The recent post on Grand Boulevard introduces a design concept that includes protected bike lanes. While Kansas City does not have any examples of protected bike lanes today, they are a commonly used and well-studied design approach. The silver lining to lagging behind other communities in bicycle infrastructure is that there are case studies from cities across the country that are seeing the positive benefits of these facilities and learning lessons about their application.
Streetfilms (which is an excellent resource in general!) has put together some short but excellent videos about particular communities’ experience with protected bike lanes. The first explores Kinzie Street in Chicago:
This one has examples of floating parking and protected bike lanes being implemented all over New York:
This video highlights some of the green benefits of protected bike lanes – something that is particularly relevant to Grand Boulevard:
And finally, this video is a bit longer and addresses complete streets in general but has some great interviews with actual users of the street about why they prefer protected bike lanes: