Date: 06/24/2011

Category: · Writing  » News Coverage  » SF Weekly · Writing  » Topic  » misc

View article as originally published

---

Get ready to dream along with the National Association of City Transportation Officials.

Oh, sure, you may think that the fantasies of municipal infrastructure bureaucrats are boring. But allow us to shatter your misconceptions with just five words: Two-Stage Turn Queue Boxes.

Try to remain calm.

NACTO is a sort of national clearinghouse for transportation visionaries in major cities. While state agencies are united under a slow-moving dinosaur called the American Association of State and Highway Transportation Officials, NACTO is a bit more nimble and urban, since its focus is on regions with higher density and lower sprawl.

This spring, the organization released the new NACTO Urban Bikeway Design Guide, an exhaustively researched document that peers into the future (where we'll spend the rest of our lives) and tells us, "bikes, y'all."

Let's take a closer look.

The report is divided into five sections: Bike Lanes, Cycle Tracks, Intersections, Signals, and Signs & Markings. That's a lot to slog through, so we're breaking it up into three parts.

It's a delight to see some common-sense guidelines articulated about something as simple as bike lanes. The report recommends separation between parked cars and lanes to prevent dooring, as well as configuring right-turn lanes so that they don't lead cars to slam into bike lanes. Hip hip hooray.

There's also a section on buffered bikeways, such as the city would like to install along the Panhandle. If Austin can do it, why can't we?

And how about left-hand bike lanes? That can be handy when stores on the right side of the street get frequent deliveries, such as would have happened if Trader Joe's had attempted to squeeze into the former Tower Records in the Castro.

Then there's contra-flow lanes. Those are special "bikes-only" lanes that allow cyclists to safely ride "against traffic" on one-way streets. We already have one in Golden Gate Park: on a street near Raccoon Hollow, cars can only travel westbound; but a double yellow line provides a narrow lane for eastbound-traveling bikes. The city is currently looking into installing something similar on Polk, so you can travel up to City Hall from Market without having to play Van Ness Roulette.

All these guidelines are all very nice, but there's something even better than bike lanes: cycle tracks. Those are line lanes-plus: physically separated from cars and the sidewalk, with plenty of room for bikes to stretch out and enjoy themselves.

Your standard one-way track might have a median, street signs, or bollards to separate it from other transportation lanes. That sort of design features prominently in the SF Bike Coalition's dream for a redesigned Market Street, which they're pushing heavily in advance of that street's repaving in 2015. In a perfect world, cycle tracks are raised to separate them from cars.

Two-way tracks are what you see on the Panhandle and along Crissy Field, and possibly in Golden Gate Park by the end of the year. Those are tricky, because what on Earth do you do at the intersections? NACTO has a few suggestions, such as "yield to bikes" signs, narrow channels for cars, elevating the track across intersections to act as a speed hump, and installing two-stage turn queue boxes (more on those in a bit).

That's enough for this week -- stay tuned for next week's installment, which is all about intersections.

Last week, we got down and dirty with the National Association of City Transportation Officials, who put out a report this spring about the future of bike infrastructure.

We tackled bike lanes and tracks in our last installment. This week: intersections.

Handling intersections may be the trickiest part of planning bike lanes. Fortunately, NACTO has plenty of advice in this department.

For starters, there's the science/art of guiding cycletracks through cross-traffic. In general, that requires a gradual transition out of cycle-track mode and into shared-asphalt mode. That's dangerous, since the dominant thinking among American motorists is that bikes should stop to let them through, rather than the other way around. So how do you prevent conflict? By "receiving" the bikes with some sort of facility (like a basic bike lane or bike box) rather than just dumping them out and letting them fend for themselves.

That may require a through bike lane, which is basically a little wiggle that puts the bike lane between lanes of traffic. That's helpful if there's a right-turn lane for cars. If the bike lane is at the far right of the street, bikes may get "right-hooked." But if bikes are gently guided to a middle lane, then they can mix more safely with cars before the intersection.

But what do you do if there's not enough space for all those lanes? Then you'll have to make do with a combined bike lane/turn lane. That puts bikes and turning cars in the same lane, which is a little confusing and scary, since it requires that cars and bikes behave differently. (Think of the weird confusing bit heading west on Market near Deco Ghetto.) That's why it's crucial that markings on the street indicate exactly where bikes are supposed to be.

And that brings us to the good old fashioned bike box. Those are specially-demarcated zones at the front of an intersection that allow bikes to pull to the front of vehicular traffic. While cars wait at the light, bikes can cruise up alongside them in the bike lane and pull into the box in front of the row of cars -- in essence, it's like a VIP area for bicycles, which makes life a lot less hazardous when the light finally turns green.

Bike boxes are a big win in that they're relatively cheap and make a big difference. San Francisco just installed a few new ones on Market Street near 9th, and they're already getting plenty of love.

