Bike St. Louis / Portland Bike Box

St. Louis is not a rich city, and I understand that.  They can't plow the snow off every street or even most streets.  That's why we have designated bike corridors.  That's why when there is snow I hope to use the Bike STL routes... assuming the bike lanes are not filled with the snow plowed out of the car lanes.

Today, I was waiting for a red light at Shaw and Vandeventer, in a car lane, and the guy behind me honked at me thinking it'd make me disappear.  I had no way to tell him that the area where I was supposed to wait was covered in snow, so I just waited it out and went about my business. 

I bike Shaw, and I'd like to tell you dear reader about the most interesting part of my route.


Mobot's road of walls, fences, and silence.  Click to enlarge


Shaw doesn't cross Kingshighway in a straight path.  I start by waiting in this box that the driver's next to me seem incapable of seeing.

Most people get irritated by me biking past them at red lights to get up to the front, but the simple fact is that I don't accelerate as fast as them and the light is short.  If I'm in the back, I won't make it across in time, and that's not good for the cars behind me.

I usually bike straight across the intersection to let the cars behind me pass or make thier left turn, then I jerk left to get back on Shaw behind them, which can be a tight squeeze.

Then I bike across MoBot's dead street to Vandeventer where I stop for another light.

Then I'm clear across in a neighborhood again.

There's no bike lane on Shaw, nor does there need to be.  But these little boxes at intersections are really helpful.  The only problem is that driver's usually don't see them.  What's worse is those times when I am biking with friends and I don't know if we should line up or just take up the car lane too.  The Shaw bike boxes only fit one rider at a time.

Because this is a designated route, and because we want to advertise it so, we really ought to make my our little boxes highly visible.



No, more than just visible, we should make them stand out.



Bike lanes and crosswalks ought to be colorful.  Bike boxes ought to be highly visible.  Portland has green.  Madison has red.  London has blue.  I don't really care what color we choose as long as it's consistent across the region.

Having a large, lane-sized bike box doesn't take anything away from the cars, but it makes a huge difference for people on bikes.  Every stop light is a five second social moment in peace instead of a fearful pause with the guy behind you making his engine growl at you because he thinks you're doing something illegal and dangerous.

The lesson for today is that the St. Louis snow removing teams do not seem aware of the bike routes, but they probably would if there were a few bright green boxes out there.  Further, if they failed to clear the bike lane, they'd probably manage to get the majority of the box that cuts into the car lanes.

Winter in St. Louis is not at all too cold for biking, but the snow and ice is a problem.  I got to work today to discover someone cleared all the sidewalks and deposited the snow on top of the bike rack.  It was buried, so I used a lamp post instead.  Yikes!