04-20-2019, 10:26 AM
(04-19-2019, 04:07 PM)danbrotherston Wrote: As for the bike box, as timc pointed out, you're confusing a bike box with a two stage left turn, the point here is that cyclists can come down the ridiculous 10 meter bike lane, and move to the left in front of cars to proceed left. I've actually done this a number of times, it works as well as they ever do.
The region as part of their bike lane pilot project gives an example of each kind of box in their presentation:
Oops, I replied to the other message before reading this one. OK, I didn’t realize there were these two scenarios. I’m thinking of the 2-stage one. Having said that, I think the 1-stage one is kind of contradictory: bicycles want to stay in the bike lane and avoid mixing with motor traffic, but they’ll still make a left turn from the bike box in front of a bunch of motor traffic, and have to contend with opposite-direction motor vehicle traffic when they make their turn. By contrast the 2-stage turn keeps the bikes completely separate, except for having to avoid conflicts with right-turning motor vehicle traffic.
I also have a slightly different perspective from some on these issues. From the way some people talk, it is as if the goal is to slow down motor vehicle traffic, meaning not the maximum speed at which vehicles travel (well, that too) but rather increasing the time to get from A to B (not the same thing in the city, where waiting for other traffic is inevitable). I don’t think that is a reasonable goal at all: ceteris paribus, as the economists like to say, getting places faster is better. What is a reasonable goal, however, is giving higher (much higher) priority to non-motor-vehicle safety and speed than we currently do. Right turn on red can be executed perfectly safely: the driver just has to be actually watching. But really the same is true of right turn on green: in both cases, the driver has to watch for pedestrians crossing on a walking person signal. In particular, if there are no pedestrians around, then the reason for forbidding the movement goes away completely and the restriction becomes an utterly pointless delay.
So my position can’t really be summarized as pro-car or pro-pedestrian. If it were up to me, King St. in Uptown would be one moderately narrow lane, southbound, and Regina would be one moderately narrow lane, northbound, with traffic light timings enforcing a 50 or maybe even 40km/h green wave on each street (plus both-direction segregated bicycle lanes on each street). If that means motor vehicle travel is slow, fine. Caroline/Erb would similarly be reduced in capacity, although possibly only to 2 lanes each way. But I would allow right turn on red at those intersections.