Bike boxes are even better when they're coupled with intersection crossing markings. A dotted line and some green stripes to channel bikes across an intersection -- what could be simpler? And yet for some reason we don't seem to have many in San Francisco.

That's fine if you're heading straight across the intersection, but what if you're turning left? NACTO has two good ideas: the first is median refuge islands, little slices in the medians that allow bikes to wait comfortably for traffic to clear.

Then there's two-stage turn queue boxes. This simply formalizes something that lots of cyclists already do: rather than trying to cut across lanes of traffic to turn left, bikes roll most of the way straight across the intersection, then stop in front of the waiting lane of cars and prepare to continue on their way when the light changes.

This is often necessary on streets like Masonic, with multiple fast-moving lanes of traffic that would never ever in a million years safely allow a cyclist to merge left, let alone wait in an intersection for oncoming traffic to yield. Or at Market and Valencia, where those streetcar tracks snag many a Mission-bound cyclist.

That's enough for this week -- stay tuned for next week's installment, which is all about signs and signals.

For the last two weeks, we've been getting down and dirty with the National Association of City Transportation Officials, who put out a report this spring about the future of bike infrastructure.

We tackled intersections in our last installment, and before that bike lanes and tracks. This week: signs and signals.

Of course, improvements don't count if nobody can figure out how to use them. That's why the report also going into detail on signals, signs and markings.

First of all: green. Green, everyone. Can we please agree on green? American cities are going through a sort of color crisis, with bike lanes filled in with every hue of the rainbow. Come on folks. GREEN.

And then: sharrows. Those are the stencils on the road with a bike and some chevrons to express the direction of travel. They're best when used in a bike lane, but can also be used when the street's too narrow for a dedicated lane. Sharrows can also be helpful in roundabouts, and we can definitely confirm that they're desperately needed in the Laguna Honda/St Francis Wood circle where Montalvo, Taraval, Claremont, Kensington, and Dewey all collapse in a heap.

And finally, wayfinding. This is sort of an uncharted area when it comes to bike infrastructure, and there's not a lot of consensus from city to city about what signage is supposed to look like.

You've got your confirmation signs, which let you know that you're on the right path. There's also turn signs, which lead you from one street to another along a particular route. And there's decision signs, which tell you how to get to a variety of destinations.

There's a bit of a hodge-podge of signs out there, and some cities -- including Berkeley -- have abandoned what few national guidelines exist. Best practices include the use of travel times, signs placed every 2 to 3 blocks, and the use of the Clearview Hwy font that pops up most frequently on highway signs. When possible, maps are a nice feature.

And effective communication isn't just about paint and paper: it can also incorporate blinking lights.

NACTO gives a big thumbs-up to bike signal heads which you can only find in one place in San Francisco: on the Panhandle at Masonic. Why don't we have more? Who knows. According to NACTO's report, they reduce conflicts with cars and simplify complex intersections; that would be a particularly useful benefit at complex points like JFK in Golden Gate Park.

Masonic's bike signal is timed, but a lot of other cities have gone one step further: they've set it up so that signals are activated by the presence of a cyclist. It's not rocket science: it just requires a little sensor in the pavement (the kind you can find all over the city already, being used for bike-counting).

But there's a second necessary component: instructions. Cyclists should be informed that the bike-detector exists, and should get instructions on how to use it. A simple sign that says "cyclists wait here to activate green light" is all it takes. Berkeley's done it, as has Marin and San Luis Obispo and Santa Clara. Why hasn't SF?

And if you want even MORE safety, you can stick in an "Active Warning Beacon." You've probably seen the one in front of City Hall: a row of flashing lights embedded in the street to warn drivers to stop at a crosswalk. Other cities, like Boulder and St. Petersberg, put them in eye-level signs instead of in the ground. Either way, they're good attention-grabbers, especially when they use a "stutter flash," and require virtually no maintenance.

And then there's "hybrid signals," which we totally DO NOT GET. They're just like regular signals, except there's two of them.

Here's how it works: the signal is shaped like an upside-down pyramid, with two red lights on top and a yellow light underneath. Most of the time, all of the lights are dark. But then when something triggers them, the yellow starts flashing, then the two red lights turn red and let peds and bikes cross, and then the red lights start flashing back and forth to indicate ... something ... and then all of the lights turn dark again.

Why is this better than a regular red-yellow-green? Unclear. "This application provides a pedestrian crossing without signal control for the side street because signal control on the side street can encourage unwanted additional traffic through the neighborhood," says the Federal Highway Administration. Okay, fair enough. But we still don't get why the hybrids need two red lights instead of just one.

So, there you have it! We have now completed our journey of wonderment through the report. Got all that? We told you NACTO planners dream big. There's a lot of wish for in there, and plenty of gleams-in-the-eye to inspire future bike construction. All that's left now is to start building it.