Explaining Bike Infrastructure

Definitions of Bike Infrastructure

• Protected bike lanes are on-street bike lanes with a physical barrier separating the bike lane from motor vehicle traffic. The barriers can include flower planters, concrete curbs, plastic bollards, jersey barriers, and parked cars. Protected bike lanes can be either one-way or two-way.
• Neighborhood greenways are bikeways on slow-speed, low-volume residential streets. Greenways are more than just signed to provide bicyclists with wayfinding; greenways are engineered and designed to reduce vehicle traffic and speed on the street through speed bumps/humps, chicanes, roundabouts, curb bulbs, and priority stop signs (stops signs are removed from the bikeway and instead placed on the cross streets). Where a greenway crosses an arterial, the greenway is designed to better prioritize bicyclists and ensure their safety while crossing.
• Bike boxes are green-painted rectangles (with a white outline) at intersections that provide a safe refuge for bicyclists to either cue ahead of cars or make a two-stage turn. Bike boxes help increase safety for bicyclists by reducing right-hand hooks by cars and by helping bicyclists navigate tricky intersections, such as where there are streetcar tracks.
• Cross-bikes are similar to crosswalks in that they warn drivers to expect bicyclists to cross an intersection. Cross-bikes are currently designed in several different ways, including parallel dashed lines with sharrows that extend a bike lane through an intersection, solid bright-green paint, and horizontal bars of bright-green paint (which is most similar to a white crosswalk).
• Sharrows are large white bike symbols on the roadway that remind drivers that bicyclists may use the full lane. The term is the combination of two words: "share" and "ROW" (or "right-of-way"). Although in many cities, sharrows are often placed toward the right-hand edge of a street, bicyclists should not feel compelled to treat the "sharrowed-space" as a bike lane; instead, they should feel free to take the full lane and ride in traffic, especially when in a narrow lane next to parked cars.

Ways to Get Involved in Building Better Bike Infrastructure

Cascade and our sister organization, Washington Bikes, jointly host a Bike, Walk, Roll Summit that guides local communities on land use policy, bike infrastructure, equity in how we build our streets, and climate resiliency. Learn more about how to build better active transportation policy in our 2022, 2021, and 2020 online summits.

2022 Bike, Walk, Roll Summit

2021 Bike, Walk, Roll Summit 

2020 Bike, Walk, Roll Summit 

 Still want to know more about bike infrastructure?

Watch the Rise of Protected Bike Lanes in the U.S. by People for Bikes