After Spike in Deaths, New York to Get 250 Miles of Protected Bike Lanes
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers. If these changes take off in New York, they will trickle down to the rest of American cities.
New York is marveled at for being such a safe big city from the standpoint of crime, but when you factor in all of the carnage caused by cars, it’s a lot less safe than you might think.
Violent crime has been falling across the country, but pedestrian and bicyclist deaths have been surging. This is a sign of some very bad policy making. Walking should be one of the safest and healthiest things a person can do.
e-bikes have been legal in NYC for 1.5 years [0]
[0] https://mashable.com/2018/04/04/electric-bicycle-nyc-ban-end...
Compare to LA, where people tend to wait for the signal to cross pretty consistently. That said, LA still has horrible pedestrian death statistics so who knows how much that matters.
To give a more concrete example. Say a traffic light has a pedestrian light attached. It will only allow pedestrian crossings when it does not stop the flow of vehicular traffic (say every 3-5 min, and only for 20 seconds at a time). But it does so regardless of actual traffic (no cars are passing the intersection when many pedestrians arrive), you can’t really blame the pedestrians of ruling this system as stupid and opting not to follow it.
Who says it's a mistake?
It has nothing to do with the signals and everything to do with the pedestrians. If you actually want people to respect the signals, place traffic police on every corner in Manhattan and issue jaywalking tickets to absolutely everyone, for months on end, and you'll see it. (You'll also see a backlash.)
Other than that, it's not happening.
https://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/13/nyregion/with-higher-fine...
(You will notice this idea is unworkable due to excessive manpower requirements. It is undesirable for other reasons as well.)
Sure I can, they have a shit culture with little regard for traffic signals. My city has the same problem. I'm the odd man out for waiting for a signal, and am mocked for it at times. Nothing wrong with the signals or timing as a pedestrian (as a cyclist that's another story), but people feel they are more important. That they're 15 - 90 seconds is worth more.
Similarly, had a man recklessly pass me in his vehicle while I was biking to work yesterday. He went fully into the oncoming well above the posted speed limit, and cut me off as I was turning from the forward-moving lane into the left-hand turning lane. All to get around me to a red light.
Some people feel their 15 seconds are more valuable than others safety. In the case of pedestrian jaywalking, that their safety isn't worth the inconvenience of using the nearest crosswalk.
That's the kind of thinking that makes our roads so deadly. If a rule in particular seems really silly to you, file a complaint / suggest a change so that it takes more parameters into account but until it is changed, stick to it. Loose some seconds or even minutes, I don't really care. These security rules should be followed by everyone, and people with your line of thinking shouldn't be allowed to own a car.
I'm not a fan of cars already, but people driving cars while following safety rules only when it suits them is what make them a lot more deadly imo.
Right turns at red lights are illegal in NYC, and most of the streets in the city are one-way, so for a pedestrian to cross the street against a signal with no oncoming traffic is reasonably safe.
LA is generally the opposite -- it's a city for drivers, not for pedestrians. So the norms are different.
Pedestrians aren't carrying a multi-tonne vehicle that can kill people. Traffic lights are for drivers, and it's drivers who should pay attention.
The first step to fixing traffic deaths is fixing the laws that make causing a traffic accident more affordable than paying attention on the road. Right now you can drive while using a cellphone and run over as many people as you want if your excuse is "they came out of nowhere".
The responsibility of not killing people is on the drivers.
When I first moved there I was annoyed by everyone ignoring the signals. Then I came to appreciate it as an efficient way of getting around the city. Pedestrians (and bikes and cars) all used the signals as general guidelines, but would go when it was safe, because otherwise you're never going to get anywhere.
I'm not saying that everyone everywhere should ignore traffic signals, but it seems to work well in New York City.
but it's nice 7-8 months out of the year!
For that, super common to bike even in the winter. After all, you're already bundled up and will probably stay warmer just because you'll be outside for less time.
Anecdotally, I know a lot of women who ride bikeshare bikes for the 5-6 blocks it takes them to get home from the subway in the early-sunset months as a safety precaution against sexual harassment.
https://member.citibikenyc.com/map/
I mean they're not evenly distributed according to a perfect pattern or anything, but there's generally a bike within an avenue and a few streets.
You can have a sense of it by checking with Google Maps street view on different places in Manhattan. It seems that there are way more cars and pedestrians than bike riders in most places.
Edit: As for summers, I've regularly biked in Texas throughout the summer over many years (I've lived without a car quite a bit in Austin). The peak of the day is rough, but the usual commuting hours aren't too bad. New York has nothing on Texas summers.
apart from that i guess you just have to ride carefully, but you the same applies to driving a car on icy roads.
Don't know why I find this double negative so disturbing. Seems so unnecessary.
Cyclists will deal with bad weather or bad infrastructure, but not many will deal with both at the same time. The solution is good infrastructure.
The biggest problem I have with biking in the winter is when it gets brutally cold, which doesn't happen that often, hardly at all in the past few years. There was this one particularly horrible winter several years back when it was terribly cold for weeks on end, and that was rough.
There are automated bike counters in certain places (e.g. bridge crossings), but I haven't been able to find the data for winter months. Citi bike data is probably a pretty good proxy, though. It's in the report I linked and in sibling from apaprocki
[0]: https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/downloads/pdf/cycling-in-the-c...
Are you literally "far more terrified" of pedestrians than cars, or are you looking for a way to appear clever and different than everyone?
If cars are so safe then just ride in the middle of the street. It's perfectly legal- bicycles are classified as moving vehicles.
But if you want to follow pedestrian rules at vehicle speeds, then it's not going to work so well.
