Observations from Europe: Near side traffic signals reduce crosswalk blocking

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The driver of a Chevy Equinox blocks the crosswalk at North Avenue and Oakley Boulevard in Wicker Park. If the only traffic signal was on the near side of the intersection, she wouldn’t drive into the intersection as she wouldn’t be able to see when the signal turned green. But with far side signals, she can still see the light change. 

It took me a while to see what was happening. I think I first noticed that people driving their automobiles were never blocking crosswalks while waiting at a red light. And people on bikes were doing a good job at respecting the crosswalk boundaries, too. I next realized I was doing it, too: waiting behind the crosswalk. I’d do this at intersections with hundreds of pedestrians and intersections with none. I then became aware of where the bike signal was: at the edge of the intersection, before you entered the intersection. And there wasn’t one on the other side.

Welcome to traffic in Germany, where traffic signals are mostly installed on the near side of intersections and rarely on the far side. The effect is simple but pleasant and profound: people stop at the stop bar, before the crosswalk. If you didn’t stop there, you wouldn’t see the signal and you wouldn’t know when it turns green. The near side signal also means fewer signal heads to install. Where in Chicago, a lot intersections have 3-5 signal heads, many German intersections I cruised through had 2. The intersection of Milwaukee Avenue and California Avenue has 3 signal heads for each direction, although there is only one lane in each direction.

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This photo shows the effect of near side signal heads. It’s labeled to show where the signals are, and to whom they are directed. The Google Street View below gives you another view of this intersection in Munich, Germany. 

View Nymphenburger Straße and Dachauer Straße in a larger map. This Google Street View is from the point of view of the driver of the silver BMW station wagon in the above photo.

This intersection, of Nymphenburger Straße (“stross-uh”) and Dachauer Straße, has cycle tracks with bike lane crossings between the intersection and the crosswalk. Near side signals keep automobiles out of both crossings, then. Eastbound Nymphenburger Straße has three lanes, one of which is for left turns. It has 4 signal heads, all on the near side. Two signal heads are for left turns: one is low, for drivers waiting at the stop bar, and one is high for approaching drivers. Two signal heads are for through movements and right turns: again, one is low, and one is high.

This wasn’t a tool mentioned in the pedestrian plan, and I’ve not heard of it being a feature anywhere in the United States, but I’d love to experiment with removing far side signals and using only near side lights at intersections. Pedestrians would have a much easier time crossing the street.

N.B. Attorney Brendan Kevenides, a sponsor of Grid Chicago, has requested that we discuss in the future features of transportation we experienced in Europe that we disliked. I’ll get right on that as soon as I can figure out what they were. I’m kidding, I have a few in mind.

Safer roadway designs: How Danes make right turns

I went to Copenhagen, Denmark, in January 2011, and I was there for about 48 hours. I met Mikael of Copenhagenize, who lent me his Velorbis bike. I biked as much as possible, at all hours of the day, and I encountered a lot of the cycling infrastructure that makes it easy to bike and encourages the hundreds of thousands of trips by bike a day – even in winter!

This photo essay shows one of the ways you can design an intersection to facilitate safe right turns and through-maneuevers, for both people driving and cycling, as seen in Copenhagen. I’m posting this to show an alternative to the centered bike lane design common in Chicago that leads to many unsafe merge maneuvers that I mentioned yesterday in A tale of five bridges (first photo).

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The driver of the white taxi on the left yielded to bicyclists going straight before making a right turn from the left lane to the right lane and enter the Kennedy Expressway ramp. Not everyone yields.  Continue reading Safer roadway designs: How Danes make right turns

Alderman Solis goes to Amsterdam

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Alderman Solis in Zolle, Netherlands – all photos courtesy of Bikes Belong

[Background info for this post came from a write-up of the trip by Washington D.C. Department of Transportation Bicycle Program Specialist Mike Goodno.]

Earlier this month when I interviewed 25th Ward Alderman Danny Solis about sustainable transportation projects in his ward, he mentioned that he would be taking a trip to the Netherlands from October 1 – 8 to study bike facilities. The bike industry-funded advocacy group Bikes Belong sponsored this fact-finding mission for transportation officials from Chicago, Washington, D.C., and Miami, and Solis says that staffers from Working Bikes Cooperative recommended him to Bikes Belong as a bike-friendly politician. Joining him from Chicago were former Active Transportation Alliance executive director and current SRAM Cycling Fund director Randy Neufeld, as well as Chicago Department of Transportation (CDOT) bike program staffers David Gleason and Mike Amsden. Continue reading Alderman Solis goes to Amsterdam

Western Illinois Death March

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Roadside Halloween display in Colchester, IL

On Halloween weekend I took a train-bike-train excursion to western Illinois and northeast Missouri and, fittingly, death was a recurring theme on this fun little trip. My childhood pal Greg recently took a gig teaching political science at Western Illinois University in Macomb, IL. Judy, another old friend from the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin, moved to Kirksville, MO, last summer to study osteopathic medicine. Since both towns are near Amtrak lines, I decided to link the two visits with a grueling 120-mile day of bicycling. Here’s a map of my bike route.

Friday morning I caught the Carl Sandburg line from Chicago’s Union Station. Like most Amtrak lines that run entirely within Illinois, it allows “roll-on” bicycle service for an additional fee, so I’m able to hoist my unboxed bicycle onboard and simply lean it against the wall of the train car. It’s a relaxing 3.5-hour cruise southwest across the prairie to Macomb, where Greg meets me at the combined train and bus station for this quaint college town of 19,748. In high school we played in a psychedelic rockabilly band called the Glorious Disciples of Freedom, so we greet each other with the band’s secret handshake, grasping each other’s bicep and saying in unison, “Disciples of Freedom.”

Continue reading Western Illinois Death March

A car-free exodus to Zion

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Camping in Illinois Beach State Park. 

[This piece also ran in Newcity magazine.]

There’s a bunch of state parks near Chicago accessible by commuter rail and/or bicycle including Indiana Dunes, Chain O’ Lakes and Kettle Moraine. But the easiest, oddest camping trip you can take without a car is a weekend excursion to Illinois Beach State Park in Zion, hometown of the band Local H, near the northeast corner of the state. Continue reading A car-free exodus to Zion

Cool Minneapolis bike features I’d love to see in Chicago

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The Midtown Greenway, a multi-use rails-to-trails conversion in a sunken railroad viaduct. 

I recently spent a day in Minneapolis, Minnesota, visiting friends en route to Duluth for a bike trip along Lake Superior. Last year Bicycling magazine named Minneapolis the best U.S. city for biking (I guess they couldn’t keep giving the award to Portland, OR, every year) while Chicago dropped down to tenth place. So I was curious to see if the City of Lakes offers any lessons on ways to make cycling better here.

In fairness, the Twin Cities area has a few inherent qualities that have encouraged bike-friendliness. The combined population of the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul is about 667,000, not much larger than Milwaukee and only a quarter the size of the city of Chicago. Minneapolis had ample available railroad right-of-way, which made it relatively easy to create a great network of urban off-street bike paths, 84 miles compared to Chicago’s 50. (We do have almost three times as many miles of streets with bike lanes.)*

Continue reading Cool Minneapolis bike features I’d love to see in Chicago