Traffic engineer and Washington University professor Shawn Leight discusses transportation trends in the USA — mode share, safety, access — with an emphasis on bicycling. This talk is from the 2016 I am Traffic conference in St. Louis, Missouri.
Following Shawn Leight’s presentation at the 2016 I Am Traffic II conference in St. Louis, Missouri, he invited colleague Billy Hattaway to join him, and they took questions from the audience.
Masters bicycle racer and CyclingSavvy Instructor Gary Cziko describes his reaching out to bicycle clubs to get across the message of defensive-assertive driving as taught in the CyclingSavvy program. This talk, given at the 2016 I am Traffic II conference in St. Louis, Missouri, includes descriptions of how he gained acceptance in the fast-riding crowd of a Los Angeles area club, how he got his message across following a tragic fatal crash of one of its members, and how he successfully campaigned for cyclists’ rights to use the road safely.
Billy Hattaway of the Florida Department of Transportation describes issues with bicycle and pedestrian access and connectivity, and measures to create complete streets, in a talk recorded at the American Bicycling Education Association’s 2016 I Am Traffic II conference in St. Louis, Missouri.
I love cars. At age 16, my first car gave me access to career-building internship opportunities far away from my childhood home. I’ve owned fun sports cars and handy utility vehicles. I’ve driven over 150 MPH on a racetrack, and I love gawking at classic cars at my town’s annual Wheels on Academy car show. This may sound unusual coming from a die-hard pedestrian and bicyclist advocate, but I consider myself in good company. Jeff Speck, renowned author of Walkable City and Walkable City Rules, is also an admitted car buff.1 I suggest that understanding cars and why people drive them is useful for building popular support for walking and bicycling.
Effecting meaningful change in our local communities requires consensus-building among a diverse population. Advocates cannot limit their coalition to those who can be persuaded by rhetoric that is potentially polarizing. Our neighbors who might be car-lovers and climate-change skeptics can become our allies in the walking and bicycling movement if we take care to understand what motivates them as human beings. Strong Towns2 founder and author Charles Marohn provides brilliant insight on bridging political differences in an episode of his podcast3 where he describes how conservatives have higher sensitivities to some issues that progressives care about too, but dedicate less attention. Timothy Carney, a senior fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute, points out4 that many of the values that conservatives hold dear are remarkably well-aligned with the benefits of a traditional walkable and bicycling-friendly community. In a nutshell, a safe and convenient environment for walking and bicycling transportation is family-friendly and economically efficient. But perhaps most importantly, bicycling and walking are rewarding activities enjoyed by many people from across the political spectrum. Traveling under one’s own power may be good for the planet, but it’s fantastic for the individual.
So yes, I love cars. What I don’t love is car dependency. I don’t love chauffeuring my kids to and from every after-school activity, job, and social engagement. I don’t love the dangerous barriers that wide, 50 mph thoroughfares create for kids — or many adults — trying to travel without a car. Ask any suburban parent if they worry about the dangers that fast motor traffic poses to their children traveling to the nearest school, store, or library, and they will describe the same fear. We are raising a generation of homebound kids, increasingly isolated and screen-addicted, mitigated only by the time parents can spare to shuttle them to “play dates” and soccer practice.
It wasn’t always this way. Many of us from Generation X and older grew up living close to our everyday destinations in traditional neighborhoods with well-connected, low-speed local street networks that better supported children’s traditional travel modes5. Like our parents and grandparents, we lived as Free Range Kids6 before there was a name for it. Such independence has an essential role in child development. Walking and bicycling teach kids self-reliance, personal responsibility, adaptability, and resilience — values all parents care about, but which resonate especially with conservatives. Bicycling teaches the value of hard work, be it conquering a big hill, improving one’s fitness, or fixing a flat on a tight tire. Tinkering with bikes builds mechanical skills and confidence that can lead to interest in lucrative vocational trades and engineering careers. Walking and bicycling teach kids that they have the power to make things happen for themselves if they are willing to put in the work.
