Bicyclists using downtown’s cycle track will notice a brand new pavement marking, the first of it’s kind in Tucson.
Crews added a green box called a “pivot box” or a “two stage turn box” at the southern end of the Stone Avenue cycle track and Alameda Road.
The city’s bike and pedestrian program manager Ann Chanecka said the box is designed to help people head west on Alameda after exiting the cycle track.
Bicyclists should enter the box, pick up their bike or make a sharp turn to reposition their bicycle to head west.
She said the box was painted in a way that will allow it to work for the cycle track when it is extended to the south.
Here’s a video of a Salt Lake City turn box in use:
This device illustrates the problem that segregated cycletracks cause.
The “cycle pivot” will be confusing to cyclists and motorist since cyclists will engage in odd and unpredictable behavior by using it.
Simple solution: Cyclists ride in the right lane to make a right turn. This is easier and effective. It doesn’t require green paint. A BMUFL sign would help, of course.
arsolot The box makes sense to me since the cycle track leaves the cyclist in the left lane of a one-way street. I can’t think of a safe way to get over to the right hand lane.
@Rob arsolot Exactly. The “cycletrap” creates a problem: How to make a right turn from the left of the road, across other lanes of traffic?
How to make that right turn safely? Avoid the cycletrack. Use the right lane and then make a right turn.
Oh dear, oh
dear, every time I see enthusiastic underlined drawings of cycle infrastructure
with those green boxes in the middle of an intersection, I get depressed. Oh
no, not again!
Even on the
website of the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO) you
can read:“Two-stage turn queue boxes
offer bicyclists a safe way make left turns at multi-lane signalized
intersections from a right side cycle track or bike lane, or right turns from a
left side cycle track or bike lane.”
But would
you place a 80 year old, a schoolboy, a disabled on a motor scooter or trike, a
mother on a bakfiets and her toddler aside on their bike in such place? If you
want a happy society where everybody (not only de mamil’s) will bike, than the
last thing you want in your streets are those painted green boxes.
Check this
out:https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/04/07/state-of-the-art-bikeway-design-or-is-it/