Among other things, it endorses door zone bike lanes. Yes, road design where the most dangerous place on the entire road to ride a bicycle is in the bike lane.

“When placed adjacent to parking, a solid white line marking of four inch width should be used between the parking lane and the bike lane to minimise encroachment of parked cars into the bike lane.”

Note that “parking,” of course, refers to car parking. Bike parking? What’s that?

Or how about this little gem of a bike lane standard:

“The desirable ridable surface adjacent to a street edge or longitudinal joint is 4 feet, with a minimum width of 3 feet. In cities where illegal parking in bike lanes is an concern, 5 foot wide bike lanes may be preferred.”

A three foot wide bike lane? Elbow to elbow, I take three feet just riding. Guess what? There’s also got to be at least 1 1/2 feet of “swerve room” to safely avoid debris or obstacles. A three foot bike lane is a dangerous joke.

And just how is a five foot wide bike lane going to deter illegal car parking in bike lanes?

Instead of wasting large amounts of time, money and resources re-inventing the wheel they could have just used the Dutch CROW bicycle standards. See:

http://www.crow.nl/english