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by CydeWeys
1985 days ago
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You're over-thinking it. "Protected" just means physical protection is provided. E.g. right now a lot of the supposedly separated bike lanes near me in Manhattan aren't protected in any meaningful way, so you often see cars illegally parked in them and sometimes even driving in them (!). Protection is as simple as physical curbs and other barriers that prevent vehicles from being able to get into the bike lanes. That's protection. Intersections actually do tend to be protected the most because they have started building some curbs at corners as pedestrian refuges between the bike and vehicle lanes, which have the side-effect of keeping cars out. |
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I'm using the standard definition of protected (as opposed to permissive) as used in the traffic engineering profession. Besides, I've heard the term protected used for lanes where flexi bollards are placed between the general purpose lane and bike lane. This in no way is going to provide any notion of protection and there's no intersection management separating traffic flow in terms of time slices (as would be done using a traffic signal).
> Protection is as simple as physical curbs and other barriers that prevent vehicles from being able to get into the bike lanes. That's protection. Intersections actually do tend to be protected the most because they have started building some curbs at corners as pedestrian refuges between the bike and vehicle lanes,
Except, that protection/barrier, as you define it does not extend all the way through the intersection. At some point, the paths of a motorist and cyclist will cross (e.g., cyclist going straight while motorist is turning). If you have bicycle specific signals that regulate traffic in such a way that cyclists and motorists never go through the intersection at the same time, then you do have protection.