The Bicycles May Use Full Lane sign, also referred to as BMUFL or R4-11, is a traffic sign used in the United States to:
The sign consists of a graphic image of a bicycle, followed by the words, "May Use Full Lane".
BMUFL was first specified in Chapter 9B of the 2009 Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices , and was replaced with the Bicycles Allowed Use of Full Lane sign (R9-20) in the 11th Edition in 2023. [1]
A study conducted by the City of Austin in 2010 showed that placement of BMUFL signs influenced cyclists to generally ride farther from the curb (an average of 0.31 ft [94 mm]), [2] and drivers moved further left as they passed bikes after the signs were installed, such that the percentage of motorists who passed within 3 feet (0.91 m) of the bicyclist dropped from 44% to 0%. [3]
The 2012 edition of the California Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices indicates that the Bicycles May Use Full Lane Sign be used "where travel lanes are too narrow for bicyclists and motor vehicles to operate side by side" to "inform users that bicyclists might occupy the travel lane": [4]
Section 9B.06 Bicycles May Use Full Lane Sign (R4-11)
- Option:
- 01 The Bicycles May Use Full Lane (R4-11) sign may be used on roadways where no bicycle lanes or adjacent shoulders usable by bicyclists are present and where travel lanes are too narrow for bicyclists and motor vehicles to operate side by side.
- 02 The Bicycles May Use Full Lane sign may be used in locations where it is important to inform road users that bicyclists might occupy the travel lane.
- 03 Section 9C.07 describes a Shared Lane Marking that may be used in addition to or instead of the Bicycles May Use Full Lane sign to inform road users that bicyclists might occupy the travel lane.
- Support:
- 04 The Uniform Vehicle Code (UVC) (Also refer to CVC 21202(a)(3)) defines a “substandard width lane” as a “lane that is too narrow for a bicycle and a vehicle to travel safely side by side within the same lane.”
Bicycle May Use Full signs are not approved for use in Michigan according to the September 2013 Edition of the Michigan Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices since they are "not applicable" under state law. [5]
In 2012, the City of Encinitas, California installed shared lane markings and Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs along Coast Highway 101 to "alert motorists that cyclists have the legal right to take the lane". [6]
The Bicycles May Use Full Lane Sign was adopted for use by the Florida Department of Transportation in January, 2011. By March 17, 2012 the signs were installed in at least three locations. [7]
In July 2012, 31 Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs were installed in Louisville, Kentucky. Dirk Gowin, an engineering project coordinator with the Louisville Metro Department of Public Works & Assets, points out that to accommodate a car and bicycle safely side-by-side within a lane, the lane would have to be "13 or 14 feet wide". The signs were installed on roads like River Road, with lanes from 11 to 12 feet in width. [8]
Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs were installed on William Clarke Drive in Westbrook in 2011, [9] and since then have been used in multiple places in Portland, including sections of Outer Congress Street and St. John Street.
Twenty Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs were installed by the City of Baltimore in 2012. [10]
After 600 cyclists objected to an initial decision to reject the sign[ citation needed ], in 2012, the Maryland State Highway Administration posted Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs along Maryland Route 953 in Glenn Dale, and announced plans to post more such signs in Montgomery and Prince George's counties. [11]
Bicyclists May Use Full Lane signs were first installed in Minnesota in 2011, including on a downhill section of Marshall Avenue in St. Paul "where the travel lane is less than 14′ wide". [12]
Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs were installed on Florissant Rd. in Ferguson, Missouri in 2012. [13] [ unreliable source ] [14]
Bicycles May Use Full Lane signs were installed in 2012 on multiple streets in Burlington, VT including North Ave., Riverside Ave., Pine St. and Shelburne Rd. [15]
A curb extension is a traffic calming measure which widens the sidewalk for a short distance. This reduces the crossing distance and allows pedestrians and drivers to see each other when parked vehicles would otherwise block visibility. The practice of banning car parking near intersections is referred to as daylighting the intersection.
Effective Cycling is a trademarked cycling educational program designed by John Forester, which was the national education program of the League of American Wheelmen for a number of years until Forester withdrew permission for them to use the name.
