Zebra striped pedestrian crossings are extremely common all over DC, and the city has recently experimented with green bike lanes. Could DC combine the two to create an even better crossing for cycle tracks at intesections?

Here is a quick rendering of what this idea might look like:

Cycle tracks provide bikers with a high degree of separation from both automobiles and pedestrians. They are, by and large, very safe pieces of infrastructure. The one weakness of cycle tracks is at intersections, where car drivers turning out of the main roadway lanes parallel to the cycle track and onto cross streets may not always remember to watch for cyclists.

The 15th Street cycle track addresses this problem cleverly, with a pair of treatments intended to help drivers remember to watch for cyclists.

Photo by ElvertBarnes on Flickr.

The bike lane shifts over as it approaches an intersection so that car drivers can see if there are any bikes approaching in it, and the intersection itself is covered with sharrows and dashed lines. But can we do even more?

It seems like common sense to combine two successful ideas in order to improve the safety of our facilities. The Federal Highway Administration recently started allowing green pavement for bike lanes, and seems to allow a pattern (though perhaps not quite the pattern above:

The green colored pavement may be installed for the entire length of the bicycle lane extension or for only a portion (or portions) of the bicycle lane extension. The pattern of the green colored pavement may be dotted in a manner that matches the pattern of the dotted lines, thus filling in only the areas that are directly between a pair of dotted line segments that are on opposite sides of the bicycle lane extension.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.

Dan Malouff is a transportation planner for Arlington and an adjunct professor at George Washington University. He has a degree in urban planning from the University of Colorado and lives in Trinidad, DC. He runs BeyondDC and contributes to the Washington Post. Dan blogs to express personal views, and does not take part in GGWash's political endorsement decisions.