* City roads are narrow and don't have empty space just waiting to be painted green. Bike lanes will cost you parking spots or a car travel lane. This gets huge pushback.
* Dangerous drivers must be removed from roads. You can be hit, killed even, with video evidence and the driver may escape punishment entirely.
* Cities (or specifically NIMBY residents) must stop resisting increased density, mixed use, and useless parking minimums. Not everyone wants to live in a suburban development, miles from useful amenities.
* Bikes and alternative transportation are compliments and need to be developed together. Biking to transit hubs is huge. It's not just green paint wherever it fits.
This behaviour from a few individuals pushes anti-bikers to protest even more, making it harder for these initiatives to thrive.
As ridiculous as it sounds, a deterrent similar to a license plate may become a necessity.
Meanwhile, the driver who hit me (in a bike lane) defended himself to the cop by saying "it's hard to not hit bikers". He was not even given a warning. I had video evidence from a helmetcam.
More like comparing apples and shotguns.
And some first aid for being run down by a cyclist, sure.
Both should be sacrificed in order to break the car-infested cities. I imagine the pushback must be annoying to deal with, yes, but there's just no way you're going to be able to reconstruct your cities to be safe with this absurd amount of space dedicated to cars in cities of all places.
I suppose we might be on the same page here, though it's not entirely clear to me at the moment.
100% agree with the rest of your comment.
Also, setting up a good cycle lane can be more expensive than you think. If you have a nice bike lane that spreads over 5 km but there's a 200 meters gap in it because of a bridge which was too narrow to keep the bike path, then you don't have a nice lane at all.
Some areas have long stretches of sidewalk without intersections those are fine for cycling assuming they have little pedestrian traffic or are wide enough to pass safely.
Most sidewalks aren't appropriate for cycling. The exceptions I was describing are mostly found in big commercial developments, target, walmart, etc. Around me they tend to build wide sidewalks, well separated from the busy road. Here's an example:
https://www.google.com/maps/@38.9146941,-92.3196647,117m/dat...
But most sidewalks aren't like that they are crossed regularly with driveways and end at a road every block. Every driveway is dangerous because drivers just don't look for people moving at bike speeds(2-3x faster than a pedestrian) on sidewalks. I personally know two people hit while cycling on a sidewalk because somebody pulled into a driveway and didn't see them.
Imagine you're a cyclist, on the sidewalk, trying to cross a four-way stop. If you cross at the sidewalk, you're at extreme danger of being hit by a car making a right turn. This is called a right-hook.
The road infrastructure in the US was built without consideration for bikes and so it's really annoying to many drivers when cyclists use roads but that doesn't mean the right place for cyclists is on the sidewalk.
Approach the intersection, coasting and then braking. Come to a stop, with feet on the ground. Optionally, dismount. Wait for a big gap in the stream of cars. Walk or ride across the intersection, remounting as necessary, and then continue on riding.
I'm not seeing the extreme danger here. It's not possible for a car to make a right turn because there isn't any car. The cyclist doesn't cross until the cars are gone.
Urban adjustment: there might be a "walk button", and there is a chance that it is actually connected to a traffic signal. Cross only with the walk indicator active.
I don't see any reason why this should be illegal. It's far safer than the alternatives.
For sure, one of the advantages of cycling is that you can at any time become a pedestrian by dismounting. This allows you to take advantage of pedestrian crossings. It's going to be really annoying to dismount at every intersection or every ~500ft/155m.
> The cyclist doesn't cross until the cars are gone.
There's a four-way stop by my house that continuously has traffic for a hour twice a day during rush hour.
> remounting as necessary
A key to road safety is behaving in a predictable manner. Cars are supposed to yield to pedestrians at crosswalk but bikes are vehicles.
It's far safer at the intersection to merge into traffic, take the lane and yield the intersection with the same rules as other vehicles.
> It's far safer than the alternatives.
History shows it's not. Sidewalks aren't designed for use by vehicles going 3x the speed of pedestrians.
It's not safe for the pedestrians and it's not safe for the cyclists.
Whatever the answer, that works for cyclists. Simply dismount, then act like a pedestrian. Maybe the intersection is unsafe for pedestrians, in which case it is also unsafe for cyclists.
The idea that "bikes are vehicles" is a load of nonsense. It's clear that the only cyclists talking to legislators are the ones in the top 0.01% for acceleration and speed. For all the rest of us, we're pedestrians, even if the law pretends otherwise.
The speed difference, mass difference, and energy difference are all terrible for bikes against trucks. Pretending otherwise is silly. We might as well compare an little old person on a bike, just 120 pounds total going 10 MPH, with 210-pound Usain Bolt running at 28 MPH.
The problem of running down pedestrians with a bike is simply solved by not doing that. The cyclist must slow down and give a wide gap or get some sort of acknowledgement that passing is OK. This isn't hard.
Also, bicyclists in cities tend to travel closer to the speeds of cars than pedestrians, and tend to have more similar dynamics such as turning radius and stopping distance which infrastructure for cars is already designed around. Additionally, car drivers are licensed and there is an expectation of awareness that they must exhibit. This makes it far easier to place slower-moving "hazards" in their path than adding faster-moving vehicles in the path of pedestrians.
https://www.sallymorinlaw.com/bicycle-accidents/riding-your-...
Also, the width and amount of obstructions on sidewalks varies widely.
I wouldn't want to bike when there are many cars in the same lane as me, but it is still safer than biking on sidewalks where are many pedestrians.
* It tends to be busy with pedestrians (not everywhere, as you mention)
* It's not safe when crossing side-roads
* It's inefficient if you walk at junctions
I have had more close calls with cars riding on at most 10 miles of sidewalk (and that's being generous to be honest) in the past decade than with ~6000mi riding in the road.
