Interesting ideas, though I can't imagine it getting a lot of support in the US, since it prioritizes bikes over cars.
Chicago recently added separated bike lanes to one of its streets, and it's definitely much more enjoyable and less stressful riding on that street than the rest of the city. In fact, whether or not I can spend most of my commute in that bike lane plays a huge factor in deciding if I'm going to bike to my destination. Unfortunately, even that bike line is flawed. For one, it relies on painted lines to separate the lane, which as the video in the article says, isn't that great a solution, since it doesn't physically keep the cars out. Taxis are the worst offenders and tend to treat the bike lane as their personal parking space.
Chicago also implemented dedicated traffic signals for bikes, as the article recommends, which sound amazing in theory. Unfortunately, most cars seem to completely ignore them and drive as they would on non-protected streets. For example, when the bike lane is green, the turn signal for cars is red. I rarely see cars actually obey that red light and regularly turn into oncoming bike traffic. Even worse is pedestrians who view the bike lane as an extension of the sidewalk, and will wait in the bike lane to cross the street.
These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception, and following bike lane laws are taught in driver's ed and heavily enforced by police.
Unfortunately, nobody really cares about bikers. The New York Times had a great article last year about how hitting bicyclists isn't considered that big a deal[1].
That is a way to look at it. Other ones are that it prioritizes the human scale over industrial scale, clean(er) air over pollution, an environment that keeps the population healthy over one promoting a sedentary lifestyle, an environment where people interact over one that distances people from each other.
Also, including public transport: in many urban zones, public transport and biking infrastructure are large reasons why the city isn't gridlocked 24x7. In many Dutch city centers, that separate bicycle lane takes more traffic than the two car lanes alongside it. One can argue that a bike lane that gets used, even if it is built at the cost of a car lane, makes the other car lanes in the street less busy.
If you accept a few of those as valid claims, you are more likely to accept the introduction of separate bike lanes.
"These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception"
Agreed.
"and following bike lane laws are [...] heavily enforced by police."
That, I disagree with. If you still need strong enforcement, you aren't there yet. If almost every car driver also is, at times, a cyclist, or at least knows how it was to cycle regularly, you don't need strong enforcement anymore.
Those special two way bike lanes with the signals, down Dearborn I presume you mean, are the thing I avoid the most riding north/south. The "pedestrian extension" effect you mentioned is the sole reason why.
We have another big problem at least in Chicago, and that's that it's such a polarizing issue that it's easy to make news articles and stir up so much inflammatory debate that any sensible lawmaker is likely terrified to even approach that territory. (See the tribune and John Kass' infamously baiting articles that get tons of hits)
The reason people don't ride bikes in the US is not because unprotected bike lanes are scary. It's because our cities have been laid out with the premise in mind that everyone will have cars. We have disparate clusters/districts related to activities like 'work', 'play', 'shop', and 'sleep', rather than having these constructs evenly interspersed. We have supermarkets instead of markets. Monoliths instead of distributed systems.
We also have bad weather. Right now, where I live at least, a top 10 metro, it's around 90-95degF and 80-90% humidity or it's raining. Suppose I decide to ride to work. Google puts that at a 1 hour and 13 to 1 hour 23 minute ride depending on my route. It sucks but it's doable.
Now I arrive at work and I'm soaked either from sweat or rain. Now what? I can stink up the office with my B.O. all day while I desperately try to dry my clothes. Or I go through the indignity of getting to work, waiting an hour to cool-down and dry off, then trying to change out of my riding kit into some decent professional work clothes in a dirty stall in the men's room after giving myself a paper towel bath in the sink.
Then at the end of a long work-day, reverse this absurd course of events? Now instead of a 10 minute drive and 8.5 hours at the office followed by a 10 minute drive home (total time commitment under 9 hours), I've succeeded in turning my 9 hours of work time into a 10.5-11.5 hours of work time so I can put myself dangerously out in traffic, exposed to the elements and be uncomfortable the entire day and can't go anywhere else once I'm there?
Even if the stars aligned and I had door-to-door bike trails, I wouldn't partake in this uncivilized madness. I'd much rather just get home earlier, not smelling like exhaust fumes and body odor and go do a leisurely jog around my neighborhood park for a half hour or go to one of the 3 gyms next to my house where I can ride a stationary bike in a temperature controlled environment while watching TV.
