Urban Replanning
I don’t know much about designing roads- but I think I know a little about it just from biking around the city. I really think the streets could be designed to better suit everyone’s needs. Maybe something like this:
By doing it this way, suddenly all the unpredictable things are predictable and tucked inside neat little painted lines.
It would appear that the cartoonist POV lane has risen about 12 feet above it all. Or is this drawn from the tall bike lane?
I had never heard of shoaling before, but now that i know, yes it is so annoying! Why do people insist on doing that after I’ve already passed them? It’s almost as bad as the clueless bicyclist who I’ve passed and then catches up to me at a red light, but just keeps going through the intersection at the exact same slowish speed, cross traffic be damned. Maybe it’s like the movie Speed, except they are not allowed to go below 8 mph.
I try not to even shoal cars when I can avoid it (mainly on roads with narrow lanes and no bike lanes). If a car has passed me and I catch up to it at an intersection, and I know there is not enough space for both of us side by side after the intersection, I wait behind it, not to the side or in front of it. I see so many cyclists pass the car and then wait in front of it. You know the driver is just going to want to pass you again. Why would you do this? It’s annoying to the driver and more stressful for you!
Cars don’t emit exhaust from the front. That’s my main reason.
If they ever did that in my neighborhood the utilities would have it dug up and obscured in a few weeks…
I was pondering the infuriating lack of any rational system of road organization down here in New York as I cycled this morning through downtown Brooklyn. And I wrote my own blogpost touching some of these points a few weeks ago – http://invisiblevisibleman.blogspot.com/2012/07/grids-lights-and-why-new-yorks-traffic.html . You know all too well, however, what the problem is. The cars would honk and complain any time a cyclist strayed outside one of the cycle lanes. And the abandoned cars would stop anywhere but the abandoned cars spot…
I once, incidentally, saw hazard-warning lights described as “park anywhere lights,” which I liked.