“[That bike lane is a] dying lure. It’s hazard after hazard.”
– Bicycle rider ticketed downtown
A lady driving a motorbike was pulled over and cited by a Portland Police officer Monday afternoon. It occurred on Southwest 2nd Avenue as she rode north simply after crossing SW Washington. Her offense? She was not driving within the bike lane.
Imagine it or not, Oregon has a regulation that requires bicycle customers to make use of a motorbike lane every time one is on the market. ORS 814.420 states, “an individual commits the offense of failure to make use of a bicycle lane or path if the individual operates a bicycle on any portion of a roadway that isn’t a bicycle lane or bicycle path when a bicycle lane or bicycle path is adjoining to or close to the roadway.”
It’s a kind of regulation — generally known as a “obligatory sidepath rule” — many states have moved away from. The nationwide nonprofit League of American Bicyclists vehemently opposes legal guidelines like this and has fought towards them on the federal degree. They’ve additionally particularly called-out this regulation in Oregon as a cause for notching us down a number of rungs in nationwide bike-friendly state rankings.
An enormous drawback with obligatory sidepath legal guidelines is that they depart enforcement open to discretion of cops — a few of whom are unsympathetic to bicycle riders, don’t totally perceive bike-related regulation and don’t have any bicycling expertise themselves. It’s additionally only a waste of sources to tug somebody over for working their bicycle in a common goal lane in downtown Portland the place speeds and volumes are comparatively low and bicycle riders journey on the identical pace as different highway customers (and naturally there are rampant, unlawful, harmful, but harder-to-see-because-it’s-so-normalized-and-ubiquitous, behaviors by automotive and truck drivers).
The girl ticketed Monday stated SW 2nd Avenue has been her common commute route dwelling for the previous eight years. She normally avoids the bike lanes as a result of they’re “a dying lure.” “That whole stretch is hazard after hazard,” she shared with me this week. “I want the police would refocus their efforts to ticketing the 5-10 automobiles parked within the bike lanes I come throughout on my 1.5 mile commute.”
Including to the frustration round this incident, it occurred in a location the place the bike lane is arguably much less protected than different lanes (another excuse this can be a unhealthy regulation).
I posted a video to Fb in 2017 that illustrated my issues with this bike lane — the identical ones I shared when it was first put in in 2016.
Bike riders will usually decide out of utilizing bike lanes as a result of they’re so usually filled with particles, potholes, or inherent engineering hazards that make bike lanes much less protected than different lanes. The 2nd Avenue bike lane particularly can also be identified to be filled with puddles and leaves this time of yr. This issues as a result of ORS 814.420 contains an exception that claims an individual isn’t required to make use of the bike lane if they’re, “Avoiding particles or different hazardous situations.”
Again in July, BikePortland reader crazytraffic99 posted a video to YouTube that clearly captured certainly one of these hazardous situations:
Whereas tickets for not utilizing the bike lane are “very uncommon” and “not helpful” in accordance with Portland bike lawyer Mark Ginsberg, who focuses on serving to folks with these sort of infractions, sadly they’re nonetheless being written.
On this case, the girl who obtained the ticket reviews that the officer who pulled her over didn’t speak a lot in the course of the cease. She stated he appeared like, “only a typical bicycle owner hating driver.” When requested to explain extra about their dialog, she stated the officer acknowledged that he first observed her whereas she rode eastbound on SW Alder, within the left lane exterior of the brand new bike/bus lane. She did this as a result of she was turning left at SW 2nd (a clearly authorized factor to do in accordance with ORS 814.420). Right here’s extra from her account of their dialog:
“He wasn’t blissful I used to be driving down Alder on the left aspect (since I used to be turning left on 2nd and never crossing the Morrison Bridge). So after I turned onto 2nd and moved to the surface of the left lane to finally flip proper onto the Burnside Bridge, he turned on his lights and pulled me over at 2nd and Washington. He acknowledged that there was a motorbike lane on 2nd and I used to be required to be in it, as a result of motorists weren’t anticipating me to be of their lane.”
The bicycle rider says she plans to contest the ticket when her day in courtroom comes up in December 2023. “I’ll struggle it,” she stated, “If I don’t die within the subsequent 13 months.”
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