Do I enter the bus lane to make the right turn or do I try to make the turn from the second lane from the right (avoiding entering the bus lane) and taking the chance of being mowed down by a bus or taxis who are also making a right?

I just don’t know.

Now, they just need to make street parking illegal on Broadway. That should keep traffic following smoothly.

Having a bike lane in the middle of the street, next to the viaduct north of 97th and next to the median between 97th and 47th, would keep cyclists out of the curbside lanes, where taxis and light delivery trucks stop. At 47th you can dogleg right one block over to Vanderbilt, then on 43rd over to 5th Ave to continue downtown.

My impression is that Park Avenue south of GCT (not sure about the north) is mostly used by local traffic rather than through traffic. If they are going to put cycle tracks on the East Side, that’s where I’d do it, with one in each direction.

Park would have one moving lane in each direction. The middle lane would be used for drop-offs, pick ups, bus stops, and trucks making deliveries as the right lane is now. Near intersections, there would be two moving lanes and the bike lane, with one used for queueing for turns (the through lane would jog right if the turn was to the left).

From what I see the impact on motor vehicle traffic would be limited. And you’d attract some bikes to Park, with some motor vehicles displaces elsewhere.

Yet 5th Ave. is the only marked downtown bike route on the East Side other than Second Ave. (rife with heavy truck traffic and speeding, and made worse by the Second Ave. construction work, leads the East side in deaths and serious injuries for bicyclists) and the East Side Greenway (numerous portages down stairs, roadbed cave-ins, and abrupt termination at 63rd St.). When I’m not in a mood to contend, or with kids, I use Park Ave. (despite having constantly to stop at lights).

My impression is that most bicyclists prefer 5th Ave., for all its problems. But what the East Side really, really needs a good downtown bike route.

It’s hard enough for SUV drivers to see bikes, let alone bus drivers. Anectdotally, it seems like a lot of the bike/motor vehicle accidents that don’t involve drunks or jerks involve buses and trucks, not cars.

Philly’s got bike/bus lanes on at least Market St and Chestnut St but your likely to get mowed over by cars who are totally clueless about the lane status. I’ve even been honked at by a bus driver even though I was moving at considerable speed right behind a car!

Holding up a busload of people….not kosher.

I prefer the right hand side of 5th as well, since it reduces turning conflicts with motorists to one intersection every 6-8 blocks, instead of every other block on the left hand side (not to mention the cab-loving population along 5th Ave.). However I do feel guilty in the bus lane on those occasions when due to a hill or the lightness of traffic I am going slower than the bus behind me. On those occasions I will merge one lane to the left. It’s dangerous, but it seems selfish for one person to hold up a busload of people.

As for the legalities, I think I looked into this once and found that the “bus only” restriction applies only to vehicles. Bicycles are not classed as “vehicles,” but have the same obligations as motor vehicles except to the extent laws specifically governing bicyclists (or the “nature” of bicycles as conveyances) provide differently. So we are back to the same issue: does the rule indicating that bicyclists are supposed to keep to the curb trump the rule about buses only in the bus lane?

Clarence, you seem to have a “hot line” to the DoT. Can you pick up that red phone and see what they think of bicyclists traveling in a “bus only” lane over at DoT?

But don’t quote me on that.

Cool picture. That’s me in your Flickr photo!

I regularly ride down Fifth Ave, and prefer to ride on the right side of the road with the buses vs. riding on the left side with crazy cabs & stopped cars. I am faster than the buses, and I find that most bus drivers look out for cyclists and create a buffer from the other traffic.