The Virginia General Assembly is now a full day in, and we have a bill in each chamber for the Bicyclist Safety Act! There are stringent bill limits and the session will be incredibly short, so time is of the essence to support this ambitious and awesome set of bills. Here is an FAQ about the three elements of the bills – familiarize yourself with it. There are compelling safety numbers, quotes from State Police, and useful visuals.
Note – because the session is totally virtual for lobbyists and members of the public, providing testimony is harder than ever. Meetings are short, virtual feels very impersonal, and public comment periods are brief and impacted by technical glitches. We are adapting our advocacy to be out of the box to have the best chance to reach legislators with your quotes and support.
HB2262 – Delegate Hurst / Blacksburg – Passed in the House of Delgates, 75-24. Headed to the Senate, where it needs your support. Contact your senator now!
SB1263 – Senator Morrissey / Petersburg – Failed in Senate vote, 22-16.
How can you help?
- Fill out the following Google Form.
- Share this post on your social media, with your clubs, groups, bike shops, friends and family.
- Email your Senator and Delegate with a personal note. Here’s how to find who that is: https://whosmy.virginiageneralassembly.gov/
- Follow VBF Facebook and Twitter for immediate information and calls to action.
Some other bills we are tracking:
- Budget line item for $5mil for long multi-use trails, working with Virginia Trails Alliance
- HB1903 – Carr/ Richmond – Authorize localities to lower speed limits in Residential/Business Districts (1/14/21 Reported unanimously 22-0 from full House Transportation Committee)
~BT
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"//pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-ffAr_0M34f91E.gif\")
Comments on this entry are closed.
Don’t hesitate to reach out
Andrew
It’s good to see efforts towards making cycling safer and more enjoyable. I would like to suggest an extremely cautious approach to removing the requirement for cyclists to stop at a stop sign. This has been a contentious issue in other states that could hurt other advocacy efforts for quite some time.
Please consider rewording the phrase “Require Bike Riders to Yield At Stop Signs, i.e. the “Safety Stop.” That phrase is disingenuous and will quickly be seen as such by the opponents of the proposal. We’re asking for the removal of a requirement, not for a requirement to be imposed. Being open and honest about removing the stop-requirement for cyclists is, in my view, the better way to approach this.
Thank you for all the good work!
I rode over 8,000
Miles last year – mostly in Virginia. So I ride everywhere. Just today coming home,
in the bike lane on Rt. 1, there were several cars and trucks that past by, very fast and not giving us any room- making them move over will make us so much safer-!
Thank you so much for your leadership on this issue. I ride around with my kids, ages 5, 8 & 10. We absolutely need to make our streets safer for them.
Riding two abreast is particularly important for family biking – I should always be riding to the left of the little ones. Having cars change lanes entirely will make it easier to enforce the law requiring drivers give us space.
My kids are particularly vulnerable when they start from a stop. It takes them longer than adults to get across intersections after they’ve stopped. We’ve crossed streets that were clear when we stopped at a stop sign, only to have a car come while the kids were in the middle of the intersection, struggling to get going. The safety stop will help immensely.
I have been close passed by drivers a number of times on a 1 mile stretch, two lane road, I have to take biking to get from Prince William County to Fairfax County. The stretch is mostly double yellow no passing. I take the lane as it is narrow and I don’t want drivers to pass when it is dangerous. Not all drivers pass on double yellow with three foot clearance. Some even try to pass with oncoming traffic. Usually the passing is done at high speed instead of a safe speed. It would be better if county created safe infrastructure, but this bill would at least provide the opportunity for safer travel.
The bills are a good start, especially the part that requires drivers to change lanes to pass. But that part needs to be modified to always require one to change lanes to pass when there are marked lanes on the road, instead of adding an exception where the lane is wide enough to share with 3 feet between the cyclist and motorist.
The reason is that the vast majority of lanes are simply not wide enough to share side by side with a motor vehicle while leaving 3 feet between the cyclist and motorist. The 2012 American Association of State Highway Transportation Officials (AASHTO) guidelines for bicycle facilities state that the operating width of a cyclist is 5 feet. Most motor vehicles are 7 to 8 feet wide mirror to mirror. Adding those widths together plus an additional 3 feet comes out to 15 to 16 feet. For a commercial vehicle that’s 10 feet wide mirror to mirror, it adds up to 18 feet.
Most general purpose traffic lanes range from 10 to 12 feet in width (e.g., lanes on interstate highways are 12 feet wide). I don’t know of any lanes that are 15 to 18 feet wide. The Florida DOT guidelines and Texas state law use 14 feet as a minimum width for a shareable lane.
So, rather than having a situation that rarely applies in the law (saying it’s okay to share the lane if it’s wide enough), change the law to require changing lanes to pass regardless of how wide the lane is. The only time the 3 foot passing law should apply is on roads that don’t have marked lanes (like certain residential streets).
If we keep the wide enough to share lane exception in this law, then cyclists will experience the same problem they had with the “Share the Road” sign. That is, motorists and law enforcement will believe that cyclists need to ride further right than is practicable in order to allow 3 feet distance to pass while remaining in the lane. That’s why the “Share the Road” signage is being replaced with the “Bikes May Use Full Lane” signage, because the message conveyed by the latter sign is not ambiguous.
We need to make this law unambiguous, and requiring motorists to change lanes to pass cyclists unconditionally on roads with marked lanes is the way to go about it.
Changing lanes is not difficult for a driver. It is a clear message to oncoming cars making the situation safer for all three parties. It also exposes the cyclist to the other overtaking cars giving them more time to react. Changing a full lane is a no-brainer rather than calculating how little they to maintain the distance that they don’t even remember.
In support of lane change pass (and, not passing over double yellow…):
Driver couldn’t wait; “passed” not at a safe distance, made contact, didn’t stop… thankfully no oncoming
> YouTube: https://youtu.be/ZfWYiy17sQk
> Upride: https://upride.cc/incident/couldnt-wait-3-seconds/