TheWashCycle

WABA/Prince George’s Advocacy Group Targets Bike Lanes on Suitland Road

By Jeff Lemieux and Veronica Davis

Installation of bike infrastructure on the east side of the DC Metropolitan region has lagged for various reasons. However, advocates in Prince George’s County, MD and the District of Columbia have identified a key missing link in the region’s bicycle network.

The Washington Area Bicyclist Association’s (WABA’s) bike advocacy group for Prince George’s county has identified protected bike lanes on Suitland Road as a top priority to create a link between DC and large employment centers in Suitland, MD. The group identified the section from DC line to the Suitland Federal Center as a top priority. The second section would extend the bike lanes from the Suitland Federal Center to Andrews Air Force/Joint Base. The overall goals of adding a protected bike lane on Suitland Road would be to: encourage cycling, calm traffic, and improve the overall streetscape for all users.

Encourage Cycling

Installing protected bike lanes has been shown to increase bike volumes in DC. Currently, there are cyclists that bike from somewhere in DC to the Suitland Federal Center in Maryland. While the Strava heat maps are not a perfect data set, they indicate that cyclists are taking Suitland Road through the Hillcrest neighborhood of DC to Suitland, MD.

Calm Traffic and Create a “Complete Street”

Over the last few years, DC has implemented traffic calming near the border with Maryland. DDOT installed speed humps on Suitland Road SE between 38th adding lane striping and sharrows on 38th Street SE between Suitland Road SE and Alabama Ave SE. In the District, Hillcrest Suitland Road has mature trees, a sidewalk on at least one side of street, and street lighting.

In contrast, the current view along Suitland Road in MD shows few (or no) sidewalks, extra-wide vehicle lanes that encourage speeding, inconsistent (or no) shoulders, and poor pedestrian access to bus stops. The nicest part of Suitland road in Maryland is where the road goes through a cemetery – after that, the road is simply run down, old fashioned, and just plain ugly. It’s no wonder businesses struggle along those blocks.

Suitland Road Streetscape in Prince George’s County

No Sidewalks or Bike Lanes on Suitland Road between DC and the Suitland Federal Center

Encourage the County Leadership to Take the Initiative

Although the state’s official policies are to encourage bike and pedestrian travel, the on-the-ground reality of most suburban Maryland roads begs to differ, and Prince George’s county is no exception. For a county with approximately a million residents, there are only have a handful bike lanes on the roadways, and many of those were built by municipalities; virtually none of the state-numbered roadways have safe bike access.

Bike transportation is such an afterthought that Prince George’s official transportation guide does not contain a section on bike riding. In fact, the work “bike” or “bicycle” only appears once in the entire booklet, as an offhand remark, not as a topic.

The group hopes that advocating for protected lanes on Suitland Road would help get the complete streets goal moved from theory into practice in Prince George’s. It is especially important to target a state numbered road, since the state controls most of the major roads in the county, and the state roads are the most dangerous for county cyclists and pedestrians. 

Prince George’s Transportation Guide

Suitland Road between the Cemeteries in Maryland

By Contrast, Bike Lanes in SE DC

In DC, cyclists complain about the lack of safe bike lanes east of the Anacostia River. But across the border in Maryland, things are even worse. It’s time to move the complete streets goal from “just talk” to on-the-ground reality in Prince George’s county.

For more information about the Prince George’s County Advocacy Group, please contact Greg Billing at WABA ([email protected]), the group’s co-chairs, Phil Koopman of Mount Rainer/BicycleSPACE ([email protected]) and Jeff Lemieux of Greenbelt/Proteus Bicycles ([email protected]).

For more information about the Suitland Road project, please contact project leader John Epps at the Suitland Federal Center/Maryland Park Bicycles ([email protected]).

PG County wants to prepare a Trails Master Plan

From a recent solicitation:

The M-NCPPC/Prince George's County Department of Parks and Recreation is seeking qualified professional consulting firms to prepare a Trails Master Plan for the Prince George's County park system.

Bids are due July 25th. This is a good sign, and hopefully it can build on the plans DC made as part of MoveDC.

The RFP mentions that this is to build on other recent plans, like the 2009 Master Transportation plan

Tire-Track Sharrows on MD-450 in Bladensburg.

