This Is Not Helpful

Posted on June 22, 2010 by Dave Feucht
Not Helpful

You can see this cyclist sitting up beside traffic. This was after she rode past all this traffic between the two strips of rumble strip dividing this lane from the bus/MAX-only lane to the right. Then she decided to get back into the lane, and then all the cars were going around her, because she wasn’t in line with the cars, she was beside them. She was where I was in the line of traffic before riding up between the lanes, and by the time she actually got back into the line, she was one or two cars ahead of me. A pretty minimal gain for having broken the law, annoyed a bunch of drivers, and confused a bus driver who was coming up the bus lane.

This is not helpful.

There are some laws made to govern the use of automobiles that really shouldn’t be applicable to bicycles (not saying law regarding riding in-between lanes is one of those), but why go breaking laws when you’re not even gaining anything from it, and you’re confusing or annoying other road users?

In other silly bicycle news from yesterday, I was riding East off of the Hawthorne bridge, and another cyclist got impatient with the person in front of them in the bike lane, went to move into the traffic lane (without looking) and almost ran smack into the side of a bus.

This entry was posted in portland and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • Anne

    When I began bike-commuting and was in the early stages of learning to ride in traffic, I was confused about the right thing to do when in the position your photo illustrates. This was after taking two of BTA's bike commuting prep classes!

    I now know to hold my place like any other vehicle if I'm in the car lane. I figure cycling gives me so many advantages over driving that I don't need to steal one more just because there's a three-foot-wide space I can squeeze into.

    Plus, I'm keenly aware of being slower-moving traffic, and I can't see annoying the crap out of car drivers by squeezing ahead only to slow them down. If a car is legitimately behind me in the line at a red light, then the driver can work around me in the next block. But if I'm legitimately behind other cars in the same line, I stay there.

    'Course, I'm old and wise.

  • Anne

    Also? Your Hawthorne Bridge anecdote underscores a problem that the bike community in Portland hasn't yet begun to address adequately IMO: the more people bike-commuting, the more bike traffic there will be, and the more the physical differences among riders will become an issue.

    The entitled feeling that younger, fitter, faster riders have enjoyed forever are not giving way gracefully to the presence of cyclists who, by choice or by physical limitations, don't ride as fast as they'd like.

    In thinking, talking, and planning for the holy grail of More Bike Commuters, I think a lot of enthusiasts have missed this fundamental point: the dream come true will NOT be all 30-somethings on sporting bikes doing trackstands at red lights and averaging 20 mph in the streets. It will be annoying as hell to those people.

  • portlandize.com

    @Anne: I think that is exactly why there are certain people who level such derision at separated infrastructure, etc.

    Because they realize clearly making cycling safe and easy for the lowest common denominator in society will limit them from riding however they like.

    As one commenter on Bike Portland said (as if it was the most horrible thing he could think of), bike traffic in Amsterdam usually moves at about the speed of a fast jog. That, of course, is great for the *majority* of the population, but isn't great for the vast minority who like to ride 25mph all the time.

    This is already becoming more of an issue, and I'm sure it will get worse before it gets better, just as will the sometimes bulging groups of cyclists who will no longer fit in our bike lanes and don't feel they should be required to spread out single file for two blocks just to get out of one or two cars' way.

    I think we've reached the tipping point, where a lot of these issues are going to come to a head. It will be interesting to see what the resolution of those issues will involve. My hope is accommodation for anyone who feels like they want to hop on a bike. Speed should not be the ideal for our city streets, accessibility and safety should be. The ironic thing, is that by promoting speed, we sometimes make it slower, and in reality, I get from A to B almost as quickly for short trips on my bike at 8-10mph as we do in the car going 20-30mph.

  • Peter

    which law was broken?

  • portlandize.com

    Peter: I couldn't quote you the law number, but even if a law wasn't broken, it's still a good question why you would do something which added basically no convenience for you, and annoyed and confused other people.

  • rawillis3

    https://www.oregonlaws.org/ors/811.415
    question whether what you see here falls within one or more of the several exceptions. on several downtown streets, the left lane is snagged by motorists turning left or waiting behind someone turning left, and one of the advantages of the bicycle is being able to pass these on the right. but not in a dedicated transit lane with a bus coming up behind.

