I am wondering also about the green left turn boxes placed at some intersections (Barton Springs and S. 1st, for example)--they are placed far forward and to the right -- placing a rider exactly where the rider is blocking someone wanting to turn right on red and placing the rider forward of the normal stop line for traffic moving forward.  They strike me as a bad idea, but I don't have any data yet to support my impression.  Plainly the idea is to promote the option of crossing an intersection in the right lane, stopping, and re-orienting in the right lane going the direction 90 degrees different, but the boxes are placed so that right-turning traffic might suddenly find a bicyclist (when not hidden by cars in lanes to the left of the right lane) popping up in front, so that right turning traffic is blocked, and the cyclist is placed further forward than the stop line.  I'm not sure the boxes are encouraging safer behavior.

The south bike box is basically useless. I'm the only cyclist I'm aware of who'll actually use it. Taking the center of the lane at the intersection seems to annoy some drivers who want to turn right. Not that I get to do that so often, given that most drivers stop in the bike box.

  http://www.portlandmercury.com/Blogtown … se-crashes

after a lot of useful commentary there on the particulars of Austin's bike box study, the entry also provides the following broad take:

But with the bike box, government is in the unusual position of promoting actions contrary to its own laws. There is further dissonance in that — at the Speedway at 38th installation in any case — many if not most of the bicyclists are students at the same institution which employs the researchers who wrote this report.

The attempt is, then, being made by parts of government to overturn its own laws by promotion of roadway facilities which require unlawful operation, and which regard bicyclists no longer as vehicle operators, but instead as helpless and defenseless — capable only of following a designated route on the roadway, and of obeying traffic signals. Correspondingly, motorists are being asked to look out for bicyclists who are operating in ways contrary to the standard expectations of operation on the roadway according to the traffic law, and in some cases motorists are being asked to perform impossible tasks.

Bicycling advocacy of this type may also be seen as an attempt at a fait accompli, where the laws no longer can function given what has been installed, and as an attempt to build a constituency for a different paradigm by increasing the bicycle mode share.

The students at the University of Texas are young adults. They all are familiar with the rules of the road from riding in motor vehicles, and most hold driver’s license. On the other hand, without an educational effort, this knowledge does not transfer to their bicycling; typically, college students are either edge riders or don’t believe that bicyclists have to follow any rules of the road. They do not see themselves as drivers. Ironically, though, the student would be a captive audience for any serious attempt by the University to educate them in how to ride their bicycles safely.

The paradigm of bicyclists’ overtaking on the right, and of motorists’ having to look back on their right side before turning right, is deeply ingrained in northern Europe. It has existed since motor vehicles were rare, it is ensconced in law, and it is supported by strict motorist licensing and enforcement. Bike boxes are more recent in Europe, but they are often described as a way to legitimize edge behavior that already occurs with bike lanes: bicyclists’ filtering forward past stopped traffic and overtaking the first motor vehicle waiting at a traffic light. Safety benefits are claimed — in comparison with illegal filtering forward past the stop line when there is no bike box, rather than in comparison with obeying rules of the road for vehicular operation. Bicyclist crash rates in northern European cities are low, but fatal crashes show a predominance of right-hooks in which bicyclists are run over by large trucks, consistent with edge behavior, and with cyclists’ having no concept that they could actively prevent these collisions.

There are historical examples of traffic law paradigm changes. The most dramatic have been the changes from driving on the left to driving on the right in Sweden and Canada. These changes were all undertaken at once, overnight. Changes in law were put in place before those in infrastructure, and bolstered by education campaigns to reach the entire population. What we see instead here is a campaign that chips away at American traffic law and traffic patterns piecemeal, by introducing bits and pieces of European practice in a few places, (only two intersections in Austin), lacking European engineering measures, with no attention to the law and no education campaign, and in a background of motor vehicles’ dominance in the traffic mix. Failure is to be expected.

Aside from this, a paradigm which increases the number of classes of travelers following different sets of rules is bound to increase delay for one class or another, and to promote scofflaw behavior to avoid those delays, unless it has achieved nearly universal acceptance. The results of this study show an adverse outcome, particularly as regards motorists’ behavior. Considering bicyclists as victims, so that everyone except themselves is to look out for their safety, is appropriate for children, but it leads to a culture of arrested development by some, and of scofflaw behavior by others who are impatient with living with the inconvenience of children’s rules.

All in all, the Austin study demonstrates failure from an operational standpoint, but it has very little to say about safety, because no actual data on crashes, or even conflicts, was collected. Some data on conflicts might be retrieved from the video data, but data on crashes would require a much larger study.

Other critiques

There is a critique of the Austin report from Austin cyclist Tim Scarry online; also one by Portland, Maine cyclist John Brooking.
[links provided for each at the blog page]

"The other rationale for a bike box is to encourage more people to ride bicycles by increasing comfort. I find this rationale very scary when the supposedly comfortable facility includes a deathtrap. I call this the “Pied Piper” approach to bicycle planning. It involves some convoluted thinking — bicyclists fear motorists, so, build facilities which appear less scary to the bicyclists.