Although the Maryland State Highway Administration (SHA) has been installing R4-11 (Bicycles may use full lane) signs on many highways, managers have indicated that sharrows will be used more sporadically, if at all.  So I was quite surprised to see some sharrows on MD-450 in Bladensburg, where right the lanes are 12 feet wide.

Unfortunately, SHA placed the sharrows about 4 feet from the curb rather than in the center of the lane.  I sent them the following complaint.

I am filing this under "complaint" because it may or may not be time-sensitive.  I noticed about 4 sharrows painted in the right lane and if more are planned, it would be wise to reflect on these concerns before proceeding.

 

MBPAC and others have warned SHA that the guidance for sharrows is incomplete and/or misleading.  Sharrows are used under two very different situations:  On lanes that are wide enough to share side-by-side, and on lanes that are too narrow to share side by side (often with an R4-11 sign).  In the former case, sharrows should usually be about 4 feet from the curb or pavement edge--and that is what the guidance said.  But when the lane is too narrow to share side by side, then sharrows should be in the center of the lane. 

 

Here you have sharrows 4 feet from the curb on 12 foot lanes.  Such sharrows communicate to drivers that the cyclists should be keeping right to make room for the car to pass within the lane--but there is not enough room.  The sharrows also communicate to drivers that a cyclist using the full lane (generally about 7 feet from the curb) is hogging the lane when he should be farther to the right.  Given that we even have R4-11 signs on this road, you have just painted sharrows that contradict the message of the R4-11 signs.

 

For examples of the right way to do this, please see the photos for the following cities:

 

Los Angeles or this

 

Long Beach:

 

San Diego

 

Seattle

 

Laurel, MD policy explained

 

Arlington, VA

 

A side benefit of mid-lane sharrows is that they do not wear away as fast as sharrows placed in the tire tracks,  But the main reason not to place sharrows 4 feet from the curb in a 12-foot lane is that doing so encourages cyclists to ride in a place where drivers will attempt to pass bikes within the lane with insufficient clearance--exactly the opposite of what the R4-11 sign was designed to do.

I'll let you know what they decide.

Jim Titus is a bicycle advocate from Prince Georges County.  The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of any organization with which he is affiliated.

Should police tell reporters who is to blame for fatalities before the investigation?

Media accounts of the two bike fatalities last month raised a few eyebrows among the commentariat here and at GGW.   The news accounts left the reader with the impression that each cyclist inexplicably placed himself in the path of an oncoming dump truck or SUV.  The average person reading those accounts would probably take them at face value; but for many of us, that is hard to do because we have seen so many cases where initial reports were wrong.

GGW briefly presented both incidents as cases where a driver killed a cyclist, and the predictable discussion centered on whether that was totally unfair to the drivers, or whether it is reasonable for GGW to provide a counterbalance to the prevailing way these stories are told.  Here on the Washcycle, the comments were focused more on trying to read between the lines and explore the various possibilities of what could have actually happened.  In the case of the dump truck on a state highway colliding with a cyclist crossing the highway, the account seemed believable.

The 9-year old child killed on a residential road between Bowie and Glenn Dale, however, was more troubling.  Several of us have young children, and  none of us like to hear that the police and the media accept the premise that a driver has no responsibility to avoid running into an unpredictable child on a residential street.  When I got my driver's license, the simulator always had a ball bouncing into the street with a child following it; the lesson was that a driver in a residential street should assume that a child may run into one's path at any moment.  

Of course, we don't have the strict liability system wherein drivers always are to blame if they run into a cyclist, but that does not mean that the duty of care does not change when one sees a child on a bike.  That's the main reason for the 25 mph speed limit.  Obey the speed limit and if you strike a pedestrian, she has a 10% chance of being killed.  Drive 35 mph and there is a 2/3 chance she dies.  And of course, avoiding the collision is easier if you go slow.  

Then twk from Bowie directed us to the link showing the front-end damage to the SUV, which made all of us wonder (in exasperation):  how can police say that speed was not a factor?  The damage does not seem possible if the driver was only proceeding at 25 mph.  But if the driver was proceeding at 35 mph, then the odds are about 6:1 that the death was caused by the speed.  That seems to make a prima facie case that speed was definitely a factor.  How could the media fail to ask the obvious followup question?

