OK, I may not be an experienced cyclist, yet, it doesn’t take away from the danger that streetcar tracks poses to us all.

Ouch!

Martine

I’ve wrecked half a dozen times, even on tracks I’m super familiar with. I love LRT,Streetcars, etc, but jeez the tracks are frustrating sometimes.

Also my Girlfriend took a serious spill here and got cut up, bashed up, and a little lacerated here in Portland too. We live right on the streetcar line downtown, and even though we know it is there, we still biff it sometime.

It would be nice to have a solution to it…

…but in a sense I think the intermittent minor (the major ones just suck) wrecks make us pay more attention and keep us alive in more dangerous areas & environments.

The most dangerous intersection for me = Junipero Serra coming from West Portal, where the KT turns towards Balboa Park, the M crosses for Stonestown and both merge towards West Portal inbound. Ugh.

I also hate that intersection at 30th and San Jose and don’t take it anymore.
Instead I turn left at 30th and Church (which is a maze of track also, but at least I can take it slowly and not get buzzed by cars) and then ride down to 29th and cross San Jose there.

The scariest one to me isn’t Church, it’s turning left onto Valencia from Market. The traffic is frustrating and trying to turn sharply into that left turn lane has made me occasionally fear that I’m not crossing at a severe enough angle. Almost bit it a few weeks ago, even though I take that intersection all the time.

Might as well throw my track story in there too – it was dumb – riding on judah out of 711 with a beverage in one hand, saw myself heading toward the tracks but couldn’t adjust in time with one hand. Still have the elbow scar as well.

P.S. Today I got rear ended! Bent my new wheel I built like two weeks ago. But he drove me to where I needed to go, including two bike shops. It happened because the guy was a tired driver. If he had taken Muni he could’ve slept…

Rubberized tracks seem interesting but hard to maintain? There are also a lot of tracks, all over town. Same with warnings, lots of tracks, that’s lots of signs and money which=dollars.

It seems education is the best way to approach this problem. But that too is kind of difficult because especially when wet the tracks are dangerous no matter what your skill level.

There is not much ice around here but that of course can be bad too. Ice and metal.

Bike network streets could maybe be rubberized/warned leave the rest. Lots of tracks in town.

Another thing I’ve noticed is that spills tend to happen when the car waiting in the intersection makes a sharp turn or honks at the cyclist, forcing them to rush across without properly aligning themselves first. At least, on Church and Duboce, it seems either you risk getting run over because you take too long to cross, or you jam your wheel into the tracks because you tried to go with the flow of impatient traffic.

Yes, it’s called a street with no tracks running parallel to your direction. As bikers need to maximize their ability to change position in the street and stay out of the door zone, bikes and tracks just don’t mix. Ride on a parallel street with no tracks.

Woah, a cop caring about your well-being?! That’s amazing. With the way people talk on these blogs you’d think he was going to start beating the shit out of you for falling off your bike.