Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists
bicycletimesmag.com
bicycletimesmag.com
That is to say: anyone can do the same, anywhere. So get on with it.. :)
I love Holland and I love biking but you guys have it easy compared to, say, Seattle where I live part-time. The hills make it a very different problem. I bike a lot but will still drive/uber when I can't deal with being crazy sweaty for a meeting or something.
I was very disappointed when they decided NOT to install electric bikes in the bike share system here. Electric bikes are the only way you'll get the ridership numbers needed in a place with the topography of Seattle. I also suspect it rains more in Seattle than Holland.
https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem... https://weather-and-climate.com/average-monthly-Rainfall-Tem...
This is a cultural and legacy infrastructure problem mostly.
Aarhus: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Aarhus,+Denmark/@56.1613594...
Seattle: https://www.google.de/maps/place/Seattle,+WA,+USA/@47.607081...
That said,
* Electric bikes are making this less important over time
* A lot of trips can still be done without hitting severe hills
* It's possible to deal with hills by installing bike escalators (there's one in Trondheim that seems to work well) if you're really serious
They have been engineered to accommodate cars, so now they're undergoing a renovation for bikes.
Good! Renovate them to accommodate bikes. That's great, do more of that. But "sharing the road" is a terrible solution, which leads to the honks and dangerous situations the OP described. Neither the biker nor the drivers in the OP's post are in the wrong. It's just a really terrible situation that really should not happen.
If they do share that traffic lane, bad things will happen. Humans will make bad decisions, because humans are dumb and fallible. My point is that situation should not occur in the first place. It's engineered to fail, and sure enough, it does.
In the OP's situation, the drivers that exhibit aggressive and dangerous behavior are clearly in the wrong. You could argue that their frustration is understandable, but their behavior is certainly wrong.
Share the road works fine as a solution without dramatically overhauling current infrastructure. Just don't be a mean driver.
[Lots of places beg to differ](https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/dutch-kids-have-different-r...).
You can't bully people into being good, but there are lots of nudges like education and more thoughtful design that can move culture to work better.
It works fine if people adjust their expectations. Cyclists in the way rarely cause real stretches of backed up traffic. Your average speed might go down slightly, big whoop.
Source: Bikes daily in Boston, Cambridge and Somerville on a bike share bike. Passes cars the entire way.
Shared space doesn't mean "shared with other auto drivers only."
For roads where there is street parking you simply dedicate that for bike lanes and force car owners to use the more expensive parking houses. This influence the commercial flow a bit unless the space between parking houses is minimal in commercial districts.
In proportion to bike ownership you also need to remake roads which are too narrow and make them dedicated bike lanes. The proportionality clause here is really important to balance the interest of both groups if we want to view roads as incompatible to be used by both.
Of course if cyclists can rely on cars to pass them carefully, they can move all the way to the side to let the car pass. But that doesn't work with aggressive car drivers.
In a perfect for me world the CBD would have zero cars and everyone would be on bikes, foot or mobility devices after they parked on the CBD fringe carparks or caught public transport in.
That will never happen.
So the next best step for me is dedicated bike lanes separated with enough room for everyone.
More likely, but not everywhere is getting this right or has enough space.
So what we have to work with until something better arives is what we have now. Cyclists don't want this any more than you do but this is what we have and we would just appreciate some understanding. I try to get out of the way as soon as it is safe and I make sure I am at least trying to keep pace. I have never had cars behind me for more than 30 seconds and I honestly don't think that's much to ask for my safety and ability to get to work. If I were in a car you would be stuck behind me the whole way and then I would take your parking spot.
The thing, I want to commute to work today. Do I just stay home and yell at politicians until a lane is built? Or do I legally use the existing roadways?
And once there is the precedent that cyclists ride only in dedicated bike lanes, then you've limited the area that cyclists can ride to dense, affluent areas that have the demand and money for dedicated bike lanes.