Part of the problem may be that the police and reporters have adopted a short-hand jargon which makes sense for auto-auto crashes.  They are trying to say that the speed was not the single most important cause of the collision.  But if a child dies, we are also interested in why the collision caused someone's death.  In fatal auto-auto crashes, the vehicles are usually going so fast that it goes without saying that speed is sufficient to kill, the only question was whether it was so great that one loses control, or did they crash for another reason?  In bike or pedestrian crashes, by contrast, collisions are often at slow enough speeds for people to live; speed may be the single most important factor that determines whether a victim lives or dies. 

So how can the story overlook the most obvious question:  Was the driver complying with the 25 mph speed limit? 

Is the problem with the police or the media?  I find myself hoping that it's the police rather than the media, because the police are public officials accountable to the public.  There are clear lines of authority whom we can lobby.  The media is not really accountable to anyone, and the turnover of local reporters is so great that trying to change how the media covers a type of event is like spitting at the zeitgeist.   

After reading the comments on the Washcycle, I sent a terse but rather harshly worded complaint to a few officials.  For some reason, I thought that the Maryland State Police (MSP) had changed its approach to the media in the case of bicycle fatalities, after having made disastrously wrong preliminary judgments in the Leymesiter and Pettigrew cases.  So I was annoyed that the Prince George's Police had not adopted the more cautious approach of the MSP.  

Recall that in the Leymeister case, the State Police stated that the cyclist had failed to ride as far right as practicable on a road where the narrow shoulder was blocked by branches.  MBPAC protested because this was a road where the cyclist had the right to take the lane.  It later turned out that the problem was that the driver had an entirely frost covered windshield with just a little peep hole to see where she was going.

In the Natasha Pettigrew case, the police initially stated that the cyclist lacked reflective material.  Her mother knew otherwise and reporters who went to the scene of the crash found the materials that the police said did not exist.  Early statements also said that the driver left the scene because she thought she hit a dog or a deer.  Only because of public outrage was that claim more thoroughly investigated, and the driver was convicted of hit-and-run.

After those cases, an MSP official told MBPAC that the state police would be more careful about what they tell the media before the investigation is done.  It's a balancing act for police spokesmen, because there is usually great public and media interest after a fatality, especially when the victim is a child or a notable person.  But MSP staff felt that they could tell the story by presenting the issues they are investigating, rather than conclusions, and by mentioning (for example) the possibility that the driver was not looking where she was going, as well as the lane position of the cyclist.

Unfortunately, MSP's thinking was never memorialized.  I now know that this was just a sense of what they needed to do; but some people have moved on, so the Maryland State Police seem to be back to where they used to be, according to my source there.  My source referred me to Lieutenant Alexander who does media relations at the Prince Georges Police Department.

Mr. Alexander did not have the specifics of the 9-year old killed in the Bowie/Glenn Dale area when I called, but he did tell me the general approach of the Prince Georges County Police.  He said that they will not make a preliminary statement unless they are 90% sure.  There has to be credible or neutral witness, such as the family members with whom the child was riding, he said.  The Prince George's police will not make a preliminary statement "if the only witness is a driver who tells us that he killed someone but it was their fault."  

I did not follow up about this particular incident, though perhaps I'll call back in a few weeks.  My main purpose for calling him was to get a regular police contact for bike-ped issues.  Police statements to the media can be a problem, but dangerous driving is a bigger problem.  The police have too much work to prevent every type of crime.  If they are doing too little to enforce the laws designed to protect us, maybe it's because we haven't been asking them to do so.  Now we will.

(Jim Titus is a bicycle advocate from Prince George's County.  The opinions expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any organization with which he is affiliated, and the pronoun "we" does not mean any organized entity.)

Oxon Hill Road construction to start this week

The long-awaited reconstruction of Oxon Hill Road will start this week, according to signs posted along the road by the Department of Public Works and Transportation (DPW&T) of Prince George's County.  The $14 million project will add bike lanes to the 1.5-mile section of roadway extending from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge Trail south to Ft. Foote Road.  A few traffic lights will be replaced with roundabouts.

