I live in a city with poorly implemented protected lanes and I absolutely feel less visible and less safe in the protected lane when approaching intersections. It is very common for folks in cars making turns to just cut me off so that I have to slam on my brakes to avoid colliding with them. Protected lanes can be much safer, but to do it correctly you have to sacrifice a large chunk of parking near intersections. Car people don’t like to sacrifice those spaces.
I think this is a good point. While you are “protected” behind those parking spaces and shrubbery, you are also less visible. But you are still very much a part of that road system when you come to the end of the block and have to get through the intersection. People crater the same problem by riding on the sidewalk instead of using the bike lanes. They feel safer but I’m not always sure they are safer.
Where I live there are water canals carrying runoff from the nearby foothills into the county water system. These canals do not follow the roads at all and criss cross through our entire city. Some smart person decided to add multi-use trails all along them, so we have a bike lane network that’s off the roads entirely. There are even a couple of elevated bridges built entirely to get the bike trails over major thoroughfares. That’s protected.
I live in a city with poorly implemented protected lanes and I absolutely feel less visible and less safe in the protected lane when approaching intersections. It is very common for folks in cars making turns to just cut me off so that I have to slam on my brakes to avoid colliding with them. Protected lanes can be much safer, but to do it correctly you have to sacrifice a large chunk of parking near intersections. Car people don’t like to sacrifice those spaces.
I think this is a good point. While you are “protected” behind those parking spaces and shrubbery, you are also less visible. But you are still very much a part of that road system when you come to the end of the block and have to get through the intersection. People crater the same problem by riding on the sidewalk instead of using the bike lanes. They feel safer but I’m not always sure they are safer.
Where I live there are water canals carrying runoff from the nearby foothills into the county water system. These canals do not follow the roads at all and criss cross through our entire city. Some smart person decided to add multi-use trails all along them, so we have a bike lane network that’s off the roads entirely. There are even a couple of elevated bridges built entirely to get the bike trails over major thoroughfares. That’s protected.
And yes, this is in the US 😀