  • James D. Schwartz

    Here in Toronto, if we don't move past the long lineups of automobiles at traffic signals, it would take an hour to do a 15-minute bike ride.

    This is one of the advantages of riding a bike – we are lean and agile and can easily squeeze past 50 cars that are at a standstill.

    So I would have done the same thing as this woman – assuming the cars weren't about to start moving forward. If the cars were moving forward, then I would wait in line.

  • portlandize.com

    In this case, the traffic was moving, and she was riding along side, only she was moving a little faster than traffic. At the point the picture was taken, we had all been stopped at a red light, and she had gotten back in the lane, but since she was beside the traffic, the cars were all going around her, and she had to stop and let most of them past, so by the time she got back in and going again, she had really only gained a spot or two.

    Legal or not, it just doesn't seem like the best move.

  • Mark

    There's nothing like the behaviour of other cyclists to get us a knot. I often find myself muttering under my breath about other cyclists, especially ones that don't look over their shoulders… but I reserve those comments for myself; I figure everyone else hates us enough without me having to add to the pot, even if their behaviour is reprehensible. It's a tough cookie, for sure.

  • Gordon Inkeles

    I live in Arcata CA, a "bike-friendly community." I see this sort of thing every day. In fact, it's rare to see a cyclist actually stop at a stop sign.

  • Anna

    I live in downtown San Francisco and mostly ride major streets without bike lanes. I take the lane, the middle of the lane, about 98% of the time, and I ride as if I were driving a car. I swear I'm the ONLY cyclist in SF who stops at lights in my car-like position on the street (wherever I end up in the line of traffic), while everyone else on bikes speeds past me to the right of the cars. I think it's okay if traffic is FULLY stopped, but if the light changes and cars start moving right in preparation for a right turn ahead it gets scary. Plus you have to worry about passengers jumping out of cars (there are often people getting dropped off at the mall or the BART stations or whatever on the main street I ride on). People even pass buses stopped at bus stops on the right, because the drivers often dont pull all the way up to the curb here. I even see cyclists passing moving cars on the right IN right turn lanes, ALL THE TIME! I've been a full time cyclist off and on for about 11 years now (mostly on though) and the longer I do it the less risks I take. Saving a minute or two isn't worth risking getting doored or right-hooked. I do sometimes roll through red lights, but only really late at night when I'm positive there are no cars or pedestrians anywhere near. I'm not one of those "Damn those outlaw cyclists! Giving us all a bad name!" people, it's more that I worry about my fellow cyclists safety and wish they wouldn't take so many risks.

  • portlandize.com

    In this case, I don't think her behavior was dangerous so much (though I do see that kind of thing here as well), but just kind of generally disrespectful.

    Similar to when you see a car weaving in and out of traffic, confusing people around them (and causing the feeling of danger, because of uncertainty), only to gain one or two places in a line of traffic.

    We have to realize that we see the roads much differently to those in cars, and what may seem like perfectly benign behavior to us may be confusing and worrying to people driving who don't ride bikes, simply because bikes and cars have such different abilities/limitations.

    A person in a car in a right lane on a road with no bike lane is not going to expect any moving vehicles to pass them on the right. Having one pass them there, then, is going to startle them. This causes the sensation that someone did something dangerous (even if technically it wasn't that dangerous), and probably in the back of their minds, "what if I had hit that person?"

    It's easy to think "well, just get over it, I watch out for myself," but that's basically the same thing as telling all cyclists "you don't need separated infrastructure, just ride in the road, it's statistically not that dangerous." You just can't really make that argument, because to most people, riding in traffic will *feel* somewhat dangerous, no matter how much they cognitively understand that it isn't.

    If we expect people who drive cars to see things from our point of view, we have to reciprocate, even if it means giving up a little bit of the convenience a bicycle offers us. I really think things will improve over time, and I think well-thought-out, well-designed separated infrastructure is crucial to these kinds of issues, and as we start seeing more of it, I think these issues will die down markedly.

    I don't think most cyclists or drivers are outlaws, but I think there are a good number of both that are entitled and inconsiderate.