This summer my 16-year-old twins will join their older siblings as licensed drivers. Exactly how many cars will be clogging our small driveway remains to be seen. I want them to have the opportunity to work whichever summer and after-school jobs they can get, but from an economic perspective, owning a car for driving to a low-wage part-time job makes little sense. According to AAA, the average total cost of car ownership in the USA is over $10,000 a year7, and according to AutoBlog, the cheapest cars to own cost over $5000 per year8. Assuming 250 workdays per year, the cheapest car translates to about $20 per workday. At a minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, one would need to work 2.75 hours a workday just to pay for the ten-minute drive to work.
When we add the work time required to pay for car ownership to the time spent driving to work, we can calculate an effective transport speed. When a five-mile commute is completed in a total ten minutes of driving plus 2.75 hours of working to pay for it, the car’s effective transport speed turns out to be less than walking speed. Only by driving many more miles or earning a much higher wage can the car’s effective transport speed become faster than bicycling speed.
It is unsurprising that many low-wage workers do not own cars, and many will walk or bike to work given reasonable conditions to do so. In a car-dependent environment, the cost of car ownership shrinks the available labor pool and increases the cost of labor. In a community that is friendly to bicycling and walking, the transportation barrier to working is reduced, making it easier for local businesses to secure part-time workers at modest wages. Similarly, many people without cars turn to walking and bicycling to access goods and services. As Timothy Carney describes, people who walk to work are “literally picking themselves up by their boot straps.”9 Car dependency increases the cost of making transactions in the local economy. In contrast, good conditions for walking and bicycling are good for business, good for workers, and good for customers.
Building sidewalks, crosswalks, and bicycling-related improvements into the transportation network isn’t free. However, the cost of this traditional transportation infrastructure pales in comparison to the cost of the infrastructure required to support car dependency. Wide, high-speed roads and large parking lots are expensive to build, maintain, and upgrade, while paradoxically limiting the potential value of the properties they serve. Walkable places tend to be more economically productive and higher revenue-generating per acre than car-dependent places. The tax revenue in walkable places more easily pays for the public costs of maintaining urban infrastructure, while many car-dependent places with more miles of public infrastructure and lower land values can have more difficulty covering maintenance costs, putting local governments at risk of insolvency over time.10
Public mass transit such as rail and bus service is a complex issue beyond the focus of this essay. However, there is one simple fact about mass transit worth mentioning here: Transit can only work if the local street network surrounding the stops is walkable. If walking to and from stops is a bad experience, only the desperate will ride mass transit.
People who choose to walk, run, and bike for fun and health come from all political persuasions. Walking is the most popular form of exercise in the US; bicycling ranks ahead of golf.11 Whether people walk or bike for enjoyment or transportation, the health benefits are enormous. In communities where people walk as part of their daily travel activities, public health and life expectancy are elevated.12 The health benefits of bicycling also greatly outweigh the risks of injury; statistically, bicycling increases participants’ disability-adjusted life years many times more than reduction from injuries.13 This benefit is amplified where lower traffic speeds and better operational habits improve cycling safety. Compared to sedentary lifestyles, walking and bicycling improve individual health and have the potential to reduce net public health care costs.
According to a 2023 survey by the National Association of Realtors, most Americans report wanting to live in communities with safe and comfortable conditions for walking to local destinations such shops and parks; most also said they would be willing to pay more to live in a walkable community.14 A survey by NAOIP (a commercial real estate development association) found that office tenants prefer to work in walkable locations four-to-one over isolated suburban office parks. 15 Americans also tend to rate bicycling as more enjoyable than driving16 and often consider bicycle-friendliness when choosing where to live.17 These findings don’t mean that all or even most Americans want to live in high-density urban areas or give up their cars — there is a wide variety of preference among residents regarding development density, and many believe car use is essential to them. But in both vibrant downtowns and quiet suburbs, buyers and renters are looking for pleasant streets with sidewalks, safe and comfortable conditions for cycling, and land use patterns suitable for traveling without a car for at least some trips. Americans appreciate having the choice to travel without a car in similar numbers to those who appreciate the option to drive one.