Pedestrians pose no threat to me unless I'm breaking the law, i.e. bicycling on the sidewalk, running a red, running a stoplight, etc.
In fact, 5 of the last 8 years had zero pedestrian deaths due to collisions with cyclists. [1]
[1] https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/bicyclists/bikestats.shtm...
Cyclists are routinely killed by motor vehicles in NYC. It's not even close which one you should be more afraid of. The scariest thing in the world if you're a cyclist is a big truck. They are statistically most likely to kill cyclists. People on foot don't even come close.
The cumulative investment in each of those has gotta be 100x as much as for biking, and you're accusing bikes of getting special treatment?
For the cost of a mile of new subway, you could probably coat most of NYC's arterials with protected bike lanes across the whole damn city. Not that I'm opposed to subways, but bike infrastructure is extremely cost-effective, redirecting money away from it is ridiculous.
So, here's my personal opinion. For the record, i live in a bike-friendly mid-sized central-european city, do own a car, walk a lot (if the bike is not an option) and use public transport - but whenever possible, i use my bike. For me it's the superior mode of transportation. It's the cheapest option after walking, healthy, fun, efficient and for 90% of my day-to-day transportation needs it's also the fastest option. The overhead of finding a parking spot (twice) is mostly nil and there are pretty much no bike traffic jams. I shop every day and carry the groceries in my backpack (upside: fresh produce every day, don't need as much storage space). Car usage is mostly limited to longer distances (i.e. visiting relatives) and transporting unwieldly stuff - i wouldn't even own one if i hadn't gotten this one for free. The same applies to pretty much all of my friends. If the infrastructure is there, they all prefer riding a bike.
That said, as a young adult (early twenties), my car was part of my male identity. All of my friends believed they were good drivers and could be promising race drivers if they wanted. That's all gone now; my car is not a status symbol anymore, but a utility. And i don't respect someone just because they drive a fast car, that usually just means they were willing to invest a bigger share of their income in that particular hobby. My previous car had 60hp and that was plenty enough for my needs. Cars never made me really happy; they meant long commutes, road rage due to other bad drivers and congestion and terrifyingly dangerous situations aplenty, even though i'm a careful driver.
So, back to the discussion. In my opinion, the biggest problems for cyclists are:
1. Infrastructure: It's not that we're unjustly taking away from the drivers to give to the cyclists - cyclists have been neglected for decades and what happens now is just that they get a little bit of what should have been theirs from the beginning. Cars take a bigger share than they deserve. There was a time where cars weren't welcome in the cities too, i took a huge marketing campaign and lobbyists to change that.
2. Infrastructure: bike lanes mostly suck, because they're crammed into existing spaces that were planned for cars and pedestrians; spaces where they just don't really fit. They're often too narrow, of disastrous quality (ever wonder why road bike cyclists without shock absorbers prefer the road even if there are bike lanes present? That's even legal around here!) and sometimes feature unnecessary stops that could have been avoided if the street had been planned with cyclists from the start.
3. Drivers: some drivers hate cyclists for no apparent reason. Luckily, this is not a huge problem here as almost everyone spends time on a bike, but the stories i have to read on reddit ... some cyclists are probably victims of carelessly attempted manslaughter (i.e. drivers throwing full cans at cyclists).
4. Storage: bike theft is a rampant problem almost anywhere (for several reasons, afaik there's no easy solution). You really shouldn't leave your bike outside overnight if it's worth anything (disregarding rust as this is a problem for cars too). But secure bike storage options are pretty rare if you don't happen to have the option of storing it in your flat.
You should try riding a bike. It's fun, it's healthy and you'll mature as automobile driver as you'll learn to get more perceptive. Don't get angry if you have to stay behind a cyclists for a couple of seconds until it's safe to overtake - you're actually losing only an neglectible amount of time. If you live in a city, try a bike commute; depending on the distance you might be faster than by car. In my case, due to traffic jams and searching for parking it'd probably have taken me three times as long to commute by car. My previous city has one of the best public transport systems in the world and still i was faster by bike).
And you should support biking, even if you drive a car: more people on bikes means less traffic, less congestion. Parking spots will probably be reduced, but there won't be as many car owners, so there's that - and you can easily fit 10 bikes on a single car parking spot. Less pollution, less noise, healthier people are probably reducing costs on public health care, but i don't know how true that'd be for the U.S. with a privatized system. Old people on e-bikes means fewer old people driving their cars at half the allowed speed.
Really
That on top of its health benefits, relative safety to those hit by bikes, its traffic efficiency, parking space efficiency, benefit to retail...
You bring up taxpayers. It is far, far cheaper to subsidize a bike lane than a new subway tunnel. And the bike lane is open more hours of the year, with more entrances and exits, more interchanges to other lines, a shorter distance point-to-point, with drastically lower maintenance costs. Taxpayers should be rioting over the costs spent on trains and traffic relative to bikes.
Many other cities are heads and shoulders ahead when it comes to rolling out proper separated bike lanes. Nobody is looking to NYC for leadership on anything in this field.
Yes, of course, NYC and Omaha need a different model when it comes to implementation.
What’s shared is the public/political will to challenge the status quo.
Pointing out the differences that you are isn’t terribly insightful. Anyone with solid algebra and geometry skills can see the variables involved and shape of the problem are different.
However, the initiative needs a more robust implementation, with more consideration of driver behavior and parking needs. This is evident as many delivery trucks, Ubers etc. park in the lane (albeit, with emergency blinkers on, but it's a moot measure regardless) and push bicyclists into traffic. So while the bike lanes probably improve safety and reduce deaths overall, it can and does introduce a new, very real hazard: the necessity of bicyclists to suddenly merge into traffic. And this abuse is pretty rampant.