Edit: for the record, I support dedicated bike lanes and infrastructure almost everywhere because of all the side benefits it brings. But I'm also not treating it as a religious issue, mindful of acute practicalities that explain the world better than assuming one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet doesn't like to ride bikes to work because they're too stupid to do so.
> It's because our cities have been laid out with the premise in mind that everyone will have cars.
Some cities are like that, and others aren't. People can vote with their feet. Guess which one people like better? (Hint: People have been moving out of dense cities for 100 years now.)
Are you planning on forcing people to accommodate themselves to your definition of the perfect city?
> We have disparate clusters/districts related to activities like 'work', 'play', 'shop', and 'sleep', rather than having these constructs evenly interspersed.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The world is not sim-city. Not everyone wants to live near a shopping area.
> We have supermarkets instead of markets.
Markets are not large enough to carry everything, so when I lived in a place like that I never went to the market, so I got the worst of both worlds: High density (i.e. traffic) plus a long drive.
I moved out.
You are acting as if the layout of cities was a commandment given from on high, but actually cities are laid out as they are because people like it that way.
Are we finally deciding to learn from the Dutch? The Netherlands has been doing this for a long time. I honestly don't know how long, but I'd expect someone from NL to read this, and have a yawn - you don't say?! kind of reaction. :)
I remember when Portland was called one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, and its transit was also one of the top-rated.
After I spent ~2 years in Amsterdam, I think both biking and transit in Portland are a joke, in comparison.
As a Dutch person, I think the US has a long way to go, and these proposed bike paths won't really help all that much. I also feel that the US and the Netherlands can't be compared when it comes to biking. Some of the problems I see with biking in the U.S.
* The speed limit in residential zones in the Netherlands is always 50 km/h (31 mph). This doesn't seem to be the case in the U.S.
* Bicyclists are considered full first-class participants in traffic on the road in the Netherlands.
* We have no policy of allowing turning-on-right here. It seems like a dangerous thing to have if bicyclists are involved in traffic. These new bike lanes might help with this.
* In accidents involving both a car and a bicyclist, the burden of proof always lies with the driver of the car, not the bicyclist.
* Our cities are way, way smaller and arranged completely differently. Everything I need in daily life is within a 3 mile radius of my house. Convenience stores, clothes shops, electronics stores, restaurants, etc. I've never been to the U.S, but I wonder if that's the case over there.
I think the biggest problem the U.S has is that car drivers and law enforcement don't give a shit about bicyclists.
It also seems to me that the people who bike in the U.S. take it way to seriously. I could very well be wrong on this; I'm not intimately familiar with bike culture in the U.S., but to me it seems you all ride extremely fancy bikes, work up a sweat on each ride and change clothes and shower every time you hop on or off a bike. That seems like a huge effort, and if I had to do it every time I took my bike, I'd probably just say "screw this, I'll take the car". In comparison, when I commute to work, I just get on my cheap $200 bike (not the cheapest category either) in my work clothes and slowly paddle to work. If there are hills, which we don't get much in the Netherlands of course, or if there are strong head-winds, which we do get a lot, I simply paddle slower. I could be completely mistaken of course, so please do point that out, but biking in the U.S. seems like a very tiring experience.
edit Some more differences:
* Round-abouts in the Netherlands are everywhere. Bikes and pedestrians have the right of way on these. Stop-light intersections are annoying and are easily avoided in the Netherlands.
* Nearly every city center (the shopping zones) is car-free in the Netherlands.
* The roads in our cities are layed out completely differently. There are usually a few main roads with heavy car traffic and lots of smaller side roads for destination-specific traffic. These side roads are much less crowded, and less car-friendly. That means cars generally stay on the "doorgaand verkeer" (passing-through traffic) roads. These generally have separate bike paths. This works because cars and bikes don't have to intermix all the time on those roads, unlike the grid-like road system in U.S. cities.
Here's a great talk[1] about all the clever bike infrastructure in the Netherlands, and how it can be adapted to work in Seattle specifically. It's a great in depth look for anyone interested in this stuff, basically a tech talk for urban planning.
Edit: Here's a similar talk[2] I just found talking about adopting Dutch traffic planning to work in Vancouver.
This is more or less how they do it all over Germany. Parked cars next to traffic buffering bikes and then peds all the way on the inside. Much safer and more sensible design. The key word being design, not hacked on after thought that reduces the number of lanes for traffic.
