The New Red Hill / Foothill Boulevard Bike Lane

First off, I apologize for the dirty windshield views, and that glaring morning sun does not help things either. But, that said, what do you think of the new Foothill Boulevard bike lane (and yes, the singular lane is intentional)? Installed as part of the read realignment, starting just west of Grove and ending at Baker, in Rancho Cucamonga. As you can, maybe, see in the photo above, it starts at Grove as a green bike lane on the street, before it transitions to an off-street lane with green markings and bollards where it crosses driveways into local businesses. At San Bernardino Road, it transitions  back to the street, somewhat protected by bollards, until disappearing at Baker. 

While two way paths, such as the local river trails, the PET, and other similar routes are pretty ubiquitous and, for the most part work pretty well, I'm not as sure about the format as used in this case. Let's say you are riding west, you will find yourself dumped onto the street facing oncoming traffic at Grove, and will need to find a way across to the other side of Foothill so as to not ride against traffic.

Back when I rode to work a lot more frequently, my preferred route was Foothill because, by bike, it was always much quicker than the Pacific Electric Trail which, as you know, it mostly parallels. I would never ride Foothill past Grove, though, because past San Bernardino Road, that third, curb adjacent lane appeared and all the speeders would dive into it to get around the "slower moving" cars in the other two lanes. The new bike lanes partially takes care of that, but only as far as Baker. What they really need to do is continue past Baker to the Cucamonga Creek channel Bike Path. Now that would be a connection.

In my initial drive-by opinion, the new lane is not the best possible solution, and there are better local examples that could have been used as a model. With pluses and minuses, is it at least adequate?

Anyway, for a more complete impression, I suppose I will have to give it a ride.

 

quite frankly, I foresee people who are exiting the parking lot, blocking the bike lane as they wait for traffic to clear before turning right