The hanging fruit is simply implementing stiffer penalities for such violations but this seems lacking. Coupling this with more temporary parking zones might be a solution. Then again, I'm not a civil engineer, just my observations and half-baked thoughts concerning the matter.
I've watched people put an impressive amount of effort into delicately navigating between those posts so that they can parallel park their car next to the curb. i.e., in the bike lane.
Drivers park in clearly signed bike lanes all the time, and when cyclists alert them to this fact they often respond with anger, not understanding or contrition. Common excuses are “I’ll just be a minute” or so on. It’s just part of how driving causes people to behave - I see the same thing with my apartment driveway which is regularly blocked by people parking illegally to go to the bank, rather than drive a few hundred feet and legally park in a garage.
Now, I’m sure there are some ignorant people out there, but the majority of people will just do what they can get away with regardless of what the law or the rule is. It’s like educating people to not text and drive. Just doesn’t work.
For example, I have plenty of run-ins with stepping out of a storefront and nearly getting creamed by a cyclist who's zooming down the sidewalk at 10mph, too. And it's frequently the cyclist who yells at me for failing to anticipate them barreling down the sidewalk illegally.
With a bike people wouldn’t just dump it on the sidewalk typically because they’d be worried about it being stolen (of course with the rentable scooters and dockless cycles, people do exactly that since they don’t have to worry about theft).
To my knowledge, the rules covering bicycles and pedestrians have never been on Illinois's written test, they aren't necessarily covered in driver's (or other) education, and, since most motorists (and also, I'm guessing, cyclists) come from more suburban environments where there just aren't as many bikes and pedestrians on the roads, people simply don't know how they're supposed to behave on the streets. Which is a recipe for unnecessary chaos.
Case in point: About ten years back, when she was visiting, I had to tell my mom not to drive in a bike lane. She was surprised to hear that it was a bike lane; she though it was just a weirdly small shared-use lane with slightly confusing paint marks.
And no, while I appreciate the good intentions of whoever it is at the DOT who thinks composes these things, cute rhyming phrases in glowing amber letters over the freeway aren't going to cut it.
Honestly, as huge and condensed NYC is, I am surprised this hasn't happened years ago. It's much, much more efficient to get from Point A to Point B on a bike vs taking the Subway, bus, or car. Would love to see something like the 14th street car ban to allow buses and cyclists only more widely adopted across the 5 boroughs.
My threshold for cars entering my personal space is clearly different than drivers. I've had drivers accelerate toward me and pass me with 1-2' of space. Way too close.
My rule, as a driver is simple: never accelerate toward a pedestrian. That means I have to stay on the break until they are not in front of me.
The law, btw, says that you can't go into the crosswalk until the pedestrian is has made it onto the sidewalk. At least, in CA that is the law. I was warned once, by a LEO about this.
https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/infrastructure/leading-pe...
People riding bikes will be able to follow LPIs at intersections that have them soon (sometime in December, I think)
I wonder if that will be addressed at some point.
Getting change in this regard will require either very serious change in how cops are regulated, or a change in cops' mindsets regarding cars and bikes. Not sure which I'd bet on happening first.
Maybe it's an overreaction to a small crime, but it would set a precedent, no?
Edit: I do not recommend trying to citizen's arrest a cop.
Probably not a viable course of action considering they murdered Eric Garner just for selling loosies.
This can also be prevented by not trying to pass right turning vehicles on the right and only pass them on their left.
But there's another scenario where a cyclist is passing traffic on the right and then gets right-hooked by a vehicle making a right turn.
But even if that’s doable, it doesn’t apply here, where NY wants to build segregated bike lanes. https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/tag/junction-design/ has plenty inspiration on how to design junctions for those, in particular https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/state-of-the-a...
Prior to the junction, you move into the center of the lane corresponding to your intended direction. If you plan to go straight, you get behind the vehicles that are going to make a right turn or go straight. Depending on how dense traffic is, you'll have to do this further in advance from the intersection. A lot of the time, you'll find that gaps are created in traffic by traffic lights. You can use one of those gaps to easily change lanes in advance for example.
> https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2011/05/05/state-of-the-a...
The problem with the NACTO guidelines for this design is that cyclists are hidden by parked vehicles until shortly before the intersection, so, if a cyclist is approaching from behind the motorist, it's not possible for the motorist to see the cyclist before they start making their turn.
Even with the curb extension, according to their example and measuring the distances in the provided diagrams on pages 12 and 13, a motorist will only be able to see roughly 8 feet down the cycle lane. That won't work when the cyclist is traveling at about 16 feet per second. The typical reaction time for something not completely expected is at least 1 to 1.5 seconds. The document also makes the assumption that the cyclist will yield to the car in that case, but many of them assume they have the right of way and that the motorist will stop prior to a collision.
The other problem is that current US law and driver education states that drivers must make their turns as close to the edge of the road/curb as practicable and yield to pedestrians. They don't say anything about treating cyclists as pedestrians, and they do say that cyclists are considered vehicles and have all the rights and duties of vehicle operators (meaning they're expected to follow the rules of the road).
In contrast, Dutch law and driver education is complementary to the intersection design you reference. But you're not going to change the law and driver education/training overnight.
Over here in the netherlands we're phasing these out, crossing traffic at a diagonal like that means that drivers will need to look almost 180 degrees behind them to spot you. It's a fine solution if there's only one lane of cars, but as soon as there's more than one lane merging movements just make it plain too dangerous.
