Hard to fit all that in the 66’ rights of way nearly all downtown streets have. Something has to give.
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Every design will have some compromises. This would be a case for city officials to visit the Netherlands and Denmark to speak with traffic experts and see how they manage to fit bike lanes in almost every street even though they have smaller right-of-ways.
City officials could start by reading this book:
http://www.modacitylife.com/building-the-cycling-city
Cheaper than a flight to Amsterdam and available at the NCSU design library. The Dutch had their struggles too. Their cycling culture hasn’t always been in place. They started the fight to have people take priority over cars back in the 60’s and 70’s. As a result they’re way ahead of us.
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Well, figuring things in the Netherlands were up and running pretty well after WW2 by the early 1950s, and that the pivot towards cycling started around the 1973 oil crisis, they had just over 20 years where the ideology of Automobile Supremacy had its heyday there. You can do a lot of damage in 20 years but the key is they stopped and started moving back the other way.
On the other hand in the US, things picked up more quickly immediately after WW2 in the late 40s (it took Europe a few years to rebuild infrastructure destroyed during the war, that we did not have to contend with). Automobile Supremacy is still going strong today, closing in on 75 years later, so not only are we 50 years late to the party, but we have done a lot more damage in those 50 years that will make it even harder to undo, and with every arterial widening and distant subdivision we continue to drift further in the wrong direction. Sigh.
Having never been to Amsterdam I can’t say for sure, but I was always under the impression that their streets with protected cycle tracks (as opposed to just striped bike lanes) are mostly the ones that are at least somewhat wider than the streets of downtown Raleigh. Take this one - Looks great but it’s 75-80 feet wide. Where do you lose the 9-14’? Can’t narrow the travel lanes or parking. You could maybe cut back the sidewalk by a couple feet next to the building, but on the canal side it already seems pretty minimal. Dropping the parking in one direction would do it, and I would fully support that, but even then, the sidewalks might be narrow for some. Lose parking in both directions? Again I would support that, but would local businesses and city council? The point is, in downtown Raleigh, our streets are narrow enough that you can’t have it all. Gotta make trade offs.
Now, Raleigh DOES have streets where this configuration would work. Hillsborough Street is about 75’ wide from NCSU to Morgan, for example. Oberlin Road in Cameron Village is another one. But you’d have to ditch the center turn lane or parking in one direction, and move the curbs including cutting many mature street trees. Sigh again.
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All good points. Don’t have time for a considered response but a key takeaway from the book I linked is that every dutch city is different and their approaches to cycling infrastructure are different.
Poke around Rotterdam (bombed to the ground) vs. Utrecht (old city) on Google maps for an interesting comparison.
Agree on the need for trade offs.
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Thanks for the pointer about different cities.
Here is a street that is about 65’ wide in Utrecht with protected cycle tracks, adequate but not extravagant sidewalks, bus stops, and parking on both sides of the street.
In Raleigh we could probably surrender some of the bike parking to make more room for street trees. Also would have to give something up to make room for sidewalk dining wherever that is a relevant consideration. Other than that, it clearly fits, so let’s make it happen!
Honestly I don’t read too many books but maybe I will have to check that one out.
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Measuring on google maps yields the following:
6’ sidewalk
6’ cycletrack
3’ buffer
6.5’ parking
11’ travel lane
(Centerline)
11’ travel lane
6.5’ parking
3’ buffer
6’ cycletrack
6’ sidewalk
= 65 feet.
6’ sidewalks seem a little less than ideal. At that width, two can walk side by side comfortably but passing traffic has to be single file. However, really if it comes down to it, pedestrians could easily step onto the cycle track to pass each other, so maybe it is not as bad as it seems.
Furthermore, this configuration could add a 10’ center turn lane for 75’ streets like Oberlin and Hillsborough.
I’m headed out there tonight with a pickaxe, a shovel, a few bags of Quikrete, and a bucket of paint to get a start on all this, if anyone wants to join me. 
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If you make a cycle track, instead of separate lanes on each side, they can share a buffer and the sidewalks can get wider. I’d rather not steal from sidewalks to make things absolutely ideal for cyclists. For me, it’s not the right trade off. IMO, we have way more potential for our city when we make our environment ideal for pedestrians.
FWIW, “minimum” bike lane widths are 5ft. I’ve actually ridden smaller ones without issue.
In any case, it could go like this:
8’ sidewalk
10’ cycletrack (2 ways)
3’ buffer
7’ parking lane
11’ travel lane (I’d really like to push for 10’ in places where we want to calm traffic speeds but I’ll settle for 10’-6" if we could get it)
(Centerline)
11’ travel lane
7’ parking lane
8’ sidewalk.
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I have walked and ridden a bike on streets configured like this in Berlin. It works great where there isn’t HEAVY pedestian traffic. There is plenty of walking space for people to pass comfortably and where there are occasionally groupings of people, they easily use the bike lane temporarily to pass.
However, the culture there has developed so everyone knows to respect the bike lane as people are moving quickly and expect the right of way when in the bike lane. Pedestrians in the bike lane get the anger of cyclist in the form of bell ringing and occasionally shouts to look out for the bike coming through. It only happens to you once or twice before you understand that you need to check for bike traffic before stepping into the bike lane. It works just fine.
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I actually think a 6’ sidewalk next to a 6’ cycletrack (that pedestrians can walk on when needed) may be better, or at least not worse than, an 8’ sidewalk next to parking.
