TheWashCycle

Bikes on Some MARC Trains Seems Imminent

You may recall that the Maryland Transportation Authority has been seriously thinking about allowing standard bikes on some MARC trains, but asked advocates not to talk about the details.  Now MDOT is talking about the details.  In a statement cleared for release to the public, Michael Jackson described an October 9 show-and-tell with advocates at Frederick, Maryland, at the October 10 meeting of the Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee:

Attendees included representatives from Bike Maryland, the Washington Area Bicyclist Association, the Virginia Bicycle Federation and staff from MDOT as well as staff from MARC and their consultants. The meeting was held at their Frederick rail yard. Attendees were invited to bring bicycles to carry on-board a modified rail car with half of the seats removed. A bicycle rack and luggage rack had been installed. Invitees assessed the modifications and gave feedback to MARC staff.

MARC intends to outfit the car with enough racks to carry 25 bicycles and to identify the outside of the bike cars with prominent graphics. Service is expected to be limited initially to weekend service on the Penn line and begin by the end of the year.

Jim Titus represents Prince George's County on the Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee, and is on the board of WABA. The comments here do not represent the official views of either organization.

Maryland’s new Traffic and Safety Director explains R4-11 guidance

Farewell Tom Hicks; Welcome Cedric Ward

Tom Hicks, the long-time head of the Office of Traffic and Safety within the Maryland State Highway Administration, is retiring at the end of June.  Cyclists often disagreed with his perspective on managing bicycle traffic, but even so, it was a pleasure to work with him.  Like all good engineers, he looked for solutions rather than for opportunities to argue.  So even when he was blocking something I was pushing, I had the sense that we were just two people viewing a problem different perspectives but on the same team.

His successor will be Cedric Ward, who has been SHA’s key person for traffic and safety in Montgomery County.  My first in-depth conversation with Mr. Ward concerned the Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs, and is summarized in the last section of this post

As we’ve reported several times, the Maryland State Highway Administration is poised to post signs that say “Bicycles May Use Full Lane” on a number of area roads. But instead of posting the official R4-11 (a white rectangle) sign on all of these roads, SHA intends to use a combination of the R4-11 sign and a new yellow diamond warning sign with the same message (see pdf).  That sign is called W16-1(3) and will probably be Tom Hicks’ final contribution to bicycle safety in Maryland.  I wish they would call it W4-11, but that designation already belongs to a soft shoulder warning sign.

The decision to use both use full lane signs was made by SHA Administrator Melinda Peters,
and appears to have been prompted by an email that I sent her just before Bike-to-Work Day.  Last fall, SHA approved the regulatory R4-11 sign by adopting it into the Maryland Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices (MUTCD). The guidance tracks the language in the federal MUTCD:  It explains what the sign means, but does not provide any specifics about where the sign can be placed.  Now SHA has more detailed guidance.

 

Guidance for the “Bicycles May Use Full Lane” signs

The new guidance for the yellow use full lane sign says that these signs “should” be posted along roads where the narrow lane or other condition causes an extraordinary hazard. It’s noteworthy that we have the term “should” as guidance for this sign.  That means that there is a presumption that the sign will be posted if local cyclists can make a reasonably good showing that there is a narrow-lane hazard.  The guidance for the white R4-11 sign says “may.”  I think that the purpose of “may” is to establish the preferences between the R4-11 and the yellow use full lane warning sign.

How does SHA define the narrow-lane hazard?  The guidance for the R4-11 sign provides a lot more detail than either the federal or state MUTCD: “signs may be placed at intervals of about ½ mile through the length of a lane effectively 13 feet or less wide in urban areas.  So virtually every highway with standard lanes and no shoulder is eligible for an R4-11 sign.   Aside from defining the narrow-lane hazard, the guidance provides several different situations where the R4-11 signs “may” be posted. 

The guidance also calls for R4-11 signs to be used along roads with parking if the usable space is less than 13 feet.  Given the door zone hazard, I am trying to persuade SHA that this means that the sign may be posted if the right most lane has no more than 23 feet to the pavement edge.  

One thing that is still a bit unclear is whether SHA will be willing to post these signs along roads with lanes wider than 13 feet (or 23 feet with parking) with high traffic volumes or a lot of bus or truck traffic. Under the existing guidelines for bicycle facilities, bike lanes have 4 feet of pavement with low traffic volumes, speeds, and truck/bus traffic.  But with higher speeds, volumes, or trucks and buses, the bike lanes are a foot or two wider.  That approach recognizes that the required operating space increases with traffic; that is, SHA recognizes that those factors increase the lane width necessary for safe side-by-side passage.  The same logic would apply as well to the “use full lane” signs. 

SHA Administrator Peters asked me to discuss the details of the guidance with Cedric Ward.  Here are the key points of our discussion; I’ve also posted a pdf of the complete notes of the entire conversation. 

 

Conversation with Cedric Ward about the new guidance

Jim Titus: Let’s start out by clarifying what we mean by “signs may be placed where the lane is no wider than 13 feet”.  Does that mean from the left-lane stripe to the curb, the edge of the pavement, or to the fog line? 

Cedric Ward: The guidance means 13 feet to the edge of the pavement to the center of the line.

Jim Titus:  At the meeting last fall in Greenbelt about the R4-11 sign, which Michael Jackson also attended, we agreed that signs would be posted for roads up to 14 feet plus gutter. 

Cedric Ward: Actually, 14-foot lanes are problematic. If you find any, please let me know.

Jim Titus:  Getting back to the first bullet [in the guidance]:  What about where roads with wide shoulders cross jurisdictional boundaries.  We don’t really need the R4-11 sign there.

