Saferails: A great idea to help cyclists and streetcars share the road more safely : TreeHugger

Headlines are quick hits from media outlets from Missouri and around the world. Follow the headline link for the full story. The source of this headline says:

Streetcars are a wonderful mode of transportation, carrying thousands of people in the cities that have them. They are beloved by transit riders in Toronto where I live (when they are not stuck behind cars). They are hated by drivers (when they are stuck behind streetcars) and they are a worry for cyclists (when they get their wheels stuck in tracks). I have written about how sometimes cyclists and streetcar tracks don't mix. And this is not just a North American problem, an excuse to say "get rid of those streetcars" but is common in the Netherlands and other cities where cyclists and trams mix.

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Saferails: A great idea to help cyclists and streetcars share the road more safely : TreeHugger

MoBikeFed comment: This issue has come home to Missouri, with new streetcar tracks going in both in St. Louis and Kansas City. The problem with the tracks is that the groove is parallel to the bicyclists direction of travel and miles of these tracks are now installed in St. Louis and Kansas City on the exact location in the travel lane where bicyclists would prefer to travel.

For now we are suggesting that bicyclists simply avoid streets with streetcar tracks where possible. They are extremely hazardous and very hard for bicyclists to avoid. This is a serious problem in both Kansas City and St. Louis, as the area of town where the streetcar tracks are installed, and the streets they are on, are very high bicycle traffic areas.

This is an issue in European cities with streetcar tracks as well--though through good design they have often created a better situation than the one we are facing in Kansas City and St. Louis, where the location of the tracks in the street has made bicycle travel on these streets more dangerous than necessary.

These students have created a product that has the potential to help in situations like this. Check it out.