Are We Building Too Many Bike Lanes?

First published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan, May 21, 2012

Sometimes I worry that we are building too many bike lanes.   We build them to encourage children, families, and novice cyclists to ride more.  But bike lanes can be misleading if they give a false sense of security to novices who need to learn when and how to get out of the bike lane safely.  They can also mislead motorists and parents into thinking that the only place for bicyclists is in the bike lane. 

Looking east on Lake Street on the Colorado State University campus.  I've seen east-bound cyclists use the left hand bike lane, riding the wrong way on this street because they were afraid to take the travel lane and felt that they should be in the bike lane.  As you can see, City and CSU authorities don't do a very good job of plowing this bike lane.  What's a cyclist to do?  What will it take to teach college educated students that they should just take the lane and avoid wrong way riding?

If we are going to become the safest bike town in the nation we’ve got to come to an understanding of where bicycles belong on our streets and the role of bike lanes in this.   Three principles govern the concept:  1) Colorado law; 2) common sense; and 3) best practices in bike safety.  Common courtesy also plays a role. 

Colorado law requires cyclists to ride in the right-hand lane if they are traveling at “less than the normal speed of traffic.”  In Fort Collins we’ve built 130 miles of bike lanes to encourage people to ride bicycles. But there are many conditions when bikes should not be in the bike lane and it is important that everyone understand those conditions. 

Cyclists should exit the bike lane if it is dangerous for them to be there because of debris, potholes, glass or the threat of opening car doors from parked cars.  Cyclists should also get out of the bike lane and merge into the travel lane to make a left turn, when overtaking a slower vehicle, and to avoid a right turn lane if they are continuing straight through an intersection.

Conflicts are often built into intersections where right turning cars must cross bike lanes.  How many motorists know that the law requires them to allow one hundred feet before turning right after passing a cyclist?  Not many, I fear. 

When there are no bike lanes cyclists can and should use the right-most regular travel lane in a position where they feel safe:  they should stay away from parked cars and occupy the entire lane if it is not wide enough to share side-by-side with motor vehicles.  Lanes less than fourteen feet wide cannot be safely shared so cyclists should position themselves in the center or the right third of that lane.

Roundabouts in south Fort Collins often have bike lanes leading into them.  In some cases the bike lane ends before the roundabout, requiring cyclists to merge with traffic, which is desirable, while other times the lanes end abruptly at the roundabout itself creating potential confusion for cyclists and motorists.   

Instead of more bike lanes we need an intensive education program to educate all road users of the rights of cyclists and best practices for everyone.  The City should take the lead in this.  Maybe when we conduct a national search for a new bike coordinator we can look for someone to help us move in this direction.

Watch for Built in Conflict Zones to Avoid Crashes

First published in the Fort Collins Coloradoan, Oct. 3, 2011

Also published on Bob Mionske's blog, bicyclelaw.com. 

Wearing a helmet and staying in the bike lane won’t protect you from crashes.  Even in a bicycle friendly community there are plenty of built in potential conflicts.  So cyclists need to learn to recognize them so they can avoid the crashes.

You may recall the three primary rules of safe cycling: 1) don’t fall off your bike; 2) don’t let anyone knock you off your bike; and 3) don’t you knock anyone else off their bike.  The first rule applies since half of all bike crashes involve only the cyclist.  A third of crashes involve another cyclist, a dog, or a pedestrian and only seventeen percent of bike crashes involve an automobile.  Most of these latter crashes can be avoided if you anticipate the conflict.  Unfortunately the place where you think you are safest, namely the bike lane, is often a major conflict zone. 

Parked cars along bike lanes can be dangerous.  So watch for opening car doors.  I ride the white line on most bike lanes in town.  I’m more visible to oncoming cars there and I am far enough from opening doors - about six feet - to be safe.  Some people will tell you that they watch for opening car doors and are able to avoid them.  But by focusing on that hazard they sometimes ignore other possible hazards around them.  In a narrow bike lane, as on Howes Street, I will ride just outside the white line in the travel lane. 