Many Americans who want to live in walkable, bicycling-friendly communities are unable to, because the supply of such neighborhoods has fallen behind demand. Since the mid twentieth century, car-centric government regulations requiring separation of land uses, dendritic street patterns, and high-speed thoroughfare designs have combined to make most newer developments inconvenient, unpleasant, and/or dangerous to travel on foot or by bicycle. Demand for historic walkable neighborhoods has hastened gentrification and has priced out lower-wealth residents18, compelling many people without cars to live farther out in lower-demand, higher-supply car-centric suburban areas where rent and home prices are lower but walking and bicycling is more dangerous.19 This trend has likely contributed20 to pedestrian21 and bicyclist fatalities22 in the US reaching all-time highs in the past few years in contrast to a general decline in fatalities for motor vehicle occupants.23 Where vulnerable, innocent people are being endangered by increasing volumes of high-speed motorists, there is an ethical and moral case to be made for improving the safety of these public ways, and for motorists to have a share in paying for it.
People in communities across the US are advocating to make their surroundings more hospitable to walking and bicycling. Realizing this goal involves a wide range of participants including real estate developers, investors, traffic engineers, city planners, police, educators, and elected officials who have the power to improve the neighborhoods and streets we have now and to build new places better. Quality-of-life improvements that benefit both progressive and conservative residents are low-risk issues for local politicians to support without partisan division. It is important to note that most of the effective policy and market strategies that benefit pedestrians and bicyclists are not particularly anti-car; rather, they restore a more traditional balance of transportation opportunities and priorities that supports walking and bicycling but still preserves safe and practical motor vehicle access.
The policies, designs and tactics necessary to make great communities rely on pragmatism, not ideology. Some solutions require regulatory reform while others require strategic investment of public funds. But many improvements require only subtle changes to existing design standards. For instance, keeping people safe while walking requires limiting motor vehicle speeds in areas of pedestrian activity. The effect of speed limitation on motorist trip times is minimal, however, because walkable activity centers are usually compact, which minimizes the distance drivers must travel within these areas. A street network with a choice of alternate routes around pedestrian centers allows drivers use other roads to travel at higher speeds over longer distances. Meanwhile, a well-connected network of low-speed local streets offers bicyclists and pedestrians safer alternatives to higher speed roads — as long as those local streets ultimately connect with where local people want to go.
Many suburban neighborhoods have been designed to minimize residential street connectivity to eliminate cut-through motor traffic within neighborhoods. This design requires all residents (including drivers, pedestrians and cyclists) ascend the road hierarchy to busy, high-speed, state-maintained thoroughfares to reach everyday destinations like grocery stores and schools. A better solution is to provide residential route connectivity that is passable to bicyclists and pedestrians but diverts through-motorists to non-residential corridors. Where drivers speed through old residential neighborhoods with historic gridded streets, traffic diverters can be added to some intersections to redirect motor traffic to major roads while preserving direct routes for pedestrians and cyclists.24 In new suburbs, short-cut paths can connect cul-de-sac and loop streets into safe, efficient, continuous bike routes at minimal cost.25 Communities that support bicycling and walking don’t have to be more expensive to build and maintain; they just need to be built thoughtfully.
Asking local decision makers along for a walk or a bike ride is a persuasion strategy that many bike/ped advocates find effective. A short and pleasant trip can open people’s eyes to the practicality and enjoyability of walking or cycling, as well as the detailed beauty of their community that cannot be appreciated from behind a windshield. (Not to mention the benefits of making a politician feel like a kid again by way of a bike ride.) Partisan media sometimes falsely casts pedestrian and bicyclist advocates as out-of-touch, radical anti-car zealots who want to take away everyone’s cars and lock them into “15 minute cities.” Engaging with people, bringing them out to see conditions on the ground, and working together on practical solutions can dispel stereotypes and demonstrate the satisfaction that comes from making a community better one street or path at a time. In his podcast, Charles Marohn says that “When bottom-up conservatives work with bottom-up progressives, they find that they need each other.”26 Asking Americans to sacrifice their beloved cars is not a winning political message, but helping them rediscover something they love more can change the world.
What is a a Complete Street? And how well is the concept being applied? You need to know. Let’s define “Complete Street” and look at an example.
Planning literature defines a Complete Street as safe and practical, pleasant even, for modes of transportation up to a contextually appropriate limit of speed, traffic volume and vehicle size. A Complete Street serves pedestrians and bicyclists well.