I believe you misunderstood what I was trying to convey. What I was saying was that the cyclist should change lanes to the one corresponding to their desired direction of travel through the junction (like one would do when in a car or on a motorcycle).
> means that drivers will need to look almost 180 degrees behind them to spot you.
Why couldn't they use their mirrors?
> Why couldn't they use their mirrors?
They can, but don't. People look in their mirrors for cars, not for cyclists. This is the same problem as cars overtaking cyclists and then making a right turn as if the cyclist isn't there.
In general you want to separate traffic that goes as different speeds. There's no good reason to mix bicycle traffic into car traffic: there are alternative solutions that avoid doing so.
Not really. You really only need to check your mirror, then look back and be certain drivers approaching from the rear see you and slow down. Only then should you change lanes.
> People look in their mirrors for cars, not for cyclists.
That would only apply if the cyclist was overtaking (which isn't a common situation). Besides, motorcyclists ride in traffic and Ste seen.
> In general you want to separate traffic that goes as different speeds.
Limited access highways/motorways accommodate traffic going at significantly different speeds. For example, on uphill grades, trucks can be going as slow as 60 km/h whole faster traffic is going 120 km/h. On the unlimited sections of the Autobahn, trucks are limited to 80 km/h and faster traffic may be going around 150 km/h.
Given those examples, there should be no issue with cyclists going 15 to 40 km/h among faster traffic going 30 to 80 km/h.
> There's no good reason to mix bicycle traffic into car traffic: there are alternative solutions that avoid doing so.
The only solution that would work is a completely separate path with infrequent intersections and little to no pedestrians.
Once there are frequent intersections, then there are conflicts unless separate traffic signals with exclusive phases are used (which leads to more delays and noncompliance).
Side paths van work at lower speeds (15 km/h or less), but those speeds won't work for the distances people need to travel unless they're willing to invest significantly more time in traveling compared to other modes of transportation other than walking.
For example, my bicycle commute in the afternoon involves riding from work to my childrens' school, picking them up, taking them to an after school program, and then riding back home. The total distance I have to cover is 15 miles. While moving, I average about 11 mph. My lowest speed up hills is about 5 mph. My top does downhill is about 27 mph. Almost all of my commute is on roads with traffic where I take the lane while riding.
If I rode at 16 km/h or less on this commute, them I would never be able to get the kids to their destination on time.
So, from a transportation point of view, using the roads where I can ride at higher speed safely is the best and safest option.
Aha! You assumed that there are multiple lanes. That wasn't explicit in "This can also be prevented by not trying to pass right turning vehicles on the right and only pass them on their left"
I read that as "ride in the same lane as the cars, but pass them on their left".
I still think that's way scarier than the Dutch approach where nobody needs eyes in their back to detect each other, just eyes that can look in front of you.
Having separate cycle lanes, as this will, also solves the "driver education states that drivers must make their turns as close to the edge of the road/curb as practicable" problem.
Aha! You assumed that there are multiple lanes. That wasn't explicit in "This can also be prevented by not trying to pass right turning vehicles on the right and only pass them on their left"
I read that as "ride in the same lane as the cars, but pass them on their left".
I still think that's way scarier than the Dutch approach where nobody needs eyes in their back to detect each other, just eyes that can look in front of you.
Having separate cycle lanes, as this will, also solves the "driver education states that drivers must make their turns as close to the edge of the road/curb as practicable" problem.
It won't solve the problem of "cyclist is traveling at about 16 feet per second", but those cyclists, IMO, are suicidal, if they do so in places where they can't know things will end up OK.
> You assumed that there are multiple lanes.
No, I didn't. If there's a single lane, then you ride in the center of it. If there are multiple lanes, then you use the leftmost lane for a left turn, the rightmost lane for a right turn, and the lane in the middle for going straight.
> I read that as "ride in the same lane as the cars, but pass them on their left".
By ride in the same lane, I mean in serial (one after the other), not parallel (two vehicles besides each other). So, if the car ahead of you is turning right, you would end up passing them on their left as they leave the lane to proceed onto the intersecting road. If the car is behind you, they would simply make the right turn behind you while you're traversing the junction. Under no circumstance would a car be parallel to you on your left and take a right turn while crossing your path straight through the junction.
> I still think that's way scarier than the Dutch approach where nobody needs eyes in their back to detect each other,
No one needs that. That's why vehicles are equipped with mirrors and why it's illegal to turn from a lane that's not the left or right most lane (other than dual turn lanes).
> Having separate cycle lanes, as this will, also solves the "driver education states that drivers must make their turns as close to the edge of the road/curb as practicable" problem.
Drivers already do that. Normally the right most lane is considered as far right as practicable for the purpose of making a right turn, but putting cycle lanes to the right of right turning traffic actually causes the turning conflict problem.
> It won't solve the problem of "cyclist is traveling at about 16 feet per second", but those cyclists, IMO, are suicidal,
16 feet per second is about 10 mph which is about 16 km/h. I don't think that's a suicidal speed and is actually relatively slow from a transportation point of view. My own bicycle commute is about 15 miles (24 km) long and I average about 11 mph (18 km/h). If I only rode at a speed less than 16 km/h, I would not be able to complete the commute in a reasonable period of time.
On the road itself, it's quite safe to traverse junctions at 25 mph (40 km/h).
Do you try to pass right turning vehicles on the right or left turning vehicles on the left? If you're at risk for getting doored, then you need to ride further away from parked vehicles (at least 6 feet away).
