Edge Lane Roads a.k.a. Advisory Bike Lanes (opens in new tab)

> I felt safe and drivers were respectful and patient when passing.

A large part of this, from what I've observed living in Canada and the Netherlands, is the different perspectives borne out of each culture.

In the Netherlands, everyone grows up having been a bicycle commuter. It's how every child gets to school. So everyone has been a bicycle commuter for at least some period of their lives and can sympathize with other bicycle commuter.

In Canada, it's less common for children to ride bicycles to school. Busses are far more common or parents dropping off their kids at the kiss-n-ride. When kids do ride bicycles, it's for sport.

So if a Canadian driver sees a person riding a bicycle, he or she does not see that person as an equal; someone who is also using the road to commute. They tend to see the bicycle commuter as someone who is intruding on their space, using the road (which is for commuting) for sport. And there is some small proportion of self-appointed citizen police who will decide to "teach them a lesson", much like you have with drivers who go about break-checking. It does not take many of those experiences to instill a sense of terror for those who try to commute by bicycle.

Additionally, in the Netherlands people who drive to work still frequently ride their bicycles to run errands. Need a carton of volle melk from the Albert Heijn or Jumbo? Just hop on your bicycle and ride 5 minutes. In the Netherlands there are very few food deserts [0] and small, well-stocked grocery stores are close at hand for every neighbourhood. That's often impractical in Canada, where we have shifted to large RC Superstores and Walmart "Supercentres", often located distant to residential neighbourhoods, often located along stroads which are inhospitable to anyone but car drivers.

In the Netherlands, it's much easier to think, "well, that could be me tomorrow", when driving past a bicycle commuter. In Canada, car drivers see the bicycle commuter as an invader or alien species, "the cyclist", whom is different and perhaps even unwelcome. In Canada, I feel lucky if the car drivers just tolerate my presence on the road; In the Netherlands I felt seen as an equal.

[0] : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

> I can already imagine the Amazon delivery van or work truck parked in the bicycle section

I've lived all over the US and I've mostly seen this on the east coast (NY, CT, MA). Totally insane to me that police don't ticket the hell out of delivery vehicles for parking in the middle of active roadways (not just bike lanes).

Drivers in this area are terrible in general, not just delivery drivers. Everyone likes to claim that their local drivers are bad, but as someone with a lot of broad experience, East Coast drivers are truly some of the worst.

Seriously. I'm in Canada but I regularly see drivers cut through bike lanes to get in and out of parking lots without checking for bikes, or turn through a bike lane at an intersection without checking their blind spots. Even seen someone drive over a concrete curb and on a protected bike lane to get around a slow moving garbage truck.

I never feel safe on shared streets unless there's a physical barrier between cars and other road users. It only takes half a second of distraction for a driver to ruin your day, or worse.

I don't know the rules in the US but in the Netherlands the car is always at fault in case of an accident, unless it is proven the cyclist was at fault.

This makes the roads a lot safer for cyclists.

When this law was introduced years ago the Dutch also made fun of it: https://youtu.be/ivY06w83fKU

I wouldn't use something like this in the SF Bay Area, at least in winter months. The drivers are courteous enough, but Califonia paints bike lanes with green paint that becomes slick if wet or covered in leaves.

The worst part is that cars get super confused / angry when bicyclists use the car lane instead of the "perfectly good" bike lane.

Have you been on Tunitas Creek Road? It's in San Mateo County and runs from the top of the hill at 35 down to 1 on the beach.

It's a pretty narrow road through redwood forest and since cars avoid it, cyclists treat it as a bike route.

In the Netherlands this used instead of segregated cycle lanes, but in addition to a strong network of cycle lanes.

Most commonly you find them down very old, narrow, country lanes, where there simply isn’t space for true segregation. But equally, there’s usually no need to use these roads a cyclist, as there are normally more direct dedicated cycle routes. You frequently only use them because your specifically looking for a scenic route, or something a little unusual to cycle down.

In other parts of the world, they will also have their place in space constraint locations, or in large networks of small country lanes, where providing segregated infrastructure simply isn’t possible or viable due to lack of space, or extremely low volumes of traffic.