If a road is wide enough to drive speeds that are dangerous to cyclists it's wide enough to put a cycle lane. Cycle lanes aren't nearly as wide as people think, and car lanes aren't nearly as narrow as people think.
Nobody would accept having only 'painted walk lanes' on busy streets to get around, much less having them appear and disappear from the road seemingly at random, and yet that's the default state of bike lanes in nearly all US cities.
If biking had as much infrastructure as even walking -- meaning, physically protected lanes on most streets -- Americans would bike in enormous numbers.
Though honestly, nearly every street in the city should have at least a painted bike lane.
There are also streets where biking isn't allowed. These are mostly major car arteries. It is imperative to realize there are places where cyclists don't belong. Just like it is imperative to realize that in most places in the city, cyclists do belong.
> Here in the netherlands, cyclist paradise, we don't even have a painted bike lane on nearly every street.
With narrow streets and low speeds, cyclists and cars can effectively mix. It's just that in the US, politically that's an even harder sell than protected bike lanes, most of the time.
Cycling on highways is a total no-go here. I've never heard of it happening, and I'd expect the police to be called whenever someone sees it.
You're right on the narrow streets and low speeds. That is a much bigger cultural / civil-engineering thing. It makes me wonder how cycling infrastructure is done in Rotterdam. It's city centre needed to be completely rebuild after WW2. The result is regarded by some as ugly or 'american'. Perhaps this has affected cycling, or perhaps that was taken into account in the rebuild.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVXhg8zvkI&ab_channel=Stree...
The city benefited greatly from some disused rail right-of-ways and turned them into completely separated bike highways. Many of the on-street bikeways that have been set up use plastic divider posts to signal to drivers separation. It's much cheaper than building grade-seperated lanes, but gives a real sense of protection to the bikers.
Which just strengthens my point: even quite modest efforts can result in big biking gains. And that's in Minneapolis, who nobody is going to accuse of having great weather for biking.
[0] - http://usa.streetsblog.org/2017/03/08/street-by-street-dc-bu...
I occasionally see people walking to the hospital here, in the lane on a 25 MPH street.
My point is really to just illustrate a mentality difference. If cyclists clamor for a handful of protected bike lanes, they get accused of wanting 'special treatment'. And yet, what they ask for is at least an order of magnitude less than what everyone takes for granted about walking, let alone the resources we allocate to cars.
It's on a narrow bridge quite dangerous for cyclists as cars tend to cut the turn to the left. After years of asking somebody decided to help themselves.
> i milanesi hanno percorso in media 18,6 miglia
> in bici per andare al lavoro...
> velocità media a Milano 14,8 miglia all’ora
Or is this per week? Is it current to talk in "miglia" in modern Italian? (though even km would be high IMHO).
I wouldn't be at all surprised if the average American bike commuter averages 15 mph. But I'd also expect the average American bike commuter to be much faster than the average Milanese bike commuter because in the USA most bike commuters are dedicated enthusiasts.
18.7 miles per day seems like a really high average, but is entirely believable. I used to do something close to that, and our summers were also hot.
I live inside the city and I never mount my bike computer when moving around in there. The normal cyclists that use a bicycle to go shopping probably don't do more than 12 km/h, twice as much as a fast pedestrian. Obviously they don't record their journeys.
So, still skewed data but with an explanation.
14.8 miles per hour is 23,68. I usually do 20 when I move in the city because I don't want to sweat and I don't see many bikers going faster than me. Maybe that's because only fast bikers use Strava and it skews distances and speeds.
As a cyclist, I'm all for making cycling safer, but breaking road laws to achieve that goal is not the right way. That's a one-way street, clearly marked as not a sidewalk and definitely not a bike lane against the one-way street direction. Guerilla bike lane or not, imho it's a stupid and dangerous idea to walk or cycle there, especially in that direction.
For "no pedestrians", we have what to my eyes much more sensible: the same sign as the Italian one but with a strike through it [1]
[0]http://st2.depositphotos.com/7458252/11066/i/950/depositphot...
