10th anniversary post: Cedar Rapids' protected bike lanes experiment

 

Protected bike lane demonstration project,
3rd Avenue SE, 2 August 2015

A protected bike lane is one that is separated from moving car traffic by some barrier, such as parked cars, bollards, or curbing. This provides more physical protection for riders than a single stripe of paint or a painted zone (buffered lane). (See discussion with illustrations in the Urban Bikeway Design Guide, prepared by the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO).)

I've been thinking that, when it comes to protected bike lanes, nothing serves as proof-of-concept quite as well as all the riders you see riding on sidewalks instead of streets. But proof of which concept? Sidewalks, despite the occasional presence of pedestrians as well as numerous driveways, are physically separated from the motor vehicle traffic, just like a protected lane; but, unlike a bike lane and more like a trail, they are located off the street.

He wants protection! 300 block of 10th St SE, 2021
(Google Earth screenshot)

Cedar Rapids built its first protected bicycle lane on 3rd Avenue SE less than ten years ago, thanks to advocacy and funding by the Corridor Metropolitan Planning Organization and its crack transportation planner, Brandon K. Whyte. Whyte led a "pop up" demonstration in August 2015, in which parking was moved off the curb to provide protection for the cycle lane. 

Beginning of the protected lane at 8th St SE

By 2019 Cedar Rapids had built protected lanes along 3rd Avenue from 8th Street SE to 6th Street SW. They remain, to my knowledge, the only such lanes in the city. Most bike lanes in the city are unseparated, while construction of cycling infrastructure has focused on trails and shared-use paths.

Shared-use path on K Avenue NE accommodates both
bikes and pedestrians

NACTO considers protected lanes to be an essential part of an "all ages and abilities" (AA&A) cycle network: Protected bike lanes are the only tool for All Ages & Abilities biking on streets with high curbside demand, speeds of more than 25 mph (40 km/h), multiple adjacent travel lanes, or motor vehicle volumes over 6,000 vehicles per day. They do what trails can't; while off-street trails like the CeMar Trail provide cyclists with superior protection over a sustained distance, they don't provide access to destinations (homes, schools, shops, offices) which are inevitably located on streets. Attempting a comprehensive trails network entirely apart from existing streets network could easily become "prohibitively expensive" [David Sucher, City Comforts (Seattle: City Comforts Inc, 2nd ed, 2016), 90].

Riding downtown on 3rd Avenue SW

Protected bike lanes are credited with improving traffic safety as well as encouraging cycling among the interested-but-reluctant. Within a year of introducing bike lanes, New York City found sharp decreases in injuries to all travelers, particularly (and perhaps counter-intuitively) pedestrians [Jeff Speck, Walkable City (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux, 2012), 190]. Nationally, analysis of data at both the block and network levels published in Nature found protected lanes had 1.8 times more riders than blocks with standard bike lanes, and even more when compared to shared streets (Ferenchak and Marshall 2025). 

Janette Sadik-Khan, who as transportation commissioner of New York City built miles of protected bike lanes among other pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, told Gilbert Penalosa at a Cities for Everyone webinar this summer:

When we put down protected bike lanes like... on 8th Avenue, which was the first one in the United States, we heard lots of people say that they were scared that people wouldn't be able to reach shops, that it was going to be bad for business... but sales data showed that where we put down protected bike lanes, injuries were cut in half, for all people, and shops showed a nearly 50 percent increase in retail sales. [The accompanying slide showed "-58% injuries, -67% pedestrian crashes, -29% speeding, +49% retail sales." She showed additional data from Toronto ("+100% cyclists") and London.] So whether it's making a street safer, better for business, or making it easier to get around, mile for mile, meter for meter, euro for euro, nothing beats a bike lane. [Quotation starts at 24:30 of the video]

Despite all these high-powered arguments, there is opposition. Some of it is the inevitable opposition of self-centered motor vehicle operators who wish everyone would just get out of their personal way, and perceive--correctly--that they are expected to slow down and share road space. Some especially confident cyclists object to what they see as relegation, when as vehicles their bicycles are fully entitled to space on the streets. 

But even ordinary cyclists have concerns about protected lanes. The main concern seems to be intersections, when cyclists are forced into traffic, particularly turning traffic than may not have seen their fellow road user. In particular, parked cars, which often form part of the protective barrier, can obstruct the motorists' view of the protected cyclists. I have myself, because the protected lane forces you into a more-or-less straight path, experienced unavoidable interactions with people standing in the lane, riders coming the wrong way at me, and one e-cyclist urging me out of their way.

100 block of 3rd Avenue SW:
Without a protective barrier, parked cars can and do
encroach on the bicycle lanes (Google Earth screenshot)

These problems appear to be in large part fixable. A cement curb between the cars pictured above and the bike lane they're sharing would provide a lot more "protection" for cyclists.

Given the value of bike lanes in encouraging ridership and improving street safety, we certainly shouldn't fall back onto the status quo. We should respond to problems as they arise, as Memphis has done with bike lanes on Broad Street. After residents experienced frequent issues at the intersection of Broad and Collins Streets, a transportation consultant involved with the original installation "suggested that the city could create a truck apron at the corner using speed bumps. This would tighten the turn radius for cars, forcing them to slow down, while still allowing larger trucks to make the turn. It’s also a quick and easy change to make" (Strong Towns 2025).

NACTO has a number of recommendations for intersections, based on four principles: 

1. change underlying assumptions about how intersections must operate
2. give people biking and walking clear priority over turning vehicles
3. reduce the approach speed and turn speed of motor vehicles
4. make people walking, biking and driving mutually visible

The specific remedy will depend on the intersection, of course, but a bike setback like this...

Source: NACTO

...gives both cyclist and driver more time to see each other. (Note the distance between the crosswalk and where the cars turn.) 

• "Right turn on red" could be barred where there are frequent conflicts between cars and bicycles (and pedestrians). A leading green only works when cars aren't expecting to roll regardless of the color of the light.
• Clearly-marked and maintained crosswalks and "cross-bikes" provide paths across the intersection that are visible to drivers. 
• Removing one parking space from each intersection will provide more visibility, not just of bicycles but also of motorized cross-traffic. 
• Finally, more and more visible traffic enforcement would discourage rogue behavior by everyone--as long as it's focused on genuine dangers (cars blowing stop signs, wrong-way bike riding, aggressive or erratic movement by anybody) and not on easy prey like pedestrians crossing empty streets.

That all said, I think there's room to expand the presence of protected bike lanes. Jeff Speck prefers--at least he did when the first edition of Walkable City was published--shared streets for downtown areas, to allow everyone access to shops, assuming "an environment of such slow driving that bikes and cars can mix comfortably at biking speeds" [2012: 203-204]--which is not always the case in Downtown Cedar Rapids. Speck wants to look at streets "where car speeds get into the thirties." I'd start with those of our stroads that don't have quieter streets that parallel them: 16th Avenue SW, Center Point Road NE, and Mount Vernon Road SE, to name a few.

So, bottom line: protected bike lanes are a boon--not a cure-all, and not appropriate everywhere, but done right they are a boon nonetheless.

ORIGINAL POST: "Cedar Rapids' Protected Bike Lanes Experiment," 3 August 2015