BIKEPGH MESSAGE BOARD ARCHIVE

I saw 5 other cyclists on the 31st street bridge this evening going north. none of them seemed to be riding with each other either. Serious bike traffic tonight.

And yes, it is illegal to drive in bike lanes.

yeah, this was 9 (mostly, i think there was a group of 3) independent cyclists.

so, how do we get people to stop driving in the bike lane? i'm sure the cops won't do squat about it.

you mean without resorting to vigilantism? good question. one thing that comes to mind is staking it out with a video camera and then showing our elected officials how often it happens and that enforcement needs to be a priority.

well, all that being said, i think it would be hard to do anything in this case without ending up looking like the bad guy. i mean, the car lanes are in such pathetically bad shape, i'm sure that "empty" stretch of smooth pavement looks really good.

personally, i think it's a perfect example of how completely skewed (and selfish) the mentality of drivers is. but, chances are that most of them are just ignorant and not overtly malicious.

Ironically,just a couple days ago I was cycling in the bike lane and a car came arounf the bend and nearly hit me.Instead of the driver acknowledging he's sorry and at fault,he drives past me yelling, gives me the finger, and tells me to stay off the road.I was cycling in the bike lane!!

I see at least one driver riding in the bike lanes down east liberty blvd every time I use them. Really pisses me off. I hope the bike cops who hang out in that area bust someone.

every time i'm riding in my girlfriend's car down wightman from forbes to beacon, someone tries to pass her in the bike lane. it used to piss me off that people would treat that as a 4 lane road before the bike lanes were added. now it makes my head explode.

Little-known fact: "wightman" is the Iroquois word for "free-for-all," although there are scholars who argue the term more closely translates to "clusterf*ck."

Inbound bike lanes on Forbes through Frick Park & the Cemetery make me crazy. Buses, access vans & red landscaping trucks are the worst offenders, although a few weeks ago I got buzzed 3 times in 3 different parts of town by Honda Fits!!!!

People tend to drift into the Forbes lanes and they are almost all speeding. The scary thing about people using the bike lanes is that it's usually a reaction and they aren't worried about looking first.

There is serious bike traffic the last few days, five bikes locked up in Bakery Square at the moment. It's sort of funny having to wait behind slower riders.

Not advocating driving a car down a bike lane all the time, but I'm OK with a driver momentarily crossing into a bike lane to avoid a potentially tire-flattening pothole. That is, as long as the driver is careful and absolutely sure to bikes are near the car. I don't think that they should be forced to drive their cars over 6 inch deep potholes all the time, that could do some damage.

This argument is purely hypothetical, considering I can't actually think of a road where someone would need to do that. If it happened, though, I think we should give the driver a little consideration.

I've been riding a bike on the streets for 30 years. It makes me furious when drivers do not respect cyclists. (Also irks me when cyclists do some things too.) I drive a car every day. I don't know if this year seems worse than all the rest or perhaps it just always seems that way. Many roads are simply not driveable in the proper location. Bike lanes, shoulders, opposite lane are all areas where I've been steering my wheels lately.

so, I guess you make yourself furious then?

there's no excuse for driving in the bike lane. "not driveable" sounds like a gross exaggeration you use to rationalize doing it, but it's not true. i drive down beechwood occasionally in a car and manage to avoid doing it.

I'd argue that sustained driving in the bike lane is a problem, but moving over for a few feet to avoid tree branches or some such is forgivable, much like moving my bike out of the bike lane for similar reasons of debris.

(Usual caveats about swerving into traffic and avoiding douchebaggery apply, of course, regardless of mode of transport.)

ok, sure - if the road is impassable that's one thing; if you don't like the bumps that's quite another.

i see people driving in the bike lane for extended stretches, they basically go over there and stay there. i see this probably once per trip for the past month or so. sometimes they come up behind me and of course wait as long as possible to move over, and of course the douchebags that do this in the downhill direction are speeding at the same time since i can easily maintain 25.

the thing is that if people would drive the god damn speed limit the road would be a little bumpy but in no way dangerous to their cars. also anyone who avoids man hole cover dips in an suv should be removed from the breeding population.

Another insane thing I've noticed is people on crotch rockets like to use bike lanes to pass traffic at 80 mph on city streets. I've seen this innumerable times on ELB. Who do these guys think they are?

"Who do these guys think they are?"

Organ donors.

