If there's a way for local people to comment on this, please encourage these to be changed to in-between-road-and-sidewalk level. (Or road level with a continuous kerb in between).
This makes it much, much easier for pedestrians not to accidentally wander into the lane. (2)
1 https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Car-free-Market-...
2 https://www.shutterstock.com/image-photo/copenhagen-denmark-...
The problem is, after the post war boom, the cities were planned for cars and now there's simply no space left for cycling lanes unless we ban cars which as much as I wish for will never happen in my lifetime.
They've removed car lanes on some fairly major roads, and successfully ignored protests from taxi drivers etc.
[1] https://ecf.com/news-and-events/news/evolution-cycle-superhi...
I've been run down once by a bicyclist and once by a skateboarder while I was walking on mixed use pathways. The skateboarder took a harder fall than I did, still helped me up, and sincerely apologized. I fractured my wrist in my fall when the bicyclist hit me and not only did they not stop, they yelled at me as they cycled away.
Anyway, I too would support limiting the use of cars as well as on street parking in city centres and other similar zones.
Getting used to some bad compromise hardly makes it good.
It doesn't feel like the extra kerb is a matter of cost as much as of "sharing" the environment. So the expectation is "there won't be too many bikes so pedestrians can just use the entire sidewalk when needed". This just leads to more cyclists trying their luck on the street with the cars which are more predictable than pedestrians.
[0] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6450742,12.4589657,3a,75y,28...
[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.614447,12.475333,3a,75y,294....
Otherwise, they're respected. I don't think I've ever seen someone driving in one. It seems a strange question. Do American drivers not respect the sidewalk? It's the same construction.
I think the police would come down very heavily on anyone they caught driving in the cycle lane without a very good reason. The only good reason I can think of would be to move slowly aside to allow an emergency vehicle to pass -- and the same reason would justify pulling onto the sidewalk -- although either action is still illegal.
https://www.google.com/maps/@50.8445626,4.3736092,3a,75y,270...
https://www.google.com/maps/@42.358207,-71.0988444,3a,75y,20...
It takes a level of empathy and cooperation I think doesn't exist in the bike versus car debate, because it has become an "us versus them" debate and everyone is trying to win not collaborate.
Pedestrian areas, yes - people usually don't commute through there. Sidewalks vs. cycle paths vs. car lanes - not a good idea.
When people propose path sharing among pedestrians and cyclists, they often mean cyclists slowing down to speeds (e.g. 10km/h, or even 5-7km/h), which they would find unacceptable for cars, even if multiplied x3 (try telling drivers to go 30km/h so they share with cyclists going 15-30 km/h).
It's not good, the priority just isn't there to make it better. Overall I think mixing pedestrians an cyclists works, as long as people respect one another, but as you say mixing in commuters really is a bad idea.
It's certainly possible for traffic moving at different speeds to share the road since there's a set of rules drivers of vehicle follow. On multi-lane highways/motorways, faster traffic passes/overtakes slower traffic by moving closer to the center of the road. The same principle works when faster traffic wants to pass/overtake a cyclist.
On the other hand, this won't work when a cyclist is riding amongst pedestrians because pedestrians do not follow the rules of the road while walking.
But once you're in the metro area, everyone should slow right down. The dominant traffic in the city is foot traffic.
Cars go at 50km/h through my city, meaning they need to be separated really strictly. Slow them down to 20km/h with narrower roads, and you can reclaim the area for mixed pedestrian traffic, allowing more free movement for everyone in the city. Something as simple as crossing the road shouldn't take 10 minutes for 200 people just so five cars can cross the road.
With narrower streets and slower traffic, you can reasonably cross the road anywhere you want. That also allows bikes to move reasonably along the road but slowly on the footpaths, you open the whole area up for the people using the city.
It's all a balance, not everywhere in a city should be like that. I'm just advocating to move away from the heavy car-oriented lean many places currently have for their city centers.
What you want to do is enable fast biking everywhere (so a bike first infra) and seperate modalities for safety and comfort. Any urban transport research will show that bikes in foot traffic is a Very Bad Idea(tm).
I fully agree with displacing cars. If a street has 20km/h limit for cars, I would not mind if it applied for bicycles as well (even though they are safer at the same speed).
Yes, foot traffic should be a priority. For longer distances you need something faster - mass transit, bikes, those e-scooters, maybe longboards, or even segways (there are nice 1-wheel versions), but you don't need fast paths on every street. Cars take too much space to go in significant numbers even near city centers.
Why doesn't it work? I frequently commute by bicycle by traveling at speeds ranging from 10 to 40 km/h (averaging around 18 to 20 km/h) amongst motorized traffic moving at 25 to 80 km/h without any issues. I do something very similar on interstate highways (motorways) where I drive 110 to 130 km/h amongst tractor-trailers moving at 60 to 100 km/h.
