I just ran across a post from March 2015 by Angie Schmitt for Streetblog:
The title is “Engineering Establishment Sets Out to Purge Deviant Bikeway Designs”
I quote:
The NCUTCD consists mostly of older engineers from state DOTs. In recent years, its bikeway design orthodoxy has been challenged by a new wave of engineers looking to implement treatments that the American street design establishment has frowned upon, despite a proven track record improving the safety and comfort of bicycling. Most notably, the National Association of City Transportation Officials has released guidance on the design of protected bike lanes that the MUTCD lacks.
NACTO’s guidance is gaining adherents. Dozens of cities have implemented protected bike lanes in the past few years. The Federal Highway Administration endorsed the guide in 2013.
The NACTO Guide is formatted to appear to be an actual design guide to a lay person, but does not serve as one for an engineer who is faced with the actual task of designing anything. That is one of the problems which the NCUTCD task force is attempting to address. The NACTO Guide has stirred up a lot of interest among the general public, politicians and advocates of increased bicycle use, but it does not offer a decision tree, or specifications, or safety cautions sufficient to guide the design of safe and practical bikeways. I’ve addressed that here.
As to the “proven track record,” search on “Lusk” in this blog for some reviews of studies which purport to overturn the results of decades of research showing an increase in crash risks at driveways and cross streets with sidewalk or sidewalk-like routing of bicycles, and an overall increase in crashes due to this “protection.”
Schmitt’s use of the terms “purge” and “deviant” — to describe the deliberations of an engineering task force — play on the image of totalitarian states’ placing people who reject party line before a firing squad, and speaks for itself.
The simple, objective measure I use is whether a design treats cyclists as peer road users AND whether the designers expect or compel either cyclists or motorists to violate the core rules of movement on which our traffic system is based. If yes to the first part and no to the second, it might be okay. If the answer to the first part is no and/or the answer to the second part is yes, it’s a bad design.
Almost everything I’ve seen that is unique to the NACTO guide fails, most on both counts.
Streetsblog is not generally thought of as a technical blog, but rather a political blog. That has been a longstanding headache when politics and engineering collide.
As far as designs, I tend to look at specific situations and make a judgement call. Not all situations are created equal.
There is a tremendous clash of authorizes taking place, and it is difficult to figure out how everything is evolving. The MUTCD is supposed to be a manual limited to the appropriate and uniform use of traffic control devices–signs and markings. The AASHTO [rural] Greenbook was developed in the 1930s, if I recall correctly, as the standard of physical construction a state highway department had to meet to be eligible for state-federal highway funds. The urban Greenbook didn’t come along until the 1960’s and the present unitary book didn’t exist until 1984, the same year that the first AASHTO Bicycle Manual existed.
The National Committee on Uniform Traffic Laws and Ordinances handled the UVC and the MTO, taking over in 1932 from the 1926 and 1928 Hoover traffic safety conferences. The NCUTLO suddenly disbanded in 2008 for reasons that, as far as I know, have never been fully explained. (more below)
JSA is correct that NACTO was able to issue its manual with the blessing of the FHWA only because it was asserted to be an applications manual for signage and markings in the then-current MUTCD. The second volume, which came out 18 months later, really pushed that logic to the limit (some would say, past the limit.)
Nobody really made much of a rukus about all this chaos, because there was a lot of talk coming out the office of the secretary of the DOTs that the FHWA and/or NHTSA would take over all three of these functions (NCUTLO, NCMUTD and AASHTO’s Greenbook Committee) and the use of semi-private organizations would go away because there was a lot of question about whether they were subject to notice-and-comment rulemaking under the Administrative Procedure Act and were subject to the Freedom of Information Act. (I sent a FOIA request to NCUTLA via the office of the secretary of the DOT in 2004, and I have heard rumors that this and other FOIA requests may have led them to fold their tent.)
Keep in mind that this is much more than bike issue. The big city transportation officials have, ever since 1921, felt that they have gotten short shrift from the fed-state system that forces them to go through their respective state DOTs, which have traditionally had a rural bias. In fact, an anti-urban bias was built into the system by its founder “Chief” Thomas McDonald, who came from Iowa. Probably about half of the NACTO transportation directors wouldn’t mind seeing the present transportation trust fund blown up in favor of one that puts big urban areas on parity with entire states. (SF-DOT vs. Caltrans, for example).
Hi JOhn
I’m research about bike paths/ways in cities across Europe but i couldn’t find data of km of these infrastructure. Where I will find? You can help me?
Sorry, I don’t have this information at my fingertips. You would have to contact the bicyclists’ organizations or transportation ministries of the various countries, or find a summary by someone who did.
It gets worse, even. See http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2016/5/22/engineers-should-not-design-streets?utm_content=buffer26fc3&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer