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FDOT is instituting a major policy shift this year and going on a diet. Roads will have narrower lanes and allow for a new default of 7 foot-wide bike lanes with a 2 foot buffer, within urban areas.

The new standard lane width will now be 11 feet.

Previous bike lanes were 5 feet in width plus a 2 foot-wide buffer. When next to on-street parking, a 3 foot-wide buffer will be provided in the “door zone” of the parked car, and the bike lane restricted to 4 feet.

Below is a graphic of the new buffered bike lane standard.

At the time of this post, this standard is only applicable to new construction.

Graphic courtesy of walkablewpb.com
Graphic courtesy of walkablewpb.com

Brendan O'Connor

Editor in Chief of Bungalower.com

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  1. Good stuff! Current bike lanes are better than nothing, but I’m still nervous biking in them.
    Now we need to get drivers used to seeing and driving when around cyclists 🙂

  2. This is a significant step forward. Next we can get this for reconstruction for older roads and also get a road diet standard to put the bicycle lane to the right, with the cars having some buffer so they can get in and out without dooring cyclist on the right and drivers can get out without other cars taking off doors or hitting people.  I met a younger FDOT civil engineer on a bike ride in Volusia county who says FDOT is going through a sea change in philosophy and I am sure younger engineers like him are driving it. When FDOT moves in the right direction go to their website and pour on the complements since a positive public response really helps the urbam multimodal and complete street cause!

  3. That’s great. Bike lanes provide an easy way to access neighborhoods throughout a city.