SIGNAL CLEARANCE TIMING FOR BICYCLISTS

Bicycle clearance-time conflicts comprise 6 percent of urban car/bike collisions, representing the largest facility-related cause. Clearance timing for automobiles is critical and even more so for bicyclists who are exposed to greater risk of accident and injury. No standards for signal timing to accommodate bicycle traffic exist. However, the California Bicycle Advisory Committee convened a subcommittee to devise such standards. This article, based on the subcommittee's report, provides the tools needed to respond to requests for signal retiming and/or to adjust timing at intersections where bicycle clearance-time accidents are likely to occur. The two types of cases considered are rolling starts and standing starts--cyclists entering the intersection on green or yellow and cyclists stopped at a red and starting from a new green, respectively.