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Comment by hirundo | Hacker News Reader

This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area pointing in both directions. One such concluded that putting bikes on multi-use trails makes cyclists less safe. A lot depends on the design of the bike paths, and a badly designed one can increase the risk over none at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_Cycling

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That's a very US-centric (and outdated) viewpoint, coming from a perspective of bike infrastructure being entirely non-existent in the US back in the 1970s. Contrast with Amsterdam's approach, where cycling is a properly treated third form of at-grade transit that has all its own paths just like cars and pedestrians do. That's way safer and has much higher usage than you'd ever see if no separate paths were provided for cyclists at all.

I don't know a single cyclist who agrees with that statement.

I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones.

Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.

And yet protected bike lanes are proven to vastly increase the number of people who are willing to bike, which then makes biking safer for everyone because of sheer numbers. I'm a confident enough cyclist to bike in the street, take the lane, and ignore all the honking assholes, but my girlfriend isn't. The protected bike lanes are great because it means we can bike to things together.

I don't know if the increase in the number of cyclists outweighs the problems with the intersections.

I get the impression from your various comments here that you have never rode a bike in the US, so perhaps our experience differs.

On my daily commute in Austin I cross I-35 via a bike lane that is sometimes semi-protected. I think many inexperienced cyclists think that this is "safe" because it's sometimes protected, but I consider it to be actually a fairly dangerous intersection that I take reluctantly. Whenever the bike lane crosses a car lane, there are signs saying to yield to cyclists, yet I can only think of a single instance where a driver yielded to me without me having to use my air horn.

I can't find the details right now, but a local bike activist's wife actually stopped cycling because she found this intersection so dangerous:

https://bicycleaustin.info/forum/viewtopic.php?pid=5464

(I don't see a mention of the particular intersection in that link, but as I recall this was it.)

Perception and reality can differ a lot, and I think that's what my criticisms come down to.

I don't know how your impression could be more wrong; I ride my bike to work in NYC every day. I've literally said as much in many of my comments here, and talked about my personal experiences. You have responded to some of these comments.

Sorry, I must have missed that in my haste. Your experience nonetheless differs from mine and from that of most US cyclists, I believe.

Most of the US doesn't have protected bike lanes, but that's what we're talking about here. I'm talking about my experience with one of the better protected bike lane setups in the US, and the advantages it grants.

Come visit some time. I'll show you the bike lanes myself.

Given my experience in Austin, it's necessary to highlight the difference between a good bike lane and a bad bike lane. Politicians usually don't know the difference. In practice it seems you typically get bad bike lanes.

When you have "protected" bike lanes with no protection against turning vehicles that are constantly full of debris (e.g., the "chipseal" finishing technique they use on the roads here makes the bike lane basically gravel in many places), it's easy to see what a bad bike lane looks like.

The protected bike lanes I used in Baltimore were only better in the sense that they tended to have a smoother finish and much less debris. (Yes, the road quality in Austin is worse than Baltimore.) I still had many problems with turning drivers not checking the bike lane.

Anyhow, I might take you up on your offer sometime. :-)

If you really want to see cycling mecca, you've of course got to go to Amsterdam, but it does at least sound like we're better here than in Austin. Though of course there's still much more work to be done.

It’s sad to me that I immediately knew the crossing in Austin you were talking about and it made me shudder. Thankfully I’ve never had to use it as a cyclist. However I do live near a “protected lane” in Austin that puts both bike lanes on one side of street. All that ends up doing is ensuring drivers never check the bike lane when they turn through it. It’s awful.

It sounds to me like it's a very poorly designed intersection that isn't actually protected, then. I know some intersections like that here in NYC and yeah, they suck (one example being 2nd Ave in Manhattan through midtown at the bridge and tunnel). When there's a reasonable alternate route available I'll tend to take them.

You have to strive to separate bikes from traffic because no matter how much bike culture you have baked into your laws and society, it only takes one careless driver of a 3000lb hunk of steel to lay you out at 25mph. Doesn't matter if you do everything right as a cyclist, you can't change the fact that you are a flabby soft bag of water and a car is 20x your weight.

Ahoy ahoy.

I'm a single cyclist and I agree with that statement. Separated bike lanes, as implemented on my commute in Seattle are the places where I'm most concerned about my safety. I'm not yet to the point where I just bike with cars to avoid them, but it's probably going to happen. Some of the separated lanes are nice though, Western ave by the market, going uphill is a long stretch with pretty inactive driveways and it's nice to have space to go slow; although, the separation means street sweeping doesn't happen, so glass from broken bottles stays on the ground for weeks.

We could have a true scottsman argument about well implemented separate bike lanes vs vehicular cycling, but I don't have the opportunity to use a well designed system, I just have the system that's in place. Putting me on the wrong side of parked cars, so I can't see traffic, and traffic can't see me means instead of worrying about doors, I need to worry about whole cars taking my lane to turn right. If I needed to turn left at one of these intersections, there's no way for me to get in the right lane position at the right time, unless I avoid the lane for the whole block.

For me, biking is utilitarian; it's literally the fastest, least hassle way for me to get to the office, given I take a ferry to Seattle. Forcing me into a bike lane where I can't make turns, or pushing me onto a multi use trail with pedestrians slows me down and reduces the utility.

