Once again, bike lane bollards torn out by auto traffic on NW Lovejoy

It’s a testament to the drivers education system in the United States that drivers here are completely unable to keep their vehicles within the lane markings, even on a straight-away.

Speaking of wands… I thought it was odd that they removed them from the interstate crossing at NE 12th when they finished the new markings there. They were actually keeping cars out of that lane, which is now a bike lane (and I’m still confused as to why they were there in the first place). Oh well. Apparently people just drive over them anyway. Bring on the reinforced steel!

So the streetcar affects bicyclers because of the rails and the posts that are installed on sidewalks.

And the streetcar affects auto drivers because they don’t want to drive on the rails either – which affects the bicyclers when those cars drift into the bike lane.

Remind me again who thought the streetcar was such a wonderful urban amenity?

Besides Charlie Hales.

They should just put the poles for the streetcar wires on the white line.

I thought they were anchored on reinstallation? If so, where’s the anchor holes in the pavement? I see no evidence that they were ever properly anchored…

LOL! Time to put a brick in this sandcastle, methinks.

put a rubber curb on that sucker!

If you look to the right of the bike lane there is a structure separating pedestrian traffic from vehicle traffic. It is made of concrete and steel so that even the most reckless driver is unlikely to encroach on the sidewalk. Why don’t we just repeat that between the bike lane and the vehicle/light rail line? Concrete barriers are really cheap and easy to install.

at the risk of sounding like a broken record (and by even using the phrase “broken record” i guess i risk sounding about as old as maybe i actually am),

the descent on lovejoy from the broadway bridge should never have had a striped bike lane on it anyway. the lane was too narrow to safely share even before the rails went in. the space between the concrete barrier and the first rail should be marked with sharrows. the bollards make it impossible for a cyclist to assert the lane in preparation for a left turn onto 9th at the bottom of the ramp.

they have taken a bad design and made it worse. the streetcar tracks have very little to do with it.

my concern is that with all this difficulty PBoT’s next move will be to designate the (rather wide) sidewalk on the other side of the barrier as an MUP, with signage and the whole nine yards, thereby suggesting to motorists that i have no right to the street at all.

i actually think there are plenty of people for whom designating the sidewalk as an MUP would make sense, but i would not want to see that happen unless they also take out the stripe and put down sharrows, as they have done on the 12th avenue overcrossing.

make every 3rd or 4th one concrete. that should solve the problem.

The bollards haven’t faired to well at 15th Ave and going either.

ideally the crash barrier between the roadway and the sidewalk would be shifted over so that the bike lane could be protected behind the crash barrier (essentially as an expansion of a widened Lovejoy ramp sidewalk).

this is why we need to move away from the standard bike lane which is that left over excess road space previously refered to as ‘road shoulders’ and actually build decent purpose-built cycling infrastructure.

The problem with suggestions to install a hard barrier between the lanes there beyond the obvious misapplication of devices is that it presents serious maintenance issues. You can’t get deicer over a wall with the existing equipment and it doesn’t make sense to retool for a single block. Curbs would prevent access to street sweeping and paving equipment. That said, this is twice now that PBOT has failed to properly secure the bollards into the pavement, and twice now that they’re running into problems with tarred down devices getting knocked off.

Replacing the bollards and anchoring them properly is a start, but the fact that they keep getting driven on speaks volumes about issues with Oregon’s inadequate licensing system allowing incompetent drivers to operate a motor vehicle in the first place.

When a lane is intended to be shared by streetcars and motor vehicles it should be wide enough that the motorist can straddle ONE streetcar rail while staying in the lane. That probably means the lane width should be 13 to 14 feet instead of 11 feet. 14 feet is the recommended width when there’s not sufficient pavement for a motor vehicle lane and a full-width on-street bike lane.

What is so hard about bolting these thing into the street? You would never glue a bike rack to the sidewalk. Why are they gluing these things. You’d think they would have learned the first time. Oh well. Sometimes it just takes people 2 or 3, or 4 times to figure it out. Keep trying PBOT.

I am glad they are gone. Everyone would just complain about the city not being able to plow the lane because of them on the one time it snows.

Huh.

I drove (gasp! a car!) down Broadway a few weeks ago, when the bollards were still there, and managed not to hit anything.

Must be a bunch of drunks…

Has anybody actually witnessed somebody driving in the bike lane with a cyclist in the lane? I suspect drivers only do this when cyclists are not present.

I’m guessing that permanent concrete barrier installation is too expensive initially and also at repaving time. This may be an acceptable solution that would allow drainage, careful lateral bicycle movement, and an effective motor vehicle deterrent. http://www.trafficlogix.com/cyclelane.asp Those plastic wand barriers are little more than an audible annoyance to many motorists.

How long is it going to take them to accept the fact that they really screwed up with this plan to run tracks down the same ramp with cars and a bike path and sidewalks? It obviously isn’t working. The trolley hasn’t even started running yet and there are these problems they don’t know how to solve.