Comment of the week: A TriMet bus driver on letting bikes pass first

Kind of incredible that in a city like Portland TRIMET has no real policy on this. I mean we are having to design roads with this in mind, and they aren’t even educating their drivers on it? Weird.

That is exactly the right thing to do.

Any vehicle that pulls next to or slightly in front of me and puts on its turn signal is threatening to hit me. That’s just impolite and unneighborly.

I’m curious, then: what formal training and procedures are Trimet drivers given about interacting with bikes?

the best thing any motorist can do when overtaking a cyclist is to slow down and wait until you are sure it is safe to pass. Don’t tailgate the cyclist either; just follow at a safe distance and protect them from the rest of the motorists following behind you (if any..). It’s really not that hard to do and doesn’t really cost any time either.

This is exactly how I expect a professional to behave. Kudos!

In general, I’ve found that bus drivers on the several routes that parallel the NE Multnomah bikeway follow Dan’s procedure, and I always feel like I have a good understanding with them. They slow down behind me, I try to speed up a little till I’m past the upcoming bus stop, and everything feels safe and reliable. Thanks, Dan, for letting us know that you consider it a best practice, too.

I rode up on a #70 bus at the stop in front of ADX on SE 11th with the light red, so I waited at the light just in front of it. I sped out into the intersection as soon as the light turned green, and the bus operator immediately changed lanes. For a couple of blocks he struggled to pass me on the left, and finally did right as he had to stop at Belmont. Of course, the driver pulled over right in front of me, and then the light turned red. I had intended to take a left on Belmont, but it was very complicated to pay attention to a bus struggling to pass me and the rest of the traffic annoyed by the bus in the passing lane, so I just rolled past the bus, dismounted and crossed SE 11th, waited for Belmont traffic to pass and jumped in.

I have a New York State Class B Commercial Driver License with a passenger endorsement, which I earned prior to being stationed in Germany as a servicemember. In Germany, it is assumed that every motor vehicle operator understands the motor vehicle laws, and all applicants must pass extensive tests to prove it. Many people lose many thousands of Euro (it is very expensive to learn to drive in Europe) by failing. It is not a given that everybody passes, and the Führerschein (driver license) is a privilege. Many servicememebers (most?) do not pass on the first try (I did!), because most Americans do not understand or know traffic law in any way; they only know what their parents and years behind the wheel taught them. I see this everyday on the roads in America since I returned to the US in 2012.

As a cyclist, I am routinely upset by the willingness of some motorists to invent new traffic laws and yield to cyclists when they do not naturally have the right of way. It confuses the issue of whether the bicyclist is a protected class of roadway operator, and it is confusing enough already! For example, the signs that warn that cyclists often cross an intersection are often combined with pedestrian crosswalks, and these are often at streets which have no stop sign for the traffic, but do for the cross street (there’s a couple of them on SE 11th). If I didn’t know any better, I would assume that cyclists are afforded free passage by the sign, but I would be wrong. The problem is this sign looks confusingly just like the sign which does indeed afford pedestrians free passage at a zebra stripe crosswalk on streets with no stop sign. Why create new signs which confuse drivers who already don’t understand fully what they are doing?

I appreciate cycletracks when they separate auto traffic from cycle traffic, but any other option is just more confusing to motorists and adds to their resistance movement. I would rather have 10,000 informed motorists than one bike lane.

I would expect that bus drivers are a higher class of motor vehicle operator that is immune to whimsy and driver ignorance, and follows the law and Trimet policy, but apparently it’s not the case.

Thanks Dan!

I would love a semi-regular series of guest columns where the authors are people whose jobs have them on the road for much of the day: bus drivers, MAX drivers, taxi drivers, bike messengers, etc. I think their perspectives would be enlightening.