It’s also an interesting attitude, that cars are so much more important than bikes that it’s not car drivers who should check the road when opening their door, but bikers who should lose the 6 feet of street space near parked cars which is the only semi-safe place for bikes in New York
When there's a stopped vehicle in the lane you're in, you can simply check for traffic in the next lane and switch lanes.
> your bike lane has maybe a foot clearance to traffic in the other side.
You're not restricted to the bike lane if there's an obstruction.
> that cars are so much more important than bikes that it’s not car drivers who should check the road when opening their door
No one is saying that they shouldn't check before opening their door, but I am saying that you can eliminate the risk of being doored if you ride far enough away from parked vehicles. It's far easier to take responsibility for your own safety than to rely on others to do it for you.
> but bikers who should lose the 6 feet of street space near parked cars which is the only semi-safe place for bikes in New York
Riding in the door zone is not safe, period. It's safer to just ride in the general purpose traffic lane far enough away from parked vehicles. There's a reason why drivers of motor vehicles don't typically drive in the door zone.
> You're not restricted to the bike lane if there's an obstruction.
These comments proves my whole second point. If a car were to just park in the car lane because it felt like it, there would be outrage, tickets, and the car would get towed immediately. Nobody would say "no big deal, just change lanes". But when a biker says "I don't like using the street because it's dangerous", it's just dismissed like this.
You also ignore that bikers DO just change lanes into the street, which can be quite dangerous somewhere like New York. I don't know if you've ever ridden a bike in New York, but drivers, especially taxis, are at best ignorant of you and often antagonistic. There's a reason bike lanes exist in the first place, and it's because the car lanes are dangerous.
> It's far easier to take responsibility for your own safety than to rely on others to do it for you
Imagine somebody saying this when a car driver complains about somebody else running a red light, or cutting them off in a lane - you would get laughed out of the room. But when drivers act dangerously towards a biker it's the biker who should be taking responsibility.
When bikers do all the terrible biker things like roll through stop signs, or "act like pedestrians", or roll to the front of the line, that IS taking our own safety into our hands by doing legally dubious things that make biking much safer, yet everybody hates that as well.
> There's a reason why drivers of motor vehicles don't typically drive in the door zone.
Have you ever been in New York? Plenty of car lanes themselves are near the door zone, not to mention bike lanes themselves ARE the door zone usually.
I don't mean to be aggressive, but the endless victim blaming towards bicyclists gets really tiresome. I really wish that people who just dismiss these complaints out of hand would bike to work in NYC for just a week.
And drivers of those cars would switch lanes to get around it in the interim. Cars can develop mechanical issues that prevent them from proceeding and if they driver can't get to the side of the road, then they remain in the general purpose traffic lane (which isn't for the exclusive use of cars).
> But when a biker says "I don't like using the street because it's dangerous", it's just dismissed like this.
What's dangerous about changing lanes after checking for traffic in the adjacent lane? People do this all the time while driving cars, trucks and motorcycles. Why would it be any different when on a bicycle?
> There's a reason bike lanes exist in the first place, and it's because the car lanes are dangerous.
According to NY state law, they exist so that cyclists do not interfere with traffic[1]. It's not for safety. It's just to keep cyclists out of the way.
> Imagine somebody saying this when a car driver complains about somebody else running a red light
When I drive a car or ride a bike, I check for approaching traffic when I enter an intersection. This is out of self-preservation. People are going to screw up (whether intentionally or not). But if you can avoid a collision regardless of what someone else did, then that's a far better alternative.
> When bikers do all the terrible biker things like roll through stop signs, or "act like pedestrians", or roll to the front of the line, that IS taking our own safety
No, that's for the cyclist's convenience. If everyone followed the same set of rules, then everyone's actions are predictable and there would be fewer conflicts and lower risk of collision. Imagine if drivers of motor vehicles started following the same strategy you mentioned. They can justify it by saying they needed to stay out of the way of the bus and they saved time as well.
> Plenty of car lanes themselves are near the door zone, not to mention bike lanes themselves ARE the door zone usually.
If other lanes are present, then drivers stay out of the door zone. That is always true when there is a door zone bike lane.
> I don't mean to be aggressive, but the endless victim blaming
Providing advice in order to prevent others from becoming victims is not victim blaming.
[1] https://www.dot.ny.gov/display/programs/bicycle/safety_laws/...
Bike lanes of various types are experimental parallel transport systems dropped into an existing system with which most people have experience and education. The bizarre undertaking on the inside and right-hook problems at intersections are completely predictable.
The "highest toll in two decades" gives some context, but I wish writers would share ratio metrics rather than absolute numbers in cases like this. I.e. the number of active cyclists on the road might be outpacing the deaths, but we don't know when you just say "25 cyclists were killed in 2019." Also, how does that stack up to the number of pedestrians killed accidentally, etc.
https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/the-worlds-best-bikeway-manu...
If I were to only go 12 mph or less, then my average speed would be significantly lower and I would not be able to complete this commute in a reasonable period of time, nor would I be able to get my kids to their after school programs on time.
Infrastructure like what the Dutch have is not suitable or safe for the speeds I ride, but taking the lane on the actual road works out just fine.
When they swapped the bike lane and parking, there was no physical barrier so everyone parked in the bike lane [1].
Even when they added bollards and painted better, lots of people still don't understand[2][3]
[1]: https://imgur.com/82LdPTF.jpg
Does it not make it harder for the traffic to see the cyclist?
I linked it below because its a good reminder that your fate is never 100% in your hands.
Another thing I'd like to see are narrower roads along with wider sidewalks.. hopefully that would somewhat help deter speeding like in the above video.
