Advance Cycle Boxes
Jul. 1st, 2008 11:27 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackJust before traffic lights, there is a cycle-lane like box the width of the main lane, in which cyclists can stop at lights without being rear-ended by cars.
0. Is there an official name for them? "Advance cycle box" is in my head, is is equally likely to be something else entirely, or made up.
1. What is the intended use if the cyclist approaches the traffic lights behind three cars? I feel it should be obvious what they're supposed to do, but admit I can't tell. Obviously if you can accelerate briskly to 20mph, there's no problem, but if you can't, or don't want to?
Undertake if there is a clear cycle lane, else wait in the queue? Always undertake if you can? (But it's not clear when the highway code permits undertaking.) Overtake if you can? (But this is unlikely to be possible.) Always wait? (But that leaves a frustrated driver behind you.) Dismount and cross the intersection from the pavement? (But that's annoying and takes several times as long.)
2. If it were safe to do either, which would delay the drivers least: moving ahead to the cycle box, or waiting in turn. One way, the drivers ahead go past, but the one behind probably misses the lights. The other, all the drivers are delayed until the road is wide enough to overtake safely again.
3. What do you do?
I feel silly for not knowing, but most of the time, it doesn't come up, either because there's not enough of a queue, or the road is wide enough to permit cars overtaking cycles safely. And then when it does, I don't actually know.
0. Is there an official name for them? "Advance cycle box" is in my head, is is equally likely to be something else entirely, or made up.
1. What is the intended use if the cyclist approaches the traffic lights behind three cars? I feel it should be obvious what they're supposed to do, but admit I can't tell. Obviously if you can accelerate briskly to 20mph, there's no problem, but if you can't, or don't want to?
Undertake if there is a clear cycle lane, else wait in the queue? Always undertake if you can? (But it's not clear when the highway code permits undertaking.) Overtake if you can? (But this is unlikely to be possible.) Always wait? (But that leaves a frustrated driver behind you.) Dismount and cross the intersection from the pavement? (But that's annoying and takes several times as long.)
2. If it were safe to do either, which would delay the drivers least: moving ahead to the cycle box, or waiting in turn. One way, the drivers ahead go past, but the one behind probably misses the lights. The other, all the drivers are delayed until the road is wide enough to overtake safely again.
3. What do you do?
I feel silly for not knowing, but most of the time, it doesn't come up, either because there's not enough of a queue, or the road is wide enough to permit cars overtaking cycles safely. And then when it does, I don't actually know.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 09:17 am (UTC)[Most of the rest based on traffic doing what it does in London]
Cyclists move slower than cars, (and accellerating and decelerating is much more effort) so sitting around waiting at lights represents a bigger delay and more inconvenience for them. For a car, their max legal speed is generally faster than the speed the traffic is flowing at, so after traffic lights they can speed up to 30 until they end up in the same queue again at the next - they don't lose that much time.
Because of this and other factors, cyclists are inclined to ignore traffic lights all together, which is very bad. Therefore, a 'compromise' position is 'look, wait at the lights, but we only expect you to wait for one cycle of the lights, that's not _too_ long'.
So to answer your question, I think that if there's a cyclelane, undertake. If there isn't overtaking to the cycle box is often possible and easy, and is the right answer, but undertaking is equally expected. It's worth knowing the junction if you're doing this, so you know when all the traffic is about to start moving and squash you like a gnat.
Point 2 is missing the point (well, unless you're uber-considerate) - the system isn't about not pissing the drivers off. The drivers will overtake when there isn't space anyway, and travel at twice the speed of the bikes and forget all about them quite soon anyway.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-02 01:33 pm (UTC)Point 2 is missing the point (well, unless you're uber-considerate)
:) Yeah. I wasn't definitely going to do, but it would be good to at least get feedback from other drivers' perspectives, and know if I'm doing something because it's best for me, best for everyone else, or both.
It seems like at many junctions any option is very annoying to anyone driving, so I feel guilty whichever I do. (Unless I just dismount and go round, following the "cyclists shouldn't exist at all" school of thought.) But if I'm convinced that nothing I do could be better, I can feel justified in whichever I do :)