Restrictions on motor traffic work down from the largest vehicles to what is appropriate in context. The speed limit is low enough that pedestrians can safely cross the street. There are crosswalks, signalized where warranted.
That approach to vehicle types and sizes has been traditional on Massachusetts DCR (Department of Conservation and Recreation) parkways. The quaint restriction to “pleasure vehicles only” dates back to the 19th Century plans of Frederick Law Olmsted, but has been pushed wider to cover passenger cars and commercial vehicles weighing up to 5,000 pounds. Bicycles and e-bikes fall well below that weight limit and qualify as “pleasure vehicles.” See these regulations.
On Thursday, June 13, 2024, I visited DCR’s Hammond Pond Parkway in Newton, now under reconstruction, with representatives of advocacy organization Bike Newton and the Boston area’s Central Transportation Planning Staff.
Hammond Pond Parkway was overbuilt in the mid 20th Century as a 4-lane speedway, reflecting car culture that turned parkways into highways. It would certainly not rate as bicycle-friendly, though I have ridden it, controlling the outside lane (and so demonstrating that the parkway was overbuilt, because motorists could always pass me without delay). The terrain is rolling, with a long, steep downslope to Route 9 at the southern end.
The DCR is currently taking the mile-long segment of the Parkway between Beacon Street and Route 9 down from four to two lanes, installing a 12-foot wide shared-use path 15 feet from the roadway on the west side and a 4-foot wide gravel sidewalk on the east side. The current project imagines Hammond Pond Parkway as a pleasant, park-like experience for bicyclists.
The segment:
RidewithGPS version of this map, so you can change to satellite view and zoom in, or Street View, or explore more widely
I commented on the project proposal when it was in the planning stage. At that time, there was a discussion about making the roadway 28 feet wide, marginally wide enough for today’s largest “pleasure vehicles” to pass bicyclists. A bit wider would be nice, but that is in the nature of political compromise. MassBike Executive Director Galen Mook concurred with my comments.
So, what is the problem, then? How well will Hammond Pond Parkway meet the definition of a Complete Street?
Galen’s position, and mine, held no weight with the DCR. The roadway will, as I found out during the expedition to Newton, have only two narrow travel lanes, with no shoulders – 22 or 24 feet, as you can see in background of the photo below. The roadway will therefore work well only for people driving a motor vehicle that can hold the 30 mph speed limit. The parallel path is for everyone else.
The DCR’s Dan Driscoll describes the reconstruction of Hammond Pond Parkway, now underway. The path will be in the dirt strip behind the people listening.
Let me be clear: I like paths for park access and a park experience. I ride them. But — the Parkway is not only a route in a park, it is a transportation route through a park. It connects the Newton Center suburban hub with the large Chestnut Hill shopping malls and residential areas beyond. Not only motorists, but also bicyclists in all parts of the behavior spectrum, e-bike riders and users of all kinds of micromobility devices, also electric and gasoline-powered motor scooters, will want to travel this segment end to end.
Faster bicyclists, e-bike and motor scooter users are a poor fit on a path shared with pedestrians, especially one with steep slopes. Nationwide, communities are grappling with the safety issues of e-bike traffic on paths. A Boston-area local example: the 15 mph speed-limit signs on the Minuteman Commuter Bikeway. It is flat, being a rail trail, and where faster traffic may use parallel Massachusetts Avenue. There is no such convenient alternative to Hammond Pond Parkway.
Proponents of the Hammond Pond Parkway project objected to adding a few feet of roadway width on the grounds that this would reduce spacing to the path and impede stormwater infiltration. I contend that a few more feet of roadway width would hardly make a difference in the middle of hundreds of acres of parkland into which water could infiltrate.
With the design of Hammond Pond Parkway, the positive environmental goal of improving access to parkland has overturned the positive environmental goal of safe and convenient bicycling for transportation. It is even worse for operators of motor scooters, whether electrically or gasoline powered. They are legal on roadways and in bike lanes, but prohibited from using paths. Legality on the roadway amounts to nothing when these vehicles have been forced off the roadway by design.
At least the noise of the gasoline-powered scooters will warn slower path users of their approach. But don’t expect enforcement of any ban or speed limit. Their important effect under the law is to shift the burden of fault in crashes.