> To gain Mr. de Blasio’s support, Mr. Johnson’s office agreed to push back the start date for the first streets plan, from this month to December 2021, around the time the next mayor takes office. Until then, the city will keep its current commitment to build 30 miles of protected bike lanes each year.
This news isn't nearly as good as it appears at first blush; de Blasio is completely abdicating his duty.
Instead of putting rinky-dink unprotected lanes on all these minor roads, they should lay out fewer, uninterrupted, protected through-ways that travel the length of the city. There's a few that run up and downtown but hardly any that run east-west.
If you prefer: https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/09/30/cops-blow-off-witness...
https://twitter.com/reported_nyc
https://twitter.com/copsinbikelanes
What else do you have in mind for a cyclist-oriented neighborhood watch?
Proper investigations of crashes, near crashes, and violence against cyclists. The police generally don't care.
Keeping statistics. Those Twitter accounts are okay, but in my experience the police will often say things like "we had no reported incidents there" when I know that some were reported. I think having an independent database would be valuable.
Tracking down repeat offenders and giving them a talking to, and/or hosting an online wall-of-shame.
Helping cyclists handle bureaucracy, which seems to be designed to discourage people in my experience.
Something like these guys in problem areas might help too: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMrKscEv_Ri1pvlRsLxsqJQ
Sure I bet we all obey the rules. But there's that overwhelming mass of cyclists that don't, it will be hard to interest police in trying to separate the incidents.
About 2/3 of drivers admit to speeding: https://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2008b/081107ManneringSpeeding....
That fits with my experience.
You can find wildly varying estimates of how often cyclists run red lights: https://bikeportland.org/2013/06/25/94-of-bikes-wait-at-red-...
https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2015/06/26/...
But even the most pessimistic estimate of the probability of cyclists running reds linked to above (79%) isn't that much worse than drivers speeding. And in my experience, it's actually quite rare for a cyclist to blow through a red light without checking for oncoming traffic. Typically when a cyclist runs a red light, it's safe. (Not that you should do it.) I think speeding is much worse from a safety perspective.
In short, my platform now is that meatbag-controlled multi-ton steel boxes hurling along at up to 60mph and meatbags sitting on top of some tubes stuck together don't belong on the same infrastructure. It will never work.
I am categorically opposed to bike lanes delimited only by some paint on the ground. If it is physically possible for a motor vehicle to occupy a space designated for a bicycle, it isn't safe. It won't work. The marginal increase in bicyclist safety isn't nearly enough. Any lobbying to try to build that type of bicycle infrastructure out is a distraction from what actually needs to be lobbied for. By consenting to bike lanes, the government has an "out." They can say that they are "doing something" for bicyclists, so it's a fair deal, and their job is done.
In reality, it isn't anywhere close to fair, and the job isn't anywhere close to done.
Until bicycle tracks completely separated from vehicular traffic are ubiquitous across all major metropolitan areas of the United States, the country won't be able to begin to claw its way out of its self-inflicted transportation apocalypse. Anybody who attempts to commute by car during rush hour in a major United States metropolitan area knows what I'm talking about. Millions are wasting away years of human life and productivity stuck in their cars in stop-and-go traffic every single day.
There needs to be a will to spend billions, not millions, on infrastructure only for pedestrians and bicyclists. Something on the scale of the the Federal Aid Highway Acts of 1921 and 1956 needs to happen today, in 2019.
Congress needs to authorize federal funds to create something on the magnitude of 50,000 miles of paved separate cycle/pedestrian tracks. There needs to be a National Urban Mobility Trust Fund with a $100 billion infusion, for starters. I for one will demand nothing less, and I won't ever stop demanding it.
We need to stop messing around with these in-the-trenches, one-city-council-at-a-time battles that bicyclist clubs are trying to fight to eek out their pathetic and ineffective lines of paint on the road.
So from my very private pov (I go around 25 to 30kph) there are much cheaper methods that I would want to give a try firat.
One good solution for the avenues would be to time their rolling green waves for an average of 15 mph. They just recently started doing this in Brooklyn on a particularly dangerous road.
I'm just pointing out that that's hardly indicative of the overall speed of traffic across Manhattan at all times. Vehicles go fast on the avenues when they can, definitely faster than you would want to try to keep up with on a bike.
The Netherlands is probably Example #1, and IIRC they commonly have mixing zones for streets right in the city center that are rather pedestrianized, outside of that you'll mostly see separates bike lanes/paths.
Examples: Boeing, this article, and a recent HN post [0], etc.
The problem is that (not only in the US!) education funding has gone way downhill and the "free speech!!!" absolutist crowd does not realize that truly free speech depends on an audience intelligent enough to separate facts from quackery (such as homeopathy, antivaxx and bleach enemas) or fascism - in a totally free-speech society with a dumb populace the profiteers will exploit whatever they can.
And yes, I am of the opinion that antivaxxers and other quackers should be jailed, for they are a danger to public health.
This is also why fascists themselves are the ones who tend to embrace violence and censorship; fascism isn’t typically capable of surviving in an otherwise free and peaceful society.
Who is the arbiter of the truth? What about people who are sincerely misinformed and well-intentioned?
Free speech laws in the US seem to strike a good balance: if you're selling a product under false pretenses, you can be sued. If you're just publishing content, you can't be sued.
> Who is the arbiter of the truth?
Why does a fact need an arbiter in the first place? It is general scientific consensus that vaccines do not cause autism, that homeopathy is placebo at best, and that the "worms" that people excrete after drinking bleach is their intestinal lining. And for heaven's sake the earth is a globe, not a flat pizza. Everyone has a right to be an absolute moron, but it should not be allowed to knowingly spread dangerous lies. Democratic discourse requires facts as foundation, not lies.
