Flagstaff cyclist Justin Pryzby is at it again — not riding in the gutter.

Heading home from work on June 9, 2010, westbound on East Route 66 in the vicinity of Switzer Canyon Drive [google maps], he was pulled over by Flagstaff police officer. His offense? “RIDING HIS BICYCLE IN LANE NUMBER TWO OF THE ROAD WAY WHERE A BICYCLE LANE WAS PROVIDED”, according to the strangely detailed police report of the incident (the quotations from the report are for some reason in all caps, underlining added by me).

Is this a bike lane?

Officer is obviously fixated on the bike lane, and writes of it often “THE SUBJECT THEN WENT BACK INTO THE BICYCLE LANE AND I ACTIVATED MY EMERGENCY LIGHTS AND SIREN”….”THERE WAS A BICYCLE LANE THAT WAS PROVIDED”…”THERE WERE NONE OF THE EXCEPTIONS… THAT WOULD MAKE JUSTIN HAVE TO EXIT OR GET OUT OF THE BIKE LANE”

Here is a picture of a REAL bike lane

Officer charged the cyclist with two violations: §28-701E, and §28-815A.

The only trouble with Officer’s story is, there is no bike lane there. I confirmed this with City of Flagstaff multi-modal coordinator Martin Ince by telephone, and also with the State of Arizona (this happens to be a state highway) Department of Transportation Bicycle/Pedestrian Coordinator Michael Sanders.  It is self-evident  that this is not a bicycle lane.  It is not marked with bike lane signage (e.g. R3-17), or ground markings. What about the lane, that is Lane number 2? It’s something under 11 feet — clearly narrow, see Take the lane. As far as I know, no one disputes the dimensions.

A real bike lane would have an R3-17 sign

I have written before on the problems and confusion these edge-stripes-that-are-not-bike-lane-stripes cause — and this is that in spades, see e.g. Is this a bike lane?

The other charge, 28-701E, is inapplicable to bicyclists because it applies specifically to motor vehicles. See in Bicycles are not motor vehicles, and why it matters

The Trial

The first sign that something was out of the ordinary was the city exercising its option to be represented by counsel, somewhat (how much?) unusual for a civil traffic matter.

In any event the trial was held in Flagstaff Municipal Court, docket #M-9341-TR-2919994702  before Charlotte Beyal, Magistrate Pro Tempore. The city was represented by Assistant City Prosecutor Consuelo “Celo” Brennan. The cyclist represented himself.

The trial apparently went well. That is to say the judge understood and accepted the defendant’s position both that the lane was narrow and was therefore not responsible for 28-815A because of exemption 4, and that the other charge could not apply to a bicycle. Not responsible on both counts.

The Trouble with Flagstaff PD

Is it poor training? Or is this officer just out to get bicyclists who dare to exercise their right to the road? Or is it something more — is it an institutional bias?

Flagstaff recently was rewarded by LAB with a Silver Bicycle Friendly Communities designation. Enforcement is supposed to figure into that, and they got a “star” in that category. Not from what I’ve been seeing over the past 8 months or so.

I started a new tag: flagstaff-anomolies as there seems to a pattern of law enforcement and justice system problems in Flagstaff. In the wake of the NAIPTA-bus-bike fiasco,  “…the police department issued a department-wide training bulletin requiring all officers to review all bicycle laws, (deputy chief) Treadway said”. Sounds impressive? But who knows what sort of training they actually did?

In a word, No. None of these are bike lanes. But someone sure went out of their way to make it look so. They even moved the not-bike lane stripe over to make more room in the not-bike lane (center photo). [See Fig 1, here, for a picture and description of how an actual bike lane is marked]

What is the correct — both legal and safety — position for a cyclist to assume in these not-bike lanes? Just try to get a straight answer out of the-powers-that-be (in this case, the City of Phoenix) on that one.

The law is refreshingly clear: “If the lane…is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane” a cyclist may ride anywhere in that lane, §28-815(A)(4).

See other articles on critical width; see AASHTO for dimensional guidelines for (real) bike lanes.

Dimensions

Exactly how wide, or narrow as the case may be, are these ridiculous shoulders? Dimensions of the shot of the white SUV, in the top-left  picture, can be found here.

Dimension of Ray Road, the picture with the big yellow school bus are as below. This section is typical of Ray Road between approx E 3600 and 4400 blocks in Phoenix (but there are even narrower parts, as pictured above top-right):

115 / 38 / 14″ : lane / shoulder / gutter pan

The “bike lane” (were it to be one, it is not) would the be 38+14 = 52″ — 8″ shy of nominal.

But that’s not even the biggest problem. The travel lane, at less than 10′, is unusually small by Phoenix standards. The usable width is 115+38 = 153″ (less than 13′) is unsuitable for any side-by-side sharing, as is graphically obvious from the photo. This is 15″ shy of being sharable with narrow-profile motor vehicles, and a bus or truck or trailer is out of the question.

Good graphic of how 14′ usable space can be shared by a typical cyclist and a typical, narrow, motor vehicle from cyclist and traffic engineer Richard Moeur.