"i see people driving in the bike lane for extended stretches, they basically go over there and stay there"

I see people on Freeport Road every day cross half into the OPPOSING LANE OF TRAFFIC to "straddle" low man-hole covers (@ Center Ave., and @Brilliant Ave.). So it's not just motorists getting over on cyclists by infringing on bike lanes. These folks will go wherever - even into the face of oncoming traffic to avoid the bumpsies.

Those are EXACTLY the man holes I was talking about in my post above.

Oops, sorry, thought I was on the Pittsburgh board. My bad!

I saw a PAT bus driving in the bike lane to pass a car on ELB just yesterday. I reported him. I've also followed a car on ELB that drove in the bike lane the whole way from Highland to Frankstown. When I pulled up next to them at Frankstown it turned out to be an off duty cop who gave me a nasty "Annnd?" when I mentioned she was driving in a bike lane.

When I see people drive in the ELB bike lane they usually end up stuck in it because despite their thought that if they could JUST GET AROUND THESE FEW CARS, there is always a stop light or get this, more cars. And seriously with the bumps, I have a Nissan Versa and manage to not harm it or even feel most of the bumps because I don't drive like a maniac. I large pot hole is one thing, but filled in pot holes are another.

and those red landscaping trucks? In the city, there's a specific company that uses red trucks... I think it begins with M and is an italian sounding name... They're on Beeler and Wilkins constantly because the landlords that rent out to college students there use them to maintain the properties...

in 1999 the douche I was stupidly dating was biking home from campus and was doored by one of those trucks. he and his bike were really beat up, but functioning enough to get home. the truck driver started to get in his face about it so he told him his name and address and to do something creative procreationally and biked away.

one week later in the mail he got a letter from the company, it was a bill for a new car door. he responded with a letter from his cousin (a lawyer) pointing out the law and suggesting that further communication would encourage a lawsuit for damages to the bike and psyche of the douche. that was the end of it. sad to know that the red trucks are still being "ignorant". Not even the douche deserved that dooring.

If a car is otherwise polite and obeys the speed limit and doesn't threaten anybody's life or sunny happy bike ride, I'm willing to overlook a brief transgression of the white line. If they're being total scary menacing jagoffs, by intent, ignorance or inattention, I'm WAY less inclined to forgive them anything for any reason at all.

Polite, predictable, safe - that's all I ask.

Hey, if they're polite, drive slowly, cooperate and don't threaten anybody, I'd be happy to have them driving in my LIVING ROOM.

I saw some thread on a website with a bike lane striped right next to drive-through mailboxes. Now, of course you have to drive up to the mailboxes to use them, and of course you're not going to do it at 30 mph, and the mailboxes were there first, but there were still a whole lot of righteously indignant cyclists bitching about the infringement on THEIR!!!1! terrortorry.

Hey. As long it's reasonably safe, whatever.

eh, I'm happy to be righteously indignant in this case - if cars are allowed to drive in the bike lanes what's the point of having them at all?

of course, the ones on beechwood are already a special case since it's really a parking area that someone decided they could call a "bike lane", but...

@salty if cars are allowed to drive in the bike lanes what's the point of having them at all?

If cars are allowed to exceed the speed limit...

If cars can cruise through stop signs....

It's a good argument, but it's pretty much the same for all traffic laws - the public will to enforce them is not there.

Cost? A large proportion of the 38K deaths a year in the US.

One thing that was strange and a little bit amusing in NYC were the pedestrians stepping off the curb to hail cabs. Except the cabs would be behind me, so it looked like they were hailing me.

at least it's not illegal for us to stray from the bike lane in pa. so we got that going for us. which is nice.

Not yet, anyway. The folks in FL rammed a MBL law through in a remarkable hurry, and the national advocacy organizations couldn't have done much less to prevent it.

Well, a new Florida law apparently just made sex illegal, so i'm not sure how much of a litmus test that state is

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/11/floridas-bestiality-law_n_860836.html

Ah, it's nice for people to occasionally recognize themselves as animals.

Now if only they stopped exploiting all the others. Kind of a silly law, even as intended. Bestiality banned, torturing and mutilating for food, fashion, and entertainment... still okay. Kind of a false-distinction.

Not.... posting....

Yeah I thought this thread was about people driving in bike lanes......

Oh sorry, I guess commenting on a link is taboo now? It could have been taken back to bike lanes two posts ago.

This is just another case of non-existent traffic enforcement. There's no public will to enforce the rules because nobody believes in the rules in the first place.