I personally think the UK could benefit substantially from these types of roads, if country lanes where converted. The lanes are barely big enough for bi-directional motor traffic, and occasionally not even that wide. Providing edge lane roads would encourage motor traffic to remain in the centre of the road, where they’re substantially less likely to collide with cycle or pedestrian traffic, which may be hidden around one of the many blind corners.

When faced with uncertainty, car drivers tend to slow down. That's the general advantage here.

It's not better than a properly separated bike path, but it is better than a painted bicycle gutter that motorists are comfortable driving 50mph inches from.

These are also mainly used on fully residential streets and basically codifying existing rules. They behave very similarly to streets without a center line & sidewalk/bike lanes. I also think cost does become an issue when implementing larger streets/bike lanes (let alone the fact that larger streets make people go faster) on every single residential street.

I assume it’s space/right-of-way related.

But, like you, I have questions about how this configuration would work (in the US, in my case). I can see it working well in towns and suburban roads in some European nations - I’m thinking Scotland here - where default speeds are lower, roads are already shared with parking (so single-tracking is a known procedure), and drivers generally aren’t assholes.

In the US, most suburban streets are posted at 25-40mph, and actual speeds tend to be higher yet, which seems WAY too fast for edge lane roads or any other mixed use roadway. Heck, in my area, we have dedicated (but not protected) bike lanes and on some roads, they’re downright scary because the traffic 3’ away is going 50mph.

there's no need to be anti-car (it's fruitless anyway) to be in favor of a more diverse mix of transport. we'd have plenty of space for mixed mobility if we just converted all on-street parking to protected bike lanes rather than implementing these edge lane roads, which seem to be a solution looking for a problem (lack of space, in this case).

the important bit is segregating traffic by inertia and mass. i'd personally love to see all the car/truck thoroughfares (roads) put underground, with people getting explicit priority on the above-ground, mixed-use streets.

Space is at a premium in many places, possibly every place where such a road might be placed.

One of these roads is two blocks away from me. I’m going to go have a look at it later today, but the road it’s on is very similar to the road I live on: two direction street, residential parking on both sides, not four car widths’ wide, so people are already “taking turns” and used to it.

I bet it works exactly like the street I live on, only using more paint.

This configuration is for streets without enough room for a dedicated bike lane. An edge-lane road is as wide as a standard two-way with no bike lane.

it seems like the sort of thing that would work well in a space that already has a culture of sharing the roads amongst various transportation modes, and where drivers are already generally respectful and courteous towards other road users. I can see why it works well in the netherlands.

I think it's a little naive to imagine it would work in north america. drivers here need more than a gentle reminder to not run other users off the road.

I agree that there are too many signs in Canada that don’t help because the roads feel like they support higher speeds.

I don’t think roads need to be mentally taxing as that just causes fatigue to already tired workers commuting. What you can do is offer visual and sensory cues so that the speed limit feels natural. For example, narrowing lanes, gradient changes, road material changes.

I enjoyed riding on this style of road near Amsterdam. It struck me as a very efficient use of space for roads that don't experience high volume traffic on a regular basis. Drivers naturally slowed down and waited their turn to pass when they saw cyclists and oncoming traffic. It made me wish that things like this would exist in the US.

But again, all of my experience riding in the US tells me that this style of road is a terrible idea without two prerequisites:

1. significant increase in difficulty of obtaining a license

2. enforcement of penalties when drivers murder cyclists and pedestrians

The number of times that people have dangerously cut through a bike lane, done high speed close passes, swerved and accelerated into incoming traffic to do a dangerous pass while going 20mph over the speed limit, randomly pulling over to park directly in front of me in a no parking zone in the bike lane, etc, that I have seen in the US, makes me dread this kind of road.

> ITT: People who've never done any research on this issue making very American conclusions.

Skimming the other posts here, people are drawing American conclusions on how drivers would behave. And can you blame them? Drivers have gotten away with slaps on the wrists for killing cyclists and pedestrians for too long in America. [0] These edge lane roads only work if drivers believe that cyclists also belong on the road. But that isn't the case in America.

Unless the States start punishing distracted driving, and enforce stricter licensing requirements, we'll continue to rely on urban planners to protect other road users with infrastructure against idiocy.

[0] - https://www.vice.com/en/article/9bzdpv/you-can-kill-anyone-y...

