the hill on Boren there’s almost no visibility of the traffic coming uphill (usually very fast) until it’s practically on top of you. It’s no place for a car to turn right on red.

I used to take the center lane, but I learned that a lot of drivers get confused by the turn lane and try to go straight out of it. Not safe to get jammed in the middle of that.

EB Pine at Broadway:

Another spot where the bike lane disappears, as the block between Harvard and Broadway in front of the Egyptian is taken up with bus stops. I usually have to take the lane on this block anyway to get around the buses, but I’m not content to retreat to the corner once I reach Broadway. The intersection is clogged with pedestrians, and too many cars try to jump the light changes and turn before the peds can step off the curb.

Even more crucially, Pine narrows dangerously on the other side of Broadway. A left turn lane from WB Pine and inexplicable parking spots turn EB Pine into a single narrow lane for half a block before it widens out and the bike lane reappears. There’s no way to get through there without taking the lane, and taking it aggressively. Cars will squeeze by you by inches if you don’t. Not safe.

Those are but two suggestions for places the city could improve cycling safety with a little bit of paint. I’m sure there are plenty more.

Just don’t get facial tattoos. Unless you’re Maori, it’s not a good look.

Anyway, the safety of a predictable route to and from work. When you know your route, you know the dynamics of every intersection, where the buses like to cut you off, where the drunks are likeliest to stumble off the curb, where you need to give the door zone a wide berth.

And, most importantly, where the potholes lurk.

(this is one of the ones I know about)

I failed to observe Rule 5 last night. And it’s dark dark dark these days in Seattle. After taking a one block deviation from my normal path due to some backed-up traffic, I rode right into a tire-swallowing pothole. It could have been ugly, in a tumble-over-the-handlebars kind of way, but somehow I managed to stay upright. Must remember to mind my own rules.

In response, the City of Seattle has painted a green bike lane through the intersection.

While well-intentioned, it’s not likely to make much of a difference. The problem with this intersection – and indeed, this entire stretch of westbound Pine – is the bike lane itself. It shouldn’t be there. There’s too much double-parking, too close of a door zone, too many pedestrians darting out, too many buses diving across the bike lane (and blocking it) to make stops and too many cars making right turns. It’s far safer for cyclists to simply take the lane, or use the bike lane only – and cautiously – to pass backed-up traffic.

Not to beat a dead horse, but I would have rather seen the City do to this intersection what they did to westbound Pine between 14th and 15th: bike lane uphill; sharrows downhill. People on bikes instinctively want to take bike lanes, and drivers expect them to. The city shouldn’t exacerbate this problem by painting lanes in places they don’t belong.

The good news is that we can take matters in our own hands. We’re not required to ride in bike lanes, and shouldn’t ever do so if it compromises safety.

Just ignore this bike “facility” and take the lane.

I take the lane, but it’s THREE BLOCKS. And they’re short blocks. And I ride through there at close to 20 mph. I have no idea why so many of the drivers on this stretch are such asshats.

Sure, it looks peaceful . . .

I could avoid this stretch of Aloha, but the alternate route has less visibility. Plus, this is my neighborhood, for christsakes.