This project will have almost immedate benefits for some cyclists who wish to ride from the Wilson Bridge south to Fort Washington.   The worst section of roadway between the bridge and the fort for cyclists is the first mile on Oxon Hill road, which has 10-foot lanes, no shoulder, and drivers who often ignore the 3-foot rule when passing cyclists riding to the far right, and lay on the horn when cyclists use full lane.   When I suggested adding "Bicycles May Use Full Lane" signs, the DPW&T safety director responded that they prefer that cyclists not ride Oxon Hill Road until the construction is complete.  Nevertheless, the construction barriers will provide drivers (and hopefully cyclists) with the optical hint that bikes should use the full lane.

The bicycle accommodations for Oxon Hill Road will not be perfect.  The rotaries are being designed to encourage novice cyclists to ride onto a sidewalk and cross the streets as a pedestrian, but DPW&T has tentatively agreed to refrain from posting a sign stating that the bike route goes onto the sidewalk.  There will be some door-zone bike lanes; but DPW&T is open to marking the hazard if the state will pay the cost for the extra striping (and the door-zone bike lanes account for less than half of the section of rebuilt road).

(Jim Titus is a cycling activist from Prince George's County)

Monday Afternoon Commute - I've now won the Tour de France as many times as Lance Armstrong did

Good afternoon.

• The Phillips wants you to "See D.C. Danish style". That would be by bike. 
• After complaints about drivers making illegal U-turns across the Penn Ave bike lanes, DC put up giant signs telling drivers not to do that. But they took those down when cyclists pointed out it blocked their view. 
• Bethesda and Rockville are new Bronze-level Bicycle Friendly Communities. [Rockville was a BFC in the past, but didn't renew it] and being a bike-friendly city can be good for business.
• Prince George's County is considering a law that would "instruct the county’s Department of Public Works and Transportation to include lanes for bicyclist and space for walkers on all new roadways or when existing roadways go under repair." 
• "The governing body of cycling will not appeal the United State Anti-Doping Agency’s findings that Lance Armstrong led a massive doping program, concurring with the USADA decision that he should be banned for life and stripped of his seven Tour de France titles." Still, all in all, it was probably worth it.
• Jill Stein for President? "Her platform includes ... a “Green New Deal” that she says would cost less than the first stimulus package and put millions of Americans to work weatherizing homes and businesses, installing solar panels, building bike paths, upgrading public transit systems and constructing safe sidewalks. The only benefits, of course, would be lowering unemployment as well as our dependence on fossil fuels and making us healthier. Cuh-razy, right?"
• The rise of anthropological bicycle studies. “More and more of the research is pointing to the fact that also people’s attitudes, social norms and things like that have an influence over their decisions to bike or walk or take public transit.....In Portland, installing a cycle track – where the bike lane is moved from the actual street alongside drivers to the other side of a row of parked cars – resulted in bikers breathing less of some pollutants."
• More on the new "Forester was wrong" study out of Canada. 

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.)

R4-11 signs coming soon to Maryland State Highways

Three different people at SHA have told me that staff have examined more than a dozen state highways for the initial batch of R4-11 (Bicycles may use full lane) signs for Prince Georges and Montgomery counties.  In response to a letter from the Prince Georges County Bicycle and Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BTAG) , the efforts will focus on highways leading out of the District of Columbia, although portions of MD-193 and a few segments that connect trails to Metro are also under consideration. (The BTAG list is indicative but SHA is looking at similar highways in Montgomery County.)  Funding for the signs appears to be available for this year.  SHA is not sure whether any of the signs will be up before Bike to Work Day, but they plan to try,

(Jim Titus is on the board of directors of WABA from Prince Georges County,  The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of WABA.)

 

Wednesday Morning Commute - Prince George's County Innovates

Good morning

• Ballston will get its first CaBi station sometime next week. "The station will have 19 docks, and will be set up on N. Stuart Street at 9th Street, in front of Welburn Square. The station is scheduled to be installed from noon to 2:00 p.m. next Monday, with a ribbon cutting event to follow."
• Images of the new ART bridge. 
• Legislation approved yesterday in Prince George's County "would require most new developments in the county to calculate not only the amount of car traffic they would generate but also whether the projects are safe for cyclists and walkers. For those that are not, the developer would be asked to improve the area within a half mile of the project."
• NYC floats some of the possible locations for its future bike share stations. "Jonathan Schnipper, co-owner of Schnipper Restaurant Group, said he hoped the kiosk in front of his restaurant, in the Times Building, would draw even more business to his restaurant, which he said did not benefit fully from the traffic one block north."