Bike lanes (US) or cycle lanes (UK) are types of bikeways (cycleways) with lanes on the roadway for cyclists only. In the United Kingdom, an on-road cycle-lane can be firmly restricted to cycles or advisory. In the United States, a designated bicycle lane or class II bikeway (Caltrans) is always marked by a solid white stripe on the pavement and is for 'preferential use' by bicyclists. There is also a class III bicycle route, which has roadside signs suggesting a route for cyclists, and urging sharing the road. A class IV separated bike way (Caltrans) is a bike lane that is physically separate from motor traffic and restricted to bicyclists only.
John Forester was an English-American industrial engineer, specializing in bicycle transportation engineering. A cycling activist, he was known as "the father of vehicular cycling", for creating the Effective Cycling program of bicycle training along with its associated book of the same title, and for coining the phrase "the vehicular cycling principle" – "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles". His published works also included Bicycle Transportation: A Handbook for Cycling Transportation Engineers.
Vehicular cycling is the practice of riding bicycles on roads in a manner that is in accordance with the principles for driving in traffic. The phrase vehicular cycling was coined by John Forester in the 1970s. In his book Effective Cycling, Forester contends that "Cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles".
Dooring is the act of opening a motor vehicle door into the path of another road user. Dooring can happen when a driver has parked or stopped to exit their vehicle, or when passengers egress from cars, taxis and rideshares into the path of a cyclist in an adjacent travel lane. The width of the door zone in which this can happen varies, depending upon the model of car one is passing. The zone can be almost zero for a vehicle with sliding or gull-wing doors or much larger for a truck. In many cities across the globe, doorings are among the most common and injurious bike-vehicle incidents. Any passing vehicle may also strike and damage a negligently opened or left open door, or injure or kill the exiting motorist or passenger.
A wide outside lane (WOL) or wide curb lane (WCL) is an outermost lane of a roadway that is wide enough to be safely shared side by side by a bicycle and a wider motor vehicle at the same time. The terms are used by cyclists and bicycle transportation planners in the United States. Generally, the minimum-width standard for a WOL in the US is 14 feet. A wide outside through lane (WOTL) is a WOL that is intended for use by through traffic.
Bicycle transportation planning and engineering are the disciplines related to transportation engineering and transportation planning concerning bicycles as a mode of transport and the concomitant study, design and implementation of cycling infrastructure. It includes the study and design of dedicated transport facilities for cyclists as well as mixed-mode environments and how both of these examples can be made to work safely. In jurisdictions such as the United States it is often practiced in conjunction with planning for pedestrians as a part of active transportation planning.
An advanced stop line (ASL), also called advanced stop box or bike box, is a type of road marking at signalised road junctions allowing certain types of vehicle a head start when the traffic signal changes from red to green. Advanced stop lines are implemented widely in Denmark, the United Kingdom, and other European countries.
Bicycle safety is the use of road traffic safety practices to reduce risk associated with cycling. Risk can be defined as the number of incidents occurring for a given amount of cycling. Some of this subject matter is hotly debated: for example, which types of cycling environment or cycling infrastructure is safest for cyclists. The merits of obeying the traffic laws and using bicycle lighting at night are less controversial. Wearing a bicycle helmet may reduce the chance of head injury in the event of a crash.
A bicycle boulevard, sometimes referred to as a neighborhood greenway, neighborway, neighborhood bikeway or neighborhood byway is a type of bikeway composed of a low-speed street which has been "optimized" for bicycle traffic. Bicycle boulevards discourage cut-through motor-vehicle traffic but may allow local motor-vehicle traffic at low speeds. They are designed to give priority to bicyclists as through-going traffic. They are intended as a low-cost, politically popular way to create a connected network of streets with good bicyclist comfort and/or safety.
California Bicycle Coalition, also known as CalBike, is an advocacy organization based in Sacramento that seeks to expand bicycling in the U.S. state of California. A related organization, the California Bicycle Coalition Education Fund, conducts solely charitable functions. The California Bicycle Coalition was founded in 1994.
A shared lane marking, shared-lane marking, or sharrow is a street marking installed by various jurisdictions worldwide in an attempt to make cycling safer.
Bicycle law in the United States is the law of the United States that regulates the use of bicycles. Although bicycle law is a relatively new specialty within the law, first appearing in the late 1980s, its roots date back to the 1880s and 1890s, when cyclists were using the courts to assert a legal right to use the roads. In 1895, George B. Clementson, an American attorney, wrote The Road Rights and Liabilities of Wheelmen, the first book on bicycle law, in which he discussed the seminal cases of the 1880s and 1890s, which were financed by Albert Pope of Columbia Bicycles, and through which cyclists gained the right to the road.
