Late last year, the City of Boulder finished constructing a new protected bike lane along Baseline Road, one of the city’s busiest roads where a high number of crashes have occurred.
The new bike lane is part of an ongoing $4 million project designed to make the road safer. The city narrowed traffic lanes to slow down drivers and make space for a wider bike path. Tall concrete curbs now separate sections of the path from the road.
Cyclists have generally welcomed these new safety measures. But some features designed to slow down cars and cyclists have introduced new hazards — particularly for faster cyclists. Several people have crashed.
The incidents highlight the balancing act transportation planners face in implementing the city’s Vision Zero Action Plan to eliminate traffic deaths by 2030. The new street designs are safer according to industry standards, but come with a learning curve for cyclists and drivers.
At intersections along Baseline, the bike lane now bends outward to the right. This design is intended to create more distance and visibility between right-turning drivers and cyclists. It also reminds cyclists there is an intersection ahead. But the awkward bend may slow cyclists down by forcing them to veer right and back again.
And at the Baseline and Mohawk intersection, the city installed two speed bumps at the corner to encourage drivers to make tighter right-hand turns. The goal of this “protected intersection” is to lower driver speeds and improve sightlines to reduce the risk of drivers hitting people in the crosswalk. Right-hand turns are particularly dangerous for pedestrians.
Both features generally make the road safer, but also introduce potential dangerous obstacles.
On Dec. 17, while riding his bike east on Baseline, Brian Haan, 67, tried to maintain a straight line through the intersection at Mohawk. He hit two speed bumps and fell off his bike, suffering a concussion and breaking his sacrum. He is still recovering and hasn’t ridden his bike since.
“When you’re traveling along at 20 miles per hour, they look like paint stripes,” Haan told Boulder Reporting Lab, referencing the speed bumps. “I collided with the road.”
Even so, Haan, a recreational cyclist, considers the Baseline project overall an improvement. And following the crash, the city installed bollards to mark the location of speed bumps so cyclists don’t hit them.
Similar delineators were installed at the intersection of 30th and Colorado, the city’s first protected intersection. The intersection features a narrow chicane for through cyclists. Skid marks suggest some have hit the curb inside the intersection.
The city is rolling out Baseline Road changes in phases, closely monitoring the behavior of road users along the way, officials said. The project could offer insights for the city as it seeks to overhaul other roads in its “core arterial network,” busy roads with a high number of crashes.
“All aspects of what you see out there on Baseline we are learning from and hope to apply to future corridors,” Daniel Sheeter, a principal transportation planner for the city, told Boulder Reporting Lab.
Certain features on Baseline, like the bends in the bike lane at intersections, are unlikely to change, even if faster cyclists disapprove.
“One of the key considerations for these types of designs is really to try to get a facility that accommodates all ages and abilities of riders,” Devin Joslin, the city’s principal traffic engineer, said in an interview. “And so it’s finding that balance of making the 8-year-old who is on their bike comfortable as well as those who are more advanced riders who want to go faster.”
Some transportation advocates bristle at the idea of putting the responsibility to slow down on cyclists, historically the more vulnerable road users compared to drivers. But in the context of Baseline, they generally support the recent infrastructure changes.
Rebecca Davies, the city ratings program director at the Boulder-based nonprofit cycling advocacy group PeopleForBikes and a member of the city’s Transportation Advisory Board, said that in an ideal world, cyclists would have entirely separate travel spaces from cars.
In the meantime, Davies said, “it’s reasonable for those shared spaces to encourage everyone to slow down to improve safety and visibility regardless of whether they are walking, bicycling, using another mobility device or driving.”
“That said, if a specific street design creates new risks, it’s also reasonable to evaluate how the design could be adjusted further to support everyone’s safe travel,” she added.
This project is an epic failure. I have watched cars turn inside the bike lane at the corner of Mohawk and Baseline multiple times. The traffic indication on the ground is confusing. I have witnessed 1 accident because the right turning traffic can’t turn into the right lane and was struck by a left turning car. Typical Boulder, try to do something for bikes and screw the entire thing up.
Thank you Boulder for increasing safety. However, adding obstacles is a very illogical (and costly) method – removing obstacles is the usual method for making cycling easier! The obvious solution, and supported by data, is to simply enforce speed limits on cars. Cars kill 7,000 pedestrians and cyclists every year – it’s insane. Install 50 speed cameras around town, automatically issue tickets for breaking the law, and in two weeks traffic safety will significantly improve for everyone, at no cost.
I’ve watched multiple east bound drivers drive into the bike path to what was the turn lane, through the bollards. There needs to be a clearer indication that that is not a turn lane any longer. While I appreciate the increase in bike safety, it’ll only work when people can see the changes.
