MetroMan
Senior Member
Could I ask, was this in a "mixed zone" or the regular bike path?
It was on the bike path about 30 feet after an intersection. The pedestrian was one of those clueless people who wander mindlessly into traffic.
The punch from the viral video last summer was in the mixed zone of a crossroad and the cyclist simply didn't stop on a red and hit a pedestrian.
I can understand why some cyclists may miss where they need to stop and I can understand pedestrians not knowing where to wait for the crosswalk light and I can understand some cars accidentally driving into the ROW but I cannot understand people who wander off the sidewalk on to the bike lane. It's an entirely different pavement. Would they wander off a sidewalk into a car lane?
The streetcar ROW needs to be a different texture that would be obvious to cars that they're driving into a lane not meant for them. Grass would be ideal but rough cobblestone or at minimum stark humps painted bright red would do the trick.
For cyclists, traffic lights with a bike symbol should be placed on low poles *where the cyclists are intended to stop*, not far up ahead.
For pedestrians, the crosswalk button should be placed before the bike lane so that they wait there and don't have to cross live bike traffic and don't have to wait between that bike traffic and streetcars inches from their noses.
Finally, for pedestrians too stupid to understand the difference between sidewalk and bike lane, perhaps low lying bushes could be planted separating the two.