> What about people who are sincerely misinformed and well-intentioned?
Reeducation camps? I don't care about people too dumb to accept science. Sarcasm aside, I do not see a realistic way on how to re-integrate people brainwashed by conspiracy crap over years back into democratic discourse that does not at the same time build a system that can easily be abused by fascists. And this is a problem.
> if you're selling a product under false pretenses, you can be sued. If you're just publishing content, you can't be sued.
The people selling bleach cannot be prosecuted. They sell bleach, a perfectly legal product. The people who say that bleach kills autism cannot be prosecuted either, because "free speech". Meanwhile, parents are pumping their children full with bleach because they are afraid of "autism". I would prefer a system where no child has to suffer bleach enemas because their dumb-as-rocks-parents fell victim to quackers - I would prefer a system where these quackers are locked up before their speech leads to direct quantifiable suffering.
While this logic isn't best when applied to safety, that is unfortunately the way many people and companies look at safety and sometimes it takes a tragedy to get improvements.
I am a big motorsports fan, and in 1994, two drivers were killed in one weekend of Formula 1, including world champion Aryton Senna. Lots of effort went into making the sport safer after these accidents and it would be another 20 years before the next death
Priorization is difficult.
While we might want all products and designs to be safe, in reality, we can only economically do so much before the cost of predictably assuring safety becomes exponential. See NASA.
In the last month in Amsterdam I’ve had more pleasant interactions on the streets than in my entire time in nyc. It’s pure magic what cities are like when they embrace the fact that they are a city.
(On both, of course, but what is the distribution?)
I was surprised to learn that left turns account for "more than twice as many serious injuries and fatalities as right turns." https://www1.nyc.gov/html/dot/html/about/leftturnstudy.shtml
This is how all of the new NYC bike lanes work!
[0] - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.7740039,-73.9587169,3a,75y,1...
[1] - https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6757116,-73.9532197,3a,75y,2...
This may be because bike lanes are placed on the left side of major one-way avenues in Manhattan: https://www.google.com/maps/@40.8005797,-73.9618377,3a,75y,1...
Often times, protected bike lanes are still very unsafe. 6th and 1st Avenues are a prime example, where trucks park to the right of the bike lane, and unload in the bike lane, forcing cyclists to suddenly merge into aggressive traffic.
[1] https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2019/06/24/breaking-cyclist-kill...
It doesn't say it directly, but it appears that heavy vehicles turning (right) at an intersection are a relatively common setup for fatalities. Unfortunately separate bike lanes don't help there.
[0] https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/12-...
The Seattle city-wide average was $2mm/mile.
Very informative article, and it is completely different from what I thought I'd read based on your summary.
As the articles goes on to point out, only that single section in the entire project will be that expensive, and that includes a lot of city upgrades that were otherwise needed and rolled into this (like new lighting, adding additional drainage, upgraded sidewalks, and new crosswalks).
To be honest the project sounds fantastic and I hope they keep at it. If they're able to roll in other upgrades at the same time, so much the better. The 12m figure is borderline clickbait (even if it is technically true).
I'm still looking for what it looks like when a city design favors pedestrian, cycling, e-assisted human-powered/assisted mechanisms (e-bikes, scooters, Segways, skateboards, skates, etc.) traffic, then on-call PRT-to-GRT-scale people/cargo/freight movers within neighborhood-scale distances in dense (40-50,000 people per sq km) developments, subways for inter-neighborhood connections, and vehicles are restricted to the city borders (kind of like restricting specific traffic at the network border) for large-scale commercial cargo and passenger transport.
I'd like to see a breakdown of where the capex and opex expenses come from for elevated and subterranean bike lanes. Building up and down seems currently a significant cost barrier.
[1] https://peopleforbikes.org/blog/protected-bike-lanes-do-not-...
[2] https://activelivingresearch.org/sites/activelivingresearch....
I've seen so many pedestrians hit by people on bikes, in bike lanes that did not stop at red while someone was crossing the walk. It's invariably a Lance Armstrong type or a tourist on a City Bike with no idea what they are doing.
With the loss of revenue from parking tickets it will have to be made up somewhere and people on bikes should be the targets for fines. There should also be stricter requirements on registering bikes for a fee to be used in the city with unlicensed bikes being fined.
Some German cities are going in the opposite direction, giving subsidies for people to purchase electric cargo bikes.
Building bike lanes is very kumbaya but these types of things are not sustainable as-is. Someone has to pay for it, why not the ones that use it? Make it great to attract more bikers and raise more money.
Or maybe just raise taxes on the place with the highest tax burden in the country? Will only chase out the small group of people that actually pay the bills even more.
I suppose we could also setup red light cameras for bikes but this would require registrations and license plates. The alternative is to tax bike sales.
Just tax the GHG-emitters fairly and there cities coffers will be over-flowing.
That will help shift the incentive for those too dim and slothful to make a change on their own.
You're not going to make significant revenue off of bikes, and in any case switching trips to bikes saves cities money. If more money is needed for infrastructure in general, that's what property and sales and income taxes are for.
This goes to show that bike infrastructure isn't practical for transportation. If you can't really use that infrastructure at speeds much faster than a pedestrian (3 to 6 mph), then it will take too long to get anywhere other than for the shortest trips. On the other hand, it's quite easy to safely go 10 to 30 mph on the actual road itself while taking the lane.
What is too fast? Why shouldn't bikes be able to go fast in bike lanes?