Please get rid of the Bollards every in the city. While I no longer commute on Baseline regularly, I do in the more northern part of Boulder the Bollards on both Quince and Glenwood accomplish two negative things:1. They provide a place for trash, snow and dirt to collect while forcing bikes to merge with traffic.
As a long-time avid cyclist, I appreciate the efforts to improve cyclist safety. I often cycle Baseline – but since there are times that I need to drive, I also often have to make the awkward right turn from eastbound Baseline to southbound Mohawk. With the narrower driving lanes, it’s difficult to make the now very tight right turn without going over the speed bumps that have been implanted. It feels to me that it distracts one from watching for cyclists in the bike lane and crossing pedestrians. Trying to stay in the right-hand lane, avoid cars that are in the left turn lane on northbound Mohawk in anything larger than a compact vehicle can be challenging.
This is a total cluster.
If I’m not on a bike path I ride on the sidewalks nowadays (I’m not a fast cyclist) – too many have had serious accidents or been killed in the bike lanes.
What the article did not bring out is that at the Mohawk/Baseline intersection bollards were originally installed in only 2 of the four corners of the intersection so that riders found out about the turtle bumps when they crashed trying to go straight through the intersection. Even though the city was notified of this shortcoming in mid December they did not try to correct the problem until Jan 5th and several crashes later. The city correction only added two bollards which as someone mentioned two comments up, isn’t enough.
I moved to Boulder because it’s good for cyclists, but it’s gone too far. Just give me wide, clear, open bike lanes with no obstructions, bollards, speed bumps, curbs or fancy paint. Those all distract drivers from paying attention to what they should be looking at – other road users. Also, please get rid of the dangerous curbs on Folsom.
The transportation department should have a Hippocratic Oath for all new designs, “First Do No Harm”. I would add if there have been no accidents, don’t try to fix non-existent problems.
The nearly one mile stretch of Baseline between 32nd and Mohawk was safe for bicycling before all these changes were made, with only two bicycle accidents in the last 7 years and only one of those involving injuries. For westbound Baseline there were ZERO bicycle accidents over that 7-year period. (City of Boulder Crash Data)
The major changes made on that section of Baseline have likely made it more dangerous both for bicycles and cars. Among the problems, the newly designed side street intersections have created new points of conflict between cars and bikes. For example cars turning right onto Baseline now conflict with bikes trying to make a left turn onto Baseline from the bike lane of the side street. The design also makes it more confusing and difficult for bikes and cars trying to do left turns off baseline. The installed concrete barriers give bicyclists and cars a false sense of safety since most accidents occur at intersections and there are may gaps in the barriers since buses need to access bus stops.
The accident of an apparently experienced 67-year-old bicyclist at Mohawk and Baseline is very concerning. Given that the redesigned intersection is only a few weeks old and was specifically designed for improved safety, the fact that any accident has occurred so soon indicates a likely design problem. Simply putting up reflective poles (a common city response to traffic issues) is a short-term fix. The real problem is that the new intersection is not at all intuitive to either drivers or bicyclists. Put simply, the problem is not with the bicyclist or with bicyclist training; the problem is with design.
Focusing on the bicyclist rather than design reminds me of Boeing blaming pilot error for the initial crash of their redesigned 737 Max. It took a second crash with hundreds of deaths for Boeing to admit to design, not pilot, error.
Daniel Sheeter’s response to concern about accidents and design with a statement that certain features on Baseline, like the bends in the bike lane at intersections, are unlikely to change is striking. Any new design can result in unexpected problems. If it does, recognize it, admit it and fix it. If the bends cause problems, drop them.
I’m a cyclist. Seems like we cyclist should be more careful and slow down at intersections.
Cycling 20 mph through any intersection is dangerous because one never knows what cars and pedestrians are going to do. The old saying “speed kills” is true, especially at intersections.
Three people I know have fallen with serious injuries broken bones and bruised ribs due the bike lane curbs. The data on vision zero is skewed. The pedestrians’ data needs to be documented. The bike curbs are a danger for pedestrians.
It makes me uneasy to read there is a “learning curve” for a new design for a “safer” intersection. Isn’t the goal to have the proper behavior be more intuitive? It is not safe to have drivers and bicyclists distracted by having to decipher more complex signs with arrows and warnings to figure out how to get through an intersection. Nor does it help to have automobile drivers angry and frustrated because they have fewer, narrower lanes to negotiated a drive across town.
And since the protected lanes have gaps for bus turnouts that are not marked “Do not enter” and for driveways, I have seen a number of cars use the bike lane as a right turn lane.