Cherry Blossoms and Innovative Right Hook Risk Reduction
A spin around Downtown Vancouver to check out a couple of things… including the cherry blossoms, some seawall and Stanley Park shots, a reasonably new protected bike lane and a neat innovation that helps reduce the risk of right hooks…
In the shot above the wind was blowing the blossoms off the trees like snow as you rode through… Difficult to capture on camera though… Below, the back tire was feeling a bit all over the place at the start of my ride and this classic little quick build plaza and modal filter between Adanac and Union local street bikeways was as good a place as any to stop and pump it up… and get a photo of the Brompton with the blossoms in the background…
A different view of the same place…
And another… Any time a local street bikeway does a little jog with offset T-intersections, it’s a great opportunity to close it to traffic and create a little people space…
That’s about it for the cherry blossoms from me… But Nic Laporte just put out a great video on those and how to explore them by bike…
Making my way towards downtown… Vancouver I think was the first place to require shared scooters to be docked like the bike share, forcing people to return them to designated locations and avoiding the pitfall of scooters “parked” at random across the city…
We were just discussing the location of nearside bike signals the other day and how approaches differ here relative to the Netherlands. Most often in the Netherlands, the nearside signal is much smaller and at about waist height. These ones kinda work for people further back in the queue or on approach, but as is normal here, there’s also a far side signal for people waiting at the stop line. Should we have smaller and lower nearside signals in Canada? Portland are going that way, hoping the local manufactures starting taking some cues from the Dutch soon…
On to the seawall at False Creek…
We’re starting to get a few hot days which is great after what seems like 6 months of rain… Time to cut off those sleeves…
Watch out for the Canada Geese along Beach Avenue…
It’s called Beach Avenue for a reason…
Looking back from further around…
Scooting by Lost Lagoon in Stanley Park…
Grade separated walking and rolling spaces in Stanley Park seawall…
Taking in the view of downtown…
Riding around to Siwash Rock…
Making my way back east, if you were looking for a safe way to get to Burrard Bridge by bike, you previously had to take Beach Avenue a few blocks further and then climb up a pretty steep street to get to the Bridge… Now you have a new option to continue along Pacific Street on a new protected bike lane…
Nice little explainer of the project…
A relatively quick build approach, using extruded curb to lay down a protective curb in short order with better aesthetics than precast pieces…
It was good to see that, but this was the real thing I wanted to see… If you’ve been here a while, you might be aware of my desire to mimic the Dutch ‘Let Op’ flashing sign in Canada. It means ‘Pay Attention’ in English and is a flashing LED light typically located next to the green ball making drivers much more aware of potential conflict where vehicles turn right at the same time people are walking or cycling through. Shout out to my colleague Scott MacDonald who noticed this on Pacific Street in Vancouver recently, and I just had to check it out. Not sure how long it’s been there, but it uses the typical RB-37 yield to bikes sign, but instead of being placed in advance of the intersection, it’s located next to the signal head which is important as that’s where the driver is looking for their signal to go. Of most interest in this case, this one also includes flashing LEDs around the edge making it much more attention grabbing, and helping to make drivers aware of people coming through on bikes. Even better, I think, but could be wrong here, that this seems to be using video detection to flash the lights only when someone is coming through on a bike. While I’d love to see conflict removed entirely with right turning vehicles having their own lane and dedicated signal phase with no right turn on red, if that isn’t an option, this at least helps make drivers more aware of people coming through on bicycles… Let’s install these in more places!
This is the place… When the weather is good and the cherry blossoms are out at least…
This might be the last post for a bit with this years trip back to Europe coming up in a few weeks… But you can be sure there will be some interesting bike infrastructure coming up when i’m back including new cities in the Netherlands, Valencia and Gdansk…