Bike Business – Buffered Bike Lanes

A buffered bike lane is a bike lane separated from car traffic and/or parking lane by a cross-hatched striped area called a  ‘shy zone’. In the bike lane you’ll also see the familiar white outline of a bike with an arrow that also designates sharrows. You may have seen a buffered bike lane on N 130th between Greenwood Ave N and Linden Ave N, as shown in the photo on the right.

This design makes it safer for both bicyclists and vehicles. With the shy zone, the buffered lane offers a more comfortable place to ride for cyclists who prefer not to ride so close to traffic. It also allows motorists to drive at a normal speed; they only need to watch for cyclists when turning right at cross-streets or driveways and when crossing the buffered lane to park.

Motor vehicles may not drive in the buffered bike lane, but they may, as indicated above, cross the shy zone and the bike lane to turn or park. Generally the bike lane stripes are solid white lines where crossing is discouraged, and may be dashed where cars are expected to cross at driveways.

More benefits of buffered bike lanes include:

• Space for bicyclists to pass another bicyclist without moving into the motor vehicle travel lane.
• Encourages bicyclists to ride outside of the car door zone when the buffer is between parked cars and bike lane.
• Provides a greater space for bicycling without making the bike lane appear so wide that it might be mistaken for a travel lane or a parking lane.
• Appeals to a wider cross-section of bicycle users, i.e. super-user cyclists may be comfortable in normal traffic, but casual cyclists feel safer with a buffer.

Buffered bike lanes are especially good on streets with high travel speeds, high travel volumes, and/or high amounts of truck traffic.

Note: the NACTO (National Association of City Transportation Officials) standard is for the shy zone to be cross-hatched, as it is on Greenwood, only if it is at least 3 feet wide. I don’t know if Seattle is going to cross-hatch no matter the width, but if not, we may be seeing some shy zones that are just two solid parallel lines between the motor traffic lane and the bike lane.