Bikelanes also are mostly just there (in practice) for rideshare services and delivery services to drop off goods. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, given the problems with right turns and doorings mentioned earlier. It is problematic in name however, but because new cyclists treat them as actual bike lanes and are just gambling with the probability of eventionally getting hit.
We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting money into this garbage is a mistake.
I'd be especially curious to know what the good alternatives are.
IIRC physical dividers like reflector poles actually do make bike lanes safer, and sharrows are mixed on whether or not they make lanes more effective.
Open Streets: https://openstreetsproject.org/
Traffic travels too fast in the US, and I do not want to share roads with cars going 40+ mph
I've also biked on streets that became "super sharrow" streets: one lane striped with a giant green stripe that supposedly provides a big visual indicator that a bike can use the full lane. This was terrible.
> We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting money into this garbage is a mistake.
What bike infrastructure would you like to see, if not bike lanes?
That sounds pretty great. Unfortunately in my area the bike lanes are straight into the door zone (see for example https://goo.gl/maps/nMnKZEVZduEfkups8) and this seems to be the general design for bike lanes in the South Bay.
In fact, the city of Sunnyvale's own bike map [0] says to avoid the four feet door zone, yet the bike lane is less than 4 feet wide and straight in the door zone.
It's frustrating. You'd think they'd favor the safety of the unprotected squishy humans over the ones in two ton metal boxes, but it seems like the opposite most of the time.
[0] https://sunnyvale.ca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?Blo...
In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are as a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have clear markings, but you should always be in sight of drivers IMO, as an active participant in traffic.
- Gives cyclist false sense of security, since they need to yield to vehicles turning across "their lane"
- Little notice given to drivers that they need to take care, since they have right of way
- Cyclists have to stop at every side road, which can make taking the bike path as slow as walking
Experience cyclists won't use them and novice cyclists are given an unsafe and slow route; they will drive instead. What a waste of public funds.
A better solution, as seen in NL and some parts of London, is to make the motorist give way or even remove the vehicle entrance entirely. The transport mix you get is the transport mix you build for.
I definitely agree with you that people on bikes should be in the way of cars because that's what gives them the most visibility, but I'd disagree with the marking parts. See the commute post I have a little bit below, the only markings on that commute on streets are a few sharrows, no bike lanes at all.
What needs to happen is for bikes to be perceived as slow moving vehicles, not unlike tractors in rural areas. People overtake the tractors as soon as it's safe to do so and don't honk at them. That happens as soon as there is enough of a critical mass of people on bikes on streets.
Junctions are where drivers tend to kill cyclists, so junction improvements are far more effective than anything along the "normal" road. Bike boxes and, ideally, dedicated light phases for bikes help far more than lanes.
We have that in SF and in the year before COVID I basically spent every morning commute berating at least one person that tried to cross in front of me on a bike-only light. It's really hard for Americans to give up the right-turn-on-red.
In NYC they just hand out tickets like candy to people who don't know that right-turn-on-red is illegal through essentially the whole city. In 2019 though I didn't see any enforcement at all of bike-protection lights and lanes.
Actually, let me show you my commute when I was a student several years ago. This is in North America.
1. Walk to the local park (https://goo.gl/maps/CdCinYAp24MgCBBm7)
2. Grab a bicycle from the local bike sharing system (https://goo.gl/maps/46vzmXzx5CPSPFRE9)
3. Bike a minute to the bike path (https://goo.gl/maps/gpkXGcXxMHYH4epn7)
4. Hop on a bike path, wave to the other cyclists (https://goo.gl/maps/JiRSC6yhwqanRn1K7)
5. Bike some more (https://goo.gl/maps/jvSoQQ2rmB1F2NNo8)
6. And then some more (https://goo.gl/maps/u2WyLVGvJBfNL5718)
7. And then even more (https://goo.gl/maps/LcxSoUZ9BzgsovU97)
8. Exit the bike path (https://goo.gl/maps/AyqzZUuo89osSEPf6)
9. Bike on surface streets, sharing the street (https://goo.gl/maps/NNyhCU9gZEXVxk5D8)
10. Arrive at destination, drop off bike at the bike sharing system dock (https://goo.gl/maps/qCy5GESLL4AxHuL99)
That's an example of good bike infrastructure. For the parts where bikes interact with cars on low speed streets, the streets are either narrow so that cars drive slowly, or there is another lane for cars to pass bikes easily.
Note the lack of painted lanes; bikes and cars share the street, and cars pass bikes whenever it's safe to do so. Also note that in most of these street views perspectives, you can pan the camera and see other people biking.
