Saturday, March 31, 2012

Adopt a bike lane designer


Do bike lane designers actually ride bikes?  How about construction workers on road crews?  I think not.

Yesterday morning, as I biked through a languishing road construction project in the dark, I encountered a temporary "uneven pavement" sign in the middle of the bike lane.  Lucky for me, I have a bright headlight and the signboard itself was reflective.  Click on the digitally-brightened photo at left for a better view (snapped from a video).  This nonsense happens all the time.

This is the same section of road where workers routinely set out traffic cones in the bike lane every month.  The crews only work a few days per month, since DOT starts more projects than it can ever finish to mollify whining legislators.  And every month, unknown unheralded cyclists routinely move them out of the bike lane into the grass, where they stand valiantly until the next month.

Earlier this week, the same crews repainted a temporary bike lane on the opposite side of this road where two car lanes merge into one.  The dotted-line bike lane crosses directly across the right lane, which results in cyclists abruptly forcing cars to merge.  No thanks.  It's already a racetrack where cars sprint from a traffic light to beat the other guy to the merge.  Now I'm not cycling anywhere near this mess with cars around.  Here's a [20-second video].  Luckily, our local cycling advocate met with DOT and they promise a fix soon.

Perhaps we should start an "Adopt a bike lane designer" mentoring program...

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