This design is designed for the 1% of the time when there are lots and lots of pedestrians, and ignores the 100% of the time when people want to cycle on the street.

6th street is a very convenient east/west throughway; I really had hopes I could bike it safely with protected lanes.

https://www.businessinsider.com/bike-la … ets-2024-3

Please let us know how it turns out.

"New York officials are unveiled a plan today to install ten miles of bike lanes throughout the city.  That story again: New York officials are adding ten more miles of sometimes car lanes." (with a graphic showing a taxi occupying the bike lane)

I floated the idea to the City about 30 years ago to somehow deputize citizens to be able to ticket cars illegally parked in bike lanes, but it was a non-starter.

Oddly enough, the city *did* (and still does?) this for people parking in handicapped spots, basically deputizing citizens to issue tickets.

For the proposed (and not yet approved if I understand correctly) bike lane parking bounty, it sounds like a citizen will make a report, and then the city will send out somebody (a city employee) to check and if a violation is found, issue a ticket, and if/when that ticket is paid, *then* the citizen might get paid, if everything works out.

I suspect that they won't issue tickets just based on a picture -- it'll require a city employee to see the violation -- and that they definitely won't let citizens issue tickets on their own.  (They could if they did the training and background check like the existing handicapped parking system, but to add a bounty to that?  That would create an unacceptable conflict of interest.)

Stassney was good to ride on in the pre-bike-lane-era.  Bike lanes didn't hurt.  Might have helped.  The pylons and barriers as configured, IMO, have made it worse than it ever was. 

Watch the confused behavior of motorists on that stretch.  They pull out across the lane and stop before making turns right or left on to Stassney. The pylons and bumpers prevent drivers from doing as they should and safely merging to the curb before making right turns from Stassney to side streets or curb cuts to parking lots.  The pylons leave following cyclists in the driver's blind spot--praying, I suppose, that the driver will signal the turn.  As flatau put it, above, "A fundamental design guideline for bicycle facilities is to not require drivers to do anything different."

On Saturday, the Stassney "protection" pylons operated as predicted.  I came up on a large number of branches in the bike lane that had been felled by the recent winds, well-hidden in the shade of the remaining branches above, so there was little warning about the problem ahead.  Had the pylons not been there, I easily could have checked over my shoulder for overtaking traffic, and safely gone left around the branches.  With the pylons, my only option was to brake hard and make complicated maneuvers through and around them--the pylons made a simple situation pretty dangerous.  A "person who rides bikes" cannot watch out for pylons ahead and watch out for traffic behind at the same time.   

And a kicker--now I see a lot more "salmon" riding-- people contraflow in those lanes.  It seems the pylons send a message to a significant number of people that the rules of the road don't apply there.

Branches, glass, dogs on long leashes, motorists pulling out across the lane or turning across the lane, pedestrians crossing the lane, joggers in the lane, "salmon" riders--all of these hazards require a "person who rides bikes" to have more skill and more situational awareness to handle the "protected" bike lane than they would without the "protection."

(edited to add:  it hasn't been a problem for me because of my usual routes, but the pylons and bumpers are a real problem for a cyclist who wants to make a left anywhere along the stretch)

(edited to add:  The pylons are a problem for those westbound motorists wanting to turn right into the DQ parking lot--evidenced by my nearly being right-hooked on Nov. 11--An F-250 driver (not signalling) barely noticed me at the last instant because he was having trouble looking behind into the bike lane and looking ahead to avoid the pylons.  Had I not anticipated the problem, it could have turned out badly.  What else would you expect by forcing right-turning traffic to cross the path of forward-moving traffic in the driver's rear blind spot?  The "protected" bike lane requires expert skills from riders. )

https://www.dispatch.com/news/20180429/ … ated-lanes  Article in THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH newspaper

http://www.carlesscolumbus.com/2018/05/ … lanes.html  "Carless Columbus" blogger who thinks the city is "learning from its mistakes."  (seems to me that it could've adequately learned from mistakes made elsewhere decades ago instead)