Orange cones are a novelty. Put them everywhere and behaviour will eventually return to where it was. The same thing happened with high-mounted brakelights on cars - they significantly reduced rear-end collisions for a few years, but eventually the trend returned to where it was beforehand.
> Put them everywhere and behaviour will eventually return to where it was. don't understand this comment - you mean to say vehicle drivers will eventually resume driving on lanes that are separated by traffic cones? i suppose they can... but i assume most drivers will try to avoid knocking/running these things over
Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
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Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#12Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#13I don't mind giving up the road to cyclists in cities. I just hope that one day they are finally treated like cars. Bikes on city roads should have to be registered with plates. Bikes in many places in Japan are registered and it makes it a lot easier to figure out when someone is riding a bike they aren't supposed to have. The plates would hopefully go along with police actually enforcing the traffic laws on cyclist…
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#14I don't think non-cyclists realize how much risk you take on when you ride in the city. In my town we really only have bike lanes on the two main roads that go up and down the bulk of the city, and they ride dangerously close to lines of parked cars. I was riding downhill once when someone opened their door in front of me without looking -- luckily I managed to get past, but had they opened it a few moments earlier I…
As a driver it's the main reason I refuse to ride a bike, I don't want to die. Even here in perth that is generally trying to help bike riders I just don't see how it's safe to ride around at 20-30km when the speed limit is 70km and there isn't enough room to overtake without going into the other lane. I just don't see how you can be safe when people are trying to overtake you in giant utes going twice your speed try…
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#15Mostly unrelated, but does anyone have (or has seen?) an opinion on self driving cars and how that may impact cyclists on the road? Do you think the shift to autonomous vehicles will make the road safer for people on bikes?
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#16I don't think non-cyclists realize how much risk you take on when you ride in the city. In my town we really only have bike lanes on the two main roads that go up and down the bulk of the city, and they ride dangerously close to lines of parked cars. I was riding downhill once when someone opened their door in front of me without looking -- luckily I managed to get past, but had they opened it a few moments earlier I…
SF is a "plaintiff friendly jurisdiction" as the phrase goes, but I've had knives and guns pulled on me there too (usually for having the nerve to ask "WTF" after being doored).
I'm not happy it's this way but if everyone gives up and decides to be a puss, nothing will change. I was listening to a guy in Zimbabwe who got beaten for years trying simply to mobilize nonviolent protests against the wicked Mugabe regime. We have it so easy in the US, it's kind of shameful to give up.
YMMV (yes, ha ha only serious).
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#17The thing that San Francisco has and Amsterdam doesn't is private garages in most freestanding buildings. For instance, the northern-most section of the Wiggle has the city's most protected bike lane - there are cement planters separating the bike lane from fast-moving car traffic. Unfortunately, to support private garages, there are gaps in these planters enabling homeowners to enter/exit their driveways. Delivery vehicles and private cars frequently idle in the spaces between these planters, trapping cyclists in the bike lane and forcing them to merge into car traffic that isn't expecting them.
The city does nothing to stop this, and the drivers are incredibly hostile. I've tried getting off my bike and asking people (as kindly as possible) to move, explaining how parking in the bike path puts me life at risk. The nicest response I've gotten was being told to go fuck myself: even the old man in a bus driver's jacket idling in his car was shockingly violent in his reply. Delivery drivers don't give you the light of day. There's a tow company on this stretch of the Wiggle that frequently has trucks blocking the path. I noticed someone had parked to deliberately keep the path clear one day and earnestly thanked him for doing so. Even he threatened me.
San Francisco politicians respond with platitudes everytime once of us dies, but they do fuck-all to actually protect us. Our local transportation board reimagined one neighborhood street as a promenade, prioritizing pedestrians and cyclists and creating a destination for people from all over the city to come patronize local businesses. A handful of shop owners who came of age when the car was the dominant form of transportation raised concerns about parking. Rather than pointing out the plentiful parking on literally every nearby street, offering to construct a garage, or pointing out that users of all forms of transportation would flock to a human-scale shopping district in numbers that more-than made up for the lost parking, the city caved with the mayor scuttling the whole project.
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a driver it's the main reason I refuse to ride a bike, I don't want to die. Even here in perth that is generally trying to help bike riders I just don't see how it's safe to ride around at 20-30km when the speed limit is 70km and there isn't enough room to overtake without going into the other lane. I just don't see how you can be safe when people are trying to overtake you in giant utes going twice your speed try…
How about as a driver, you don't pass cyclists when it's not safe?
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#19Mostly unrelated, but does anyone have (or has seen?) an opinion on self driving cars and how that may impact cyclists on the road? Do you think the shift to autonomous vehicles will make the road safer for people on bikes?
I can't imagine how autonomous vehicles could make cycling less safe. The only thing I'm coming up with is that the side profile of a bike at night could get "filtered" as noise and ignored. That same scenario must happen just as often with human drivers though.
My biggest concern while cycling in Sydney was going through roundabouts at night. Cars in front or behind me with bright blinking lights? Just fine. Cars potentially coming at me from the side where nothing but my own reflective vest to identify me? Terrifying.
Re: Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco
#20I don't mind giving up the road to cyclists in cities. I just hope that one day they are finally treated like cars. Bikes on city roads should have to be registered with plates. Bikes in many places in Japan are registered and it makes it a lot easier to figure out when someone is riding a bike they aren't supposed to have. The plates would hopefully go along with police actually enforcing the traffic laws on cyclist…