> ITT: People who've never done any research on this issue making very American conclusions

As an American, it could be that I've experienced and heard of active hostility to bicyclists. It seems like a uniquely stupid American thing. I'm sorry if this is also the case in Europe.

There exist optimization criteria besides "reduce the number of deaths". In particular, the enjoyment of drivers is an important optimization criterion.

> Well yeah, but we use this specific configuration with the shared centre lane only on the lowest tier of rural roads where traffic is limited and the speed limit is 60 km/h (roughly 40 mph), and some select urban streets where they act as a traffic calming measure¹. Most arterial and collector roads have segregated cycleways, both within and without city limits. That is the basis of our road system. Cyclists and motorists mostly share only local roads/streets (30 km/h (20 mph) speed limit within city limits, 60 km/h without). The exceptions are roads where limited space means cyclists have dedicated cycle lanes which motorists may not use for overtaking, but in those cases motorized traffic won't share lanes with oncoming traffic either.

They actually say that in the video. In Germany they are mostly used in urban settings in streets with speedlimits below 30 km/h I believe. They definitely work if this is a low volume street, however the speed limits need to be enforced (a general problem in many countries IMO).

I used to work in Utrecht in the Netherlands as a contractor (doing Delphi progamming,me based the UK) and I can safely say that the bikes used to terrify me far more than the cars did, as the NL has some of the worst gridlock in Europe, so you can walk faster than the cars, even on motorways. The bikes used to sneak up on you.

As an American it was immediately clear to me the sort of road this website is suggesting we replace with edge lane roads. They are two lane, dotted-white divided, and limited to 45mph. Very common rural and exurban pattern.

This might not have been as clear outside of the North American context.

I've ridden rental bikes on roads like these between Amsterdam and Leiden.

I think the big problem is nobody knows what the heck they’ve encountered.

If you do it naturally people can figure it out: make the road very narrow but technically wide enough for two cars and people will hug the center naturally.

the only reason the "share the road" signage is accepted in america is because drivers interpret it to mean that cyclists should give way to motorists. "other road users should share with me" rather than "i need to share with other road users"

try going to a community meeting and suggesting that a "share the road" sign be replaced with a "cyclists may use full lane" sign and see how much pushback you get.

I feel that to implement these in the US you’d want to start by marking those country roads, but even then it would take time. L

It almost feels like it works better unmarked.

Well as another Seattleite who bikes a lot, I have to say that infrastructure is only part of the solution. I chose my neighborhood on the basis of bikeability - it was literally the most important metric. And demographics and narrow streets trumped bike-specific infrastructure by a wide margin.

Upper middle class folks are much less likely to kill you regardless of what sort of road they're on (I can pretty much predict the probability of bad interactions simply based on looking at what folks are driving). And in the absence of any effective law enforcement with regards to traffic laws improving your priors is fundamental. (Heck in the WA state 10% of fatal crashes are due drivers who don't even have a license at all https://wtsc.wa.gov/download/12727 - apologies for the cert warning on the above)

And the other thing to look for is narrow streets (big feature of my neighborhood here) which keeps vehicle speeds down.

And don't bike after 10 PM at night (that's what buses and Uber is for) - too many impaired drivers after that point.

And keep in mind that separated infrastructure does little or nothing at intersections and driveways. There's a notorious separated lane across I-5 from me where lots of my friends have had bad interactions (including injuries) at parking garage driveways (a particularly nasty case is associated with the garage for a medical practice - we theorize that folks are coming out after unhappy doc visits distracted by the prospect of looming financial ruin - another US-specific feature ;-)

I take the lane there (which is scary as it makes drivers cranky, but again given the demographics they're not homicidal (at least so far)) but it beats getting squashed by someone speeding out of the garage.

I think the way forward in the US lies in achieving automated (and therefore safe and cheap) public-ish transport so we can give an alternative to the folks that can't drive safely and get them from behind the wheel. Short of that infrastructure (if built correctly) can be helpful but like bike helmets gets way more attention than warranted.

The first street I lived on in Munich had only enough space in the road for one lane of traffic + one lane of parking. This meant the road was safer, not more dangerous -- the very fact that it was so narrow meant that cars traveled down it quite carefully.