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Comment by SOLAR_FIELDS | Hacker News Reader

Cities who want to keep cars out of bike lanes should stop offering “mom says we have bike lanes at home” repainting of streets. Create a curb and raise the bike lanes. It’s the only safe solution. I understand this is not realistic in a lot of scenarios but it is basically the only way you can achieve actual safety short of cement separators at the road level, which is basically a curb anyway. There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely. No, plastic bollards are not enough. It needs to be either raised or a barrier enough that a car sideswiping it won’t cause the barrier to fail

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My experience cycling regularly in NYC: bike lanes separated by curb, stoppers, or poles are more dangerous as cars stop at their entrances/exits and I am literally trapped or cannot enter them before/after an intersection. I'm not against them in principle, but without extremely strict enforcent of laws (let's say a ticket 5% of someone's annual income and a loss of DL on a repeated offense - this stuff endangers people's lives), they are sadly counterproductive. :(

I semi regularly see big cop SUVs parked here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/MydRmrTkiJMxt3Pi7?g_st=ac

On the bike lane, which is physically separated from the road.

The cop car takes the whole width of the lanes.

It also means the cop had to get on the bike lane here: https://maps.app.goo.gl/frGXL1NpcCW18iRN9?g_st=ac and then drive for a couple of blocks _on the physically separated bike lane_.

This is why bike lanes should be some non-integer multiple of a car width. 1.5 car widths allows the continuation of bike traffic despite an emergency vehicle in the lane unless someone blocks it intentionally.

People undoubtedly said this was not realistic in many car-clogged European cities before some actually did it. “Realism” here is just a measure of the current number of votes you have for making things better.

It helps to replace ‘realistic’ with ‘palatable’, which at least conveys the issue more precisely as one of desirability rather than capability. Most U.S. voters for someone who interferes with drivers on behalf of non-drivers.

Streets are narrower in Europe. It should be easier in the US.

The thing which I think would really help with bike lanes would be to standardize on placing underground utilities beneath them --- they'd be less expensive to dig up than a roadway structured for cars, and when maintenance is necessary, a cyclist can easily be diverted either onto the roadway (if staying on the bike) or to the sidewalk (if temporarily dismounting).

The width of a bike lane and its margins is not nearly enough space to safely trench deep enough with the equipment they already have to reach most things they need to tear roads up for. Even modest water mains can be 4ft in diameter, drainage and sewage twice that (in flood prone areas)

Okay then, such utilities as would comfortably fit then.

4 ft is great for a one way bike lane.

Or, even partially under the bike lane with the balance under the parallel road --- that way, only part of the road needs to be dug up.

Or they could fine them. And increase fine for each repetition so rich can't just pay to be jerks.

All the fines in the world won’t save you from getting mowed down by a distracted driver on their phone. Drinking and driving has heavy fine deterrents, yet people still do it anyway. You know what stops a drunk or distracted driver from killing someone? A cement barrier

add to that, a class of drivers that believe two wheel vehicles have no place on public thoroughfares, openly hostile to non cars.

And police that is sympathetic to those drivers.

> a distracted driver on their phone

Waymos don’t get distracted. Grade separation, ticketing and increasingly favoring AVs in cities is a simpler solution than erecting physical barriers, which have the downside of making cities less walkable.

That would be relevant if we had mass adoption of autonomous vehicles. Unfortunately last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase.

> last I checked actual autonomy was still stuck in the perpetual R&D phase

I know plenty of people in Phoenix for whom it’s their main mode of transport. When I’m there or in San Francisco, it’s certainly mine. (And now, increasingly, in Miami, too.)

Waymo is here and it’s real and it’s so much better than Uber or taxis.

Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout. It's certainly not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it. There's perhaps a small handful of companies globally that are currently prototyping the technology in a process that's shaping up to take a decade or longer to play out.

Even once things reach that point reworking an existing place would be a massive undertaking.

> not to the point where anyone would realistically design a city center around it

Sure. Neither is Phoenix's light-rail system, for the most part. These things take time to play out and gain buy-in.

Americans take about 34 million public-transit trips a day [1]. Assuming 25 rides per day, that's about 1.4 million self-driving cars to rival public transport's impact. Waymo has "about 3,000 robotaxis deployed nationwide" [2]. Doubling fleet size annually–Waymos and non-Waymos, though currently they have no peers–would get us to parity in less than 10 years. (A more-realistic 35% growth rate puts us around 20 years.)

The point of that excercise is to say that within 10 to 20 years, less time e.g. California's HSR or New York's Second Avenue Subway took to get online, we could see as many trips in AVs in America as we do on public transit of all types. That's close enough to start looking ahead to.

[1] https://www.apta.com/news-research/about-the-industry/public...

[2] https://www.axios.com/local/san-diego/2026/03/30/waymo-speed...