Where bike lanes cross intersections is another conflict zone.  The right turning motorist across a bike lane is the primary source of conflict here.  Our transportation planners have begun to consider this where possible, creating right turn lanes while bringing the through bike lane to the left of the turn lane.  The do-si-do dance step that ensues creates a safer intersection than the one in which right turning cars find themselves to the left of a line of cyclists. 

Unfortunately we have many intersections in town where the above treatment doesn’t work.  The cyclist’s rule of thumb that I would apply at all intersections is the following:  if you are continuing straight through the intersection, get out of the bike lane and take the primary travel lane.  This tells motorists your intent and makes room for right turning motorists to take the bike lane to execute their turn. 

Parked cars are a hazard anywhere, whether along a bike lane or not.  Diagonally parked cars are even more of a hazard.  So stay as far from them as you can.  This means that on Old Town streets such as Magnolia, Olive, Oak, all the streets surrounding Library Park, and on residential streets approaching CSU campus you should ride in the center of the travel lane well away from diagonally parked cars. You are more visible there and won’t be hit by a car backing out of a parking space.

Drive your bike carefully out there.

Avoiding the Door Zone: How Far to Ride Away from Parked Cars

 This video features Preston Tyree, Education Director at the League of American Bicyclists, at Colorado State University demonstrating how far we need to ride from parked cars. 

Keep Your Guard Up -Especially in a Bike Lane

First published in The Coloradoan, Nov. 1, 2010
by Rick Price, Ph.D.

Bike lanes serve a useful purpose in encouraging new cyclists to take up cycling and in making many of us feel comfortable bicycling in traffic.

They can give cyclists a false sense of security, though. On narrow streets with parked cars, bike lanes often invite cyclists to ride in the "door zone" where a car door might open unexpectedly. This happens on Mason and Howes streets in Fort Collins. On those streets, I ride just to the left of the bike lane to avoid the door hazard. On Mountain Avenue or Remington Street, however, the bike lanes are wide enough to ride in most of the time. There, I ride just inside the bike lane and am still far from car doors.

Novice cyclists often think, incorrectly, that they can use a bike lane for travel in either direction. These novices don't understand the danger with wrong-way riding. Drivers entering a street across a bike lane aren't used to looking to the right for bikes. This, in part, makes wrong-way riding the single biggest cause of  car/bike crashes nationally.

Right-turning motorists are another problem with bike lanes. Motorists violate traffic laws when they turn across a bike lane since the law states clearly that "both the approach for a right turn and a right turn shall be made as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway." This means that as a motorist you should merge into the bike lane and make your turn from there after yielding to any bicyclists in the lane just as you would yield and merge right into a right-turn lane before making a turn.

Photos:  The top photo shows a bike lane on South College in Fort Collins where motorists are invited to cross the bike lane with dashed lines to get into the right turn lane.  The bottom photo shows a situation on Laurel Street in Fort Collins.  Here the bike lane all of a sudden jumps left eight feet putting the cyclist in the right turn lane unwittingly.  The lack of dashed lines delineating where motorists should cross the bike lane is confusing for both cyclists and motorists on Laurel St. on the north side of the Colorado State University campus. 


Having a car use a bike lane as a turning lane contradicts what most people believe to be correct, including cyclists, who think that the bike lane is for their exclusive use. It is, most of the time, but not in the case of right-turning motorists.

So what should cyclists do when confronted with a right-turning motorist in "their" lane? Since cyclists are not required to ride in the bike lane, the safe behavior is to either stop or merge left into the travel lane to continue straight through the intersection. This is a little dance that cyclists and motorists must do as they negotiate bike lanes.

LaPorte Avenue will soon go on a "road diet," reducing it from four to two travel lanes. Bike lanes will be added as will a center left-turn lane. Transportation Board members asked if the bike lanes would be striped with dashed lines for right-turning cars. The answer was no, but board members suggested that the lines delineating bike lanes should be dashed where cyclists can expect right-turning vehicles to cross their path. This offers a warning to cyclists that cars may enter the bike lane here.