The German scheme works well at major intersections, but creates a new danger where small side roads cut through the bike lane to join the major road to which it runs parallel. At these minor junctions, I had the experience that drivers on the side roads would often pull right up to the major road, without paying much attention to traffic on the bike lane they were crossing. Everything is a trade-off. The best long-term strategy, of course, is to reduce motor vehicle traffic.
I tend to disagree a bit here. Yes, that's how most bike lanes are laid out at the moment but in my experience, more and more bike lanes are moved on the road and inbetween car lanes to let cyclists become more visible. I welcome that because one can go much faster without having to take care of pedestrians.
That wouldn't work very well in most of San Francisco - there are driveways/curb cuts all over the place. That's fine if the cars are next to the curb, but if they are on the other side of the bike lane, it's pretty tough to get in and out of driveways (and screws up the bike lane).
Edit: as a note, some people are concerned about losing lanes, but if the lanes are (almost) always moving, and there is no redundant middle left-turn lane, you don't need as many lanes, freeing up the space for sidewalks and bike paths.
This is not a thing that can be changed overnight. It takes decades to update the city infrastructure, but the city planners can take small steps in the right direction each year.
Take a look at this short film from 2009 from my home town of how we re-invented the biking culture:
From a cyclist's perspective, intersections are basically death traps, where right-turning drivers threaten collisions at any moment.
A bike can travel on the right near an intersection only when it's passing traffic that is completely stopped. If traffic is moving at all, you shouldn't be on the right, you should be in the lane. If you still want to pass, pass on the left, although if there's only a single lane of traffic in each direction you should probably just ride in the lane and wait to pass until after the intersection.
I appreciate attempts to solve real problems like this, but I doubt this design will be an improvement. The most dangerous thing a cyclist can do at an intersection is blast off the sidewalk into the crosswalk. Such a cyclist is more dangerous than properly-crossing cyclists, because from motorists' perspectives he appears out of nowhere instead of simply continuing to travel in the street. He is more dangerous than pedestrians, because he's moving much faster. This new design appears to force all cyclists into that situation: traveling quickly and appearing, to motorists, out of nowhere.
Another problem with this design is it prevents large trucks from turning right.
I'd love to see something like this paired with a project like this that takes parks and parklets and treats them like nodes in a graph and converting part of the streets into dedicated park lanes forming green edges between the green nodes. Taken all together, this turns the city into a veritable park.
>Falbo proposes that at big intersections bike lanes should have their own signals to synchronize movement.
I'm not sure if this is the same in the US, but at least here (UK), cyclists are extremely infamous for ignoring traffic lights, to the frustration and occasional fear of both pedestrians and drivers alike.
In the case of a car, they always have to use extreme caution when a cyclist is coming up to a junction as there's probably a 50% chance they will blast straight through a red light without slowing, and if you hit them, you're going to be the one they expect people to blame. In the case of a pedestrian, you always have to look out for ones who do similar things at crossings, in addition to treating the pavement as a cycle lane in roads without a dedicated lane.
I know that both represent a minority (albeit a large one) and I personally know many responsible cyclists, but I think perception of cycling in general (and so concessions made) won't change until the irresponsible ones are a thing of the past.
Major problem with people on bikes in the cities is not safety caused by cars (its issue, but not major for regular biker that drives from a to b at regular speed). Its the fact that most bikers ignore laws. They drive through red lights, use side walks as their own, change lines like crazy...
I am a biker myself and I see first hand all this people getting themselves in dangerous situations by ignoring road rules and then complaining how bad and ignorant car drivers are. Bicycle bays wont help much here...
Why are motorcycles and mopeds never part of the discussion? Better fuel economy versus a car. No need to revamp basic infrastructure because they keep up with traffic. And, at least for motorcycles, a requirement to carry insurance and generally accept personal responsibility for one's safety instead of demanding bogeymen cagers change three generations of urban habits. For example: killed on a bicycle implies stupid car; killed on a motorcycle implies idiot motorcyclist. I see no difference.
As a long time bike commuter, I've never liked the "protected" bike lanes put in in Chicago. The few streets they work WELL on were already great cycling routes before they had the lanes, and the other streets they haven't worked well on they are often repurposed by whatever entity decides to repurpose them.
Several of them are somehow converted into school children drop off zones for cars during the morning (i.e., at the time that people should be commuting on them they're made even more dangerous - Des Plaines Ave near the church school for example) And of course despite multiple calls out to advocacy groups and local leadership, nothing seems to beat the "for the children" argument, despite the fact that what it's really doing is "for the traffic" more than anything.
