Cycletrack and Blue Marking for Conflict & Transition Zones in Cambridge

Cambridge, MA was one of the earliest adopters of cycletracks in the U.S. and this was my first time cycling on the facility which is adjacent to the MIT campus. The cycletrack was enjoyable to ride on and reminded me of many of the Dutch cycletracks I had used last summer or the one way facilities common in Copenhagen.  The nature of having the cycling facility flush with the driveway (which is lower speed traffic) is a nice touch. The markings at the driveway denote the potential for a conflict or a transition at the locations where the cycletrack is ending.
The City was using the blue markings prior to the feedback the City of Portland got related to using green and apparently they haven't had the need to go back and refresh the markings.  
The treatment that was worth noting was the yield to bikes sign and the lane configuration sign which included the blue bike lane to indicate to motorists that the lane exists and there should be an awareness of the potential for a conflict. The first time I saw the sign, I had a hard time noting the bike marking in the lane, the black and blue does not provide a very good contrast that is easy to pick up and doesn't offer a consistent marking for the bike symbol, I tend to prefer the addition of the rider to match the striping, but that's a detail that's something to talk with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD) National Committee about this week.    
This post reminded me of the early work done by Alta to summarize some of the facilities in 2009, which seemed like an eternity ago what with the Green Lane Project and so much emphasis on cycletracks and protected facilities in the past several years.

Signal IntersectionDesign: Bicycle Lane & Left Side Mixing Zone on 1st Ave

This person chose to weave through the left turning traffic to the left, so as
to avoid the conflict. The next vehicle is in queue, so this is a relatively
safe movement, as long as someone doesn't pull from the adjacent through
lane into the parking on the farside. In the next picture, you can see a
concrete barrier that protects against that.  

This person passes the vehicle on the right and then moves back into
the marked area. This picture also shows the bus on the right hand side
they have a bus priority lane in red on the right hand side of the street. 

   The mixing zone in NYC was something that I had wanted to spend some time looking at because when I first thought of the idea, I didn't know how well it would work. My past visit to NYC suggested that it was something so new that they weren't sure how it would work, but they did know that it eliminated the need for a bicycle signal movement that is separated in time from the left turning traffic, essentially providing a permissive left across the bicycle lane, which requires motorists to look back before making the left turn to see if a person on a bicycle is approaching.
Generally, it was a new concept to me and upon visiting this location, I was curious to see how folks were using the intersection.

The NY Times did a Q&A about the lanes and the engineer from NYC offered the following:  “this ‘complete street’ treatment has been shown to decrease injuries by up to 58 percent for everyone using these streets, whether on foot, on a bike or in a vehicle.”

The second question on the Q&A is about traffic signal timing, which is a bonus for those that clink on the link. 

A little more research shows that the NYCDOT did some initial work on this back in 2009 as covered by StreetFilms. NE Multnomah Boulevard is Portland's first foray into mixing zones and it includes buses and that should something that the City studies with one of its summer interns. 

Dutch Bicycle Signal with Through Arrow - Clarifying Intent of Traffic Control - Den Haag, Netherlands

 In discussing bicycle signals with fellow transportation engineers, I am consistently asked what the green indication is intended to mean to a person on a bicycle. I am perplexed at this question because I believe that one could ask the same question for a circular green indication that is used for all traffic. With a circular green, it does not mean you should turn left (in your motor vehicle) from the right most lane of traffic.

That was exactly what a recent discussion inquired about. I hadn't ever considered whether a bicycle signal indication would given a person on a bicycle the clue that they could turn left from the bicycle lane across vehicular through lanes, essentially stopping all traffic in favor of the traffic in the bicycle lane. In our nine bicycle traffic signals in Portland, only a few of them are for the bicycle lane where there would be an opportunity to make a left turn across several lanes of through traffic, but I don't think that's a logical conclusion for a cyclist to make when there are other adjacent traffic signal displays or through arrows in adjacent lanes.