[1]http://www.gettyimages.es/detail/foto/no-pedestrians-in-irel...
You are right, because the signs are, roughly in this position:
1) One way road. 2) Pedestrian crossing, the one the kid is standing on.
3) No pedestrians allowed.
So yes, bikes shouldn't go down that bike lane. If it were an official one they would have changed the road signs to allow it. However I know that's a slow road, so combined with the white line it's probably safe at least during the day. In the night not so much, by direct experience, but bikes were going down there in the forbidden direction anyway.
However the argument against cycle tracks focuses on resident car parking and becomes extremely political. So a key part of developing a good end to end cycle network, given that a network is only as good as its weakest link, is parking control. This is where paint fails and you create these bitty networks where drivers feel happy to park their cars in the cycle lanes, because they can.
A more interesting approach is to look at road capacity. A typical road consists of:
footpath|parking|lane|lane|parking|footpath = 19,000 pedestrians + 2000 drivers per hour => 21,000 people.
Converting this to: footpath|cycle track|lane|lane|cycle track|footpath = additional 14,000 cyclists per hour = 35,000 people
Providing a 67% increase in road capacity while protecting pedestrians, reducing congestion, and making a population healthier is a big win for any urban environment. Politcally this is finally becoming easier, but it is a fundemental recognition that our roads are not there to store private property.
More interstingly is that many cities are focusing on routes to centres of employment. The focus needs to be more on connecting schools to communities. An immense amount of congestion is caused by parents dropping their fat little kids off at school.
Analysis I did on UK Census 2011 data looking at range traveled across 112 towns and cities in England and Wales indicate 6 million residents drive to work in the city/town they live in. 1 million live within a 20 minute (2km) walk of work 3.5 million live within a 20 minute cycle ride of work.
Looking at Bath,UK that's about 20,000 local car journeys in a city that is 3miles in diameter. Add in the 5,000 kids being dropped off at school and you end up with 40,000 local car journeys.
BUT unless people feel there is a safe alternative choice this is not going to change and for some reason the UK seems fixated on strategic networks and hub centric public transport systems. Not actually fixing local journeys.
The arguments for segregated cycle tracks (physical
barriers) rather than cycle lanes (paint) can be answered
by one question: "Would you let your child cycle here?"
| C |
----------------------------------| a |--------
Cycles ◅ | r | ▷
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divider | |
----------------------------------- Δ ---------
Cars
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This leads to a demographic split in cyclist behaviour. For children and cyclists who aren't in a hurry, the segregated path is more friendly - but for 'serious' cyclists and people in a hurry, staying on the road makes more sense. Especially if there's a high density of T junctions, which isn't unusual in some urban areas.
Fortunately, in my country there aren't any laws that force cyclists into bike lanes, so it generally isn't a problem. But any urban planner who wants 100% of cyclists segregated from traffic is going to have a difficult time on their hands :)
That is a very car-centric design. In the Netherlands these kind of junctions within city limits tend to give the bicycle path the right of way. Bicycle lanes are also mandatory when they are provided; this makes everything a lot safer for all parties concerned.
Of course if you just ignore that you don't have the right of way and just go people will slam on their brakes for you because that's the least costly option for dealing with the situation.
It's like taking a left turn across traffic. Some people may stop and let you go if they deem it appropriate but the burden is on the you to turn when it is clear to do so, not on them to stop.
Such a principle, stripped of all disguise, is surely the mere primitive doctrine that might is right. Surely, we can do better.
| C |
-----------------------------------Δ Δ Δ----
Cycles r
----------------------------------- s ---------
divider | |
-----------------------------------Δ Δ Δ---------
Cars
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In short: The issue in the US anyway I think has a lot more to do with culture than with road safety and structure. If people gave a shit we'd make it work, but few here do (at least around where I live, northern midwest.)
