Saturday, November 10, 2012

First Bike-Only Traffic Light Installed

The City's first bike-only traffic light is up and operating!

Just before the downpour yesterday, I noticed that the traffic light west-bound on Chemeketa at 12th had been swapped out this week for the new bike light.

It's been a bit of a winding road to it...

New Bike Lights:  12th & Chemeketa
Back in the spring of 2010 a light was part of the proposed "Quiet Zone" crossing treatment for 12th and Chemeketa (revised to this).

Bike Signal Head: LADOT
During the 2011 Legislative session, a law for these had to be passed. Portland had had these signals for some time, but as Portland signals engineer Peter Koonce said to BikePortland, the bike signals had existed outside of statute and occupied a legal grey zone.  The law codifying them, Senate Bill 130, was introduced to the Legislature before the session and signed into law in June of 2011.

And now we have one!

So where will the second one be???

(Updated Sunday with picture of bike signal head; longer discussion at LA Dept of Transportation bike blog.)

Update 2, Tuesday the 13th

Front page on the SJ:

4 comments:

Jim Scheppke said...

Sorry to be dense SBOB, but I don't get it. What is a "Bike-Only Traffic Light"?

Salem Breakfast on Bikes said...

Updated with better picture! Because of the clouds, the exposure time was too long, and the yellow light blasted the exposure, so you can't see the bike outline and it just looks like a regular old traffic light. The LA photo and blog discussion will give more detail!

Salem Breakfast on Bikes said...

In a comment on the SJ piece, Curt rightly points out that this configuration saves Salem residents some $300,000: A four-quadrant gate would cost half a million, and this treatment was projected to come in around $200,000.

Bike Lights said...

Really informative post! Cool retro look led light, are you using a double A batter or are you using a jumbo battery for that?