Cyclists riding in the shoulder can and will, I can attest to from first hand experience, get passed with just inches to spare by drivers merrily and illegally skimming by cyclists in the “not-bike lane”.

Large vehicle dimensions are commonly 8′,  or 8.5′ (e.g. see Large School Bus Design Vehicle Dimensions ; the AASHTO defined SU truck or BUS is 8.5′); not including mirrors.

What the MUTCD Says

The Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices, MUTCD, is the transportation engineer’s bible, throughout the United States; it is incorporated into Arizona law, see the-mutcd-and-a-r-s.

See sections 3B06 and 7, Edge Line Pavement Markings, and Warrants for use of Edge Line Markings.  What is an edge line? “If used, edge line pavement markings shall delineate the right or left edges of a roadway”.

Types of roads where their use is warranted include “Freeways, Expressways, and RURAL arterials”. (my emphasis). Note that urban arterials are NOT on the list, to put it another way, the use of edge lines on urban arterial is non-standard and unwarranted. The only other possible allowable usage would be “where an engineering study indicates a need for edge line markings” — were there engineering studies done to support their use? I, um, highly doubt it.

The kindest thing i can think to say about edge lines (on urban arterial with closed shoulders) is they are not prohibited, due to the “if used…” language in 3B06.

Recommendations

Since motorists have an expectation that cyclists must use bike lanes; these not-bike lanes cause confusion, since they are widely perceived as actual bike lanes.

The confusion has only deleterious effects on cyclists, one of two problems arise:

1. encourages (mis-informed) cyclists to ride too far to the right, this encourages motorists to buzz cyclists. Or,
2. cyclists riding (legally) in the lane are harassed by motorists.

Planners should not lay out urban arterial roads with a right lane that has a “critical” width. This is a critically important revision needed to the current (1999) edition of AASHTO’s Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities: “an outside or curb lane wider than 3.6 m (12 feet) can better accommodate both bicycles and motor vehicles in the same lane and thus is beneficial to both bicyclists and motorists (p.17)”

Improved wording in the DRAFT Guide reads: “Lane widths of 13 feet (4.0 m) or less require most motor vehicles to be driven at least part way into the next lane to pass a bicyclist with an adequate and comfortable clearance (usually 3 ft [0.9 m] or more depending on the speed of the passing vehicle). Lane widths of 14 feet (4.3 m) or greater enable motorists to pass bicycles [sic] without encroaching into the adjacent lane” (p. 57).

…

Where these bad layouts already exist, because of the confusion caused to both cyclists and motorists, the stripe should be removed; i.e. it should have never been placed there in the first place.

A Ray of Hope

Yes, that was a little play on words — When a portion of Ray Road in Phoenix was rebuilt in July 2010, it overlapped with the portion that has the onerous stripe. Happily when the newly rebuilt portion was striped, the edge stripe did not make a reappearance. So the portion between Ranch Circle South and 44th Street used to look like the picture above with the school bus but now looks like this (east and west bound; the west bound has just a few feet of edge stripe in order to mate up with the bad old existing edge stripe):

It’s only maybe a quarter-mile but at least it is a step in the right direction.

Educated cyclists know that they not only can (legally), but should (for safety) occupy an entire lane when conditions dictate. One of these conditions is when the lane is narrow. See more on the safety discussion at Where to ride on the road.

Arizona law is quite strong and plain in this regard. Here is the relevant law, (I intentionally clipped the part about the cyclist’s speed, which is briefly treated later).

§28-815. Riding on roadways… A. A person riding a bicycle…shall ride as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway, except… 4. If the lane in which the person is operating the bicycle is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the lane.

So this law creates a duty in part A for cyclists, but there are enumerated exceptions to this duty, the 4th one being the subject of this article.

We are reminded that from time to time, cyclists are targeted by law enforcement for “taking the lane”. This sometimes takes the form of mis-guided paternalism — “you should always ride to the extreme right so you don’t get hit”. It also can take a an uglier tone of faux-paternalism, really just a thinly-veiled automobile-superiority attitude, the sub-text being “cyclists must always get out of the way of cars”.

And disappointingly sometimes cyclists are found guilty (actually “responsible” is the correct term, I am told) by compliant lower courts.

Happily, Arizona cyclists can point to not one but two relatively recent Superior Court decisions which reversed on appeal these wrongful convictions.

The first case, Arizona V. Goren, occurred in Tempe (Maricopa County). In the second case the rider was riding two abreast, but that isn’t relevant to the case; Arizona V. Piscopo, Pima County (see more generally at Two Abreastness. Also see the case at TBL, the blog of the lawyer who represented Piscopo).

I would encourage everyone to read both of these decisions because they are brief, well-written, and illustrative.

How narrow is narrow?

