Bend Intersection Merits More Scrutiny, Less Celebration

Over at Salem Bike Vision they note what they call a forthcoming "protected intersection" in Bend.

via FB

While the idea of one is good in general, this particular instance is not a good protected intersection! It's not anything we should seek to emulate. The version in Bend looks like more than a little bit of greenwash/bikewash for a zoomy, autoist set of roads.

And in fact, Bend doesn't even call it a "protected intersection."

"A protected intersection...did not move forward"

In their most recent online Open House late last month, they said, "A protected intersection design was considered...but did not move forward." Among the reasons they listed was a need to "provide the required space for passenger vehicles and large trucks to make turns."

Prioritizing higher speed turning movements really compromised the design.

In a nutshell, look at the slip lane and the way a person on bike has to jog multiple times, shuffled around and inconvenienced to maintain auto flow and speed. (A much larger plan view from the Open House is here.)

slip lane

By contrast, the NACTO discussion of protected intersections shows a straight travel path, without any of the jogs and deflections.

NACTO shows inline travel (black comment added)

Even in the subsection on "variations," where they discuss a "bend-out," a small deflection, it is nothing like the ones in the Bend proposal.

And the subsection "Setting Turn Speeds through Curb Radii" is about slowing turning movements, not speeding them up through slip lanes. It is wholly at odds with the slip lane function.

The plan view also shows plastic delineator wands along the bike lane. For the speeds clearly envisioned by the road design, these are nearly certain to be inadequate and run over often.

All in all this is a very inferior design for anything a person might want to call a "protected intersection" and is something that deserves a much more critical perspective as we might think about one for Salem. We should not uncritically laud this Bend example! And we should reserve the name "protected intersection" for designs closer to the template. If Bend doesn't call it a "protected intersection," Salem Bike Vision shouldn't call it that either.

Previously:

• A little bit on ways our corner bulb-outs downtown made protected intersections more tricky to retrofit, "Downtown Board to Discuss Corner Bulb-outs Thursday" (2017)