Hacker News Reader

Comment by dandr01d | Hacker News Reader

Traffic has gotten so much worse since I first came here in 2011. The good news is that Seattle is small enough that you can walk to most places just fine, and the bus and light rail systems are fantastic.

View on HN

As a motorcyclist, whenever I was in SEA on my motorcycle I was always dismayed that lane splitting / filtering is not legal in the state. Motorcycling is still the fastest way (for me) around SF and the Bay Area, and the lane splitting in dead stopped traffic is a large reason why I started riding in the first place.

California is the only state in the US where that is legal. I'm guessing serious traffic problems are the reason why.

Chicken-and-egg: no other state allows lane splitting out of concern the citizens wouldn't know how to drive amongst such motorcyclists.

Also, motorcycles aren't exactly a large block of votes. And, many lane splitting bills include helmet provisions which are a non-starter for some riders.

Source: watched as attempts failed multiple times in Texas.

I read somewhere that California has a tradition of lane splitting due to the fact that it was an early adopter of multiple controlled access freeways that would be often have traffic jams for miles. Most early motorcycles would overheat if not moving, so motorcyclists had a high incentive to drive between stopped cars in a traffic jam. This tradition continues to the present day, even though legality of lane splitting is still not defined in California. The American tradition of that which is not prohibited is allowed, still applies in this case.

Actually lane splitting has been legislated in the past year and is definitely legal when not >15mph faster than nearby cars.

What I read is that what "lane splitting" is was legally defined in 2016 but the action was not officially sanctioned or made illegal. Illegal lane splitting is covered under reckless driving. You can see some of the CHP recommended guidelines here[1]. If you have a reference for the lane-splitting legislation, I'd appreciate it as a California rider myself.

[1]http://lanesplittingislegal.com/assets/docs/CHP-lane-splitti...

This is actually still a problem with some air-cooled bikes, and a lot of even the common beginner bikes made up into the 00s are air-cooled. The bike overheating aside, when you're sitting stopped on 101 near Mineta airport on a gasoline-powered heater, you will overheat too.

It's been getting progressively worse, but they recently added HOV lanes both ways on I-90 between Seattle and Bellevue and that has decreased commuter congestion fairly markedly for pretty much everyone who lives in Seattle and work on the Eastside. The HOV lane additions eliminated a few merges so it's now better for everyone. Once the train is running in place of the recently-bygone reversible express lanes life will be even better.

+1 for the bus/rail systems. They also recently upgraded the bike lanes downtown and added some fancy bike lanes in several neighborhoods. I'm hoping over the next few years they expand the light rail through the other neighborhoods.

You can walk to most places if you have chosen hyper-inflationary, expensive, gentrified housing in the city.

Which is utterly astounding to me. The traffic was beyond atrocious when I left in 2002. The Bay Area was a significant upgrade in terms of traffic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com