London is adding protected bike lanes to one of its traffic circles. Could the same design work in DC? Would we want it to?

London traffic circle, with protected bike lanes in green. Image by London.

London city workers recently began rebuilding the Queen’s Circus traffic circle to include protected bike lanes. Since central DC has so many traffic circles, it’s worth considering whether the Queen’s Circus design could work here too.

DC’s big traffic circles are notoriously difficult places to bike. They have multiple lanes of intimidating and zig-zagging car traffic, and sidewalks too packed with pedestrians to be good bike paths. Most of the circles lack bike lanes, and those that have them (Columbus Circle and Thomas Circle) are still far from comfortable places to bike.

But the traffic circles are key destinations. People want to use them. Making the circles more bike friendly would be great for DC.

Would we want to do this?

This is sort of a good design. It’s better than nothing. But with so many crossings, it’s still pretty confusing what’s the bike lane and what’s for cars. It seems likely there will still be a lot of intimidating cross traffic.

In fact, the actual design doesn’t even have the green paint; I added that to make the rendering clearer.

The other big problem with the London example is that pedestrians are mostly absent. Unlike DC’s circles that typically have popular parks in the middle, this London circle is just a road. The central grassy section isn’t a useful park, and there are no pedestrian crossings into it. That obviously changes how the entire thing functions.

Look to the Dutch

Perhaps a better example might come from this traffic circle in Rotterdam, where in typically Dutch fashion the bike lanes are much more well protected.

Rotterdam traffic circle, with protected bike lanes in red. Image by Google.

Rather than fight with cars, the Dutch put the bike lanes up on the sidewalk. That’s more ideal from a cyclist perspective, but it’s also much harder to accomplish.

The sidewalks around DC’s downtown circles are too narrow in many places to accommodate bike lanes. DDOT could theoretically rebuild the circles to have wider sidewalks and narrower roadways, but that would be controversial to say the least, not to mention a lot more expensive than striping a bike lane on the street.

The Dutch example is better, but the British example is more achievable.

Cross-posted at BeyondDC.