"A bike box with a pre-green signal interval (red and yellow in European practice) provides a warning for a bicyclist not to overtake and swerve in front of the first motor vehicle waiting at the intersection as the light turns green. He/she can still get stuck waiting for through traffic to clear, and the signal to turn red, then green again, if the intention using the bike box was to prepare a left turn (as with a Vancouver, BC bike box and some in New York City) or to cross to the other side of a one-way street (as with a bike box in Eugene, Oregon).

"Motorists waiting behind a bike box without the pre-green are expected to look for bicyclists in their right rear-view mirror while also scanning the intersection ahead. That increases the likelihood of mistakes in both tasks, but also, the right rear-view mirror doesn’t provide complete coverage of the area where a bicyclist may be, particularly for the driver of a truck or bus with a high cab and a hood. If the motorist doesn’t look into the mirror at the right time, the bicyclist may have passed outside the field of view seen in the mirror. That is the rationale for additional mirrors, beepers, bicyclist-presence actuated flashers etc. that have been proposed to warn motorists of bicyclists overtaking on the right, and warn bicyclists of motorists preparing to turn right — none of which measures have been implemented in practice and all of which are technological solutions, with the attendant problems of implementation rollout and reliability."

1)  Most of motor vehicles respect the "wait here" line on the road.  Note that I said most, not all.

2)  Most of the motor vehicles respect the "no right turn on red" sign.

3)  Most cyclist stay on the right (ie, in the bike lane), but pull up ahead of the cars.

4)  Very few cyclist actually pull into the bike box - ie, pull up ahead of the cars, and over the to left so as to be directly in front of the cars.

5)  If there is no car at the light, I pull up in the center of the bike box.  If there is a car at the light, I rarely pull up into the bike box - I just pull up to the head of the bike lane.  The bike box is too short to pull over the the left and ahead of the cars without some awkwardness.  Before the change, I always merged into traffic as the bike lane ended, putting me where the bike box is if I got to the light before any cars, and interspered with cars otherwise.  I was in the minority of cyclists that did this.

Overall I have mixed feelings about the change.  I like having the bike lane go all the way up instead of ending short of the intersection and the banning of turning right on red.  I don't find the bike box itself very useful due to its short length.  I don't think very many cyclist realize that they are supposed to pull up directly in front of motor vehicles waiting at the light.  I hope the city didn't spend very much money on this project.

I'm a little surprised that right turns on red are allowed at all at bike boxes. As Allan said,
"One scenario where this could cause issues: Say a car gets to an intersection and is going to turn right, but forgets (or chooses not) to use their signal (which happens A LOT, I think we can all agree on that). They turn their head to the left to watch traffic. While their head is to the left, a bike comes up to the right of the car and plans on going straight through the intersection. There is no opening for the car to turn right when the light is red, and then the light turns green, and the car tries to turn while the cyclist goes straight. Collision. This is just one scenario, there are plenty others."

Well, what's to stop that car from looking to the left for a gap and then making that right turn on red? What are the chances they looked back to their right mirror/window for a bike approaching the bike box on their right?

I see the need for the "STOP HERE ON RED" sign but it doesn't seem to me that it does any good without a "NO TURN ON RED" as well? It's kinda like that new pedestrian signal at the Triangle. Are people supposed to stop and then proceed or wait for the signal to revert back to flashing yellow? I'm a traffic engineer and even I can't figure it out! It is a scary place to cross and I see these bike boxes setting themselves up for the same dangerous unpredictability.

I am not sure exactly when it happened, but there are now "no turn on red" signs on both northbound and southbound speedway.  They have been there for at least a few weeks.  Of course, some drivers ignore them, but overall compliance with the no turn on red signs and the wait here markers seems reasonably decent to me.

My problems with the bike boxes echo what I have seen here - too short and too ambigous for motorists.  My other problem is that the real issue with this intersection is that the road condition is horrid.  As long as that is true, cyclists will go every which way.  If only the city would repave Speedway from 38th to 45th.  Considering the number of cyclists that ride on Speedway everyday, that would be high on the list of cyclist friendly things the city could do.

Well, what's to stop that car from looking to the left for a gap and then making that right turn on red? What are the chances they looked back to their right mirror/window for a bike approaching the bike box on their right?

I see the need for the "STOP HERE ON RED" sign but it doesn't seem to me that it does any good without a "NO TURN ON RED" as well? It's kinda like that new pedestrian signal at the Triangle. Are people supposed to stop and then proceed or wait for the signal to revert back to flashing yellow? I'm a traffic engineer and even I can't figure it out! It is a scary place to cross and I see these bike boxes setting themselves up for the same dangerous unpredictability.