> unprotected bike lanes are just a bandaid solution to that problem.
Bike lanes don't solve anything and they cause problems for cyclists at intersections because they direct cyclists to pass traffic on the wrong side when traffic plans to turn.
That significantly reduces the utility of the bicycle in terms of transportation. If one can't ride at a pace that much faster than walking, then using a bicycle provides no advantage in terms of time. It's also more awkward to control a bicycle at slower speeds and you're more likely to fall and injure yourself compared to hist Ealing at the same speed.
But you can totally ride faster than walking on footpaths provided they're big enough, and it's easy enough to get on and off the path when needed. Not commute speed, but fast enough for inner-city commutes.
That really depends on how many pedestrians are using the foot path. Plus, why use the footpath when I can use the road and ride at commute speed? Similarly, when I drive my car, I prefer taking the highway/motorway since I can drive faster than I can using surface streets.
Bicycles are vehicles with wheels just like motorcycles and cars. Drivers are supposed to follow the same rules of the road regardless of what type of vehicle they use. That is, stay on the correct side of the road, signal intention to change lanes or turn. Make left turns while keeping to the left of same direction traffic and make right turns while keeping to the right of same direction traffic. Faster traffic passes/overtakes slower traffic on the side closer to the center of the road which allows for traffic moving at different speeds.
In the other hand, none of these requirements apply to pedestrians, so they cannot mix with traffic other than at designated crossing points. These crossing points work for pedestrians moving at pedestrian like speeds (3 to 5 mph -- 5 to 8 km/h). Faster speeds leads to the problem where drivers have insufficient time to see the pedestrian and yield).
I'm not advocating for bikes on sidewalks, but it seems less ludicrous to me than bikes on streets with cars. I'm for the standard line of though that bikes and friends belong in a 3rd flow of traffic like the Dutch do it.
Compared to the Netherlands or Denmark, biking culture and infrastructure in Austria is a national embarrassment.
I'm not sure that would work in many, much less every intersection but it really made me stop and question what sort of unrecognised assumptions I had about traffic safety. This stuff is important and I think there's way to many rules and practices that are in place because of assumptions that got made back in the dawn of time... it's likely that they're not correct now but it's even possible that they were never really correct. We need evidence based policies and not so-called common wisdom.
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0761111,15.4503833,3a,75y,31...
My second favorite intersection is on the left side of Erzherzog-Johann-Brücke, where pedestrians, bikes, trams, and cars intersect with only one traffic sign (northwards on Neutorgasse).
https://www.google.com/maps/@47.0710439,15.4355343,3a,75y,20...
Can't speak for other Austrian cities other than Salzburg, though.
"We'll just put all the vulnerable road users off to the side here. Cyclists don't mind if they have to cross a road at every single junction right?"
What to do, what to do?
It can work OK when you have wide paths that have lots of different types of users on them. It's less good when you have fairly narrow sidewalks.
That doesn't fit with my memories of visiting the Netherlands, or a quick Streetview-tour of The Hague.
https://www.google.com/maps/@52.0645825,4.2251355,3a,75y,172...
Numbers, man, numbers. Link to some hard data "or it didn't happen."
not if the curb is sloped (american suburbs tend to have these), so that you could ride up (or down) it in a pinch.
i'd support such a little "mound curb" separating cars and bikes at the same grade, which would likely be less expensive to install than building 3 different grades for cars, bikes/scooters, and pedestrians (which i'd also support).
I absolutely do not blame the pedestrians - its all too easy to do.
Something I found in Japan was that it seemed like abnormal number of people rode bicycles on fairly busy sidewalks. I found I needed to really train myself not to change directions without looking behind me in case there was bicycle back there.
FWIW, This was brought up in the public comments on the project. The bike lanes seem to be between the sidewalks and the bus stops in several places, and overall there isn't a firm physical distinction between bikes and pedestrians. It seems to me that you're going to have to ride more slowly than you would if we had proper bike lanes, and there are going to be a lot of accidents with bikes hitting peds.
Also, cross traffic is still going on and the center of the street is reserved for buses (if I understand correctly) and light rail, and there are still cars (taxis, &c.), so from a bike-commuter POV I don't think it will be much more convenient than before, however, it's potentially much safer.
But again, I haven't actually been down there yet myself.
But I tend to agree with you overall: with (most^) cars taken out of the equation, a street level bike lane is probably better for everyone.
^ I still see people mistakenly turning on to Market sometimes.
It is the single cheapest/easiest thing a city can do to improve a street.