From June 26 in Minsk on the street. In Khoruzhei, bicycle lane markings appeared. A few hours later, news portals published the results of their test drives. The Minsk Cycling Society, which takes part in the development of the reconstruction project, has collected answers to the 5 most popular questions about the innovation.
When the reconstruction of the street is completed, we, together with the traffic police of Minsk, will hold a press opening of the cycle lane, invite everyone to a bike ride and tell all road users how to use the street.
Is it already possible to ride a bike there?
The cycle lane is not completely ready yet. Construction work continues on the site, where special care is required from all traffic areas, color markings have not been applied. Presumably, all work will be completed in early July - the weather makes its own adjustments. Therefore, for now, we would recommend postponing the trip.
How safe is it at all?
For additional protection of cyclists, the speed of cars was limited to 50 km / h. The bike lanes are highlighted in bright color. This is the most widespread and economical option for building infrastructure, which is used all over the world.
We would like to note that, despite the ban on movement on the carriageway, in Minsk quite a lot of cyclists ride there. And accidents with them happen extremely rarely. Most often, accidents occur at pedestrian crossings, due to the fact that the bike and the car move perpendicular to each other. As practice shows, parallel movement, provided that the speed of cars is low, is quite safe.
What should car drivers do now?
In fact, nothing has changed for motorists. Stopping and parking along this section of st. Horuzhei was banned before! Therefore, there is only one advice - to comply with the Traffic Rules. There are many parking lots and paid parking lots within walking distance, and the courtyards of shopping centers are specially designed for unloading goods.
You cannot stop on the cycle lane even “for a minute”. The same rule is strictly observed, for example, on Nezavisimosti Avenue - and it never even occurs to anyone to be indignant about this.
What's the point in such a short section?
This site was chosen for the pilot project, because a large number of problems are concentrated here: a dense flow of pedestrians on the sidewalk, the presence of underground crossings, a pocket for minibuses, and spontaneous parking of cars. In the future, the project can be used as a standard solution for the conversion of many streets in Minsk and other cities of Belarus for cycling.
The cycle lane does not continue along the carriageway after the intersection with st. Kuibyshev due to the fact that further the traffic intensity of cars is much higher. At the same time, there are much fewer pedestrians on the sidewalk than near the Komarovsky market.
What is the correct way to navigate the cycle lane?
In the coming days, we will be releasing a text and video instruction that will tell you in detail how to behave on the bike lane. The general rules are extremely simple: drive along the lanes in the direction of the movement of cars, be careful, be guided by bicycle traffic lights, the markings themselves will lead you along the desired route. Parked cars can be bypassed in the adjacent lane, but this must be done with extreme caution.
Expert work on the development of the project was carried out with the financial support of the European Union within the framework of the project “Urban Cycling in Belarus”.
