BIKE: Dedicated bike lanes -- a mistake?

[Mike Dahmus]

I'm going to use my two posts today as follows:

1 (this one) - addressing Fred's, Thorne's, and other's inappropriate 
attacks and rebutting claims that they made
2 (next one) - laying out the arguments which (I believe) favor bike 
lanes over wide curb lanes.

You can therefore skip this one if you think I'm just a whining crybaby 
or somesuch, but you'll miss direct responses to some of their claims 
about the corridors. Your choice.

Here we go:

from John Schubert (person Lane corresponded with):

"I don't like it. The bike lane next to parking would STILL be in the door

zone."

The one-side-only original city design is arguably in the door zone, but it meets standards by the Feds, and is less 'in the door zone' than most other facilities of this type.

"
(1) "Not as much in the door zone" is safer.  WRONG.  The slightest overlap 
between car door and bike WILL cause an accident, and can easily cause a 
fatality or very serious injury."

This is kind of a ridiculous premise. Of COURSE "not as much in the door zone" is safer - simple geometry will tell you you're less likely to get doored there.

 
"
(2) "An unsafe bikelane is better than no bikelane."  WRONG.  Why are we 
taking people's tax dollars to instruct them (via this traffic control..."


I'm not aware of anybody credible who said that an unsafe bikelane was better than no bikelane. Certainly Lane hasn't said it; I haven't; I'd be interested to know who did. (The neighbors? Probably - although they're not remotely qualified to offer comment).

"While I don't know the intricacies of parking on Shoal Creek, I expect that 
eliminating half the parking would have been a hardship for many people."

No, not even remotely so. Many of us in the central city live with parking restrictions in neighborhoods where far less off-street parking exists than on Shoal Creek, and somehow we suffice.

"Why 
pick that fight when it's so much easier to teach cyclists how to ride properly?"

It's easy to teach cyclists who are interested. It's hard to convince 
cyclists who reluctantly mix with traffic that they're safe out in the 
traffic lane; and it's nigh-impossible to convince novice cyclists to 
cycle on a major road without a bike lane. The sum total of that means 
that the SCB bike lane (the old imperfect one pre-2000) attracted 
cyclists to the corridor (and people like me to cycling in general). If 
you had instead offered me a class on sharing a lane with a car instead 
of the bike lane, I'd not have been intererested.


from Jeff Thorne's post yesterday:

"It is to laugh, MD, that you refer to 'statistical thinking' in arguing about
SCB bike lanes and back it up only with a 'one guy's very subjective (and may
we say result-oriented) rough guess data table.'"

I explained why I came up with that data set - to prove to somebody (a long time back) that you could have greater average passing distance with facility A, but still have a safer pass with facility B. This is elementary statistics - focusing on the fact that I didn't measure the pass with anything other than my own eyes is missing the point - the argument was NOT that the typical pass in either BL or WCL matched my table, but simply that THE AVERAGE PASSING DISTANCE ARGUMENT WASN'T A GOOD ONE TO HANG THEIR HAT ON.

"You don't have the data set
for 10th percentile talk about anything."

Nor did I ever claim to. Like yourself, my 'data' is anectodal observations. The passing distance argument was couched as such every time I brought it up, and is clearly labelled as "my own estimates" in case somebody was likely to accidentally misconstrue it. The only way somebody could treat it as scientific data is through willful disregard for the actual words used, in an attempt to slur the generalization that "average passing distance" is a crappy way to measure safety.

"You've got lots better resources
than your 'observed' average passing distances to work from, friend, but the
trouble is that they don't make your point."

This is opinion, just like mine.

"I know from years of serious
riding experience--roads like Jollyville included, BTW, that, while bike lanes
do add a nice safe _feeling_ for many riders, that they also bring with them
dangers of their own and these dangers are the dangers the young and novice
cyclists are least prepared to deal with."

This is opinion, and some of it I even agree with.

"Thing is, the accident statistics
(one way of showing what's really dangerous or helpful) back up my
observations.  Right hook, turning left from the right hand side, wrong way
cycling, just to name a few."

No, they really don't. AT THE RISK OF MAKING YOU ACCIDENTALLY OR PURPOSEFULLY DRAW A CONCLUSION I DON'T IMPLY, I'll say:

You can't say ANYTHING about the safety of EITHER design by looking at the proportion of various kinds of accidents, unless you're doing so in an environment where the cyclists and the drivers on both facilities have the same experience levels, the traffic is roughly the same level and speed, and many other variables. Anything you WOULD say about the facilities, absent this data, is the same kind of generalization by anectdote and theory that you've been (incorrectly) blasting me for. 

The biggest problem for your statements is that your next post, the set of links on bike lanes vs. wide curb lane studies, generally either supports the "bike lane better" or "no conclusion possible" position. Yes, I read the Foresterite rebuttals to all of them, and most of their criticisms are valid, but I'll note you weren't even able to find a pro-WCL study. Thus, the best you could honestly claim is that no credible study exists which shows a difference between the two facilities.



Now on to Fred

from Fred's first post yesterday:

"I was pointing out that your arguments sounded as if they had been 
formulated without any statistical research and were merely grouped to 
fit your perception of the world (real or otherwise). That's why I found 
it interesting that you needed to make up three groups to gather all of 
the people who take the other side of the fence you've chosen to stand 
behind."

As I said, I've argued bike lanes versus wide curb lanes in other forums 
for a very long time. I didn't "make up" these three groups, as is your 
implication; I "observed" them. Key difference here - I explained where 
my classifications came from. You chose to ignore my stated reasoning 
and instead claimed that I made them up in order to support predefined 
positions. This is what our pal Rush Limbaugh does - ignore what people 
SAY is their reason for position X, and come up with another (more 
sinister) one.



 From Fred's latest post:

"Mike, It sounds from here as if your accusations are as fuzzy as your 
logic. I did not attack you, Mike"

 From earlier Fred posts:

"Exercise care, my friend, when you say such things as below, "Those of 
us in the real world note ..." Unless you have a ready list of these 
"real world" inhabitants, someone might suspect your "us" refers to you 
and the frog in your pocket. "

"Otherwise, one might have thought that you were pulling some of this 
stuff right out of your ... in support of what you have already chosen 
to believe. "

"I was pointing out that your arguments sounded as if they had been 
formulated without any statistical research and were merely grouped to 
fit your perception of the world (real or otherwise). That's why I found 
it interesting that you needed to make up three groups to gather all of 
the people who take the other side of the fence you've chosen to stand 
behind. "

"Ah, Mike, I didn't realize you were LOOKING for any content. You 
sounded as if you had all the content you needed."

"your response felt as if it were leaving little flecks of foam on my 
screen. "

- MD