Bethlehem’s ‘protected’ bike path will get cyclists hurt
“Worst-case” is a reverential phrase in engineering. Professionally, I kept my integrated circuit designs (aka chips or semiconductors) away from worst-case process variations, signal timing conflicts and material inadequacies for 36 years.
With managers who “pooh-pooh” such efforts, you get exploding smart phones, 737 plunges and space shuttle breakups. That’s what I fear for Bethlehem’s plan for “parking-protected” bike lanes on West Broad Street.
I’m a longtime bicycle traveler. Since 1988, I’ve made more than 14,000 trips across Allentown to my lab in the morning and then back home in the evening. Now I bike, trike and tandem — often towing heavy cargo — on Broad Street two to four times a week, at around 8-12 mph.
Jane Brody of the New York Times laid out the case against parking protected bikeways in a March 30, 2020, article, Are Bike Lanes Really Safe?, where she wrote about two cycling accidents she had, and questioned how then new bike lanes in New York City were designed.
Many, she wrote, run between a curb on the right and parked cars on the left, preventing cars traveling to the left of the parked vehicles from having a clear view of cyclists in the bike lane, and vice-versa.
Yet Bethlehem wants parking protected bikeways along its broad West Broad Street.
The plan would move car parking spots out from the curb and dedicate the space cleared for bicycle travelers. They could pedal from downtown Bethlehem to Allentown or back with the many benefits of bicycling while separated from high-velocity travelers by those parked cars.
No interaction between cyclists and speeding motorists. Cyclists and the city are overjoyed! Good for society!
Beware.
The promise of parking protected bike lanes crashes, figuratively and literally, at intersections. Traffic science backed by data has shown for generations most collisions happen there. PennDOT reported about 60% of bicyclist injuries occurred at intersections in 2020 (481 out of 799), and just over 50% cycling deaths (12 out of 22 that year).
“Protected” bikeways cannot protect at intersections, and parking protection makes things worse because of blocked sightlines and shrunken timelines.
Turning and crossing motorists look several ways. See behind the delivery van? “Does that sign say Second Avenue?”
Novice bikeway enthusiasts and enthusiastic longtime cyclists love the promise of “protection” Why worry about what could be on the other side of that parked car?
Most collisions already happen at intersections. They’ll increase. So what?
“Fender bender” collisions between cars at intersections get fenders bent.
Wheel-bending collisions for cyclists are low speed. Just bruises? No and no. A bicyclist will be knocked over. Noggins hit asphalt like a sledgehammer dropped from 5 feet overhead. A concussion could result. A helmet could separate concussion from death.
Fatalities at intersections are prominent in PennDOT’s data. But the data doesn’t really give the full picture. Consider Dr. Anita Kurmann, a young doctor who met a gruesome death in 2015 in Boston. She was crushed under a tractor-trailer turning right as she continued straight through the intersection. She had not emerged from a protected bike lane, but nonetheless the driver apparently didn’t realize she was there.
Broad Street’s proposed bikeways would route unwary cyclists right into that same situation.
Traffic engineers in Boulder, Colorado — nearly a nirvana for protected bikeway efforts — were so wary of routing its 30th Street protected bikeways across an intersection that they dug twin underpasses.
If Broad Street is left as is, cyclists will be visible earlier. If Broad Street is left as is, cyclists will see a truck readying to turn.
Electric bicycles are coming too. Fast. An e-biker going 28 mph in a protected bikeway would travel 65 feet in just 1.65 seconds. That’s the same length the Bethlehem bikeway designers want kept free of parked cars to give a clear view.
Broad Street today offers cyclists and motorists clear and long sightlines.
Is speed overemphasized here? Even at zero mph, safety suffers. Who goes first on green? What about right-on-red permissions?
Bethlehem bikeway designers wouldn’t answer “how could a left turn be made from a protected bikeway?” Three right turns equals one left turn? Still unsafe. A colorful answer from national protected bikeway designers is “stop, dismount and walk.” That’s half safe.
Broad Street between Main Street and Pennsylvania Avenue has 19 intersections: 16 avenues plus 3 named streets. Forty-two driveways adjoin Broad Street between Main and Pennsylvania. Motor vehicles and protected bikeway cyclists could meet at any of those 61 spots.
Most bicycle collisions happen at intersections and can be fatal. Parking “protection” is for straightaways only but would make things worse at intersections. West Broad offers many intersections along just 1.4 miles of straightaway.
I see West Broad Street in Bethlehem as a worst-case bad place to put a parking protected bike lane.