That's one of many examples though, but the short of it is - things like protected bike lanes ignore the real problems in urban commuting, of which there are essentially four, in my opinion:
1 - Traffic is too fast - The basic speed limit unless posted otherwise, in the city of Chicago is 30mph. this speed limit is nearly NEVER enforced by police (Hello free revenue stream?) and traffic down major streets regularly goes at 50+ mph.
2 - Traffic is too slow - congested streets cause just as many problems as speeding. Being in a car when you're stuck in stop light to stop light traffic is infuriating. People are constantly looking for a move they can make to avoid it. Even with a bike lane, cars will constantly try to pass on the right, use what's supposed to be parking to make moves towards turning early, etc. This has been the source of my own collisions with automobiles 4/5 times I've had them in 10 years.
3 - Lack of a safe place to stow the bike. Any respectable bike will cost $500.00 and up. Sure, you can get some used single speed or old ten speed for less, but walk into any shop, and you won't see much below that. Locking those outside, especially on a regular schedule, makes them not last very long. (not to mention weather, which while often fine to do a short ride in, all day exposed to can wreak havoc on even a great bike).
4 - The whole, stinky at work, work stigma, aging building infrastructure problem. Sure, a few downtown offices have showers, but it's certainly the exception (spoken as a developer who's worked in many offices over the years) and in some companies being "that guy" seems to have it's own negative connotations.
Want to spend that bike-focused infrastructure money well? Start offering tax breaks to companies providing showers (I'd hear this was a thing once, but never found any proof of it), or safe places to store bicycles indoors. Want to create more of that bike-focused infrastructure money? Start enforcing speed limit laws that exist already, and start looking more towards traffic patterns for cars as a whole, and stick to shared lanes and painted lanes.
Looks like a death trap to me. My problem when cycling is the j-hook when cars pass me and then turn right. That's killed at least two cyclists in the bay area in the past couple years. This intersection makes the problem worse -- it moves cyclists where they are less likely to be seen. Better to add a handful of "right turn must merge to bike lane" signs which is the law but poorly followed.
How does this move the cyclist where they are less likely to be seen? The video addresses this point directly, and claims that moving the bicyclists one car length ahead of the stopped cars and requiring a tight turning radius for cars will increase their visibility.
Have we ever considered underground biking lanes? I wonder if they could be fairly shallow compared to subways, and would definitely be safer than the proposed option above by entirely avoiding conflict with cars. Better even, with underground biking lanes, we could try to build infrastructure to avoid weather problems. Snow, rain, flooding and cold are the problems I'm referring to.
This design is like all others that involve separated, segregated facilities: Cyclists are at extreme risk of getting right hooked by turning drivers who will assume they have the supreme right of way even if they do see the bicyclists they mow over. Little tweaks like moving the stopping positions around have no effect on oblivious cagers.
So his solution for cyclists feeling uncomfortable is to take away a lane of traffic at every intersection? And he wants a special light for cyclists to proceed while all the cars are stopped? This would be a traffic nightmare.
I agree that the taking away the lane would likely be a problem for traffic, the special light for cyclists works very well over here in The Netherlands. Once every few minutes the green light turns on for all cyclists and is red for all cars -- cyclists can manage having a "free for all" while crossing the intersection where cars cannot.
Before you say "but that means that there is less time for cars to cross the intersection", consider the fact that a lot of the people using bikes would otherwise have to use other means of transportation, resulting (at least partially) in reduced traffic.
No lane is taken away. This image is showing two cross roads with separated bike lanes. So the curb stop is in the lane where parking exists. If anything, the additional bike infrastructure would keep cars within the box and stop them from cutting it really close to the corner.
Regarding the lights - sure. Cars have a special light, pedestrians have a special light. Why wouldn't bikes? Having a usable bike infrastructure that doesn't make bikers feel like they're going to die at every intersection would promote safer biking. I'll run a red light on my bike because I can see the cars coming from my left and right, but I can't see the car coming from behind and turning right into me.
These are city streets, not highways. We want to encourage more pedestrians and cyclist, not merely bow to the demands of automobiles. Being auto-centric creates poor urban environments.
Seems like a fine design, but doesn't it require a lot of space? It looks like you would have to widen existing roads by at least 10 ft or so, which wouldn't be practical for a lot of roads in the city.