    (I also recently had a lady in a car get miffed with me for not signaling a turn in a right-turn-only lane, while she was trying to pass me on the right, in the lane – because I was stopped in the middle of the lane making sure there was no cross-traffic since we had a red light, and she was just going to blow past me).

  • cycler

    This was my first winter commuting all the way through the worst the NE can throw at me, and riding with snow introduced me to not "filtering" on the right. I was holding such an aggressive lane position to avoid the icy gutter that it just felt wrong to pass people on the right who had (mostly) passed me carefully.
    Now that the snow is gone, I have kept it up, mainly because it just feels right, feels safer, and just makes my commute easier, if ever so slightly slower. I just value my life more than the 30 seconds I'd save threading the needle between the bus and the mack truck.
    There are rare occasions where I'll filter (the stupidly parked delivery truck blocking both lanes, the poorly timed light) but only when I know the traffic patterns well enough to make sure that the traffic will not be moving while I'm passing on the right.

  • Glenn

    Sort of begs the question. If there were a decent bike lane or bike path such as you might find in Holland or Denmark the point would be moot. I for one, have to share a 40 mph two lane highway with cars and trucks with no shoulder or margin. (Jefferson County, Washington State, U.S.A.)

    Glenn

  • portlandize.com

    @Glenn: yup, I agree with you on that one. If cyclists were provided an environment where they felt completely safe and accommodated, I think you would find much fewer doing things like this.

  • rawillis3

    the lights on the transit mall (where this photo seems to have been taken) are timed to 12 mph. no need for a separate bike lane. on the other hand, it might have been nice to completely remove single occupancy motor vehicles from the transit mall . . .

  • portlandize.com

    I wasn't necessarily implying there should be a separate bike lane here, but in general, I think cyclists are pressured to do things which seem dangerous or suspect because of the fact that they just don't mix well with automobile traffic in many situations. (and sometimes, automobile traffic around them intentionally pressures them to do things which they wouldn't do otherwise)

  • Amari

    I think part of the confusion about it all is that on the streets where there actually are bike lanes, its on the far right and its our own lane. So it makes sense that this would also carry over on the streets where that lane isn't painted in… why shouldn't we make use of that 3 foot space that cars aren't in?
    I think we're also coming up on a critical time where the bike traffic will be too much for our small bike lanes. There has got to be a larger shift to making the streets a safer place for cyclists, drivers, and pedestrians to all flow together. Multi use streets are safer and people get where they need to go in a reasonable time.

  • abby

    speaking of the dude hitting the bus…is it implied that you make yourself known when passing on a bike? I do not have a bell, but clearly state I'm on the left when passing. I can't tell you how many people I've almost run over because of the lack of warning.

    Is this just something that bothers me?

  • portlandize.com

    @abby: for me, it kind of depends on the situation. for instance, going over the Hawthorne bridge, if there is a lot of pedestrian traffic, I'll usually ding my bell when passing someone so they don't suddenly move over and bump into me. In an area like the waterfront path where there is a lot of room, I usually just give people plenty of room, pass them slowly and don't ding. Of course, I'm usually one of the slower riders, so I don't honestly pass people on bikes all that often (though I follow kind of the same pattern with pedestrians as well).

  • A-Dub

    @abby. It drives me nuts! How do other riders know that I'm not about to swerve to avoid debris in the lane?

    I too keep most of my commentary to myself when I'm on the road, but did ask one person who passed me why he didn't provide an audible warning and his response was that he didn't want to surprise people and have them swerve in to him.

    I understand, but then maybe you shouldn't pass so close. When I pass pedestrians on MUPs after having given an audible warning (either voice or bell depending on the bike I happen to be riding), I get thanked 80% of the time.

  • calumny.org

    I can think of intersections where lane-splitting like this is more practical – for example, turning left off Front onto NW 15th (to get onto westbound Thurman). If the light on Front is red, it can simplify matters a bit to occupy the edge of the lane such that in turning you sweep right into the bike lane. This is of course also encouraged by the fact that it's very hard to trip the sensor for the light with a bike, so encouraging a car to get up there is vital. On the other hand, through traffic on Front is dangerously fast, so I avoid this maneuver if the light isn't red (or if a train is preventing us all from turning for a while).