Blindspots. Intersections. Parallel parking/parking in bike lanes. Safe and clean parking of bikes at destinations.
The entire design and build requirements of roads have to be reconsidered to make cycling/scooters first class citizens in cities. As it stands in the US, most cities are pretty dangerous for cyclists.
Realistically, you've got to convince me to leave my 3000+sqft house (with bedrooms for all my kids) and yard to move to a 1000sqft apartment in the city (and make my kids share a room) and take on a bigger mortgage so that I'm closer to work. Also how do I get groceries for a family of 5 home on my bike?
Life for the majority of people where I live has not been set up to be bicycle friendly and bike lanes don't change that barrier.
1. This central area should have a connection to a frequent public transit option which can get you to your job. BRT would be the easiest to roll out, but the ideal for most people would probably be some sort of medium/commuter rail with decent WiFi onboard and enough seating/frequent enough trains so that the average commuter can sit and work if they'd like. Obviously this won't take everyone out of their car, but the majority of commuters in your neighborhood could use this instead since it would be faster and more convenient. Ideally there would be trains/buses running at least every 10 minutes.
2. Because there is a retail area close to your residence you can realistically walk/bike to get groceries and do routine errands. Bike paths in your residential neighborhood make this easier because they feel (and are) much safer for everyday people to use instead of sharing streets with cars. Ideally the paths are safe enough for you to feel comfortable with your elderly relatives or children biking on them.
This is obviously very different from how North American suburbs are set up today and would require a large amount of investment and changes in the way that we do public policy and planning. However, it is certainly possible to have suburbs that are bike/pedestrian friendly if you put the infrastructure in place to do so.
What you describe is exactly how my suburb is set up. There are several clusters of mixed housing (single family, town houses, apartments) built around a few retail centers (and the retail centers usually have housing built on top of them). There is also both light rail and regular rail for transportation from the retail centers. I live 3-5K from the various central areas.
Here are my observations:
* cars are really only avoided for people in the residential apartments above or directly attached to the grocery stores. Nobody here rides their bike to shop (based on never seeing bicycles at the grocery store).
* there's still ~ 200M of elevation change inside of that 3-5K range. Only the most hard core are interesting in cycling that on a regular basis.
* It's a 5 minute drive or 30 minute bus ride to get to the light rail centre from my location (others are closer, some are farther). Some are content to take a bus, but many others drive. There are some who cycle but it's a tiny percentage.
* It's wet here all year long, but uncomfortably cold 5 months of the year. Those who cycle for transportation tend to only do it during May/June/July/August.
What's the level of bike infrastructure available? It can be surprising how protected people need to feel from cars to use bikes over other modes of transit. I personally only bike in bike lanes and will avoid sharrows and walk my bike on the sidewalk if there isn't a lane available. My partner will only bike on grade separated paths. This leads to us mostly walking or taking public transit since we're in an urban area, but both of us would gladly bike if we had a good network of bike lanes to do so.
That's simply not close enough. The station must be within a 10-minute bike ride to disrupt the car-centric commute. Ideally the rail stops must be spaced about 3km apart, then there's a corridor 5km wide that lets everyone inside use their bikes to commute.
Cargo bike. Also used for getting the smaller kids (too small to bike safely/fast enough) to daycare etc.
Or when living in a properly dense city just bring it with you one backpack at a time. This is what my mother did when I was a kid. Just stopped by the shop on her way home from work.
The lack of affordable 2500sq ft apartments is the big failure. It doesn't cost that much more to build them, and so rent shouldn't be any more than a house payment ($1500/month!). If that doesn't exist it is because zoning won't let them build it. (or more likely they can, but why do that when you can get more $$$ from 3 800sqft apartments each at $1000/month. Until the high profit apartments are filled nobody will build the ones families would actually live in.
Or to put it a different way: it isn't 1880. People have always wanted more space, now with cars we can afford it in the suburbs.
In Vancouver proper, Average 3 bedroom house price is $2.1M. A townhouse or condo of that size is $1.5M. Your typical house payment is going to be much higher than $1500/month. Rents are probably in the $3K+ range -- I don't actually have data on this. Lots of factors there. I don't think zoning is one of them as there is constantly land assemblies and razing blocks of houses for town houses and condos. I suspect it's more geography: we're up against and ocean, a border and a mountain range.
The mountains don't help, but nobody is building the apartments people want to live in.
US roads always stroke me as super wide and at least those I saw myself had plenty of space for this.
One example to illustrate the difference - on say Swiss or French car parks, if you park perfectly in the center of the parking spot and if cars around you do the same, even with regular car (say BMW 3 series) you can't just open the door fully, often not even that half-open position in the middle. Significantly wider cars effectively take 2 spaces, but then again not many folks buy them here also for this reason.
This is not true - we have streets that have been converted to be fully pedestrian+bicycle, and resupplies/moving in is not really an issue because these vehicles get exceptions. The sign combination 'Motor traffic forbidden / Exception for authorized vehicles' is pretty damn common in my European city.
Good biking infrastructure is physically segregated infrastructure, which is less trivial to build (though still way cheaper and easier than infrastructure for cars).
The larger and more ambitious the project the greater the costs. I imagine a massive upgrade would be even more expensive
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/transportation/12-...
Cycling lane poles would be ideal, but a lot of drivers push back on this since they see it as precious space being taken away from them.
https://liveboston617.org/2020/12/16/dangerous-bike-lane-div...
Paint doesn't do squat for making car lanes safe for bikes.