[+] [-] guptaneil|11 years ago|reply
Chicago recently added separated bike lanes to one of its streets, and it's definitely much more enjoyable and less stressful riding on that street than the rest of the city. In fact, whether or not I can spend most of my commute in that bike lane plays a huge factor in deciding if I'm going to bike to my destination. Unfortunately, even that bike line is flawed. For one, it relies on painted lines to separate the lane, which as the video in the article says, isn't that great a solution, since it doesn't physically keep the cars out. Taxis are the worst offenders and tend to treat the bike lane as their personal parking space.
Chicago also implemented dedicated traffic signals for bikes, as the article recommends, which sound amazing in theory. Unfortunately, most cars seem to completely ignore them and drive as they would on non-protected streets. For example, when the bike lane is green, the turn signal for cars is red. I rarely see cars actually obey that red light and regularly turn into oncoming bike traffic. Even worse is pedestrians who view the bike lane as an extension of the sidewalk, and will wait in the bike lane to cross the street.
These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception, and following bike lane laws are taught in driver's ed and heavily enforced by police.
Unfortunately, nobody really cares about bikers. The New York Times had a great article last year about how hitting bicyclists isn't considered that big a deal[1].
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to...
[+] [-] Someone|11 years ago|reply
That is a way to look at it. Other ones are that it prioritizes the human scale over industrial scale, clean(er) air over pollution, an environment that keeps the population healthy over one promoting a sedentary lifestyle, an environment where people interact over one that distances people from each other.
Also, including public transport: in many urban zones, public transport and biking infrastructure are large reasons why the city isn't gridlocked 24x7. In many Dutch city centers, that separate bicycle lane takes more traffic than the two car lanes alongside it. One can argue that a bike lane that gets used, even if it is built at the cost of a car lane, makes the other car lanes in the street less busy.
If you accept a few of those as valid claims, you are more likely to accept the introduction of separate bike lanes.
"These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception"
Agreed.
"and following bike lane laws are [...] heavily enforced by police."
That, I disagree with. If you still need strong enforcement, you aren't there yet. If almost every car driver also is, at times, a cyclist, or at least knows how it was to cycle regularly, you don't need strong enforcement anymore.
[+] [-] zephjc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbarn|11 years ago|reply
We have another big problem at least in Chicago, and that's that it's such a polarizing issue that it's easy to make news articles and stir up so much inflammatory debate that any sensible lawmaker is likely terrified to even approach that territory. (See the tribune and John Kass' infamously baiting articles that get tons of hits)
[+] [-] bwindels|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] akjetma|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bane|11 years ago|reply
Now I arrive at work and I'm soaked either from sweat or rain. Now what? I can stink up the office with my B.O. all day while I desperately try to dry my clothes. Or I go through the indignity of getting to work, waiting an hour to cool-down and dry off, then trying to change out of my riding kit into some decent professional work clothes in a dirty stall in the men's room after giving myself a paper towel bath in the sink.
Then at the end of a long work-day, reverse this absurd course of events? Now instead of a 10 minute drive and 8.5 hours at the office followed by a 10 minute drive home (total time commitment under 9 hours), I've succeeded in turning my 9 hours of work time into a 10.5-11.5 hours of work time so I can put myself dangerously out in traffic, exposed to the elements and be uncomfortable the entire day and can't go anywhere else once I'm there?
Even if the stars aligned and I had door-to-door bike trails, I wouldn't partake in this uncivilized madness. I'd much rather just get home earlier, not smelling like exhaust fumes and body odor and go do a leisurely jog around my neighborhood park for a half hour or go to one of the 3 gyms next to my house where I can ride a stationary bike in a temperature controlled environment while watching TV.
Edit: for the record, I support dedicated bike lanes and infrastructure almost everywhere because of all the side benefits it brings. But I'm also not treating it as a religious issue, mindful of acute practicalities that explain the world better than assuming one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet doesn't like to ride bikes to work because they're too stupid to do so.
[+] [-] ffumarola|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|11 years ago|reply
Some cities are like that, and others aren't. People can vote with their feet. Guess which one people like better? (Hint: People have been moving out of dense cities for 100 years now.)
Are you planning on forcing people to accommodate themselves to your definition of the perfect city?
> We have disparate clusters/districts related to activities like 'work', 'play', 'shop', and 'sleep', rather than having these constructs evenly interspersed.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The world is not sim-city. Not everyone wants to live near a shopping area.
> We have supermarkets instead of markets.
