Pedestrian routing that offers pleasant alternatives to the shortest route
gislounge.com
gislounge.com
And how. I've found that my preferred routes don't just differ from what Google Maps might suggest, they also tend to avoid all the places that my city thought might be a good place for a posted bike lane. The bike lanes are all on noisy, busy streets that aren't pleasant to ride on, and the bike lanes themselves are often full of delivery trucks and rideshare drivers.
I choose a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation specifically because I dislike all the noise and rush and stress that automobiles represent, facilitate and encourage. I've already decided to take 5 minutes longer to get where I'm going for the sake of having a more pleasant life, I can spare another 5 minutes in order to have an even more pleasant life. Worst case scenario, it still beats anything Peloton wants to sell me.
This is part of why separated bike lanes are so important.
I've come to prefer non-thoroughfare streets where it's understood that bikes get to use the road, too. There, the only thing I have to worry about is rideshare drivers and Waze people thinking that blasting through residential areas at 40mph is their birthright, but, fortunately, my city has recently started getting more proactive about installing traffic-calming features into the roads, and that kind of behavior seems to be on the decline.
SE Clinton is a pretty good example: https://goo.gl/maps/bnra2rsMCekcB3YA6
Paint bicycle paths in red consistently, plus ensure there's a height difference (a step down from a pedestrian path, then another small section that's higher before you reach e.g. cars). Basically what's being done in The Netherlands. Do ignore Amsterdam experiences though, the city centre there is not a good example.
In my view separated bike lanes are for casuals, not serious commuters. I'd much prefer sharrows and marked mixed lanes personally. Just visual reminders to drivers to share the road is designate our area is sufficient IMO.
Segregated lanes in Denmark and the Netherlands work fine. Those using a bicycle for energetic exercise will choose quiet places and times, just like car drivers who want to drive fast can't use city streets.
But I just think the marked lanes and sharrows are a good enough compromise for the serious commuters and the casuals. I’m not an expert nor closer to the mean of the typical rider (I build my own bikes, ride fast but safe, like a bike messenger without the suicide wish) so I try not to get all holy about this.
I should also note I find Toronto’s more plentiful marked lanes to be pretty good but I avoid the separated one on Adelaide. it’s much improved over past years.
There have been several studies that show sharrows don't actually help, and in some cases even hinder, bike safety.
E.g., https://trid.trb.org/view/1393928 https://rosap.ntl.bts.gov/view/dot/40917 https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S204604301...
As far as I can tell, their only purpose is to let cities pretend that they have done something for bikers, while actually doing nothing.
perhaps less than nothing - if a sharrows implies anything, then the absence of a sharrows must imply the opposite, right? And there are a lot more streets without sharrows than with.
I’ve never been on a separated bike lane without it being jammed up and cluttered with people who don’t know what they are doing, unless it’s dead out I’m not using them or would avoid the street entirely.
I miss Montreal which built bike highways in neighborhoods adjacent to busy one way streets (another good idea). Riding there was always a joy. SF scared the shit out of me but mostly because the city is disgustingly dirty and the roads are weird.
I’ve already said it’s probably the best compromise for tourist and casuals but I’m not using them unless as others mentioned they are wide enough for these people to be one side like a slow lane, others have mentioned Toronto has smaller ones than Copenhagen.
As mentioned, separated bike lines are way safer. Pedestrians won't suddenly step on bike lanes if you actually mark them properly and consistently, plus apply a height difference. Obviously there's exceptions to this but "right of way" goes in hand with "mistakes happen". Meaning, anticipate on what might happen. I cycle every day to work. There's something weird every single day. Sometimes a car, sometimes another bicycle, sometimes a pedestrian.
I live in The Netherlands btw, and those shared roads are _way_ more dangerous. What's way more likely is that the separated bike path was implemented in name, but missed out on the several bits that Netherlands has standard that other countries IMO completely mess up.
That looks to be the issue here.
For the segregated cycle paths in Copenhagen, "legally, the minimum width is 1.7 metres"[1]. That cycle path on Adelaide Street, Toronto looks to be about as wide as the tram tracks (1.4m), but about ⅓ of it is wasted with rough asphalt at the edge, and for something like 80% of its length it's just paint, with the remaining 20% using poles and planters. There are also regular manholes.
