Pic Needed Here
On a road with suggestion lanes, a broken white line indicates the zone for bicycling, but no bike symbol is marked. Red color paving is optional. Like other forms of advisory lane, suggestion lanes are used only on roads with no marked centerline.
Because no bike symbol is marked, suggestion lanes have no legal meaning. That is, legally, road users are to follow the rules that would apply if the lines were not there. The lines and optional red pavement color are only a suggestion — but a very effective one, because drivers and cyclists alike universally recognize them as bike lanes. On roads that lack sidewalks, they are used for walking as well.
Suggestion lanes were first applied to rural roads, as described in xxx. When it became routine to pave rural roads with asphalt instead of gravel or rough stones, three motivations converged to create suggestion lanes. First, road safety experts recognized the value of white edge lines for improving visibility, especially at night, and thus preventing road departure crashes. (Such lines would have to be dashed, not solid, because in Europe, it is not legal to cross a solid line, and edge lines are not meant to be a legal prohibition — drivers may have to cross an edge line, for example, for large vehicles to squeeze past one another.) Second, road managers wanted to keep vehicles, especially heavy vehices, from driving near the road edge except when necessary, because the road edge is the weakest part of the pavement. Together, these two motivations could be satisfied by edge lines marked only a short distance — say, one to two feet (30-60 cm) — from the road edge. However, there was also a third motivation: to indicate an advisory lane for bicycling, which would make it clear where bicycles are expected to ride and what space passing vehicles should afford them, thus making the road safer and more comfortable for cycling. This motivation was strong because nearly all children living on these rural roads used their bicycles to get to school. This third motivation led to edge lines being placed at least 3 ft (0.9 m) from the road edge.
The distinction between edge lines meant as advisory lanes and those meant only for visibility and pavement preservation is not always clear. If the broken white edge line is at least 2.7 ft (80 cm) from the road edge, cyclists generally understand it as a bike lane, and if it is less than 1.7 ft (50 cm) from the road edge, it is clearly understood as not indicating a bike lane; but edge lines marked in the 50-80 cm range (1.7 – 2.7 ft) are ambiguous and lead to conflict, as many cyclists consider the resulting edge band too narrow to be a bike lane and therefore do not ride fully within that band, while many motorists think it’s a bike lane and resent cyclists who fail to stay in their “lane.” Therefore, road design guidelines include the recommendation that edge lines not be placed in that ambiguous range of 50-80 cm from the road edge.
Guidelines about when local rural roads should have edge lines (ADT) and when they should be far enough from the road edge to make an advisory lane.
(This guideline is mostly followed, but there are exceptions.)
Rural roads in the Netherlands are classified as local or through roads. Through roads have a marked centerline and either separate bicycle paths (sidepaths) or a parallel service road used by bicycles, farm equipment, and local traffic. Local rural roads have no centerline, and generally marked with edge lines for visibility. Where road width is at least xxx, those edge lines are 3 ft (90 cm) or more from the edge of the road, and thus serve as suggestion lane lines;
The photo below shows a suggestion lane in Rotterdam on which parking is allowed; as the photo indicates, parking demand is quite low, and most of the suggestion lane is clear for bicycling.
xxx pic of Delftweg in Rotterdam, suggestion lane with parking
- Rural
- Traditional rural suggestion lane: white stripe, narrow advisory lane on narrow rural road. Until 1997, mostly 80 km/h; since 1998, mostly 60 km/h
- More recent: Schimmelpennink v.d. Oyeweg in Pijnacker
- Urban suggestion lanes
- Narrow collector road (Delft – Westplantsoen)
- Wide collector road –but not wide enough for 2 vehicle lanes and 2 bike lanes. Middle zone is actually wide enough for 2 vehicles if both are cars, but not if one is a bus or truck.
- Hugo de Grootstraat
- Maasstraat (look around #29) in Amsterdam
- Local street with unusually high traffic (Kortekade, Rotterdam): changed in 2011 from local street layout (unlaned, parking on both sides) to ALR in order to lower traffic stress for cyclists. StreetView has previous (2008) layout.
- Contraflow suggestion lanes
- Westplantsoen, Weteringsweg (?) in Delft. One with advisory lane in both directions, one with adv lane in contraflow direction only.
- Korflaan in Delft’s city forest
- Note: contraflow on one-way local streets is extremely common – allowed on the vast majority of one-way streets – and usually has no contraflow lane at all. Suggestion contraflow lanes are only used in special situations, such as an unusually wide road (first two examples – they help make the road seem narrower) or heavy bike volume (last example).
- Suggestion lane that cars sometimes park in – Delftweg in Overschie part of Rotterdam
- National law: no parking in or next to a bike lane. Bike lane is defined by presense of bike symbol marking on the pavement, and so doesn’t apply to suggestion lanes. (If street with suggestion lanes has a parking lane, then double parking regulations prevent parking in the advisory lane.)
- National law: no parking in or next to a bike lane. Bike lane is defined by presense of bike symbol marking on the pavement, and so doesn’t apply to suggestion lanes. (If street with suggestion lanes has a parking lane, then double parking regulations prevent parking in the advisory lane.)