BIKE: Bike lanes and cycling behavior

[Thorne]

Offering a bit more on the late discussion of whether bike lanes encouraged
proper and safe riding, for those who might still be interested in the debate
. . . 

The following is a little piece cut from
http://www.wright.edu/~jeffrey.hiles/essays/listening/ch5.html
which is Chapter 5 of Hiles's article "Listening to Bike Lanes" (which comes
to some conclusions I don't agree with, but which I think is an interesting
and informative article on the subject--it tries to strike a compromise
between the cycling facilities advocates and the vehicular cycling advocates,
but it doesn't persuade me out of the ranks of the latter).  Note that it
mentions the effect/non-effect of painting direction arrows in bike lanes to
show the proper direction of travel as Fred Meredith was suggesting and which
I've long thought to be a good idea.  

<<Studies of bicyclists’ behavior point to one overriding rule: The more
options cyclists have, the more options they take. This is true whether or not
those options are officially sanctioned.

<<The side of the street on which bicyclists ride, for example, is influenced
by the kind of space they have in which to ride. Thom and Clayton (1992a)
observed bicyclists riding at mostly busy intersections with standard 12-foot
lanes and speed limits mostly either 50 or 60 kph (31 or 37 mph). A full 97.6
percent of the cyclists rode on the side of the street with the flow of
traffic (p. 97). On most of the streets at the seven intersections studied,
bicyclists would have had to ride close to on-coming traffic if they had
chosen the other side of the street.

<<The picture changes where bicyclists have more room. A study of bicyclists
on nine streets with striped bike lanes (Cycecki, Perry, & Frangos, 1993)
found that 22 percent of the cyclists who rode on the streets chose to ride
facing the motor traffic on their side of the street. On one street the bike
lane was marked with four arrows per mile “to show clearly that bicyclists
must ride with traffic.” Apparently the arrows did not deter wrong-way
riding as much as the extra space encouraged it; 23 percent still rode facing
traffic. On another bike-laned street, 39 percent cycled against the flow (pp.
29, 31). >>

Again, I have to wonder at the conclusions of the study mentioned in an
earlier post that claimed bike lanes encouraged cyclist to ride in the correct
direction.

Jeff