> Sure, there's a very gradual, strictly limited, tightly controlled rollout

By city and ODD, but if you are in the area and your source and destination for the route are both within the ODD they are just as available as an Uber.

Grade separation IS building physical barriers lmao what are you even saying

That's the wrong way to look at it. People still drink and drive because the deterrents aren't heavy. It's a bit tautological but if they were heavy enough then by definition they would be deterrents, but they aren't, so they aren't.

The correct solution to this kind of problems and others is to fix the obviously broken fine system. The first fine for anything should sting and it should make anyone who gets it think twice about doing the thing that they did to get the fine. subsequent reoffenses should make it uneconomical for anyone to reoffend.

Fine should be scaled to your income and have an escalating multiplier for reoffense within the same category of offense with a cool down period of a few years if they don't break the law.

How many of those drunk drivers get actually fined?

Agree with this.

The concrete barriers being added in Seattle help a lot.

What's wrong with lane separators¹? Bollards are dangerous for cyclists.

Rised bike lanes are also parked onto. I had the displasure of sliding on reentry when a car was blocking the raised bike lane. Next time I'd rather stop and argue with the driver. Also you get to enjoy going up and fown ramps all of the time.

1. https://orcacivil.com.au/products/traffic-management-product...

>There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely.

that was among the promises of self-driving cars. Because of ultimately superior sensor suite and reaction time they can be safer than humans, in particular they would never "not see a bicyclist", they wouldn't cut impatiently, etc. . Instead that superiority is used these days to drive more "efficiently", to beat/cut the human drivers in a way not every regular human would be capable of. At least that is my anecdotal observation during the last several months (and these several months experience totally differs from the more than 15 years of having Waymo cars around in MV when they were i'd say among the safest to be around)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46199294

From the more recent - saw again a Waymo cutting like a ninja into a left turn lane at the same intersection as before, and at the other intersection a Waymo car missing the point to get in line for the right turn behind several cars already waiting in line in the bike lane, drives forward on green and makes the right turn as the second layer of the cake in parallel with those cars from the bike lane.

I think all that aggressiveness/"efficiency" comes as a result of the push to increase the customer satisfaction. All these years before driving actual passengers, Waymo (and i guess others) could allow themselves to be the safest, most courteous drivers on the road. Not anymore as such "inefficient" granma-style driving obviously would conflict with the passengers satisfaction.

Maybe in 40 years or so everyone will use self driving vehicles that work perfectly and this will be a solved problem. We should probably do something about the problem in the meantime though

Curbed bike lanes create a huge hazard when cars going the same direction turn right. Neither the bike nor the car has good visibility of the other, very likely the car turns into the bike or the bike doesn’t stop and rides into the turning car.

I've seen people park in these curbed bike lanes too, completely blocking it off.

Seems like they need to fenced off. Would also prevent jaywalking so in general increase safety of pedestrians forcing them to cross only at intersections.

Great, now how are we going to force bicyclists to open red lights and stop signs?

ive also seen cyclists having to squeeze by, and are forced to offer up against the side of the blocking vehicle to avoid being hit, leaving pinstripes bumper to bumper.

Clamping is a useful deterrent there.

Yes! Concrete please!

Bike lanes on a curb are significantly more dangerous due to turning car drivers often not seeing them (due to parked cars in the way) or interpreting them as “just a sidewalk” and not properly looking for cyclists.

Not a real problem, as proven by many countries where cycling is encouraged and supported

I bike in Chicago and curbed bike lanes recently installed are a big problem

Really? I use them all the time without issue, unless someone has decided to park themselves in the intersection

The global consensus on which type is safer is not nearly as clear as you confidently make it out to be.

A lot of things need to be true for a curbside bike path to be safer than a roadside one, most importantly protection against dooring and ensuring visibility at intersections. If these measures are not taken, the result is often less safe.

It’s a real problem, just not an unsolvable one. But it will take a lot of awareness campaigns and time.

It definitely is a real problem, although I cannot say with certainty whether it's a significant enough problem to make curbside lanes worse than roadway lanes.

> There’s just no reality where a bicycle can share the road unimpeded with a motor vehicle safely.

Logically equivalent:

> There’s just no reality where a motor vehicle can share the road unimpeded with a bicycle safely.

... or a pedestrian. Those motor vehicles sure are a menace!

Bike lanes with curbs aren’t great. On garbage days trash cans often get parked in the bike lane and cyclists have no way of going around since the curb block their way. I’m perfectly comfortable with just lines for bike lanes.

I’ll take my chances with the trash can over the SUV that can’t even see me because it’s so lifted and that will kill me instantly if the driver isn’t paying attention. At least with the trash can I have a chance

You might be, but cycling adoption is strongly linked to safer riding conditions. Protected bike lanes are demonstrably safer. So perhaps you should be more concerned about people blocking roadways with their garbage?

Only in dysfunctional societies.

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