Markets are not large enough to carry everything, so when I lived in a place like that I never went to the market, so I got the worst of both worlds: High density (i.e. traffic) plus a long drive.
I moved out.
You are acting as if the layout of cities was a commandment given from on high, but actually cities are laid out as they are because people like it that way.
[+] [-] akulbe|11 years ago|reply
I remember when Portland was called one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, and its transit was also one of the top-rated.
After I spent ~2 years in Amsterdam, I think both biking and transit in Portland are a joke, in comparison.
EDIT: changed wording for clarity
[+] [-] zorbo|11 years ago|reply
* The speed limit in residential zones in the Netherlands is always 50 km/h (31 mph). This doesn't seem to be the case in the U.S.
* Bicyclists are considered full first-class participants in traffic on the road in the Netherlands.
* We have no policy of allowing turning-on-right here. It seems like a dangerous thing to have if bicyclists are involved in traffic. These new bike lanes might help with this.
* In accidents involving both a car and a bicyclist, the burden of proof always lies with the driver of the car, not the bicyclist.
* Our cities are way, way smaller and arranged completely differently. Everything I need in daily life is within a 3 mile radius of my house. Convenience stores, clothes shops, electronics stores, restaurants, etc. I've never been to the U.S, but I wonder if that's the case over there.
I think the biggest problem the U.S has is that car drivers and law enforcement don't give a shit about bicyclists.
It also seems to me that the people who bike in the U.S. take it way to seriously. I could very well be wrong on this; I'm not intimately familiar with bike culture in the U.S., but to me it seems you all ride extremely fancy bikes, work up a sweat on each ride and change clothes and shower every time you hop on or off a bike. That seems like a huge effort, and if I had to do it every time I took my bike, I'd probably just say "screw this, I'll take the car". In comparison, when I commute to work, I just get on my cheap $200 bike (not the cheapest category either) in my work clothes and slowly paddle to work. If there are hills, which we don't get much in the Netherlands of course, or if there are strong head-winds, which we do get a lot, I simply paddle slower. I could be completely mistaken of course, so please do point that out, but biking in the U.S. seems like a very tiring experience.
edit Some more differences:
* Round-abouts in the Netherlands are everywhere. Bikes and pedestrians have the right of way on these. Stop-light intersections are annoying and are easily avoided in the Netherlands.
* Nearly every city center (the shopping zones) is car-free in the Netherlands.
* The roads in our cities are layed out completely differently. There are usually a few main roads with heavy car traffic and lots of smaller side roads for destination-specific traffic. These side roads are much less crowded, and less car-friendly. That means cars generally stay on the "doorgaand verkeer" (passing-through traffic) roads. These generally have separate bike paths. This works because cars and bikes don't have to intermix all the time on those roads, unlike the grid-like road system in U.S. cities.
[+] [-] narwally|11 years ago|reply
Edit: Here's a similar talk[2] I just found talking about adopting Dutch traffic planning to work in Vancouver.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0GA901oGe4 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BrIlB6C8uqs
[+] [-] Someone|11 years ago|reply
And of course, that site has several excellent articles on all kinds of cycling infrastructure related issues, including on junction design, for example http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/junction-design..., which links to http://www.protectedintersection.com, the site that the video mentions, but this Wired article forgets to link to.
[+] [-] hyperion2010|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanityinc|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthiasv|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jim-greer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] judk|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zephjc|11 years ago|reply
Edit: as a note, some people are concerned about losing lanes, but if the lanes are (almost) always moving, and there is no redundant middle left-turn lane, you don't need as many lanes, freeing up the space for sidewalks and bike paths.
[+] [-] randomknowledge|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] watson|11 years ago|reply
Take a look at this short film from 2009 from my home town of how we re-invented the biking culture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZtX8qiC_rXE
Edit: My comment is more a reaction to the general theme of the comments on this post, rather than a comment to the linked article
[+] [-] jessaustin|11 years ago|reply
A bike can travel on the right near an intersection only when it's passing traffic that is completely stopped. If traffic is moving at all, you shouldn't be on the right, you should be in the lane. If you still want to pass, pass on the left, although if there's only a single lane of traffic in each direction you should probably just ride in the lane and wait to pass until after the intersection.
I appreciate attempts to solve real problems like this, but I doubt this design will be an improvement. The most dangerous thing a cyclist can do at an intersection is blast off the sidewalk into the crosswalk. Such a cyclist is more dangerous than properly-crossing cyclists, because from motorists' perspectives he appears out of nowhere instead of simply continuing to travel in the street. He is more dangerous than pedestrians, because he's moving much faster. This new design appears to force all cyclists into that situation: traveling quickly and appearing, to motorists, out of nowhere.