One in Copenhagen [2] has a kerb most of the way, and is wider. It's still worse around the junctions than the standard design in the Netherlands [3] (somewhere in Rotterdam). (Note that both of these are typical, I clicked once on the map on a likely-looking medium-sized road.)
dmix praises Montreal, which looks to be approaching the Danish or Dutch quality, although still has a way to go -- there are gaps in the lanes, and they sometimes go traffic-side past parked cars.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Copenhagen
[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6830112,12.5481995,3a,75y,29...
[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.9381892,4.5402326,3a,75y,267...
I mentioned way up above that I tend to avoid protected bike lanes in my city because pedestrians just walk into them without notice. The lanes in question do have a height difference. But, as far as I can tell, pedestrians aren't seeing the curb that separates the sidewalk from the bike lane and thinking, "Oh, the sidewalk ends here." They're looking a little bit further over, to the curb that separates the part of the street that's for cars from the part of the street that's for bikes, and thinking, "Oh, the street begins over there."
Isn't that a reason to support them?
> I’ve never been on a separated bike lane without it being jammed up and cluttered with people who don’t know what they are doing
Either:
a) It's busy. That happens in some places in Copenhagen during rush hour, and I have no right to go faster than anyone else. The city eventually widens the lanes, some are around 3-4m wide now [1], or people choose alternative routes, or allow 2 extra minutes for their journey. (I think some Dutch cities can be considerably worse, as there is less space due to all the canals.)
b) The people are children. Everyone gives them plenty of space.
c) They are tourists, or friends taking up the whole lane without realizing people want to pass. "Ping" them, the friends will move fairly quickly, the tourists... well, it's only the very centre of the city anyway. Treat them like young children, they have about that much experience on a bicycle.
[1] https://www.treehugger.com/bikes/bike-rush-hour-copenhagen-h... & https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6866416,12.5640582,3a,75y,13...
“How do you commute to work?” “Oh, I get there on a train, but I wouldn’t consider it a _commute_; I don’t take it very seriously”
I mean, what?
Yes, sometimes you may need to slow down a bit because someone is already overtaking or the lane is too narrow but I will take that over having to share the road with cars any day of the week.
And FWIW I've been commuting by bike for about 20 years so I wouldn't consider myself a "casual".
E.g. the width of the bike lane should be based on the amount of bikes they've estimated to ride on there. Bike traffic here is measured often. If needed the bike lane is expanded. Then height differences, consistent colouring, marking, etc. It should be obvious without thinking, something that's often not the case.
(Also I challenge the idea that relatively slow cyclists who nonetheless bike to work every day are somehow less serious)
Part of this will be cultural, Danes are relaxed and good at following rules, but it's also because it's less stressful just to wait until the next change of the lights, or go 20% slower and not have to pay attention to the cars.
Police patrols actually cycling around the city can do wonders for that.
Usually they get put there because of it; a quiet residential street doesn't need nearly as much intervention to be good for cycling, so they don't really bother with it.
The other thing is that, particularly in non-gridded cities, the roads are noisy and busy because they are often the most direct, flat route from A to B.
Finally, these thoroughfares are usually the safest places to cross other, similar thoroughfares. Less busy roads will have lower priorities at crossings, which can mean no traffic lights giving you guaranteed passage to cross, or even physical blockers in the median preventing you from crossing as well.
One downside is that the cross streets usually have cars just rolling through the stop signs with no attention paid to the possiblity of an oncoming cyclist. Maybe adding a bike indicator on all the stop signs would be a partial solution.
Parking a bike anywhere still sucks, even in a city that provides such well labeled lanes.
Doubtful. Motorists tend to be strongly apathetic to anyone but themselves. Probably a red light that’s capable of spotting a cyclist and timing a crossing would be a blue sky solution.
In my view (I'm Dutch), every road and intersection needs to be built with pedestrians and cyclists in mind. You might even consider another mode, as electric bikes and similar can be quite a bit quicker than bikes, but slower than cars.
Alternatively, let's say everything is built for pedestrians and cyclists. Then cars just have to "make do" and only in busy roads you make it safe for everyone. That's considered crazy but exactly the case in many countries for both pedestrians and cyclists.
Easy example: try walking a few blocks in various cities. How long do you have to wait for traffic lights? Now try the same in The Netherlands. The wait in other countries is often insane (1-2 minutes).
Montréal, for example, is about as dense as any other large North American city (which is to say, not very), but still does a great job without, from what I can tell, any serious expenditure of resources on physical infrastructure. There are a few physically separated bike lanes, but mostly the city just focuses on calming down the traffic: More one-way streets, left turns permitted at fewer intersections, and a ban on turning right at a red light go a long way toward making the city's streets more pleasant for everyone.