This can be a gray area; it is not (directly) specified in the law. In Goren, Officer Robinson maintained that 12’10″ (his measurement) was more than ample. He was, however, not aware of the concept of usable space; and thus incorrectly counted the gutter as lane width. In the end, the court accepted that the defendant’s measurement approximately 11′ usable width was both accurate and clearly narrow. Much the same conclusion was reached in Piscopo: “credibility was not at issue and the salient evidence — the dimensions at play — appear undisputed”, the dimension according to the defendant were “no more than 11 feet wide”.

Both cases counted on using the minimum 3′ passing distance specified in §28-735 as an entitlement to the cyclist when determining narrowness. (see Three-Foot Laws for more generally about this law including other states who have a passing-distance law)

From an engineering perspective, the authoritative AAHSTO Guide for the Development of Bicycle Facilities, 1999 says minimum 14′ usable width for side-by-side sharing:

In general, 4.2 m (14 feet) of usable lane width is the recommended width for shared use in a wide curb lane…(the gutter pan should not be included as usable width).

You can play with the dimensions, e.g. if you allow a minimum of 1 foot both to the left of the (8′) motor vehicle, and the right of the (2′) cyclist, plus mandated 3′ between the cyclist and motor vehicle — you come up with something akin to the 14′ mentioned by AAHSTO. Many vehicles are less than 8′, but not by much — and don’t forget to include the mirror width which is commonly not included in specifications. Traffic engineer and cyclist Richard Moeur has created an elegant schematic drawing divvying up the 14′ here. (and see some comments below from Wayne Pein on the dimensions). More similar diagrams from humantransport.org.

Also see How Wide should a Wide Curb Lane Be?, by Wayne Pein, which provides a literature review, and takes into account other factors such as wind blast and the effect of speed limits and expected truck traffic.

Also see reference to 28-1093, max width of vehicle body allowed on Arizona roadways, linked in comment to is-this-a-bike-lane.

The Issue of Speed

Neither of the aforementioned cases dealt with whether or not the cyclists were “at less than the normal speed of traffic”. In a nutshell: some courts (but none in Arizona, that i know of) have held that normal means normal for a bicycle. See e.g. State V Patrick , which references the Selz decision; both out of Ohio.

But what about Impeding?

This was not at issue in either of these cases, for some more general discussion of impeding see Bicycles are not Motor Vehicles and Why it Matters.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Office

There is a memo from Lt. K. Woolridge date March 5, 2009 which states the (Pima) county attoney’s position particularly with respect to riding two-abreast. Further inquiries are directed to Seargent Copfer.

Thinking of Representing Yourself?

There are a number of guides for pro se / pro per appellants on the Arizona Supreme Court website.

Lanes that are wider than minimal width for a motor vehicle, yet not wide enough for a bicycle and motor vehicle to share side-by-side have come to be known as “critical width”, a.k.a. ambiguous width. This creates confusion for both cyclists and motorists, leading to unsafe passing.

The section of road between the Ray/Chandler split and 24th street is wider — as seen in the first photo. The section at the intersection is typical of the entire section beginning just east of 24th street and continuing out to Desert Foothills Parkway. (west of DFP is a real bike lane).

The section from 24th Street out to DFP is dominated by an oversized, landscaped median. By oversized, I mean that there is more than enough extra width to have made side-by-side shareable outside lanes, or real bike lanes — within the existing right-of-way. Instead, the city chose to install this odd configuration with “critical width”. (it is so large, it is easy to see it from the aerial/sat picture, my estimate is it’s at least 30 feet wide! But no room to have a shareable lane?)

Here are my measurements, where there are lines involved, I measured to the center of the line. Both sections have about a 16″ gutter pan that is not included in the following figures…

(left picture, above)  lane: 125" shoulder: 44"
(right picture, above) lane: 121" shoulder: 30"

If the edge stripe were not there, the usable space in the wider section would be 14’1″ — which would nominally be wide enough to share side-by-side (motor vehicle – bicycle) per AASHTO “green book”.

The narrower section, at 151″ (under 13′) usable, is not suitable for any general side-by-side sharing.

The changes in dimension are rather gradual. Which leads to yet more problems for cyclists who wish to share in the wider portion, and take the lane as it narrows.

It is also a signed Bicycle Route (see figure 2 for another shot of this section). The signage seems to be yet another source of confusion for ill-informed motorists.

And this is not an isolated design, the city inexplicably uses similar cross sections on other arterials, e.g. Ray Road.

Good graphics of how 14′ usable space can be shared by a typical cyclist and a typical, narrow, motor vehicle from cyclist and trafic engineer Richard Moeur. Also see similar diagram on this page at humantransport.org show typical widths for passing with typical vehicles, e.g. a “normal” SUV is about 7 feet wide including mirrors.

A possibly better solution would be to remove the stripe, since it doesn’t belond there anyway, and adding Sharrows (since somebody at the city obviously feels we need some sort of bike facility — these are already signed “Bike Routes”). Unfortunately, besides being “experimental”, according to guidance sharrows are not to be used on roads with posted limits above 35mph — so they are virtually prohibited in car-crazed suburban Phoenix. Well, except perhaps on roads that don’t need them, witness the many 35mph oversized laned collectors with bicycle lanes.