Except now every street crossing becomes a death trap because you're outside the cone of visual awareness of drivers.
From my experience (in the UK) how usable those lanes are depends hugely on pedestrian discipline. There's one of those running alongside the seafront in Brighton that in my experience works well. The same style of lane that I've seen in and around London generally doesn't work as well: there are often pedestrians on the wrong side, not infrequently looking into their phones and/or wearing headphones.
What makes matters worse is that in the UK the rules are asymmetric: while it's an offence for a cyclists to go on the pedestrian side, there are no rules preventing pedestrians from walking on the cycle path (source: [1]).
Not to mention that, in my jurisdiction, if this sort of behaviour led to injury or damage to property, the cyclist would almost certainly be found to be at fault, at least partially.
I don't think there's really a solution to the turning problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every intersection for cars/bikes. I'm hopeful that newer cars' safety features help to fight this back (I would also like people to, yknow, pay attention when driving).
My principle (especially after getting a drivers license and realizing how little visibility one actually has while driving) is to not listen to music (so I can actually hear cars etc) and to basically slow down at every interesection that has even a bit of doubt. It's annoying but at least I'm not rolling the dice on every intersection (or at least not as much)
It establishes the wrong principle - it makes drivers feel entitled to exclude cyclists from the main road lanes. A bike lane that isn't wide enough, isn't adequately maintained (sweeping, filling potholes...), leads to blind corners, or just dumps you out into the main lanes at junctions, is worse than useless - it actively makes cycling more dangerous, because drivers feel no need to share the main road lanes.
> I don't think there's really a solution to the turning problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every intersection for cars/bikes.
The solution is to have bikes be part of the main traffic stream at that point. If you have a bike box at the front of the queueing area, and ideally a bike phase on the lights, that can help a lot.
In the Netherlands, for example (well, much of the Netherlands, I haven't been everywhere), the bikes are on the bike lanes, the cars are on the car lanes, and that's that. You have no motivation to go on the car lanes (except on small alleys with no lanes), since the bike lanes just get you wherever you want to go.
Personally I’d argue that it’s extremely odd that we dedicate so much public space for people to leave their private property laying around.
And like for deliveries... what do you want people to do? Not stop in front of the place they are delivering?
If there's an argument for it being a public space, it's also a public space for things like deliveries, dropping people off, etc. "People should be more careful" is a glib thing to say for this stuff, and I think we should make improvements to things, but if we're talking about public space, cyclists are _also_ not the only thing on the road and accomodations can be made for stuff like delivery
When you make a delivery, do you just stop dead in the middle of the lane you were driving on?
If yes, please proceed.
If not, why not? Don't you want to stop in front of the place you are delivering to? Why do you think that it is ok to completely block bicycle lane for the same purpose, but it's not ok to block a car lane? For an extra point, assume the car lane is a single-lane one-way road, and the delivery takes 5 minutes.
So, yes, you stop "in the car lane" and it affects people.
There are also times where you change lanes because of obstructions. Just like intersections, stop lights, so many things that prevent the "just speed right ahead without any concern in the world" use case.
There are safety reasons for isolating bike/pedestrian traffic. But acting like it's uniquely unfair to bikes to have any form of obstruction... this is what roads are. Shared area for movement.
And while I do agree that it isn't uniquely unfair for bicycles, it seemes that when there is no isolation between a car lane and a bicycle lane, during the busy hours there is a random car, van, taxi parked every 30-50 meters. (Well, used to be, 2 years ago)
Where do you live where the parallel parking spots in front of businesses are always open? Where I’ve lived things like UPS will just stop in the road if necessary, and other cars will go around.
Deliveries in areas without lots of parallel parking is a solved problem; we don’t need to pretend like reducing or eliminating street level parking will have unknown impacts on things like delivery vehicles.
These are some of the fist ones through the CBD - https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-and-transport/roads-... - As part of this they closed a major bridge in the middle of the city (Victoria Bridge over to South Bank) to road traffic. Before it was two bus-only lanes and two car lanes, but now it's three bus lanes and a separated bikeway.
They're also building four bridges over the river dedicated to cycle and pedestrian to link up different bike routes, and the State Government has been doing some good work with their 'Veloway' next to the M3 highway. A lot of intersection and road upgrades (and new roads) are starting to add separated bike paths too, like the overhauled Kingsford Smith Drive that finished recently.
Watching subdivisions going in with utterly unfriendly approaches to people who want to get around with anything but a car is horrific to me.
As a motorcyclist and former electric skateboard rider, welcome! Everyone is trying to kill you and it's always your fault.
Cemeteries are full of people who had right of way.