Cedric Ward: We would still post the R4-11 signs there if there is not a bike lane, but those shoulders will eventually be marked as bike lanes. 

Jim Titus:  Then the guidance talks about places where there are a lot of bikes turning left.  Why would you need an R4-11 sign there?

Cedric Ward:  I follow your point.

Jim Titus: Let’s come back to the third bullet: “At the beginning of a section of roadway where curbside parking or other encroachments narrow the width usable for travel to 13 feet or less.”  What does usable width of 13 feet mean?

Cedric Ward: If there are parked cars, and the cars extend 7 feet from the pavement edge, then 13 feet of usable width would mean 13 feet to the left of the parked cars.

Jim Titus:  So if the edge of the parked cars might be along a parking line that is 8 feet from the curb, then usable width of 13 feet means that the lane is 21 feet from the curb, or 20 feet from the edge of the pavement.  [If] we have 14 feet of pavement to the left of the car, I think that the cyclist still needs to use the full lane.

Cedric Ward: How would you phrase the guidance?

Jim Titus:  I would change the "13 feet" to "16 feet".

Cedric Ward: A 16-foot lane could cause other problems, such as drivers passing other cars within the lane.

Jim Titus:  We are not talking about how wide we want the lanes.  We are talking about the lanes we have, and where to post the signs….Parked cars reduce usable space more for a bike than for a car.  A driver may be willing to drive 1 or 2 feet from a parked car, because the worst that could happen is that someone opens their door, and that open door gets knocked off the car.  But for the cyclist, the worst that can happen is that the door opens, the cyclist is deflected 20 degrees to the left as she falls, and then she is run over by a car.  So usable roadway needs to be measured from the edge of the open door, or 16 feet from the parking stripe.

Cedric Ward: I follow your point.

(Jim Titus is on WABA's Board of Directors and lives in Glenn Dale, Maryland.  The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the official views of WABA.)

Purple Line likely to have 5-ft sidewalk through "tunnel", says MTA transportation planner

The Maryland Transit Administation (MTA) believes that a five foot sidewalk along the Purple Line is feasible and cost-effective, according to Monica Meade, a transportation planner for MTA.  Speaking to the Maryland Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (MBPAC) at MDOT headquarters in Hanover, Maryland last Friday, Ms. Meade explained that the final decision is up to Montgomery County, which would fund the bicycle and pedestrian accommodations along the Purple Line.  "We hope that cyclists will walk their bikes along this sidewalk because it is too narrow to pass a pedestrian," she added.

Ms. Meade also declined to say whether the Purple Line is likely to be built on schedule or delayed several years due to a lack of funding.  When I asked whether MTA or MDOT has any contingency plans for funding the Purple Line if the gas tax is not raised, she said that even that "is a question for the politicians."  (Recognizing that this might be outside her scope of expertise, I had emailed that question a day ahead to allow her to get clearance for whatever answer she might provide.)

Much of the discussion among members tracked the issues raised by commenters on this and other blogs in the Washington area.  Ms. Meade reminded everyone that "tunnel" is a misnomer:  MD-355 has always had a bridge over the tracks, and the surrounding land was graded to the street level.  Several people asked whether the trail can eventually follow the Purple Line, when the buildings nearby are rebuilt.  Ms. Meade said that this would be up to Montgomery County, although SHA would also have to agree to widen the bridge abutments.

Michael Jackson of MDOT engaged in a colloquy with Ms. Meade about whether cyclists could be allowed to ride between the tracks, at least during off peak times when the headway would be 12 minutes or so.  Ms. Meade pointed out that this would require grading a roadbed between the tracks, but more importantly there would be safey issues in getting people off the tracks when trains arrived.  Mr. Jackson persisted, pointing out that this problem would already be faced for the at-grade portions of the Purple Line.  Another attendee pointed out that if MDOT now has faith that cyclists can get off the tracks as a train approaches, maybe it should reconsider its position that cyclists could not get out of a proposed Henson Creek Trail tunnel under the beltway when a creek is rising.  

(Jim Titus represents Prince George's County on MBPAC, and is also on WABA's Board of Directors.  The opinions stated here do not represent the official views of either MBPAC or WABA.)

 

February and April 2011 Maryland BPAC Meeting Minutes

They are located here and here.

The items that impact the DC area include

• MBPAC member Neal Welch passed away in December
• The Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene alterted the MBPAC of a national student bicycle education curriculum developed by the National Association for Sport and Physical
  Education.  Maryland had already developed a pedestrian and bicycle education curriculum for Maryland schools.
• The Safe Routes to Schools grant review team recommended either full or partial funding of 18 applications out of the 20 that were submitted.
• The MBPAC is working on a checklist for identifying best practices in making government buildings more bicycle friendly.
• The MBPAC is going to consider whether or not to recommend that MDOT temporarily reduce the local match required for transportation enhancement (projects) for the next two years due to budget shortfalls at the local level.
• "Jim Titus expressed concerns regarding the Maryland National Capital Park and Planning Commission. Prince George’s County’s designation of MD Route 564 as a bikeway was not recognized by the State Highway Administration. Michael Jackson with MDOT stated that because MD Route 564 is a State highway SHA was not bound to accept M-NCPPC-PG’s designation but recommended that Jim contact SHA staff about his concerns."
• The Maryland Statewide Student Travel Survey was released. MDOT is looking to partner with the Department of Health on implementing the recommendations
• "Delegate McIntosh recommended that MBPAC prepare a folder for the Motor Vehicle Administration to distribute in driver license renewal notices on sharing the road with bicyclists."
• SHA is planning to reprint the Maryland Bicycle Map