Comment by defen
2 days ago
> Yes, it is absolutely acceptable and it happens all the time in road design.
Aren't there usually signs indicating the maximum safe speed when that sort of thing happens? We don't have context here but I doubt there is a sign telling bikers that they should slow down. And aren't roads in general much larger and easier to see from far away, vs this tiny little ramp? You also haven't explained why the big curb is vertical instead of sloped, or why the street sign needs to be where it is. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that this thing is designed as a fuck you to bikers who don't obey the rules. We simply don't design roads that way, where it's designed to make you crash if you deviate from the standard even a bit.
We absolutely do design roads for all kinds of people to make you crash if you do not follow them. In fact, on pretty much all roads, you will crash if you decide not to follow the road, and frequently you will crash into a tree or a building. Drivers generally see this kind of design and complain about it but slow the hell down. Cyclists seem to be the same.
There is a sign ahead of this ramp saying in very big letters "BIKE LANE ENDS." It's up to the bikers to decide how they want to use that information. The sign, the ramp, and the end of the bollards marking the bike lane are visible at quite a long distance.
As for the street sign, it's a street sign. It's where the street is. It also tells you exactly where to use Google street view to get full context.
If you look at the street view (https://maps.app.goo.gl/Li9FSf29kXJWJLxW8), you'll see that it's been redesigned since the picture in the post. The current street view picture is from Feb 2023; the picture in the blog post also appears to be from street view (given the translucent quadrilateral near the fence) but presumably from before 2023. So...it appears that the bike lane was redesigned in a way that reflects two of my biggest complaints that were based on the outdated picture. Doesn't that sort of vindicate what I was saying? Why did they change it if the original design was ok? Like why didn't they do it the right way in the first place?
The context is even worse than the bike ramp. The bike lane dumps directly onto a sidewalk, which is not really bikeable anyway with the impending complicated street crossings that require stopping to push a button to get a crosswalk against a very confusing intersection across right-turning traffic onto a motorway on-ramp. Or stay on the street and shoot directly into a lane of traffic, and hope to find a gap big enough to cut left across the lane before it turns into a highway on-ramp.
The sharpness of the corner is the same, which is TFA's real biggest complaint. Yours may have been the sign.