I even find it's more pleasant to drive there than it is in my city.
Google street view would be such a rich mine for data on route pleasantness, unfortunately google don't like people mining it.
A current gap in the market, by the way, would be routing for e-bikes. In the UK the power assistance is legally limited to 25km/h which means it actually makes sense to take hillier routes so you can climb using power assistance then descend fast under gravity alone. Not seen a router which can do that yet!
I think cycle paths should be focused on running around the edge of urban areas in a ring. This would facilitate many more commuter journeys and help people avoid the centre. Cyclists would naturally use the quieter roads to access the ring.
It would be nice if Google got their hands on the Strava data and integrated it for more casual bike-navigation.
I would also love a mode which lowers the cognitive load of navigation while biking. Perhaps I could save a minute by taking a short-cut involving 10 different turns, but when in unfamiliar territory (and hence using navigation software in the first place), each turn poses some difficulty. So many times I've missed to take a turn because the audio cues have been so ever slightly off.
I would love having this mode for cars as well. Sometimes to shave off a couple of minutes, maps will route along the hypotenuse of a right triangle via a lot of turns on smaller roads. I would have preferred just going along the main road and making a single turn, even if that took a few minutes longer. This is especially important at night where the road signage may have reduced visibility.
I would pay real money for a navigation app that would tell me which route was the easiest drive.
I was driving the other day and pondered whether measuring pulse/blood pressure/other factors that indicate stress while traveling a recommended route (or even passively, correlating to time+day) could positively inform route quality.
(*It honestly seems to prefer them, even in Seattle where everything is a reflective sheet of glass and pedestrians are shrouded in urban camouflage 300 days of the year.)
Sometimes I do choose to make that left turn myself, though. In light traffic (middle of the night, etc.), it's easy and it's faster. In heavy traffic, it can be impossible.
If only they had access to traffic data, and if only they had people skilled in algorithms and AI, they could use those two things to figure out when to suggest (unprotected) left turns and when not to. Oh wait... they do have that data and that expertise.
Every time I use Waze, I end up pulling my hair out from all the stress-inducing second-shaving measures. Left turns zig-zagging across the city? What could be bad about that??
The idea of low cognitive-load routing is great. One could take in to consideration "how does this driver/cyclist typically navigate to the point they've requested," and providing a route that augments an already well-worn mental path with something a little better and easier (or faster) as well.
Does Strava take user feedback as an input? It irks me how Maps/others seem to not take elevation, road condition, or general "pleasant-ness" in to consideration when it comes to routing …
I would agree that Maps and Waze strike me almost as opposing forces in how they do things … without making it apparent.
This is exactly why I hate Waze: people "scooting around" are exactly the worst ones to have on residential back-roads, where children might be playing, people sleeping, and where there's less often a cycle path.
Fortunately, traffic engineers in the larger European cities sometimes block off residential roads to cars to prevent "rat running".
Maybe routing apps should have an initial onboarding (or route-specific questions) similar to 401(k) / investing apps: "what is your tolerance for risk?" and "how well do you know this area?" and "do you like calm or active routes?"
Used it around lots of Western & Central Europe. It's great most of the time.
Walking is my favorite way to get to know a new city, and it not always easy to determine a good way to walk by eyeballing google maps if you’re not yet familiar with a new city.
* Running: https://trailrouter.com/
* Running/Cycling: https://www.strava.com/
* Motorcycles: https://scenicapp.space/
* Motorcycles: https://www.motorcycleroads.com/
Disclosure: Author of trailrouter.com, which uses openrouteservice under the hood, but has its own algorithm for determining green/natural spaces to run in.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desire_path https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePath/ https://www.reddit.com/r/DesirePaths/
The system is based on the open source GraphHopper routing engine https://github.com/graphhopper/graphhopper (UI at https://graphhopper.com/maps/ and integrated on https://osm.org)
So you can easily contribute to data (https://osm.org) or to one of these open source engines to achieve what you prefer.
Personally I have the feeling that especially for walking and cycling they are already better in many areas than Google or similar but as a co-founder of GraphHopper I might be influenced ;)
And the media skewered them for it: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=%22microsoft%22+%22avoid+ghetto%22...
P.S. Title should include "2012".
I frequently have to reroute myself due to these “shortcuts”
What I would like is something like google maps where I can say I want to walk from A to B (or back to A) but take a nice route, avoiding ugly/dangerous/crowded parts of town etc. The more configurable the better.