A Special Blue Light and Other new Bikey Road Details

Bike traffic signal and blue light

While these aren't game-changers, there are some quiet advances and incremental improvements for our new bike lanes on recent projects.

When 25th & Madrona opened up, a reader pointed out the new bike traffic lights.

And if you look closely at them, there's an additional feature. On top is a very small blue light. I think they're the first in Salem. (Update - The ones at Mission & Winter came a few weeks earlier, and are the first.)

Portland started experimenting with these back in 2012. The blue lights go on when the video detection - see the camera above them - registers a person on bike. So that way you know when you've tripped the signal and don't have to jockey trying to get its attention. They should be standard!

Bike traffic lights and blue indicator light - 25th & Madrona

Downtown, on the new buffered bike lanes on Church and High, some of the intersections where right turns are common have had plastic wands installed to help with separation and ensure that drivers aren't using the bike lane as a turn lane. In other cities the plastic wands don't always last very long, so this will be an experiment. It may be that harder, more rigid separators are necessary.

Plastic Wand and "Yield to Bikes" at Church & State

A downtown bike user also noticed that there are new "turning vehicles yield to bikes" signs at some of them. Here there's one right next to the right-hand green light.

These are small, but helpful details.

Making left-hand turns off Church and High remains problematic, and next summer when there is more bike traffic it will be interesting to see how people actually make left turns, either by merging left into traffic and biking vehicularly, or using the crosswalk for a jug-handle turn.

Have you seen any other new bike things in the summer's crop of road projects?