BIKE: Re-evaluation of SCB CE's

[Mike Dahmus]

Lane Wimberley wrote:

>Bike folks,
>
>I have been riding SCB daily for some weeks now, and I have changed my 
>mind, I now like the CEs in the bike lanes.  It was a good thing to do.
>
>Here's why, If a car is coming your way you can get near the CE and the 
>cars stay away, it has a zone of protection around it.  I have used this 
>several times. Lets face it, car drivers are not getting any smarter and 
>the situation is getting worse out there.  But the CEs do provide a 
>safety zone when cars are around.
>
>Anyway, thats how I see it.
>  
>
I've only been riding approximately weekly, and I never thought the CEs 
were the problem, and I still don't. The only irritant is the branches 
which will supposedly be pruned as the trees get taller.

I doubt very much, though, that the cars are afraid to get close enough 
to the CEs to have much of an effect. It's probably more that the cars 
that are passing you are being careful because they see _you_ - this 
works because most motorists don't really want to buzz cyclists. Traffic 
engineering isn't the art of handling the best drivers, of course, it's 
the art of figuring out how to deal with the rest of them.

In other words, the CEs aren't doing much harm to cyclists, but they 
aren't doing much good either. They're certainly not slowing automobiles 
down, which was the theory promoted by Stuart et al. (And this was 
predicted in this very forum and in other places - the CEs would have to 
go to the edge of the 10-foot through lane in order to have the kind of 
effect they do in normal installations). These CEs do more to slow fast 
_cyclists_ than they do to speeding motorists.

By the way, I wrote in last week to try to clarify something I thought 
the reporter got wrong about your letter - I emphasized that the 
"obstructions in the channel" you talked about were cars, not CEs. I 
hope I got it right.

- MD

- MD