Uniform Policies Are Key

Guest blogger Greg Kushmerek continues his series of articles on bike commuting:

A key design tip in the world of print is consistency: keep consistent design elements in place. People recognize a designed page as “belonging” to the overall product. Apply this to the physical world and you get predictability, and that’s good for something like traffic management.

We don’t have enough predictability on today’s roads, however, for drivers or cyclists. For example: should bikes be subject to all rules of the road, or should they have their own set? Aside from the fact that some cyclists create their own rules, I have seen plenty of examples where bikes have been given the right to do things that cars cannot.

For example: it’s the law in Massachusetts that bikes can pass cars on the right so long as the local town or city hasn’t explicitly outlawed the practice. Pass someone on the right in a car, and you’re subject to a ticket (it was the first one I ever got when I was a teen). Of course, few people know this — I once had someone try to use his car as a rolling roadblock to prevent me from going down the right side.

More signage would help as would other aids to navigation. Intersections can have bike traffic lights or bike signs explicitly dictating what cyclists may do. Signs in advance of major intersections could warn cyclists and drivers that the road is about the change and thus the dynamics are about to be different.

Consider bike lanes again: the non-uniformity of how they appear, how long they last, on what kinds of roads you’ll see them all lead to ambiguity. Ambiguity in traffic is bad. When are they solid lines? When are they dashed lines that allow cars in them? And, as I previously mentioned, how close to the side of the road are they? I personally prefer the idea of redefining the idea of a road to be partly a place where cars travel and then partly a place where “other things” happen. Some roads are generously wide enough that you can cut out eight feet from the side, leave six feet for parking, a foot of space, and the last foot be available for bike lanes. Consistent marking would make it clear where moving cars do and do not belong, and people would form new habits.

What about sidewalks? Any cyclist who’s spent enough time on the road has been asked, rhetorically, “Why don’t you go back on the sidewalk where you belong?” (Presumably, the thought of a cyclist rapidly sneaking up on a baby stroller is more appealing to these drivers than having to share the road.) Just when is it a good time to be on a sidewalk? Ever? Never? I think they’re even more dangerous for cyclists than most roads, but the laws here are also quite mixed even encouraging cyclists to use sidewalks.

I think it’s time to consider a federal-level set of guidelines tied to highway and road funding. Signage, lane width, location, requirements on which kinds of roads should have bike lanes, consistent rules — all of this can come right down and level the playing field to create the predictability we need on the roads. It won’t stop cars from complaining about bikes on the roads, but hopefully it will move their complaints over how someone is biking on the roads and not whether someone should be biking on the road.