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Bicyclists ask for a sign they belong

Marked bike lanes may make pedaling safer, but maybe not.

By DAN DEWITT
Published November 26, 2006

Michael Riley - who should know - says that marked bike lanes make for safer cycling.

"Motorists are definitely more hesitant to pull across the white line if they see a pavement marking or a posted sign," said Riley, 26, who commutes to his job at Oliver's Cycle Sports in Tampa and rides as much as 300 miles a week.

"It identifies it as my space."

The Tampa office of the state Transportation Department disagrees.

Its district is one of the most dangerous places in the U.S. to ride a bike, yet only 8.2 miles of the 880 miles of roads it maintains have marked bike lanes - about one-tenth the average for districts statewide.

Department engineers in Tampa say they have protected cyclists by building paved shoulders on highways and that defining these with signs and pavement markings has little added benefit.

But some transportation experts say the district - which covers Pinellas, Hillsborough, Pasco, Hernando and Citrus counties - is neglecting a cheap and effective solution to a serious public safety problem.

"Is it being addressed? Simple answer: No," said Dennis Dix, Hernando's transportation planning coordinator. "There's obviously a dearth of bike lanes in the system."

* * *

In the most recent Mean Streets report, in 2004, the Surface Transportation Policy Partnership ranked Tampa Bay second to Orlando as the nation's most dangerous metropolitan area for cyclists and pedestrians.

That year, 13 cyclists died in Pinellas, the most in the state, followed by Hillsborough, which had 10 cycling deaths. In 2005 - when Florida led the nation in bike fatalities - Hillsborough County tied Orange County for most cycling deaths in the state, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles.

More recently, on Oct. 18, Fredrick Gardner, 15, was struck and killed by a fellow East Bay High School student as he rode his bike on Bullfrog Creek Road which is not a state highway.

State and local governments have accommodated cyclists by building the Pinellas, Suncoast and Withlacoochee State bike trails, which mostly draw recreational riders. Tampa-based District 7 of the Transportation Department has constructed paved shoulders on 62 percent of its roads to serve bike commuters. It also plans to build marked bike lanes on the 3-mile stretch of Nebraska Avenue between Hillsborough Avenue and Kennedy Boulevard, said Dwayne Kile, the district's design engineer.

This stretch of Nebraska meets the district's other criteria for marking bicycles lanes, he said. It is in an urban area, is heavily used by cyclists and stretches between two main roads with bus routes.

"You need a good terminus," Kile said. "You don't want a bicycle facility to end in the middle of nowhere."

Bike lane signs on roads seldom used by cyclists are needlessly distracting, he said. On these highways, paved shoulders are adequate to comply with a state law that requires bike lanes to be built on new or improved roads in urban areas.

"The key factor is to put that white line down to mark the shoulder," he said. "That isolates that 4- or 5-foot area for that bicyclist to ride in."

Engineers in other districts, however, interpret this law as requiring the state's standard markings for bike lanes: a painted outline of cyclist and a directional arrow on the pavement, often accompanied by signs telling motorists the lanes are for "bikes only."

Though the state does not keep track of the miles of marked lanes, a study completed for the Transportation Department last year by a consultant, Kimley-Horn & Associates Inc., estimated that 606 miles of state road have marked bike lanes - about 87 miles per district.

Some districts have much more, including District 3, which has marked lanes on 23 miles of state roads in Tallahassee alone.

"All new urban construction gets marked bike lanes," said Mary Anne Koos, bicycle/pedestrian coordinator for District 3.

"We just do it as a policy."

Other hazards

Some transportation experts agree with Kile that marked bike lanes do little to save lives.

Mighk Wilson, bicycle-pedestrian coordinator for an Orlando-based planning agency, has analyzed fatal crashes in and around the city. Most are the result of mistakes such as riding at night without lights, which bike lanes do nothing to correct, he said.

"The designation of a bike lane is not really that relevant from the standpoint of fatalities," Wilson said.

Theo Petritsch, a Lutz transportation consultant who formerly served as the Transportation Department's statewide bicycle/pedestrian coordinator, said no studies have conclusively shown that bike lanes improve safety. Nor have they proved that cyclists feel safer in marked bike lanes than on unmarked shoulders.

"I think (bike lanes) are worthwhile," Petritsch said, "but I can't really tell you why they're worthwhile."

Can they coexist?

But Dix said the pavement symbols and directional arrows help riders avoid two of the main causes of collisions: riding on sidewalks and riding against traffic, as Gardner was doing when he was struck and killed.

Markings also remind drivers that cyclists have a legal right to ride on the road, said Michael Frederick, neighborhood transportation manager in St. Petersburg, which has marked about 50 miles of bike lanes since 2003.

"Motorists coexist with cyclists a lot better if they can see evidence that (the cyclists) belong," Frederick said.

If marked lanes also make cyclists feel they belong on the road, Dix said, they could combat the root of the hazardous riding conditions in Tampa Bay: its dependence on cars.

Dix has repeatedly asked Kile to mark a stretch of U.S. 41 that was widened three years ago. Kile has declined, partly because he says the volume of bike traffic doesn't justify it.

"Unfortunately, it's a car culture, and the department just follows the priority of the people," Dix said. "If you don't build a bicycle-friendly environment, of course the riders aren't out there.

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352)754-6116.

[Last modified November 25, 2006, 23:58:53]