If bicycles are to be competitive in terms of travel time, they must not be subject to unnecessary delays, or held to low speeds. But the path now under construction crosses parking-lot entrances and roads in crosswalks, adding delay and inconvenience. Bicyclists must traverse multiple crosswalks at the Route 9 end of the segment. With such treatments, users become impatient and choose their own times and ways to cross, becoming unpredictable and increasing risk.
The narrowed roadway is crowned and has storm drains. The path, on the other hand, lacking drainage, will be unusable or unsafe for weeks or months in winter even if plowed. Or it could be heavily salted, unhealthy for vegetation and bicycles.
Years ago, the DCR applied the same configuration, narrow, shoulderless roadway and parallel path, to Metropolitan Parkway in Waltham, shown in the video below. Metropolitan Parkway is short and very lightly traveled, so riding on the roadway is practical. Bicyclists on the roadway of Hammond Pond Parkway would have queues of cars behind them and would invite harassment.
So, the most practical solution in winter is to put away the bike, ebike or scooter and drive a car. The path could be left unplowed and unsalted for cross-country skiing and snowshoeing.
So much for the idea of a Complete Street.
I have applauded the efforts of the DCR in extending the paths along the Charles River upstream from Watertown to Waltham. I have supported the Cochituate Rail Trail, the Mass Central Rail Trail, Bruce Freeman Trail and other trail projects. These projects all have improved bicycle access by constructing trails without compromising access on roads. The Hammond Pond Parkway project proposes to forego much of the potential of the Parkway for bicycle, e-bike and motor scooter transportation. In that way, itthat way has a fundamentally different impact.
If you are going to ride the reconfigured Hammond Pond Parkway, please make sure that your brakes are in good working order, and be cautious!
I rode the segment of Hammond Pond Parkway under discussion on November 25, 2021. My travel speeds ranged from 6.5 to 30 miles per hour southbound, and 5 to 21 miles per hour northbound.
If you see plans for a road reconfiguration project in your community, please make your voice heard so it is actually a Complete Street, properly accommodating all anticipated uses.
I have posted more detailed comments at https://bit.ly/hammondpkwy. Again, thanks for your attention.
Dan Gutierrez ‘s presentation on his Understanding Bicycle Transportation course at the I am Traffic Colloquium was recorded as video in three parts. Part 1 is here. Scroll down for links to Parts 2 and 3. Links are also in the descriptions with the videos.
A critical piece of Encouragement is simple: parking.
A well-designed bicycle parking area welcomes employees and patrons and encourages practical bicycling in our cities. Providing safe, ample parking for bicycles need not be expensive, fancy, or elaborate. However, if not considered properly, bicycle parking can easily lose its value and become a useless landscaping feature.
Where should bike parking be placed? In Bicycle Parking Planning Criteria, the International Bicycle Fund has provided an excellent guide to placement considerations:
Bicycle Racks and Lockers
After a location is determined, an actual mechanism for locking the bikes should be considered. There are three simple things that a bicycle rack needs to accomplish:
“Wheel bender” racks such as these do not support the bicycle frame and are not compatible with U-type locks:
The common “wave” bike rack should not be used either, especially when placed too close to buildings, as it does not allow proper use of a U-lock and does not support the bike correctly:
The Denver Bicycle Master Plan specifies the “Inverted U” type rack, which meets all three requirements:
That’s all there is to it!
Now, whether cyclists learn to lock correctly is a totally different story…
For more resources, visit:
This article from 2013 comments on a Colorado town’s prohibiting bicycling, gathering statewide and national attention, and a lawsuit in which that prohibition was overturned on appeal. i am traffic was unique in taking a close look and pointing to troubling legal implications of the outcome. — John Allen, August 3, 2024.
Now that I’ve read the details of the Blackhawk, Colorado court decision, what the Supreme Court did was determine the resolution to a conflict between two state laws, 42-4-111(1)(h) [local regulation] and 42-4-109(11) [allowed highway ban if proximal sidepath exists], based on whether the area of concern was purely local versus statewide or mixed (statewide and local).
Here is the law granting local authorities the power to regulate bicycles (which includes prohibition):
42-4-111. Powers of local authorities. 42-4-109. Low-power scooters, animals, skis, skates, and toy vehicles on highways.
