bike lanes

The city of L.A. has nearly completed 0.8 miles of new road diet bike lane on Fletcher Drive, extending from San Fernando Road to Eagle Rock Boulevard. The lanes contribute to fairly strong bikeway network in northeast L.A.

New on-street bike lanes separated from auto traffic are nearing completion in Palo Alto and Menlo Park, and a handful of neighboring cities have plans to install them too. Separated bike infrastructure gained traction among local planners after Caltrans approved Class IV Separated Bikeway design standards [PDF] in December 2015. The first protected intersections were built last year in a handful of North American cities.

On Tuesday, Streetsblog followed up on a report from Dan Crosby, a bike commuter who rides the hairball, about how the westbound bike bridge had become almost completely obstructed by the homeless. Streetsblog reached out to several agencies and the mayor about it.

Dan Crosby works in tech and cycles to his job in SoMa, using the bike lanes and bridges along Cesar Chavez. Recently, Crosby brought this situation to the attention of Streetsblog: "There’s now a homeless encampment on the westbound Cesar Chavez bike bridge under the 101. There have often been a couple of tents there, but now there’s at least six tents, and a bunch of people standing around, ironically, a pile of bikes," he wrote in an email to Streetsblog. "Yesterday I had someone exit their tent right in front of me in the very narrow space left for me to pass, and today I had to weave around several people."

A bike lane that appears at an intersection to help guide bicyclists out of the way of turning drivers -- in Washington, D.C., they call this a "pocket lane." David Cranor writes at Greater Greater Washington that the District is looking to add them along streets that don't otherwise have bike lanes, targeting intersections where they might help avoid conflicts. He says:

The city of L.A. Department of Transportation (LADOT) is putting the finishing touches on new bike lanes on Wilshire Boulevard in Westwood. The new bike lanes run 0.7 miles from Selby Avenue to Beverly Glen Boulevard. They extend the existing Wilshire bike lanes that currently run 0.2 miles from Beverly Glen to Comstock Avenue.

The more people bike on the streets, the safer the streets are for everyone who bikes. This phenomenon, originally identified by researcher Peter Jacobsen, is known as "safety in numbers." And that's exactly what American cities are seeing as they add bike infrastructure -- more cyclists and safer cycling -- according to a new report from the National Association of City Transportation Officials [PDF].

When DOT presented plans for a protected bike lane on Sixth Avenue, one point of contention was the design of intersections. How many intersections will get split-phase signals, where cyclists and pedestrians crossing the street get a separate signal phase than turning drivers? And how many will get "mixing zones," where pedestrians and cyclists negotiate the same space as turning drivers simultaneously?

"What do we want? Safe streets! When do we want them? NOW!"