SVBC's own Didrik Hoag was quoted in a Wednesday article in the San Francisco Examiner titled, "Bike lanes are seeing red".
Didrik recalled his own close calls at the corner of Edgewood Road and Scenic Drive. The bright red color being tested will hopefully keep cars out of the bike lane, with cars making a left hand turn onto Scenic Drive. With cars backed up behind a driver making a left turn, many cars decide to pass along the right side, entering the bike lane.
Although New York has recently incorporated a pale green for separated bike lanes and Portland uses blue to highlight their bike boxes, this is the first time a city has used bright red to designate a bike lane. The city will be testing the surface for at least six months to see if it will be durable enough to use at other San Mateo County locations.
In San Jose this week; at the city's Transportation and Environmental Committee meeting, Hans Larsen, the Acting Director of the Department of Transportation stated that they are considering using colored bike lanes in the downtown area. What do you think? Would they help? Let us know.
Comments
Green bike boxes
Portland actually has a mixture of blue and green surfaces, and the bike boxes are green, not blue. Blue surfaces are from an older treatment that mainly dealt with pre-intersection crossing points where right-turning vehicles might cross the bike lane (e.g. where a Right Turn Only lane begins). Newer bike boxes are green and provide a stopping location (box) as well as visual signal that cyclists may be going straight through an intersection where a right turn is permitted (green bike lane treatment). The new SW Broadway cycletrack and SW Oak and SW Stark buffered bike lanes also have some amount of green paint treatment.
doesn't appear to work
i watched a number of cars swing through the bright red section of bike lane along edgewood road & scenic to get around a left-turning vehicle. if the fine for entering the bike lane is singeing enough, maybe motorists will get the hint. but first you have to catch them ...
Other options
"With cars backed up behind a driver making a left turn, many cars decide to pass along the right side, entering the bike lane."
How about changing the traffic signal timing so northbound Edgewood has its own phase? Then there won't be any backup behind left-turners.
Another option is to reconfigure the intersection so that all through traffic has room to pass left-turning traffic. That might require some merging.
Intersection not in Woodside
Edgewood Road and Scenic Drive is in unincorporated San Mateo County near the edge of Redwood City, quite far from Woodside.
Edgewood Road and Scenic Drive
Thanks Bob.