In my experience, separate bike lanes are great for long stretches of road without intersections. Also quite safe on intersections with traffic lights if the bikes have their own dedicated time slot. (That's not always the case)
But when bikes going straight are encouraged to pass right turning vehicles on the right, it becomes a serious risk.
It's not hostility very often, it's just not paying enough attention to things that aren't cars.
That does not mean design a two tier infrastructure, that is kids using shared pavements and real men riding with HGVs. Take a universal approach that enables all ages and all abilities to cycle safely.
"Really, you have to take that nice, scenic, ten minutes detour because I would not let my child ride the direct route. If you're in a hurry, take a car". This is not how you make people switch to bikes, this is how you teach them that bikes are merely toys for a nice Sunday afternoon ride.
I'm fine with designing for humans, but not all infrastructure has to be child proof, as the interstate network clearly shows. We have the technology to create motor vehicle infrastructure ready for unattended children (bumper car floors, yay!), but for various reasons we chose to take very different tradeoffs.
Two tier infrastructure can by the way also mean that children up to a certain age legally share the sidewalk, which is a much better place than sharing even the most segregated bike lanes with texting pedelec pilots.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692316...
(above is out of date, more recent work under review: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sdna/european-transport-conference-... )
So far I have shied away from simulating on-road cycle lanes, e.g. where motor vehicles and bikes are separated by a line of paint.
Firstly because the quality is so variable - hilarious examples about on the internet, and many cyclists would argue that a bad cycle lane is worse than none at all as it creates an expectation they should be riding in it rather than sharing the road.
Secondly because data on what's there - width, quality, obstructions - is so thin on the ground. (any time anyone wants to use deep learning to harvest this from streetview please go right ahead!)
Where am I going with all this? It's heartening to see a case where lines painted on the road actually made a tangible difference. I wonder how much came down to the temporary nature though - like some kind of campaign - as cultural effects are known to have a huge impact on cycling as well.
Some of them are grade separated from the main road by a inch high curb. Just high enough to catch a wheel and cause a wreck.
Most of them just collect road debris like the shoulders.
Some of them are de-facto parking lanes.
Some of them are confusing enough that it's seriously unclear what the lane actually means. (I say this as someone who had to go through the whole driver licensing scheme here after 20 yrs driving in the US, so I've seen all the rules from the POV of an experienced driver.)
For example: https://www.google.com/maps/@53.6089878,-6.1934201,90m/data=...
What the hell are those cycle turn boxes in the middle of the car lanes? They have a solid border, so they're 'mandatory'. They're unavoidable by cars. And if you're in one, you better have right of way already, because squishy. (and fwiw, the one other cyclist I saw at that junction was using the crosswalk).
And then there's the cycle lanes near Greystone where they exist for one block, then there's something that looks like a crosswalk for bikes, and they dissappear for a block, then they reappear again.
At some point, you just have to assume that some one with a can of paint is taking the piss and you just ride in a straight line like any other vehicle.
At least where I live, I can bike in my own neighborhood but to get from my neighborhood to the commercial districts where the actual jobs are I need to essentially go on a highway and share the road with 40 MPH cars.
When neighborhoods are spread out it makes biking hard. Where I am at least, neighborhoods tend to be connected to main (high speed) roads like Christmas lights. Thing is they aren't even far away... work to my house is 5 miles. An easy bike ride. Except part of that ride is a highway that I'd need a death wish to bike on and there are no back roads.
What metro area are you in? It seems odd that there are no surface streets at all between two points just a few miles away.
I think the word highway might have some regional nuance. Around here there are often open highways (highways with stop lights and connected side roads) and bikes are allowed to go on them. Although I wouldn't feel safe doing it. Bikes are not allowed on the kind of highway you are thinking of here either.
The speed limit on those roads tends to be 35 or 40 MPH. Not 65 like it would be on a large highway.
Edit: Here's an example from Nashua, NH (for privacy I found a place similar to where I live but not actually where I live).