(1) This article shall not be deemed to prevent local authorities, with respect to streets and highways under their jurisdiction and within the reasonable exercise of the police power, except those streets and highways that are parts of the state highway system that are subject to section 43-2-135, C.R.S., from:
…(h) Regulating the operation of bicycles or electrical assisted bicycles and requiring the registration and licensing of same, including the requirement of a registration fee, consistent with the provisions of this article;
The key aspect of the application of the above law is that it applies to purely local concerns. And both the initial trial court, and the appellate court in Colorado considered the prohibition in Black Hawk to be a purely local concern, thus 42-4-111 and the local ordinances, like the Black Hawk ban (Ordinance 2009-20) that it allows, take precedence over the state law 42-4-109(11), which applies to any concerns that are state level only or mixed local and state.
The Colorado Supreme Court however determined that the prohibition in Black Hawk was a mixed, state and local concern:
42-4-109. Low-power scooters, animals, skis, skates, and toy vehicles on highways.
…(11) Where suitable bike paths, horseback trails, or other trails have been established on the right-of-way or parallel to and within one-fourth mile of the right-of-way of heavily traveled streets and highways, the department of transportation may, subject to the provisions of section 43-2-135, C.R.S., by resolution or order entered in its minutes, and local authorities may, where suitable bike paths, horseback trails, or other trails have been established on the right-of-way or parallel to it within four hundred fifty feet of the right-of-way of heavily traveled streets, by ordinance, determine and designate, upon the basis of an engineering and traffic investigation, those heavily traveled streets and highways upon which shall be prohibited any bicycle, electrical assisted bicycle, animal rider, animal-drawn conveyance, or other class or kind of nonmotorized traffic that is found to be incompatible with the normal and safe movement of traffic, and, upon such a determination, the department of transportation or local authority shall erect appropriate official signs giving notice thereof; except that, with respect to controlled access highways, section 42-4-1010 (3) shall apply. When such official signs are erected, no person shall violate any of the instructions contained thereon.
Therefore this law takes precedence over Black Hawk Ordinance 2009-20 allowed by 42-4-111. So the reason I did not believe the ban was illegal was that I saw the ban as a purely local issue, as did the trial and appellate courts.
Now let’s add a wrinkle to this horrible situation to show the utter evil of local regulation. The selective mandatory sidepath law, 42-4-109 is a discriminatory law, that we in i am traffic would like to see repealed, but if it were repealed, then there would be no protection against local road bans in Colorado, thanks to local regulation. Even with 42-4-109 on the books, any city that can demonstrate that a road ban is NOT a statewide or mixed state and local concern, or if there is a nearby path within 450 feet, can ban cycling from the road anyway.
In other words local regulation is so bad that it makes a selective mandatory sidepath law look like protection against even more brutal local regulations. How disgusting is that?
Bicyclists across the US, including a number in Florida1 and California2 have reported that they were harassed by police and ticketed for riding in the center of travel lanes that are too narrow to share safely side-by-side with cars and trucks. Florida and California have bicycle-specific laws3 4 modeled after Uniform Vehicle Code § 11-1205(a), which requires bicyclists to ride as far right as “practicable” when traveling slower than other traffic.5 Like the UVC version, the Florida and California bicycles-stay-right laws include an exception for lanes that are too narrow for riding side-by-side with a motor vehicle to be safe (in addition to many other exceptions such as on-street parking and surface hazards). Unfortunately, many police ignore the exceptions and use the stay-right requirement to harass or ticket cyclists whenever other traffic must slow for them.
When so many bicyclists operating according to best practices are cited for violation of the law, we must conclude that there is something wrong with the law.
When so many bicyclists operating according to best practices6 are cited for violation of the law, we must conclude that there is something wrong with the law. One observation is that since most travel lanes are 10 to 12 feet wide – too narrow for safe side-by-side sharing by a typical SUV, much less a truck or bus7 – the law has the general rule (stay right) and the exception (narrow conditions) completely backward. Police officers assume that the law wouldn’t be written the way it is unless bicyclists should stay to the right edge of the lane most of the time, and so they send lane-controlling bicyclists to court again and again, only to have such cases dismissed.
