Pushing back against new bike lanes is becoming a Pittsburgh tradition. When Mayor Bill Peduto started to install the lanes a couple years ago along Penn Avenue, in Oakland and elsewhere, there was outcry from business owners, residents in the neighborhoods and drivers worrying about parking. Granted there was also support from hundreds of bikers and advocates, but that support tended to be downplayed by media outlets.
Now, two years after having set up protected bike lanes Downtown on Penn Avenue (which sometimes receives more than 1,000 trips per day) and the Roberto Clemente Bridge, the city is still facing strong push-back on an extension to that system along Fort Pitt Boulevard. In response, Pittsburgh City Councilor Theresa Kail-Smith (District 2) is proposing the creation of a bike-lane committee to field complaints and suggestions for new bike lanes.
However, as advocacy group Bike Pittsburgh points out, there already is a Complete Streets Advisory Committee being set up that can field road-design complaints, such as for bike lanes.
“We believe that [Pittsburgh] should first concentrate on getting the Complete Streets Advisory Committee off the ground and running — a committee that was written into the Complete Streets bill that unanimously passed council in November,” wrote Bike Pittsburgh director Scott Bricker in an email to City Paper. “If a bicycle-only advisory committee is still needed, so be it, but they should figure out how it will coordinate with the Complete Streets Committee so that the two are not redundant.”
In addition to the Complete Streets committee, Pittsburgh’s Department of City Planning conducts numerous public meetings every year led by bike/pedestrian coordinator Kristine Saunders, where complaints and suggestions about new bike-lane projects can be filed. CP has sat in on many of these meetings, which are always held in the neighborhood directly affected, and they usually include many representatives from both the pro-bike-lane and anti-bike-lane creed.
Nonetheless, the Pittsburgh Trib Live reported Jan. 3 that Kail-Smith was motivated to set up a bike-lane committee due to “numerous complaints about existing lanes Downtown from residents who say they take up space for street parking and cause traffic congestion.”
But the assertion that bike lanes cause more congestion actually runs contrary to studies in multiple big cities across the country. In New York City, a protected bike lane on Columbus Avenue actually improved congestion, decreasing travel time for cars from 4.5 minutes to 3 minutes along a 20-block stretch. In Minneapolis, the U.S.’s top bike-commuting city, news-data website fivethirtyeight.com studied 10 segments in the Minnesota city in 2014 and determined that the addition of a bike lane at the cost of a car lane had no affect on traffic times for cars.
In fact, a 2013 University of Virginia study shows that bike riders only reduce congestion when they have bike lanes to ride in. The Fort Pitt Boulevard proposed extension to Downtown’s protected bike lane would add about half-a-mile of lanes and connect directly to the Great Allegheny Passage trail, which runs to Washington, D.C.
The proposed bike-lane advisory committee will be discussed at 10 a.m. Wed., Jan 11, in the city council chambers, located on the fifth floor of the City-County Building at 414 Grant St., Downtown.
This article appears in Jan 4-10, 2017.
The Penn Ave bike lane has been a big success. Because downtown is small and car parking is difficult, getting around by car there is a hassle, and once more bike lanes are put in, it will be easier to do some trips in or near downtown by bike than by car, taxi, or bus. A lunch trip from downtown to the Strip could be done easily with HealthyRide bike share, for example. Or a bike commute from Southside to downtown could be easily and safely done once the proposed Fort Pitt Blvd and Stanwix St bike lanes are in place. To those that complain of lost parking spaces with the addition of this bike lane: (1) there will always be tradeoffs, loss of a parking space will be an inconvenience for some, but creation of a protected bike lane will help about 1000 people a day and it could save a life, either by preventing a car-bike crash, or through exercise and improved health; (2) Kristin Saunders looked carefully at parking and car traffic consequences, she chose the Fort Pitt Blvd route in part because it would take out only one block of (non-peak!) parking, cars can park at one of the three+ garages or lots near Wood & Fort Pitt.
Bike lanes create hazards. The most dangerous bike lane of all is the downhill lane on Liberty Avenue. Cyclists can easily maintain the 35 mph speed limit going down that hill, and the bike lane puts them squarely in the door zone. 35 mph is about how fast you would be going if you fell off a three-story building, and hitting a just-opened door at that speed can be deadly.
What’s worse, if you swerve to miss the door and it hits your right handlebar, it will throw you under the wheels of cars in the traffic lane.
Other bike lanes are dangerous as well. The bike lane on East Liberty Boulevard has intersections where cars turn right from the left lane across the paths of bikes going straight in the right lane.
Beyond that, bicycles are more visible when they are in the traffic lane than when they are off to the right. They are more visible to cars crossing from the left and from the right, as well as oncoming cars wanting to turn left and even cars overtaking from behind.
If you are in the traffic lane, you can always slide over when it is safe to let cars pass. But when you are off to the right on a bike lane, your only maneuver option is to the left, into traffic. You are more vulnerable to pedestrians stepping out from between cars, to car doors, and even to debris, which tends to accumulate in bike lanes. All this is explained in the “Street Smarts” section of the PennDOT Bicycle Drivers Manual.
Bike lane advocacy is based on people wanting to look like they are helping cyclists, but they are really endangering us.
The only major cycling organization that really understands what safe cycling is all about is Cycling Savvy. They teach courses on bicycle safety, and people who take their courses understand just how dangerous bike lanes can be.