Applicability

Volumes

  • Guideline: what’s CROW give as the limit? 4,000 or 5,000? (Now that CROW is sorta negative about suggestion lanes, how can they give a limit on “advisory legal bike lanes” when they don’t have a name for the thing?) Reasons for a limit:
    • When trying to drive in the middle of the road would require frequently shifting right because of oncoming vehicles, drivers tend to settle into two opposite-direction lanes on the side of the road, thus NOT sharing space with one another, undermining one of the conditions that makes ALRs less stressful for cyclists
    • If both bike volume and auto volume are moderately high, cars will frequently have to pull into the advisory lane behind a bike and proceed at bike speed until it’s safe to pass. Motorists become frustrated if they have to do this frequently.
    • However, ALRs whose middle zone is 18 ft wide, which is wide enough for opposite direction cars to pass, can support almost any volume of traffic, because vehicles have to enter the bike lane – which can mean slowing or stopping if a bike is present – only when meeting an oncoming bus or truck.
  • Pushing the limit: Tolsteegsingel and Maliegsingel in Utrecht. Bicycle Dutch has blogged / videoed about it. It may be that this worked only because there is already a strong culture in Utrecht of respecting and yielding to bikes
    • The City of Utrecht succeeded in reducing traffic:
    • reduced to 5,000.
    • malie 6000 to 4100, tol 6600 to 4800, 43 to 33 kmh
    • Used to have a central zone of 18 feet (two car lanes and two bike lanes, one of which was in door zone)
    • find blog post about it
The new widths of the traffic lanes, cycle lanes and pedestrian areas on Tolsteegsinger and Maliesinger. (City of Utrecht as reported by Bicycle Dutch)

Speed

  • Dutch have been doing this for years on higher speeds, never got rid of ALs, just lowered the speed (30 kmh in urban areas, 60 kmh in rural, used to be 50 and 80 respectively) still there on some 50s
  • probably isnt there anymore on 80s
  • 80s had to have separated bike lanes

Sight Distance

In contrast to both US and Danish guidelines, Dutch guidelines for ALRs have no limitations on sight distance or the width of the middle zone.

  • In the Dutch concept of advisory lanes, the middle zone of an ALR is never intended as a vehicle lane. On an ALR, there is no centerline, and the roadway is a shared space, shared by users of different types and going in opposite directions. Vehicles can use the entire roadway, just as they would on an unlaned local street, governed only by the standard conventions of passing only when it’s safe and keeping right when meeting opposite direction traffic. The advisory lane markings (or pavement boundaries) are meant to make such road-sharing less stressful by suggesting a bicycling zone boundary that drivers should respect when passing bikes. Otherwise, the lines have no meaning. Drivers may drive in the middle, but they may also keep to the right, driving partially in the advisory lane.
  • No sight distance requirements. Example of advisory lanes at 90 degree bend in a rural road with less than 75 of sight distance on Veenakerweg. Continue the lanes, with the protection they offer, around the curve, where cyclists need protection the most. Of course, at blind curves like this, motorists should not drive in the middle because it isn’t safe. However, continuing the marking around a blind curve does not advise drivers to ride in the middle, but rather reinforces desired behavior by reminding motorists that cyclists take up road space, making it impossible to pass a cyclist – whether one who is in view, or one that’s just around the corner – without driving in the middle of the road, and so where a driver lacks sufficient sight distance, they should not even consider passing a bike.
  • No requirement on the width of the middle zone. Examples show widths as little as 1-3 feet on one-way ALRs and on two-way streets ALRs a fietsstraat layout, and with widths from 8-18 feet on other two-way ALRs.