Cycling in New York City is associated with mixed cycling conditions that include dense urban proximities, relatively flat terrain, congested roadways with stop-and-go traffic, and streets with heavy pedestrian activity. The city's large cycling population includes utility cyclists, such as delivery and messenger services; cycling clubs for recreational cyclists; and increasingly commuters. Cycling is increasingly popular in New York City: in 2018 there were approximately 510,000 daily bike trips, compared with 170,000 daily bike trips in 2005.
Cycling in Illinois encompasses recreation, bikeways, laws and rules, and advocacy. The director of the Illinois Department of Natural Resources, Joel Brunsvold, explained Illinois cycling opportunities: “Bicycle riding is one of the most popular outdoor recreational activities in Illinois, enjoyed by young and old alike...Illinois has a variety of trails for the public to enjoy. The terrain includes flat prairie land to rolling hills, towering bluffs to the breathtaking river and lakefront views.” Many communities across the state are updating bicycle infrastructure in order to accommodate the increased number of cyclists on the roads.
Cycling infrastructure is all infrastructure cyclists are allowed to use. Bikeways include bike paths, bike lanes, cycle tracks, rail trails and, where permitted, sidewalks. Roads used by motorists are also cycling infrastructure, except where cyclists are barred such as many freeways/motorways. It includes amenities such as bike racks for parking, shelters, service centers and specialized traffic signs and signals. The more cycling infrastructure, the more people get about by bicycle.
The Idaho stop is the common name for laws that allow bicyclists to treat a stop sign as a yield sign, and a red light as a stop sign. It first became law in Idaho in 1982, but was not adopted elsewhere until Delaware adopted a limited stop-as-yield law, the "Delaware Yield", in 2017. Arkansas was the second US state to legalize both stop-as-yield and red-light-as-stop in April 2019. Studies in Delaware and Idaho have shown significant decreases in crashes at stop-controlled intersections. In France and Belgium, some intersections use red-light-as-yield signs.
There is debate over the safety implications of cycling infrastructure. Recent studies generally affirm that segregated cycle tracks have a better safety record between intersections than cycling on major roads in traffic. Furthermore, cycling infrastructure tends to lead to more people cycling. A higher modal share of people cycling is correlated with lower incidences of cyclist fatalities, leading to a "safety in numbers" effect though some contributors caution against this hypothesis. On the contrary, older studies tended to come to negative conclusions about mid-block cycle track safety.
Cycling is a popular mode of transport and recreational sport in the Philippines. Bicycles were first introduced to the archipelago in the 1880s during the Spanish colonial occupation of the Philippines and served as a common mode of transport, especially among the local mestizo population.
02 The Bicycles Allowed Use of Full Lane (R9-20) sign (see Figure 9B-1) may be used on roadways where no bicycle lanes or adjacent shoulders usable by bicycles are present and where travel lanes are too narrow for bicycles and motor vehicles to operate side-by-side. 03 The Bicycles Allowed Use of Full Lane sign may be used in locations where it is important to inform road users that bicyclists might occupy the travel lane.
The results of this study suggest that "Bicycles May Use Full Lane" signs do improve bicyclist and motorist safety along routes where commuter bicyclists are common users of the facility.
After the sign installation, the proportion of motorists who passed within 3 feet of a bicyclist decreased from 44% to 0%.
01 "The Bicycles May Use Full Lane (R4-11) sign may be used on roadways where no bicycle lanes or adjacent shoulders usable by bicyclists are present and where travel lanes are too narrow for bicyclists and motor vehicles to operate side by side. 02 The Bicycles May Use Full Lane sign may be used in locations where it is important to inform road users that bicyclists might occupy the travel lane."
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: CS1 maint: unfit URL (link)The addition of sharrows and signage along Coast Highway 101 would simply alert motorists that cyclists have the legal right to take the lane
The Maryland Department of Transportation (MDOT) has begun to install special signs, called R4-11 signs, around the state, which read: "NOTICE: BICYCLES MAY USE FULL LANE." Better yet, there are already twenty such signs installed in Baltimore City.
BMUFL = "Bicycles May Use Full Lane". Two signs with that message popped up recently on South and North Florissant Roads. If you haven't seen them yet they are right at the borders of Ferguson in either direction. The accompanying photo shows the sign at the south city limits along with a bicyclist (me!) using the full lane.