So our fist shaking will continue

Meh... It's difficult to not see a tinge of hypocrisy in "bike only" lanes if we're promoting enforcement of existing traffic laws. Existing traffic laws say we can ride anywhere we damn well please, unless otherwise posted - like interstates and some sidewalks.

As I see it we're promoting the enforcement of existing traffic laws while also encouraging status quo - poor enforcement, car superiority - by developing infrastructure that attempts to resolve the traffic right-of-way hierarchy but is unfortunately misconstrued by the motoring public.

Motorists see sharrows on one street and not another, so they expect to see cyclists only on sharrowed streets. They're never reeducated by the traffic cop that a motorist should expect to see cyclists everywhere and not exclusively on sharrowed streets or "bike only" lanes.

I've heard that "we should take back the roads" argument but I think the experience of Europe, and specifically biking cities like Copenhagen, show that biking infrastructure promotes biking and that more bikes equals more safety. It's a fairly straightforward formula backed by statistics.

Kordite: the argument that more bikes equals more safety has some merit, but it's vastly oversimplified. The statistics used to support it are so flimsy that no self-respecting scientist would use them. And the supporters of this argument seem to take the position that the ONLY method to improve safety is to put more cyclists on the road, with very little attention paid to whether the methods used to do so are as safe as they could be, or whether they make cycling more convenient or less. Just lots of "oh, look, a bike sign, yay!" I'll let Mick comment in detail on the statistics, if he wants, since statistics seems to be his area of expertise, but the primary problem is that the simple argument doesn't establish cause and effect. The statement "fewer serious injuries => more cyclists" is just as well-supported by the same data, and makes an awful lot more common sense.

Furthermore, you could just as well argue that "the experience of European cities shows that high gasoline prices create more cyclists, which provides more political support for bike-specific infrastructure."

Frankly, I think that much higher taxes on gasoline (which are probably politically impossible) would solve an awful lot more problems than, eg, bike-specific signal phases.

I take the Forbes Ave. bike lane before/after Sq. Hill on my daily commute. There was some pretty heavy traffic heading towards Braddock yesterday afternoon, and more than a few cars were pulling into the bike lane to...I'm not sure, really. Doing what cars do, jockeying for position in traffic when nobody's moving, trying to get a better view of what's going on up ahead though everybody knows it's just post-work traffic and a too-quick stoplight. I felt myself get a little protective, as in "this is my designated space," but then it hit me that the bike lane is not my invincible shield from harm while riding. Of course I knew this already, but it's funny how official this knowledge dropped on my brain yesterday. Just a reminder to always ride with caution, alertness and to always expect a little of the unexpected.

They could have also been trying to block you from riding your small vehicle where theirs doesn't fit out of spite. I get that one a lot.

Lyle - never confuse science with politics.

"Evidence", whether statistics that withstand the rigor of scientific inspection or not, that is used to achieve political gain, such as cycling infrastructure, is a beast of special character. I may be bastardizing history, but I believe someone held aloft a grocery list to incite congressional investigations and trials and destroy the careers and "reputations" of thousands, instilling paranoid fear in the public at large, and generally be a, empowered jackass.

Sure scientifically valid statistics could be used for political persuasion. But so can grocery lists.

"Kordite: the argument that more bikes equals more safety has some merit, but it's vastly oversimplified. The statistics used to support it are so flimsy that no self-respecting scientist would use them."

Perhaps, but I have seen *no* statistics that indicate that increased enforcement make it safer nor have I seen any statistics that biking infrastructure makes drivers less tolerant of bikes on their roads.

I will choose statistics, no matter how "flimsy" you try to characterize them, over zero statistics.

just had another thought - bikes having bike lanes doesn't undermine efforts to broaden acceptance of bicycling on the streets in general... Every form of transportation has special places they can do it and nobody else can. Cars have freeways, pedestrians have sidewalks (esp in business districts), bikes have bike lanes. Bikes, peds, and every other non-motorized method gets trails (though some say no horses). For a given form of transportation, in a given location, sometimes it makes sense. Pedestrians or bicycles on highways makes no sense. Cars in bikelanes make no sense.

It's like kintergarden: you're supposed to share certain things with other kids (like blocks and paints and books), other things you have your name written on and you keep it to yourself (like your lunch or your mittens). Regular streets, we all have to share. Bike lanes literally have our names written on them. That being said, if someone politely asks to eat my crackers if I'm not going to finish them, I'll hand them over.

Problem is, most adults would fail kintergarden.