This poorly conceived and written law generates needless conflict between police departments and the bicycling community. A somewhat better bicycle-specific law would declare bicyclists’ right to a full marked travel lane as a general rule, and define the exceptional circumstances where same-lane passing may be allowed. (Multiple criteria must be met: An especially wide lane allowing abundant passing distance given the vehicle width, a location away from intersections, safe conditions at the right edge of the lane given the bicyclists’ speed, and so forth.) The states of Colorado and Montana have each modified their bicycles-stay-right law with a step in this direction.
But what would happen instead if states did away with the bicycle-specific stay-right law entirely, as the NCUTLO Panel on Bicycle Laws recommended in 19758? Would traffic grind to a halt? No, but it would be harder for police to ticket bicyclists who exercise lane control for their own safety. We know this because six states – Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Pennsylvania – never adopted a bicycle-specific stay-to-the-right law. North Carolina has only a generic slow vehicle law,9 similar to UVC 11-301(b):
UVC 11-301 – Drive on right side of roadways – exceptions …
(b) Upon all roadways any vehicle proceeding at less than the normal speed of traffic at the time and place and under the conditions then existing shall be driven in the right-hand lane then available for traffic, or as close as practicable to the right-hand curb or edge of the roadway, except when overtaking and passing another vehicle proceeding in the same direction or when preparing for a left turn at an intersection or into a private road, alley, or driveway. The intent of this subsection is to facilitate the overtaking of slowly moving vehicles by faster moving vehicles. …
The driver of any vehicle traveling slowly can satisfy this law by using the right hand thru lane; only if there are no marked lanes is such a driver compelled to operate “as close as practicable” to the road edge.
Having no discriminatory bicycle-specific stay-right law doesn’t make lawful cyclists immune to police harassment rooted in ignorance and bias. A lack of adequate police education about bicycling in North Carolina has resulted in many bicyclists (including me) being pulled over by police who felt we shouldn’t be riding in the center of a narrow lane. The difference in North Carolina is that when the stopped bicyclists invite police to look up the statute, the officers usually recognize their error about the state law. The contrast between an unfair citation and a teachable moment is of great significance to the bicyclist. It’s possible that some bicyclist somewhere in North Carolina has paid a ticket for violating our state’s generic slow vehicle law, but our statewide advocacy organization isn’t aware of one, and we are vigilant.
Bicyclist advocates in North Carolina are actively engaging local police departments to promote better police relations and improved public safety, including education about best bicycling practices. When discussion of bicyclist positioning on the roadway comes up, we explain the technical issues of why it is often safer to ride in the center of the lane or control it by riding double file. This conversation with police is made much easier by the fact that North Carolina has no bicycle-specific stay right law. Question: “Don’t bicyclists legally need to stay to the right side of the lane?” Answer: “No, state law treats bicyclists the same as the driver of a slow moving tractor; they can occupy a travel lane. Next question?” Our state Driver Handbook (current version as of 2024) underscores this point. “Bicyclists, like any other vehicle, are entitled to use the full lane.”10
North Carolina’s vehicle code clearly defines bicycles as vehicles and bicyclists as having the rights and duties of drivers of vehicles. Bicyclists don’t need a vehicle-specific law to telling them where to ride in a marked travel lane – or that they are allowed to occupy travel lanes in the first place – any more than motorcyclists do.
Do bicyclists in North Carolina ever control a wide travel lane under conditions where it creates an unreasonable delay for motorists, but with no real safety benefit? Yes, but such situations are very rare, firstly because so few lanes are truly wide enough for this to be safe, secondly because roads that carry substantial traffic will usually have an additional same-direction lane for passing, and thirdly because cyclists will usually move to the right as a courtesy when it will make a significant improvement for others. Contrary to what some people may think, bicyclists are human beings who typically care about other people, and some have written a good deal about this.11
The rare cases where motorists experience significant delays from unnecessary control of wide lanes are too few and far between to warrant adopting a law that invites abuse from police and encourages unsafe edge riding.
Living without laws that punish bicyclists for being slower than motorcyclists and narrower than tractors has worked well in North Carolina. Bicyclist advocates in other states would do well to pursue the same full driver rights.