The pictures in this post show an example in Den Haag where some clarification was deemed necessary of the intent of the traffic signal and there was a need to provide clarity related to the bicycle signal was intended to control through traffic (note the small through arrow in the larger signal head at left. As you can see in the photo, the red pavement curves to the right, but this traffic signal is intended to control the through movement.  

NACTO Bike Guide Training at the Oregon Active Transportation Summit

The Oregon Active Transportation Summit (OATS) annually offers education on a broad array of active transportation topics. This year’s Summit will be April 16-17 in Salem.

Offered on Monday, April 16th of the summit will be an intensive day-long training on the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) Bikeway Design Guide. Completing the training offers 6 professional development hours.

The NACTO Guide presents both detailed designs and examples of how best practice bikeways are being implemented throughout North America. The training—taught by Roger Geller, Rob Burchfield and Peter Koonce—will cover the 21 designs found in the guide as well as other treatments in use, but not yet covered there. The course is intended for traffic engineers, project managers, planners and anyone interested in the nuts and bolts and discussion of more recent bikeway designs.

To take the course, register here for the summit!
Registration is $50, which includes conference sessions, lunch and the evening reception. In addition to the bikeway design training is a full two-day agenda that promises a stimulating summit. If you cannot attend both days at the least please plan to stay for the evening talk and reception that follows.

A hard-copy of the NACTO Guide is available for an additional $40 when you register.

Documenting Efforts on NE 12th Avenue: 4 to 3-lane Conversion

I got an email from another colleague regarding the experience converting a 4-lane to 3-lane conversion on NE 12th Avenue. I could spend a lot of time to describe it or I could summarize blog posts that BikePortland.org had on the subject in chronological order with better reporting than I could accomplish at home in the evenings after work.

Pushback on the Plans - are signals enough? - April 28th: This was the time I got involved. There was some earlier work on the concepts, but I hadn't done a whole lot of new information.

Implementation Notice - June 2nd: PBOT implemented the signal changes with some striping modifications before the school year ended.

Moving Forward with Concerns - June 16th: A second meeting was held to discuss initial results.

Consensus with the Stakeholders! - September 29 : We studied the after when school was back in session to do a reasonable comparison.

Implementation pictorial: The completed project, we still have a few things to modify and we committed to evaluate the after before the end of the year. We haven't had any complaints that we were not able to address.

Green Wave Signal Timing in Copenhagen with Transit

A great conversation with a consultant who is working on modifying the Green Wave signal timing to incorporate transit priority measures that will reduce delay for buses. In describing the two Green Wave projects we have implemented in Portland outside of downtown (which is all timed for human scale speeds) we discussed the relative importance of certainty associated with the signal timing and the practical implementation issues associated with what you cannot at the intersectionof two green waves. Our experience in Portland is a little difference because our Green Waves are on one way couplets, which makes the progression issue less of an issue in the opposite direction.

From One Greenwave unofficially starts at the Bike Signal at Interstate & Oregon

My experience in Copenhagen was fantastic on their green waves. It was also very necessary to facilitate the movement of people with their impressive bike mode split nearing 40% for people on bikes. The impetus for reduced bus delay is to reduce costs of service. This is also consistent with an argument I consistently made as a consultant... Any public sector employee should want to reduce bus delay since ultimately the investment in transit is a service that if faster is a savings we can all enjoy. It also can reduce pavement wear if buses are not suddenly stopping at the stop bar.

The person I talked to was also very interested in what we've done with VISSIM to assess bicycles and pedestrians. While we've used some of the elements of simulation, I would say we've just scratched the surface related to what can be done. Beyond the simple assessment of adequacy of the facilities, is the quality of the network to support multimodal travel. There are a lot of details we are not ready to assess to fully evaluate tradeoffs between transit, bike, ped, and freight mobility. Things like the use of detection are difficult to weigh without performance measures and a complete assessment for the 24/7 operating conditions we deal. This is not to mention the maintenance issues associated with the decision of the engineers.

Finally, we discussed detection technology, which is consistent with several posts and a recent inquiry from the Oregonian, BikePortland, and Alta about some work that was done in Pleasonton, CA.