There’s an intersection I occasionally cycle through that has what looks like left turn areas for bicycles. Here’s a street view of it. (The green area that that cyclist is not using.) This is the only one I’ve ever seen and it’s pretty new. Any else seen one like this?
I’m going to guess that there’s sensors in the road in those areas to detect bikes and will turn on the walk signal when the sensor is tripped. I don’t know since I’ve never tried to use it. I do make left turns there, but always just use the car left turn lane.
I’ve never seen one of those; pretty interesting. That would be for timid people who don’t want to take the left turn lane with cars, or is that somehow illegal in your jurisdiction? Or is it meant to encourage bikes to stay in the bike lane? Please assure me that it’s not illegal to take your lane in Oregon?
As I said, I turn left there on my bike and always use the car lane. These things are new, less than a year old. Have never heard about them being required to be used. For that matter, I’ve never heard anything at all about them in the news.
Did some googling (should have done it before) and found something called Two-Stage Turn Queue Boxes. At least I think these are the same things.
If I saw those here in the Twin Cities, I’d assume they were there for the same reason the bike lanes are there: to give a visual cue to the clueless drivers that there are going to be cyclists about, and everybody would ignore them.
A cyclist approaching that intersection has to fully cross three lanes of traffic to get from the bike lane to the turn lane. Typically roads with that many lanes are not low-volume, 25mph roads. I bet there are a lot of non-timid cyclists that wouldn’t want to make that left in the left turn lane.
Yes, it looks like there are loop sensors cut into the road.
We have some similar ones near me, for the same reason. They don’t want bikes cutting across multiple lanes of traffic then sitting exposed as cars whizz by. The bike crossing is timed with the pedestrian crossing.
Not too long ago, people from Minneapolis were bragging about how they’d taken the Big City Bike Capital of America away from Portland, or something like that. I guess that must have been an exaggeration.
Actually only across two lanes. (There’s two left turn lanes and you only have to get into the near one.) But you’re right about the speed limit, more like a 45 mph road. The intersection is only a real problem during rush hour, but there’s bike commuters on that road, so maybe some of them use it. I can’t recall ever seeing anyone use them, but as I said, they’re pretty new.
Around here, it’s legal for bikes to occupy a lane, but it’s not always easy. In addition to the issue of crossing multiple lanes of busy traffic, sometimes a bike won’t trigger the sensor to give a left-turn arrow, if there’s no car behind you in the turn lane.
There’s one intersection near me where I usually turn left in two legs like a pedestrian instead of braving the traffic, but it isn’t designed for it, so I have to just use the corner of the sidewalk.
Oh, one new thing I saw just today (installed sometime since this past Thursday) is a traffic signal specifically for bikes. From right to left, there’s a bike signal (red, yellow, and green lights with a bicycle shape silhouetted on them), a right-turn arrow (turn only on green arrow), and a normal light for straight and left-turning traffic. I didn’t see a full cycle, but the bike and straight lights were both green while the right arrow was red. I guess that’s a way to keep bikes to the far right, without colliding with people making turns.
In Melbourne they’re legal for bicycles anywhere, but we don’t have cute little green-paved areas for the bikes to wait in because everyone simply knows that they’re legal for bikes anywhere.
Car drivers are all familiar with the hook turn rules because we also have “hook turn for EVERYONE” intersections in the city center. This is because we still have trams running down the middle of roads all over the place, and the last thing you want in the middle of your tram tracks is a bunch of drivers in the center lane waiting to make cross-traffic[sup]*[/sup] turns and getting in the way of the public transport all the time
People have been known to take out-of-state visitors in to the CBD simply for the pleasure of showing them those crazy hook-turny-things. That’s livin’ the high life in the big city!
[sup]*[/sup]ie ‘right’ for me or ‘left’ for you guys
Looked quickly, I thought it was three straight & one left turn instead of two & two.
In that case, the light is defective & may legally be treated like a stop sign, allowing you to proceed when safe (which usually means when it changes red for one direction or another).
Yup, that’s a turn box. It allows those using the bike lane to make a turn that’s more like a pedestrian crossing instead of fighting their way into the left turn lane, which a lot of cyclists are uncomfortable doing.
We have a number of them in Chicago, including some interesting installations in the Loop for turning from a two-way cycleway on Dearborn onto one-way Randolph or Washington.
A number of cities, notably London, put advance boxes in front of the stop bar for motorists at signalized intersections. Cyclists thus get a head start on motorists when the signal changes.
The green lane on the (left0 is the bike lane, the cross-traffic box is in front of the traffic lane. There is a turn arrow: I don’t know if there is a traffic sensor to detect bikes (I doubt it).
Normal people only enter the box if the traffic is stopped and light is red: They undertake in the bike lane, then move across into the box. Bikes don’t get priority. Of course no sane bike rider would turn across traffic from that box, but that location is hipster central in Melb, so there are people crazy enough to do it.
Boxes like that are spread around Melbourne, where there are bike lanes, but mostly not so clearly marked, and mostly ignored by drivers (most drivers pull up over the box)
As mentioned above, most cyclists turning left just merge over into the left lane for the turn rather than use this but at rush hour it’s not a bad option. This intersection is further complicated by the middle lane being both for turning and going straight, so depending on where you stop there could be cars trying to buzz past you on the right while you wait.
Oh, sure. Even with a normally-functioning light, around here, it’s legal to make a left turn on an ordinary green light, so long as it’s clear. And it’s also legal (or at least, if it’s not, it might as well be, because everyone does it) to pull partially into the intersection on the green, and then complete your turn once it turns red. But at some intersections, at some times of day, you might need to wait a very long time for that. At one in particular I’m thinking of (which I will make a note to never go via again), literally my only recourse was to wait for a car to pull up behind me in the turn lane to trigger the arrow for me. The stream of cars coming the other way was unending, at least until the end of rush hour, and the light wouldn’t change at all without a demand.
What I was trying to say is that if the left turn arrow won’t trigger for you (& there’s a red/do not turn arrow as opposed to a green dot/proceed when safe) when the traffic light turns red for straight traffic & before it turns green for cross traffic (or vice versa, red for cross traffic) you may legally proceed thru the intersection because the traffic light is defective & will not activate for you.