A fundamental issue facing those who wish to get around with a car is that most of our transportation infrastructure has been dedicated to vehicles. How can we share the road better, especially in low density rural areas such as ours where we do not have the tax resources to build dedicated routes for each transport mode ? One idea worthy of consideration is Advisory Traffic Lanes … in summary, rather than dedicate two opposing traffic lanes for cars (i.e. 100% of the pavement width give cars priority), the vehicles are directed to use the center portion, with each remaining “half” lane on either side now labeled for primary use by pedestrians, cyclists etc. When two vehicles meet head on, they move to the right to pass (after ensuring the road edge is clear), then continue after in the middle of the road as before.
Of course this approach won’t work well where traffic densities are too high but in quieter areas it would be a more efficient use of the existing road. Vehicles are heavy and cause more road wear, keeping them in the middle most of the time will reduce the damage to the pavement and dedicated sidewalks and/or bike paths need not be built.
A quick internet search finds a few places where this has been applied (e.g. Gibsons, B.C.) with design details documented and it is the effective default in many areas throughout the world (though usually completely unmarked roads). We could think of it as extending our one lane bridge concept perhaps. Depending on the available road width, it is possible for one direction of traffic to have priority such as in the Gibsons example but this isn’t strictly necessary. Both cars would pull to the right and travel behind any cyclists until clear to pass again.