¹IANAL; in the jurisdiction I'm in, but my understanding is that this is common
Yeah, I perhaps should have made it clear that occupying a full lane is something I do probably <2% of the time. Not very often, and for similar reasons to the rest of the comment: I don't really want to have to deal with cars, and if I can stay right and let them by, I will.
I'm in America, so it depends on the road; where we have unprotected bike lanes, then I'm in that & there's passing room, but too often there are "sharrows" where there really isn't a good deal of room for passing. Then it's very situational. (Usually the car taking up part of an oncoming lane as they pass.)
https://www.britishcycling.org.uk/cycletraining/article/ct20...
He eventually did a half lane change, buzzing me as he went by, then got stuck at the next red light while I caught up. Ridiculous.
(Of course my area also has reckless motorists who don't respect the rules of the road, but they seem to believe they are above the law whether they are interacting with cyclists or other motorists.)
Unfortunately not, that's basically my strategy.
If I keep to the edge of the lane folks pass by me really close. If I'm going back and forth a bit and taking a whole lane up, cars give me the entire lane. It's wonderful
The exception is on left bends. There it's best to stay on the right, for three reasons: better visibility, you can have a straighter trajectory with a higher speed and if there is only one lane in each direction, cars going too fast in the opposite direction may cross into your lane.
A good example is a Bubb Rd, the part north of McClellan, in Cupertino (which has a bunch of Apple offices): much improved signalization and there’s now a bumper divider between the car and bike lane, making it very safe.
They also added much improved commuter bus access islands.
This is just one example. There are others. I don’t know if it’s because of COVID or because these things were already planned, but the lack of usual commuter and school traffic definitely made it easier to do the work.
Yeah, sadly a kid died on that stretch a few years back — likely why they added the new improved bike lane.
1. How often do pedestrians wander into those bike lane?
2. What are the rules at intersections? Specifically, does a bike lane along a major road have priority over minor roads at intersections, or are bikes required to give way to all traffic from both the major and the minor roads?
3. How obvious is it to drivers turning right from the rightmost lane that they might, in fact, be crossing a bike lane?
1. Depends on where. In busy areas it happens a lot. You just have to be careful when there are people around.
2. The bike lanes have their own traffic lights, which are on the same cycle as the cross walks to the right of them, and the main road/lights to the left.
3. It's obvious since these bike lanes are everywhere; it's just apart of driving. I will say it's a little worse in the West of the city though!
2. The sidewalks and bike paths run together, and road crossings are dual marked. Everyone needs to exercise extra caution, of course.
3. Riders for the most parts have the same traffic flow as pedestrians. If you're turning right, you'll most likely cross both the sidewalk and the bike path at the same time.
Unless you meant something like [1] or [2] where there is a raised bicycle lane effectively on the sidewalk.
But even if they're part of the road that's not necessarily a problem [3], but in that case you'll want to have a reasonable speed limit (that sign on the road is 30 km/h, not 30mph) and you'll have to teach cars they're supposed to just be patient and slow down if they can't overtake.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ciclovia_Povoa_Varzim.jpg [2]: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gonzaga_ciclovia.jpg [3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Fietsstrook_Herenweg_Oudo...
On the other hand, if there are enough pedestrians, they will spill on the bike lane thinking it's a sidewalk. Or in some places, people really don't pay any attention and don't have a single care in the world, and will be totally oblivious to the fact that they are on a bike lane, even after ringing a very loud bike bell a few times right behind them.
My commute happens to have both of those configurations, and the second one is hell, to the point I'll rather ride on the bus lane (which is forbidden to cyclists) than risk a collision with a pedestrian.
Edit: I almost forgot, but since it tends to be between the road and the sidewalk, cars turning right will always check for pedestrians, but often fail to give way to cyclists, depending on how used they are to see cyclists coming. Some intersections have high change of T-bone because of that.
This has been done in places in Cambridge UK (a reasonably bicycle friendly city). If your cycle lane is part of the road you can act like a car does - you get to ignore turnings because anyone joining the road has to give way as per normal. If you're on the pavement though, you're like a pedestrian - every turn off is a road you have to cross. Even if there isn't any traffic you have to slow down enough to look and as a cyclist what you want is constant speed.
If you can't quite see what I'm talking about aee this example from Milton Road: http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/images/milton-road-1.jpg The 'main' road is the one going into and out of the picture with cars on, and the image pictures a junction. You can see where the cycle lane 'crosses' the joining road and how you'd have to look for traffic (even ignoring the bump down and up that messes with a nice cadence).
(from this blog post I found via Google: http://www.rtaylor.co.uk/anti-social-cycling-north-cambridge...).