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This is a nice feature, but I would encourage those that have good bike route knowledge to use it to find a route, and then use the feedback mechanism to report problems and/or ill advised directions. For example, when it give directions involving a long stretch on North Lamar. If we all do this, it should hopefully improve and not give such obviously poor bicycle routes.
A change in the speedway bike boxes: they have been painted green. The change happened on Thursday. They certainly are visible now, and it is painfully obvious that they are too short.
You can buy a light cable to lock your seat and seat post with. You don't even need a lock for it -- you just set it up so that the seat has to be taken apart with tools to get it off. This works even if the seat adjustment has a quick release -- they can release the entire seatpost, but without an allen wrench or bolt cutters they won't be able to take it. It'll take a minute or two to take the seat apart with the right tools, so it dissuades those who, as you said, are just going to throw the seat away. It won't save your expensive Brooks saddle, however. An added advantage of this setup is that the seat is locked up all the time -- you ride with it locked too, so there's no additional work once set up.
As for quick release wheels, two crescent wrenches will get bolted wheels off just as fast as a quick release tire can be removed, so I wouldn't call that secure. (Really, quick releases just mean you have to carry fewer tools, and don't have to find them when the time comes.) Now, if the bolts aren't hex bolts, but instead are some weird shape that requires a special adapter -- THAT might provide some security, as long as it's all smooth and such and doesn't give a pair of pliers somewhere to grab. Does anybody sell something like that?
By that measure, nothing on your bike is secure. An allen wrench and some wire cutters, and your handlebars and stem are gone. A wrench and or an allen wrench will get most brakes. And a knife will leave the bike owner with flat tires (yes, I have had my tires slashed). With a threadless headset, getting the stem gets the whole fork.
You can get skewers that take a special tool to loosen - there are Pit Locks (see pitlock.com), and Velo Orange sells skewers that require a modified allen wrench. You can also hose clamp the lever to your fork. Another option would be to put an axle locknut between the axle nut and the fork on each side, thus requiring a cone wrench to get the wheel off.
Of course, this whole "do short trips on the bike, long trips in the car" thing ignores one big advantage of the car -- security is fast and easy.
You arrive, you park, you get out, you push the clicker as you walk away. When you get back, you hit the clicker, open door, sit down, put key into slot, turn, drive off ...
In the bike, you arrive, you find a place to lock it, you lock the frame to the rack with your U-lock, then you run your cable lock through your wheels and lock them to the rack too. Then you remove your cyclocomputer, your headlight and your bag of stuff and carry it with you. Then you reverse this process when you're leaving.
And even if you do properly lock your bike with two locks, it's still more likely to not be there when you get out or to be there but have been messed with or parts stolen than your car is.
Personally, I'm not a fan of walking, so this tends to mean that short trips involve the car (with the bike, I spend more time locking it than I do riding it), medium trips the bike, and long trips the car again.
Or you have a bicycle that is actually set up for commuting and errands. Since both wheels are bolted on, the lights are bolted on, and you don't have a cyclecomputer on the bike at all, you just put a u-lock or decent cable lock around the frame and maybe through a wheel and you are done. I do this every day (I commute) and haven't had a problem yet. The extra time to lock up the bike is less than the time to walk from where you would have to park your car.
I ride through this intersection twice a day, and have been doing so since well before the bike boxes where created. Now that they have been there for a while, this is what I have noticed.
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.
First I want to second (or third or ??) the notion that the bike lanes on Great Northern are both confusing to someone who hasn't ridden there before, and generally a poor design for all the reasons mentioned above. My question is how did they end up this way? And is there some way to get the city to get rid of them? I would much prefer this road to have no bike lanes than what is there.
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.
I just did - thanks for the prompting.
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.
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