The Washboard State Revisited

Last spring I berated the state of Georgia for having bike lanes along its highways that weren't really bike lanes. The lanes are covered with deep grooves designed to wake up a motorist who has drifted to the edge of the road, hopefully before he continues to drift off the pavement, across a ditch, and into a tree. This is a good thing for motorists, but I wouldn't pretend that you could ride a bicycle in such a warning lane. For these cruel parodies of bicycle lanes, I dubbed Georgia the "Washboard State." You'd especially notice the lanes on US 319 north of Tallahassee, where at the state line an acceptable bike lane in Florida became the Washboard from Hell in Georgia.

But earlier this month I discovered that Georgia can get it right.

On US 27 between Lumpkin, Georgia and Louvale, Georgia there is a wide, paved shoulder that is signed as a bike lane. The washboard grooves are there, but they only take up half the lane. The rest of it is smooth pavement, a surface decent enough and wide enough for bicycles to actually use. As a bonus, the warning grooves are between motor traffic and bicycle traffic. If an eighteen-wheel rig wanders over into the bike lane, the driver will be alerted by the vibration from the rough pavement. This is much better than the typical bike lane, where the driver's first indication that he had drifted too far over was the gentle thud of a cyclist against his vehicle's grille. It works even better the other way, keeping bicycles from straying out into motor traffic. So far as keeping bicycles and motor vehicles safely separated on the highway, it's not as good as the three-foot high concrete barrier that I'd prefer, but it's better than a four-inch wide stripe of paint. Like all bike lanes, it's a resting place for road kill, trash, broken down vehicles, and other obstacles. But as bike lanes go, it's nearly as good as anyone can do.

Links:

• The Sunshine State and the Washboard State (April 2009)
  http://troubleafoot.blogspot.com/2009/04/sunshine-state-and-washboard-state.html