Another problem with this design is it prevents large trucks from turning right.
[+] [-] malandrew|11 years ago|reply
https://www.flickr.com/photos/12588351@N02/sets/721576231926...
[+] [-] blueskin_|11 years ago|reply
I'm not sure if this is the same in the US, but at least here (UK), cyclists are extremely infamous for ignoring traffic lights, to the frustration and occasional fear of both pedestrians and drivers alike.
In the case of a car, they always have to use extreme caution when a cyclist is coming up to a junction as there's probably a 50% chance they will blast straight through a red light without slowing, and if you hit them, you're going to be the one they expect people to blame. In the case of a pedestrian, you always have to look out for ones who do similar things at crossings, in addition to treating the pavement as a cycle lane in roads without a dedicated lane.
I know that both represent a minority (albeit a large one) and I personally know many responsible cyclists, but I think perception of cycling in general (and so concessions made) won't change until the irresponsible ones are a thing of the past.
[+] [-] barrystaes|11 years ago|reply
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XuBdf9jYj7o
[+] [-] andrewliebchen|11 years ago|reply
Road geometry goes a long way to influence driver speed and perception.
[+] [-] funkyy|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RhysU|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bbarn|11 years ago|reply
Several of them are somehow converted into school children drop off zones for cars during the morning (i.e., at the time that people should be commuting on them they're made even more dangerous - Des Plaines Ave near the church school for example) And of course despite multiple calls out to advocacy groups and local leadership, nothing seems to beat the "for the children" argument, despite the fact that what it's really doing is "for the traffic" more than anything.
That's one of many examples though, but the short of it is - things like protected bike lanes ignore the real problems in urban commuting, of which there are essentially four, in my opinion:
1 - Traffic is too fast - The basic speed limit unless posted otherwise, in the city of Chicago is 30mph. this speed limit is nearly NEVER enforced by police (Hello free revenue stream?) and traffic down major streets regularly goes at 50+ mph.
2 - Traffic is too slow - congested streets cause just as many problems as speeding. Being in a car when you're stuck in stop light to stop light traffic is infuriating. People are constantly looking for a move they can make to avoid it. Even with a bike lane, cars will constantly try to pass on the right, use what's supposed to be parking to make moves towards turning early, etc. This has been the source of my own collisions with automobiles 4/5 times I've had them in 10 years.
3 - Lack of a safe place to stow the bike. Any respectable bike will cost $500.00 and up. Sure, you can get some used single speed or old ten speed for less, but walk into any shop, and you won't see much below that. Locking those outside, especially on a regular schedule, makes them not last very long. (not to mention weather, which while often fine to do a short ride in, all day exposed to can wreak havoc on even a great bike).
4 - The whole, stinky at work, work stigma, aging building infrastructure problem. Sure, a few downtown offices have showers, but it's certainly the exception (spoken as a developer who's worked in many offices over the years) and in some companies being "that guy" seems to have it's own negative connotations.
Want to spend that bike-focused infrastructure money well? Start offering tax breaks to companies providing showers (I'd hear this was a thing once, but never found any proof of it), or safe places to store bicycles indoors. Want to create more of that bike-focused infrastructure money? Start enforcing speed limit laws that exist already, and start looking more towards traffic patterns for cars as a whole, and stick to shared lanes and painted lanes.
[+] [-] kevinpet|11 years ago|reply
(Other states may vary from CA)
[+] [-] baddox|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thrush|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kevin_thibedeau|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] meandave|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] redthrowaway|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stingraycharles|11 years ago|reply
Before you say "but that means that there is less time for cars to cross the intersection", consider the fact that a lot of the people using bikes would otherwise have to use other means of transportation, resulting (at least partially) in reduced traffic.
[+] [-] ffumarola|11 years ago|reply
Regarding the lights - sure. Cars have a special light, pedestrians have a special light. Why wouldn't bikes? Having a usable bike infrastructure that doesn't make bikers feel like they're going to die at every intersection would promote safer biking. I'll run a red light on my bike because I can see the cars coming from my left and right, but I can't see the car coming from behind and turning right into me.
[+] [-] bluthru|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] quadrangle|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dohertyjf|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raldi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arghbleargh|11 years ago|reply