Left Out

Whilst delivering on Girard Avenue today, I noticed some more shiny new paint on the road:

No, this is not instructing you to flip your bike.

This is a two-stage turn queue box. If you don't know what that is, check this out. Now that you know all about two-stage turn queue boxes, let's move on...

This seemed very curious to me, because Girard Avenue doesn't have a bike lane. This box looks very out of place at the normally busy intersection of 2nd St, American St and Girard Avenue:

Try fitting a Wash Cycle trailer in that green box. Not gonna happen.

There's a good reason Girard has no bike lane, as I've written several times before: It's. A. Dangerous. Street. It's ill-suited for bikes. Unfortunately three of my clients exist on Girard and another requires me to use it to get to them, otherwise I would avoid it like the plague.

So why, all of a sudden, did the city decide to paint one of these on Girard Avenue? I think I found the answer just a couple blocks down the road:

Let us never speak of the shortcut again. I really need to stop with all these Simpsons references.

I'm not sure if this is accurate, but this is my best guess: BicyclePA Route E, which regularly turns left at Lehigh Avenue heading South, has been detoured, and they decided to put in a bike box in an attempt to make things safer. There's been a lot of construction along Delaware Avenue/Columbus Boulevard recently, so my guess is that's the reason for the detour.

Really? This is the best they could do? Looks like I'll be waiting to cross the East Coast Greenway off my "to-do" list...