> With the loss of revenue from parking tickets it will have to be made up somewhere
How much can be made up from fewer vehicles causing less damage to roads decreasing the maintenance budget? (A study found road damage proportional to the 4th power of weight https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/AASHO_Road_Test)
Their stronger acceleration is probably a bigger problem.
My reading of NYC data links motor vehicles to deaths and injuries: From mid 2012 to mid 2019, there were 940 reports of a crash with a bike as the primary vehicle and 1+ pedestrians injured. In the same time period, there were 69776 reports of a crash without bicycle as primary vehicle injuring 1+ pedestrians.
They don't make safety 100% perfect, obviously, but they do make things substantially better.
The other thing is that if you go by the figures and text in https://nacto.org/publication/urban-bikeway-design-guide/don... on pages 12 and 13, you'll find that a right turning driver can only see about 8.2 feet to their right when making a turn. That's the only opportunity they have to see an approaching cyclist who comes from behind them moving at 16 feet per second.
A half second to react to a cyclist appearing in the driver's field of view (as shown as the picture on page 13) is not enough time for a driver to yield.
Anyway, you're ignoring the other two things I pointed out about protected intersections. It makes the bike lane itself more obvious, and the curb design forces drivers to slow down more.
Without visibility, the motorist and cyclist could be on a collision course and not even know it until it's too late.
On the other hand, if the cyclist is on the road in the middle of the general purpose traffic lane, the motorist will see them in advance and either change lanes to pass or slow down and wait until it's safe to do so. At intersections there won't be any turning conflicts because the turning motorist is either directly in front or directly behind the cyclist (meaning the motorist won't cross the path of the cyclist when making their turn).
The fact is that the vast majority of motorist/cyclist collisions occur at intersections, so it makes more sense to cycle in a way such that you're visible to other drivers between intersections and follow the vehicle traffic rules when proceeding through one.
No. You don't seem to understand how protected intersections work. The design of the intersection itself forces cars to slow down quite a lot to make the turn. You can see this here: https://images.app.goo.gl/XnppCCtEhs8vdgd39
Plus, generally you make the parking lane end a bit before the actual intersection, precisely to improve visibility.
Anyway, as I said, parking protected is not the ideal situation anyway. It's a compromise with municipalities that aren't ready to give up more street parking in the interest of safety.
What you're describing is vehicular cycling, which has been a complete failure. There are zero countries that use it with high rates of safe biking, whereas there are a bunch of countries that use protected lanes and intersections with success that directly correlates with how much they're used, with the Netherlands being the foremost example.
I'm well aware of how NACTO[1] claims they work.
> The design of the intersection itself forces cars to slow down quite a lot to make the turn.
According to NACTO, they make drivers slow down to about 10 mph to make a right turn (see page 11, paragraph 2, sentence 1).
> Plus, generally you make the parking lane end a bit before the actual intersection, precisely to improve visibility.
This doesn't address the case where a cyclist approaches the motorist from behind from the motorist's point of view. In other words, the only time the motorist will have a chance to see the cyclist is when they're in the process of making a right turn. We can't assume that the cyclist will yield to a motorist or even be paying attention to the adjacent roadway (think of an 8 year old cyclist who doesn't have the concept of how intersections work).
The document makes the assumption that a cyclist will traverse 50 feet in 3 seconds (about 16.67 feet per second which is about 11.4 mph). On page 13, they have a figure depicting the motorist's field of view as they make their way around a protected at a speed of around 10 mph.
If you measure the bikeway setback line shown on page 12 and compare it with the horizontal measurement from the drivers field of view cone (from the origin to the left most extent), you'll find that the driver can only see about 8.2 feet down the bikeway.
Remember that both the cyclist and the car are traveling at a speed of around 15 feet per second. Also, the average reaction time of someone who's not expecting an event is around 1 to 1.5 seconds. This means that the motorist will not have enough time to see the cyclist in order to yield to them. The picture right below it showing the cyclist entering the intersection makes that evident.
> What you're describing is vehicular cycling, which has been a complete failure.
Vehicular cycling is the safest way to cycle in the current environment and addresses the problems of intersection conflicts by positioning the cyclist right in front of the motorist who will have no trouble seeing them well in advance of catching up to them.
The sidepath type intersection actually increases conflicts due to lack of visibility as I described above.
[1] https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/NACTO_Dont-Give...
Building bike lanes can also be used for scooters and other kinds of non-auto transport.
Finally, mass transit is an order of magnitude more difficult to plan and implement, as effective MT needs to not only coexist with vehicles, but pre-empt them at intersections. Otherwise, they're slow and no one uses them.
Most cities in the US will never have a subway, so the only option is light-rail or protected bus lanes.
Bikes are also healthy for people, and they're certainly more space-efficient than cars. Oh, and they're vastly less expensive for the city as well; building subways is enormously capital intensive, and buses have high ongoing operating expenses. Good quality bike infrastructure isn't exactly cheap...except that compared to high quality car or transit infrastructure, yeah it is relatively cheap.
So, altogether, replacing car space with bike space makes a ton of sense, especially for a city as dense as NYC. Sure, bus and subways improvements should happen too, but there's so much car space that's wasteful, and bike stuff is so cheap, that it's really low hanging fruit. No good reason not to develop it.
I do think there is overlap in bike lane interest and public transit. TransAlt's mission, for example, "is to reclaim New York City's streets from the automobile and advocate for better bicycling, walking, and public transit for all New Yorkers." I'm pretty sure they were helpers on the 14th St bus way pilot.
https://sutp.org/files/contents/documents/resources/F_Readin...
Here's a mirror: http://archive.li/Hyxyf