So get out and ride, but don't let your guard down just because you are in a bike lane.

Shared Lanes: Sharrows are a Great Educational/Engineering Tool to Promote Sharing the Road

(Scroll down for additional photos)
Fort Collins transportation planners conducted an experiment in February of 2006 along Laurel Street near College. Never mind that the "sharrow" ("shared lane arrow") shown here is placed incorrectly and quickly dissipated in the grit and snow, the symbol communicates clearly to cyclists and motorists exactly where cyclists can be expected to ride in the travel lane. This particular series of sharrows was west of College Ave. on Laurel where the street is too narrow (because of on-street parking) for a bike lane. Here bikes should ride in the center of the travel lane.



"Share the lane signs" went up on College Avenue in Old Town Fort Collins in September. The signs (a total of eight signs both north and south-bound, between Laurel and Cherry Streets) were placed along College as a part of the new campaign to discourage cyclists on the sidewalks in Old Town. Signs such as the one below communicate clearly to cyclists and motorists alike that bicycles are both allowed and encouraged on College Aveune in this part of town.

Somber accidents bring bicycle safety into spotlight

December 26, 2008
Copyright The Coloradoan

BY NATE TAYLOR
NateTaylor@ coloradoan.com

In the decade before 2008, three people died in car bike crashes in Fort Collins. This year, tragedy struck twice when cyclists were killed in accidents that brought public outrage.

Rebecca Allen, 32, died July 22 after being struck from behind by a drunken driver while riding her bicycle in the bike lane on Drake Road.

About four months later, on Nov. 25, 9-year-old Erica Forney was riding her bicycle home from school when a woman police say was distracted by her cell phone drove her SUV into the bike lane and struck Forney. She died two days later.

The deaths of Allen and Forney occurred in a year when the Fort Collins biking community received a "gold" designation from the League of American Cyclists and its Bicycle Friendly Community program, had record turnouts on bike to work day and opened a free bike library.

"They were both tragic accidents and reminders that we've got lots to do still as a cycling community," Fort Collins Bikes Coordinator DK Kemp said.

Daniel Price, 21, the driver of the vehicle that killed Allen, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide on Nov. 15 and is likely to be sentenced to eight years in prison.

According to court records, Price, who was 20 at the time of the crash, had blood-alcohol levels of 0.091, 0.078 and 0.067 in the hours after the crash. Records also indicate Price tested positive for THC, the active compound in marijuana, in his blood when the fatal collision occurred. Price will be sentenced Jan. 16.

Michelle Smith, 36, also of Fort Collins, has been charged with careless driving resulting in death in connection with the crash that killed Forney and faces a maximum penalty of a one year prison sentence and/or a $1,000 fine if convicted. She is scheduled to appear in court Jan. 7.

At Allen's funeral service on The Oval on the CSU campus, more than 300 people showed up to remember the undergraduate administrator at the Colorado State University Department of Journalism and Technical Communicationn. Many wore flip-flop sandals, which Allen wore on her wedding day.

The CSU journalism department also renamed a scholarship in memory of Allen and a public relations class dedicated a semester-long project working with Bike Fort Collins to bridge the gap between cyclists and drivers to Allen's memory.

"She impacted me so greatly that I was moved to do something for her," Sarah Pooler, a CSU adjunct journalism professor, said in September. "This project is an opportunity to come up with a campaign to honor Rebecca, who was a very adamant supporter of biking safety."

The Forney family received similar support from the community in south Fort Collins. Two days after Erica died, hundreds of family, friends and neighbors gathered at Coyote Ridge Elementary School despite frigid temperatures to lend their support during a candle-light vigil.

"We wanted to show Daren and Shelley how many people are here to support them," Ginger Hillyard, a close family friend, said the night of the vigil. "We're here to support them for the long haul."

State lawmakers have begun looking into the possibility of proposing legislation for more stringent laws prohibiting cell-phone use while driving.

Streetfilms Documents why Boulder is Platinum

Take a look at where Fort Collins has to go in order to achieve the platinum level bicycle friendly community award.