Their argument is that bicycle collisions increase at intersections and, I assume, decrease in segregated bike lanes. That is understandable since most automobile accidents also happen at intersections.

I'm a long term cyclist (> 100,000 miles) and I live in the Metro Boston area and have bike commuted into Cambridge before.

I read Effective Cycling a long time ago and took it to heart and I put a large amount of my safety over the years down to following the "Vehicular Cycling" model. Drivers are WAY less likely to honk or yell at you when you follow this model too because you are behaving in a way that is consistent with the rules of the road. In the end the law in 99% of places actually mandates you ride according to Vehicular Cycling.

I don't have a problem with bike lanes but they are all highly imperfect. Boston, MA has a very large # of very very very dangerous bike lanes because the bike lanes encourage/force the cyclist to behave inconsistently with other traffic.

A lot of the bike lane advocates appear to be from the anti-Vehicular cycling.

The problem with a lot of the bike lanes is even they are protected it is impossible for them to protect against collisions at intersections. Most of these bike lanes place the cyclist who is traveling straight off to the right side of the vehicles which are trying to take a right turn at the intersection. This is an absolute disaster in the city and we had a high profile fatality of a woman cyclist a few years ago in Boston that was directly caused by this kind of bike lane.

You can't protect straight traveling cyclists going through an intersection where the cars need to turn right and left. As soon as they get to the intersection the cyclist is placed in the most dangerous place for them.

If the lane is unprotected the cyclist can exit the bike lane and enter the "travel straight" lane of traffic and avoid this. If the bike lane is protected the cyclist might not be able to do this at all and is forced into the "travel straight to the right of the right turning traffic."

If the road designer insists on putting a protected bike lane to the right of the right turning traffic the only thing I see being safe is a stop light for both the cyclists & cars, and the cars can't take a right when the cyclists have a green light and the cyclists can't go straight when the cars have a red light. The cars would have to be given a "No Right turn on Red" as well.

Again my experience is a lot of the advocates of some of this non-vehicular cycling stuff do not have that clear of a picture of what is actually safe because:

- They don't actually ride that much

- They spend a lot of time riding on Multi-Use-Trails instead of roads.

- They use sidewalks a lot of the time and advocate use of sidewalks

- They often think the rules of the road are invalid for cyclists

- Never got a motor cycle license or learned to ride a motorcycle

- Maybe don't drive cars at all

My experience is there is a cavernous gap in behavior between these folks and long term long distance riders & racers. The long term long distance riders & racers fall into vehicular cycling and are very very safe over the years.

This same kind of thing happens with left turns. The Vehicular cycling way to do this is signal left and move across the lanes of traffic as you approach the intersection and get to the left turn lane, just like a car or a truck. I've been doing this for decades safely and without conflict on roads as busy as 8 lanes wide. It works incredibly well. The non-vehicular way (Forrester always called this the "cycling inferiority complex" way of riding) is to hug the right side of the road even if you're in a right turn lane, and then take a left across all the right turning & straight turning traffic in an incredibly dangerous way that is also illegal.

Any cycling behavior that would get you a ticket if you did it on a motorcycle or in a car should be a red flag behavior for you because the ticket would be issued because you were engaging in flagrantly dangerous behavior.

A cyclist who is experienced in Vehicular cycling can move in and out of the bike lanes when they are safe or not safe and get the best of both worlds.

I agree with you in the sense that especially in America a lot of the bike lanes are really just faded single lines littered with gravel, and practically speaking following the Vehicular Cycling model has been very successful for me in interacting with cars.

However, while I can nimbly integrate with traffic being in shape and experienced, trying to get friends and family who are not experienced in this are usually met with an awful time, further discouraging bicycle use.

A fully segregated path, where you can get comfortable and learn without impatient drivers honking or zooming past 45+MPH would be infinitely valuable in helping. Cities need to stop half-assing bike lanes and either provide a safe, effective path or not bother because like you said they can even more dangerous.

There are plenty of intelligent solutions to the intersection problems, as well.

https://www.industrytap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/duth....

Vehicular cycling is, to put it lightly, controversial.

In the US specifically? It's perfectly normal here. (Ireland.)

It's normal here in the US too, but that the problem people have. Vehicular cycling can really only be used by the strongest bikers, mostly young, mostly male riders. It excludes slower, older, and younger riders who might be intimidated by sharing a road with aggressive drivers going 45+ mph who pass with less than 3 feet of space.

https://www.latimes.com/opinion/livable-city/la-oe-babin-pro...

I've heard this argument before. It is among the weakest against vehicular cycling in my view. It's a misrepresentation of vehicular cycling, which doesn't require cyclists to keep up with drivers. It also strikes me as an ad hominem attack, attacking vehicular cyclists rather than their arguments. A point I like to make is that perceptions of safety are not the same thing as safety, and I think vehicular cycling is all about that.

The strongest argument against vehicular cycling would be the evidence of where cycling infrastructure works well, which many people who accept the basic tenets of vehicular cycling (like myself) admit. I'd call myself about 1/2 vehicular, 1/2 infrastructural.

Forester and his acolytes are widely discredited.

By who?

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