Grade crossing

Shining Sea path, Falmouth, Massachusetts, northbound at Ter Heun Road.

(You may click on “Vimeo” at the right below the image to get a larger view)

shining-sea-terheun from John Allen on Vimeo.

So, let me ask you: how many bicyclists are going to go to the left of the fence into the oncoming lane of the path and ride across, and how many are going to ride up to the fence on the right, dismount as the sign instructs them to — no other way to make that tight corner — and manage to be paying attention to traffic coming from 9 different locations?

• sidewalk, both directions;
• street from the left, in two lanes, one of which can hide traffic in the other;
• street, from the right, coming straight across the intersection, also turning right and left from Jones Road;
• path, coming across from the far side of the street;
• path, bicyclists who went around on the left side of the fence.

The underlying concept is “we will make bicyclists into pedestrians, walking is safer than riding” but:

• For a competent bicyclist, this isn’t a great place to cross, but riding is safer, because it is faster, everything you need to yield to is in your forward field of view, and you can get across before the street traffic changes.
• For a novice or child bicyclist or a pedestrian, this isn’t a safe place to cross, end of story.

Nobody planning from the git-go would ever install a crosswalk this close to an intersection — a signalized intersection yet — instead of at the intersection. This is an example of an accretion, starting with the rail line, constructed in 1872 when when road traffic wasn’t what it is now. Motorists can’t reliably be expected to yield here. Where a rail trail crosses a busy street near an intersection, a grade separation is warranted but there wasn’t enough funding to pay for that and so we get this. Doubtless, there have been crashes and this an attempt to prevent them. It is a grade crossing that doesn’t make the grade!