Turning left the green way. Photo by Charles River TMA.
Cambridge is trying something different with a dedicated bicycle lane on the newly repaved Binney Street between Land Boulevard and Third Street: Bright green lanes and dedicated left-turn boxes, which, of course, nobody has ever seen around here.
The Charles River Transportation Management Association explains how to use the new turn boxes, designed to left bicyclists turn left with less danger:
With a cycletrack and a busy street like Binney, it's hard and not-that-safe to take a left turn from the cycletrack across three or four lanes of traffic. What the bike box allows you to do, as a cyclist, is to make a left turn in two steps. First, you bear right and stop your bike in the green box, repositioning it to aim to the left. Then, once the light changes, you proceed straight across with (or ahead of) the flow of traffic. So instead of having to make a left in traffic, you get to make a right turn out of traffic, and then go straight ahead with the flow of the cars, which is safer for everyone.
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We also see police officers
By J
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 5:20pm
We also see police officers killing unarmed men. Maybe address the problem?
red herring on the field
By Malcolm Tucker
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 8:33pm
Ah! Yes! There is another problem besides the one these fools are discussing here! Get out of the way, everyone, and make room for the discussion of another problem that has nothing to do with this problem! Heaven knows no one here is capable of caring about ensuring that traffic is as safe as possible for all vehicles while also caring about ending injustice among law enforcement officers. No! The ideas are mutually exclusive! Oh, thank you, internet person, for saving us from ourselves!
That's how I already make a left while cycling...
By UHub fan
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 12:50pm
with the notable exception of the fact that I'm not effing dumb enough to wait in the MIDDLE of moving traffic.
I ride ALL the way across the intersection (taking extra care to watch for right-on-redders with their heads turned the wrong way) and wait at the curb for the lights to change again.
Leave it to Cambridge traffic planners to come up with yet another way to make everyone slower and yet less safe. Some days I swear cycling advocates are trying to invent new ways to get cyclists killed.
There's nothing at all new
By anon
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 1:22pm
There's nothing at all new about this...
Two stage left turns are standard procedure at difficult intersections.
Pretty sure there's some of these painted suggestion boxes elsewhere in the area, as well...
In my opinion, bikes should
By anon
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 2:11pm
In my opinion, bikes should be integrated with vehicular traffic. Bike lanes are just never going to work. Firstly, many cyclists think it's safer to ride in the streets where cars are better able to see them. In Boston I generally observe about half the bikes using bike lanes and the other half either on the sidewalk or in the flow of vehicular traffic. Secondly, bike lanes are often blocked by delivery trucks, city busses, cabs, regular passenger vehicles, etc. I see people double-parked in bike lanes rather than parallel park there car into an available parking space right next to them! You can paint up the streets as much as you like, but it's not going to make a difference unless the majority of drivers and cyclists abide by the street markings. I'd love to see a fraction of the money spent painting bike lanes go toward public service announcements on local tv geared toward bike awareness and bike safety.
Public service announcements?
By lbb
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 2:21pm
How about punishing double-parking in a meaningful way? If you had brownies going up and down Comm Ave, so that you couldn't park in the bike lane "just for a minute" without a >50% chance of getting an expensive ticket, maybe people would think twice about doing it. As it is, there's no meaningful penalty. In New York City, blocking the box is a hefty fine plus points on your license -- seems like this should be similar.
Funny story
By KSquared
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 2:37pm
Several weeks ago there was a City vehicle that was double-parked (or rather, just parked in the traffic lane as there were plenty of parking spaces available) on Centre Street. I sent in a photo to Citizens Connect where it has remained "Open" ever since.
So no, if Boston doesn't care about its own cars, there is no way there will be any enforcement of double parking for anyone else.
Agreed
By lbb
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 9:31am
Agreed, my point was simply that more PSAs definitely won't accomplish a thing. Bike lane violation enforcement might.
Wait what?!? This proposal completely misses the point.
By bob barker
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 3:12pm
Anita Kurmann was riding her bike straight - she wasn't making a left turn. This new "helpful" reconfiguration does nothing to keep bicyclists from getting crushed by a car or truck that overtakes them and then turns right - directly into them.
If a car rushes to overtake a bike and then immediately turns right, sideswiping the bicyclist, the driver of the car is 100% responsible. They saw the bike in front of them (or, at least they should have) as they approached the intersection.
On the other hand, if traffic is congested (stopped or moving very slowly) and a bike is riding in the right lane quickly, overtaking all the cars, then the bicyclist has the responsibility to be aware of which cars have their turn signal on when they approach an intersection. If a bike tries to go straight while overtake a car that's stuck in traffic and that has their right blinker on, the bicyclist is 100% responsible if they get side swiped. The driver of the car was never aware of your proximity.
The fact that so many drivers DON'T USE A TURN SIGNAL just makes the problem exponentially worse.
(from a law abiding, safe bike rider)
Unrelated
By Kaz
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 3:32pm
This is unrelated to what happened last week. This is something they were doing anyways.
Mr. Kaz - I'm responding to the posted article.
By bob barker
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 9:48pm
That's what we're discussing in this forum = the benefits of a stupid green line / box at intersections.
You wrote: "This is something they were doing anyways."
What is this?
Who are they?
What were they doing?
Please, clarify your post. I don't mean to be snarky - I honestly don't know what the F you're talking about.
My point was / is that green lines & boxes do not address what occurred last week on Mass Ave / Beacon. It would not have mitigated the death of that woman.
I wonder why it's unclear
By Kaz
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 9:44am
"This is something they were doing anyways."
Painting left turn boxes for bicyclists is something the City of Cambridge was taking action on regardless of the accident that occurred across the river on Massachusetts Ave and Beacon St which you seem to have tied together in your head absent any logic or reasoning that I can discover so maybe you should be the one to explain the confusion since you're the one causing it.
There is *nothing* in the linked article that addresses the death of the cyclist in Boston last week. There is *nothing* in Adam's post about her. There is nothing in anyone else's comments except yours that brings her up. So, my whole post was to tell you to leave last week's victim out of this post because it's completely unrelated and I have no idea where you got the idea that they were painting these boxes in order to mitigate the occurrence of right hook accidents.
The benefit of this box is to make drivers aware that there might be a reason for a cyclist to be stopped waiting for the light to change to begin going left and to provide cyclists a way to go left from the right lane that doesn't involve crossing all lanes of traffic while traffic is moving.
vehicular cycling
By blues_lead
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 4:30pm
To everyone advocating vehicular cycling - i.e. riding bikes as though they're cars, with no special infrastructure - let's look at the results. The countries, cities, and neighborhoods with the highest rates of cycling all have largely separated routes for people in cars and people on bicycles. The Netherlands, for instance, has almost no no cycling on heavily used roads. On busy routes they separate the modes, which makes everyone feel safer, and anyone "8-80" years old can cycle easily and safely. even in Boston, the area with the best cycling infrastructure, Jamaica Plain, with the SWC, has the highest cycling mode share.
Side note, they don't use this type of intersection in the Netherlands or Copenhagen or any other high cycling place, because it really doesn't add much at all to safety in an environment with cycle tracks or very light traffic. But with the infrastructure currently in place in Cambridge, it might make sense.
We spent a few vacation days
By anon
Mon, 08/10/2015 - 7:56pm
We spent a few vacation days in Brunswick ME. Bowdoin College is located downtown and there are a lot of bicyclists. I think the town population is about 22K. Anyway for all the downtown streets and all the residential areas the speed limit is 25mph. That takes getting used to but most locals seem to abide by the law. The reason for 25 mph according to a local cyclist was at that speed car/bike/pedestrian accidents will most likely not end in someone dying. Perhaps Cambridge/Boston should try this.
most locals seem to abide by the law
By Sock_Puppet
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 8:04am
I think I found a more substantial difference between Boston and Brunswick than the speed limit.
Mixed traffic
By lbb
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 9:39am
FWIW, as someone who used to commute by bike in downtown Boston (don't do it as much nowadays, but I do still ride in the city), I think a variety of factors make Boston a relatively good environment for biking (relative, that is, to other US cities and non-cities). The speeds are regulated by congestion rather than enforced speed limits, but it ends up having a similar effect. Boston drivers are much more used to dealing with a mixture of traffic that's not all cars and trucks than the average suburbanite (I notice the same thing in rural areas, where locals are used to cars, bikes, tractors, livestock, etc.). It makes it easier for bikes to be part of the flow. To be sure, there's room for improvement (I keep thinking about the earlier comment about too much signage, lights, and other visual distractions), but I'm not convinced that separating bikes is the best solution for Boston. Maybe it's because it's not just cars/trucks and bikes: it's scooters, it's motorcycles, it's kids on skateboards, it's pedicabs and pushcarts and who knows what all. So if you create separate infrastructure and say "this is for bikes", first you have to enforce that (good luck with that, the first thing that happens with a "bike" path is that it's taken over by dog-walkers and parents with kids in strollers), and then you have to consider that you still have this mix of non-car non-bike traffic that has to go somewhere.
Right on Red?
By anon
Tue, 08/11/2015 - 11:18am
How should this work with drivers trying to make a right on red in the perpendicular lane? Is the box in the middle of the other lane so a car can fit between the bike and the curb? I'm assuming these boxes don't block right on red turns.
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