Notice how the residential on the left is completely separated from the commercial on the right by "Daniel Webster Highway"... one could easily bike on that road if there were bike lanes but it is an extremely busy road and there is no safe way for a bike to take a left hand turn to get to the other side.
https://www.google.com/maps/place/Daniel+Webster+Hwy,+Nashua...
What I've noticed too is you get increasing returns the more you build. Given a scenario where a chosen route is covered 50% by acceptable infrastructure, it makes you think if it's worth taking a bike. Improve some strategic junctions and roads, and the coverage of acceptable infrastructure may increase to 90%, at which point it's a no brainer taking the bike.
But, simply put, they are barely used.
A few things are different in Lisbon from a lot of Northern Europe cities: it's very hilly and windy, it has temperatures close to 40 degrees in the summer (we have AC throughout the tube network) and in the winter, when it rains it really pours (not that drizzle that you get in London for example).
I may be too early to call it, but not all cities are alike and many people here are very skeptic about whether general adoption will ever be reached.
One thing I really like about the Oslo system is how startup-like it is, unlike a lot of other systems which feel arcane.
The apps are flawless (there's no card), the design profile is fantastic [1], the bikes are good and light and they do a good job of communication [2].
[1] http://www.underconsideration.com/brandnew/archives/new_logo...
[2] https://www.facebook.com/bysykkeloslo/videos/144834624185549...
I don't see why city biking would be any different than other biking.
I envision a high-tech track that uses redox batteries around its foundations, replaceable solar panels around the sides, is very brightly-lit, uses every 10 meters PTZ lenses on fiber optics leading back to a centralized, multiplexed bank of 2K and 4K video cameras backed by a deep-learning vision system, and easily-accessible emergency boxes every 20 meters to put female customers at ease. Emergency boxes vend bike repair kits (tire, chain, hex wrench, etc.), vend first aid kits, have an omnidirectional microphone listening for calls for aid, and of course a Big Red Button. Water is captured, filtered and stored for a cleaning robot to use later to maintain the track, solar panels, and awnings. Clear awnings automatically come out of housings, then raise and lower to shield from excessively-hot sun and inclement weather. Cleaning robot runs along a high-speed rail hanging on outside of track, multi-purposed to perform simpler replacement-style maintenance duties (replace vending supplies, replace awning, etc.).
If you can obtain the right-of-way for an elevated path, then what would you design for it that makes it pay off at least a little above break-even?
Generally, I take this as a sign that in the US, unless you deliberately attract a demographic to a specific concentrated area that consciously chooses biking as a major transportation mode, namely, a master-planned community/town built around biking and public transit, cyclists are SOL to comprehensively expand biking for the foreseeable future in most US metro areas outside of "bike ghettos" where there is a strong cycling culture. I'd love to see as much biking for normal daily activities as we saw in mainland China before they opened up to the West, but in the US in many areas it is legitimately risky to bike (despite the actual risk of fatality on a bike gradually dropping over the past three decades).
So a related hypothetical is, if you were in a high-density (say, 30K per square mile scale density) city designed from the beginning for walk/run/bike/public-transit transportation, what kind of bike paths would you want?
The article describes intra- and inter-neighborhood scale at best, but doesn't address efforts to solve US commuter distances, which invariably involve highways. That seems an insoluble challenge at the moment in the US.
Like buses, I'm afraid that you're just throwing yourself at a wall as long as our development pattern provides such an enormous subsidy for cars. Also like with buses, I would love to be proven wrong.
- Pilot projects are not representative of actual long term use. When Burrard bridge lost a footpath to a temporary cycle lane, as a regular pedestrian commuter I saw a brief spike in cycle traffic but then a big drop off again.
- Cycle lanes have a negative impact on both car and foot traffic. The Burrard cycle lanes increased the length of my commute on foot (footpaths were converted to cycle lanes that went empty much of the time) and disrupted car traffic causing delays to drivers.
