Advisory Bike Lanes

Advisory bike lanes a beautiful example of how cities can change the priority of roads to favor bikes. Here, they are common on low speed or low traffic roads, roads in the countryside, and residential roads. The way they are designed is that roads that have one lane of car travel in each direction are restriped to have two bike lanes instead of a center line. There is still enough space for a car to pass another car traveling the opposite direction, but in order to do so they must yield to bikes to enter the bike lane. This is significant because when there is a center line and no bike lanes, the road is telling users that there is space for two car lanes and bikes must be wherever cars aren’t, where as when there are advisory bike lanes, the road is telling users that there is space for two bike lanes and cars must be where bikes are not. This shifts the priority of the road from transporting cars to transporting people. Cars can still use the space just as easily as they could otherwise, but now bikes can also safely use the road.