I could maybe see narrowing the cycletrack to 5’ to make the sidewalk 7’ instead.
I also don’t think 10’ travel lanes next to rather narrow 7’ parking spaces would be a good idea. The street view images makes it feel like a snug enough environment for cars, plenty to cause them to slow down- also given the inevitable less-than-perfect parallel parking that will take place and the wider US spec trucks using the loading zones, I wouldn’t really want to tighten it up any more than that.
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In this case I would also tend to just trust the best practices deployed abroad rather than try to invent something new. Figure if this is how they do it over there then it must work (not just for cyclists, but for all users.) I’ve traveled all over the Netherlands (well, no, I’ve never been, but I’ve browsed for a few hours on google street view! That’s practically the same thing, right?) and I have never seen a two way cycle track along a narrow street. They seem to mostly use them on much wider streets and in suburban areas.
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Then we can solve the problem by getting rid of parking on one side of the street, but make the opposite side parking wider. We could then take a few feet and put a median down the middle of streets that we really want to calm traffic speeds. Why must we always accommodate street parking as a given? In growing urban environments, more an more of the businesses’ customers are going to be approaching by foot or bike because they are in the neighborhood.
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Totally in favor of dropping street parking in one direction, or both for that matter, in absolutely every place that it is remotely politically tenable. 
Street parking is a waste of space, full stop. Use the parking decks.
HOWEVER. In reality there are likely places where dropping even one side of street parking is an unwinnable fight. That 65’ cross section from Utrecht shows that there is a way to have it all, something I did not think was possible before. In those cases I would be in favor of copying that layout verbatim.
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I don’t think we have it all when it’s the pedestrians that sacrifice the most. 6 feet is not wide enough for a busy urban sidewalk.
Well, I do think a 7’ sidewalk with a 5’ cycle track may make more sense. And as @djberryann said, I don’t think it’s going to operate like a 7’ sidewalk at all. It’s not 7’ immediately next to a non stop flow of 35mph cars: there is 15’ from edge of curb to edge of ROW. Bike traffic is going to be intermittent.
My main experience with this sort of thing is in Japan, where people on bikes just ring their bells and people on foot just step out of the cycle tracks when they can. No drama, no anger.
In areas that get really busy with pedestrians like Glenwood, around Moore Square, Fayetteville Street, near the Museums, or on Hillsborough Street across from the university, maybe just don’t have cycle tracks. Post signs that say “walk bikes and scooters”.
Too many couples obliviously walk hand in hand while ignoring everything around them, “forcing” people off the sidewalk. I’m sorry but going into the bike lane to pass people on a narrow sidewalk is not a solution. The other issue that needs to be considered is how many things end up in the sidewalk. First of all, we all want shade, that means a tree planting every now and then (and I’m all for it). Then you have street sign poles, mailboxes, trash cans (I’m for these as well), street lamp & traffic signal poles, bike racks, business sandwich signs, etc. Then you have the people pushing double-wide strollers. These are all real things that happen on sidewalks.
8 feet has to be the bare minimum where any sort of commercial activity is present.
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There are vehicles who cannot enter a parking deck. Where do these vehicles park/load/unload? Block the travel lane?
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I do respect that you are raising valid concerns, but I’m honestly inclined to say that if it works in the Netherlands it is good enough for me and that we had ought to at least try it. I have not heard many criticisms that NL is a pedestrian hellhole because they overprioritize bikes over pedestrians.
As a person who has ridden bikes, walked holding hands (with significant others and with children), pushed double strollers, etc, drawing a line in the sand over an 8’ sidewalk vs 7’, when the tradeoff is having to downgrade to a two way cycletrack which is pretty solidly inferior, seems like not a good trade to me? I stood in my living room and arranged some furniture to simulate a 7’ sidewalk and an 8’ sidewalk and found that although you can perceive a difference, they both feel pretty comfortable compared to the standard 5’ suburban sidewalk.
In the Dutch example above, bike parking, street trees, and other street furniture all take the place of vehicular parking spaces and impede neither the cycle track nor the sidewalk. This is a configuration I have seen in th US, notably in Asheville which is known for it’s rather narrow (by NC standards) streets. It works quite well there.
As for the sandwich signs, I’m not quite sure how to solve that one. I’m not that great a fan of putting them on the public sidewalk even if the sidewalk is 20’ wide. As for sidewalk dining: on public sidewalks, this should maybe be in specific districts, and in those districts just skip the bike facilities altogether unless the streets are wider than the standard 66’. In new construction, often developers will set their buildings back 5’ to 10’ from the ROW to make a wider sidewalk, and since that is private property I have no problem with signs or tables or whatever going in that space.
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There’s a section in the book I linked above that features the work of Janette Sadik-Khan in NYC.
Sadik-Khan talks about her success and becoming known for lighter, quicker, cheaper projects. She notes: 'I think we were able to push back against the cynicism and challenges by moving quickly and showing New Yorkers something they could touch and feel instead of just arguing about it, and that these projects were a good idea. . . . [the pilot projects] gave us something to measure, and that went a long way to convince some of our biggest skeptics that the program was working, turning them into our biggest supporters."
We need to do more and quicker pilots in Raleigh and have the ability to collect data on their impacts.
@orulz - add Janette’s book “Street Fight” to your list of catch up reading. “Real-life experience confirmed that if you know how to read the street, you can make it function better by not totally reconstructing it but by reallocating the space that’s already there.”
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Video of cars/bikes intersection in Utrecht.