- Expensive but poorly thought out physically separated bike lanes made intersections more dangerous for cyclists (who would go faster and slow down less for cars) and pedestrians (cyclists are silent and frequently ignore traffic lights)
- On street parking is frequently lost to new cycle lanes that frequently sit unused.
- There are a lot of 'fair weather cyclists' who only ride in good weather. Pedestrian traffic seems much less weather dependent.
A pilot project like this doesn't necessarily reflect actual long term usage and also ignores the many negative effects and costs associated with cycle lanes. Existing cities that grew up around mixed pedestrian and car traffic are not necessarily well suited to increased bike traffic. Bikes are dramatically more dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians and take up disproportionate space relative to their contribution to transport options.
http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2016/02/eco-counter-cycling-index...
Questions I would ask that I haven't seen addressed as part of Vancouver's bike lane push:
- Given the higher risks of cycling relative to driving or walking, how many extra deaths and injuries are associated with increased cycle use substituting for other forms of transport?
- How many people are switching to cycling from driving because you have made things worse for drivers, pedestrians and transit users by installing cycle lanes (less parking space available, fewer car lanes, dramatically more congestion during the construction process)
- Are pedestrians at greater risk due to the increased cycle use? (anecdotally it appears to me they are)
- Given all the other ways the transport budget could be spent and road space used, is building cycle lanes the best bang for the buck?
- What exactly are the goals of transport policy (hopefully not just 'increase the number of cyclists') and how are you measuring your success?
Frequently sit unused? Brief spikes and big dropoffs? How do you know? I'll bet your local department of transportation is conducting traffic counts though. I know mine does.
"poorly thought out physically separated bike lines made intersections more dangerous"? You really need a cite on that because this study--conducted in Canada--says the opposite: http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2012.3...
"Bikes are dramatically more dangerous to both cyclists and pedestrians" Really? How many pedestrians were killed by cyclists in your city last year? How many by motor vehicles?
The dangers of cycling itself are pretty well known I thought, it is far more dangerous than driving, e.g. http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39856219
I don't know of any figures comparing the relative risk to pedestrians of cyclists vs cars. I would expect that pedestrians are less likely to be killed if hit by a bike than a car but I would also guess that adjusted for relative miles traveled you are more likely to be hit by a bike as a pedestrian than a car. Certainly as a pedestrian in Vancouver I am more concerned about bikes than cars due to the silence and lack of respect for the rules of the road I mentioned.
If the changes made here were based on solid research, I never saw it presented to the public. It was just 'Cycling is great! And green! Yay cycling!' and PR shots of the mayor on a bike to justify the money spent and disruption to other road users caused.
In the photo a cyclist is still on the road which should not happen.
I also remember seeing a video where a guy got some kind of ticket for not cycling in a cycle lane, so he made a point by cycling only in the cycle lane and deliberately crashes into a police car because they were parked in the cycle lane...
Normal white lines etc are made by melting plastic onto the road. They're very thick.
A nice intermediate step would be if states would make moped registration less onerous. As it stands most states require a motorcycle license ($), insurance ($) and registration ($) for anything more than a bicycle with an engine kit. If more people rode those parking would be less of an issue and it would be easier to get support for bike infrastructure since bike infrastructure is common with moped infrastructure in many cases.
Edit: I don't care how the moped is powered. I'm just pointing out that a moped that can keep up with 30mph traffic is a huge increase in utility over a bicycle while not taking up appreciably more space.
Mopeds (e.g a 150CC vespa) on the other hand can keep up with non-highway traffic (although their manufactures may configure them in a way that prevents this), come equipped with turn signals, lights and mirrors, can maintain speed up a hill without slowing to a crawl and are an all around massive upgrade in safety and utility over a bicycle (motorized or human powered) without taking up more parking space or having the ability to rocket down the highway.
I think it's likely the insurance lobby leaned on legislators to make it that way.