In Maryland, the 3-foot passing law confuses everybody

Maryland’s 3-foot passing law is unusual. Like the DC law, the general rule is that cars must leave a 3-foot clearance when passing a bike, §21-1209(a)(2). But unlike the DC law, there are several exceptions. And in some situations, bicycles are also subject to the 3-foot rule.

The statute explicitly lists four situations when drivers do not have to leave a 3-foot clearance

1. If the cyclist is failing to maintain a steady course.
2. If there is an adjacent bike lane and the cyclist is violating the legal requirement to be in the bike lane. The requirement to be in a bike lane has so many exceptions that only a well-versed cyclist who happens to be driving will know whether a cyclist has the legal right to be outside of the bike lane. Nor does anyone know what it means to be outside the bike lane. Does it mean that the car needs to be 3 feet to the left of the bike lane, and if the cyclist’s shoulder intrudes a foot into the bike lane, then the buffer is only two feet. Or maybe it means that as long as the bike’s tire is in the bike lane, one must give the cyclist three feet. 
3. If the cyclist is violating the legal requirement to ride as far to the right as practicable and safe. This requirement has even more exceptions, so a driver is very unlikely to know if the requirement is met.
4. If the highway is too narrow for the driver to legally pass with the required clearance. This probably only applies to narrow highways, such as one-lane bridges and narrow roads where cars must slow and pull partly off the road to pass in opposite directions. But Bike Maryland believes that it also applies to no-passing zones (double yellow lines) on standard 2-lane roadways , because it thinks that the legislature inserted the word “highway” when it meant “lane”.  This assumption prompted Bike Maryland to sponsor HB 1397 which would have allowed cars to cross the double yellow line to pass bikes.  That way, our Baltimore allies reasoned, the exception to the 3-foot rule will no longer apply because it will be legal to pass with the required clearance.  Previous posts on this blog have discussed why many cyclists did not support that bill. MDOT also opposed the bill, albeit for different reasons. After the session, some of the advocates had an email colloquy with MDOT on whether the three-foot bill does or does not apply to the typical 2-lane road.    I asked MDOT for its position on that question, but so far, MDOT has not responded,

These four exceptions have been widely publicized, though few drivers probably undestand what they mean and no one knows what the final one means. But the statute also imposes two requirements on cyclists. First, §21-1209(a)(2)(ii) applies to any vehicle passing a bike, so a bike passing another bike is required to leave a 3-foot clearance.

The law also prohibits bikes from overtaking cars on the right within a standard travel lane on a 2-lane road, although they may pass on the left within such a lane. § 21-304 prohibits overtaking on the right if the highway is not wide enough for two or more lines of traffic moving lawfully in a given direction. Given the 3-foot passing law, there has to be room for the cyclist and 3 feet of clearance, for two lines of traffic to move lawfully. Therefore, if the lane is too narrow for cars and bikes to travel side-by-side with a 3-foot clearance, bikes may not pass on the right. This is not an issue for 4-lane (and wider) roads which have room for two lines of traffic. So a cyclist can legally squeeze between the curb and cars slowing for a traffic light on US-1 or Georgia Avenue, but not along the typical 2-lane road unless it is wide enough for side-by-side sharing (i.e. at least 13-14 feet) or has a shoulder into which the cyclist can pass.

Between the ambiguous exceptions, and the exceptions to(the (bike lane and keep right) exceptions, Maryland has a law that is too confusing to explain to student drivers.  Fortunately, the Motor Vehicle Administration appears to be sticking to the simplest approach:  Drivers should pass cyclists with at least three feet.  This was always MVA's recommended best practice, and the fact that a court can not convict a driver for passing with less clearance in some situations does not change the clearance with which a reasonable driver will pass.

(Jim Titus is on the board of directors of WABA from Prince Georges County, The opinions expressed herein do not necessarily represent the views of WABA.)