Clarence Eckerson has done a great job of documenting Boulder's great bike system and bike culture for Streetfilms. Watch the whole thing and learn!

Share this with ALL your friends in Fort Collins.

What the League Friendly City Program Says about Bicycling in Fort Collins

In their review of our bicycle program in Fort Collins the League of American Bicyclists (LAB) offers a long list of areas that we could improve. Most of these include efforts to increase education for both motorists and cyclists, implementation of all the projects in the current bike plan, increasing bike friendly arterials with shared lane arrows (sharrows) and "share the road" signs, and training for City staff to better understand the behavior of cyclists and their right to be on the road. To read the full report from the LAB click here.

Fort Collins Named #2 Place to Live in USA

Fort Collins recently was named the number 2 (#2) place to live in the US by Money Magazine. According to their online posting:

"One of the first things you notice about this Rocky Mountain city is that practically every new road has a bike lane. Even the wheelless can get in on the action now that Fort Collins has a bike library: Residents and visitors can check out a bicycle for up to seven days, free." http://money.cnn.com/magazines/moneymag/bplive/2008/snapshots/PL0827425.html
This is down a notch for Fort Collins since the same poll put our fair city at #1 in 2006. Not to worry, though, since we lost the number 1 spot to Plymouth, Minnesota. Have you ever tried to ride a bicycle in Minnesota in winter? Neither have we, but still . . . . We'll take #2 any day!

Above, two bike library patrons check out bikes for the week: "We want to try them a bit before deciding if we should buy our own bikes." bike li

Why a Platinum Bike Plan Blog for Fort Collins and why now?

1. Our Bike Plan was written in 1995 and updated in 2008.
2. With the 2008 update City Council mandated that the City Manager create a Bicycle Advisory Committee (BAC) to advise Council and City Staff on bicycle matters in Fort Collins. The BAC is taking shape now.
3. Once created, the BAC needs to hear from YOU on how to implement the existing plan and how to engage cyclists and others in improving that plan.

Why a “Platinum” plan? What’s that?

1. Bicycle Friendly Community awards are given by the League of American Bicyclists (LAB). We had the Silver level award from 2003 until 2008 when we got th gold award. There is just one level left, Platinum. Boulder, Colorado, Portland, Oregon, andDavis, California all have the Platinum level award. Some of us think that Fort Collins should be next.
2. The LAB program gives us a metric and a goal. We need to start aiming towards that goal.

How do we get to Platinum?

1. There is no simple formula but the bottom line is this: “what percentage of trips to work are made by bicycle in our community?” If we could answer 16% (like Davis, CA) we’d get the Platinum. Or if we could answer 8% (like Portland and Boulder) we’d get the platinum. We’re at about 5.5% give or take.

So how do we do this?

1. Develop good metrics so we can really understand how many people pedal in Fort Collins.
2. Develop a real bicycle culture where motorists respect cyclists and cyclists respect motorists and follow the rules of the road.
3. Develop an educational outreach program to teach newcomers to town (like all those CSU students every August) that they are a vehicle. That they need to be predictable, visible, use lights at night, stop at stop signs, and not go the wrong way in a bike lane.
4. Make everyone including kids, seniors, students, commuters, racers, and recreational cyclists feel safe on the road.

How does the blog help?

1. By giving us a tool box, idea box, and shared resource to brainstorm how to build our bicycle culture. Here are just a few ideas to get you started:
a. Expand the Fort Collins Bike Library check-out locations to every major hotel in town and to the two parking garages in Old Town.
b. Fix the asphalt trails in our City parks.
c. Finish the Downtown Strategic Plan to complete bike lanes east and west across College Avenue at all major intersections.
d. Implement the Canyon Avenue bicycle bouleveard from the west side of CSU campus to Old Town with access to College through the Oak Street Plaza.
e. Begin planning for an overpass/bridge/gateway to the City on Harmony Road where the Powerline Trail is now scheduled to cross Harmony.

2. The BAC which is just now being formed will have lots of public input to get started!