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Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

bicycletimesmag.com

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Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#141

Post by rocqua »

TulliusCicero wrote: post #140
rocqua wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed most major roads have adjacent bike paths. Certainly not all though. No highways do, and there are some other roads where it doesn't make sense. Cycling on highways is a total no-go here. I've never heard of it happening, and I'd expect the police to be called whenever someone sees it. You're right on the narrow streets and low speeds. That is a much bigger cultural / civil-engineering thing. It makes me wonde…

In the US you can't bike on freeways either (I avoid saying 'highways' as technically the term can refer to a number of different types of roads, whereas freeways only mean roads that have completely controlled access (on ramps and off ramps, no stoplights or stop signs)).

I was thinking of [1], ever since I saw that, I thought Americans were crazy cyclists. Upon further research that video is from Russia. Seems like american cycling is much better than I thought.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1hVXhg8zvkI&ab_channel=Stree...

Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#142

Post by yourapostasy »

QuarterReptile wrote: post #138
yourapostasy wrote: post #108

Interesting. For the cyclists out there, would you pay out of pocket for a bi-directional elevated bike/walk-run track, with access from every street intersection, Japanese-style underground bike garages and automatically-cleaning showers/toilets at public transit intersections? If so, how much? I would, at $0.25-0.50 per mile, $0.25 per hour storage, and $2 per use of showers. I don't know if that would pencil out e…

What are you talking about? Can you define some of the problems you're trying to solve? It feels like you're writing a parody of something. The post is about keeping bike lanes simple and cheap so we'll just build them already. Yours is the opposite, no?

In the US, obtaining right-of-way to build bike lanes in metropolitan areas is infeasible. I've sat in neighborhood meetings with my state's Department of Transportation engineers and planners discussing main artery expansions, and they explained that there isn't sufficient demand for bike paths to include them in any new planning funded by taxpayers; whenever they've tried to include dedicated bike lanes in the past, they were shot down first by politicians looking to curry the fiscal conservative votes, then by special interest groups protecting a car-based culture (housing developers, chambers of commerce, etc. all see dedicated bike lanes as yielding less traffic to their planned projects). However, obtaining right-of-way to privately build an elevated path, they conceded, while not easy, was more feasible because someone else foots the bill. The problem is no one has figured out a design that can feasibly pay off.

If you can obtain the right-of-way for an elevated path, then what would you design for it that makes it pay off at least a little above break-even?

Generally, I take this as a sign that in the US, unless you deliberately attract a demographic to a specific concentrated area that consciously chooses biking as a major transportation mode, namely, a master-planned community/town built around biking and public transit, cyclists are SOL to comprehensively expand biking for the foreseeable future in most US metro areas outside of "bike ghettos" where there is a strong cycling culture. I'd love to see as much biking for normal daily activities as we saw in mainland China before they opened up to the West, but in the US in many areas it is legitimately risky to bike (despite the actual risk of fatality on a bike gradually dropping over the past three decades).

So a related hypothetical is, if you were in a high-density (say, 30K per square mile scale density) city designed from the beginning for walk/run/bike/public-transit transportation, what kind of bike paths would you want?

The article describes intra- and inter-neighborhood scale at best, but doesn't address efforts to solve US commuter distances, which invariably involve highways. That seems an insoluble challenge at the moment in the US.

Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#143

Post by Doxin »

Tommyixi wrote: post #45

I'm a biker in Boston; I cycle 5 miles to work and 5 miles home on a daily basis. I think the city is doing an amazing job with what they are given but so many of the roads are just too narrow for dedicated bike lanes. Most streets have "sharrows" which is great but honestly what it comes down to is a lack of understanding on how to share the road. I'm constantly honked and shouted at for commanding full use of the d…

> so many of the roads are just too narrow for dedicated bike lanes

If a road is wide enough to drive speeds that are dangerous to cyclists it's wide enough to put a cycle lane. Cycle lanes aren't nearly as wide as people think, and car lanes aren't nearly as narrow as people think.

Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#144

Post by Doxin »

phicoh wrote: post #107
FussyZeus wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is how it's done in my area of the US, but I can tell you American drivers almost universally ignore where you're supposed to stop at a T junction, especially when turning right. It's maddening, multiple times I've had to leave the bike lane into traffic to get around a vehicle that isn't where it's supposed to be. I've never seen anyone get pulled over for this either because cycling isn't recognized as a "real…

Vehicles turning right is a big problem in the Netherlands as well. Not so much that they block intersections, but that bikes going straight have priority over the vehicle turning right, bikes take priority and then get in an accident. It doesn't matter who was right if you are dead. In my experience, separate bike lanes are great for long stretches of road without intersections. Also quite safe on intersections with…

Actually, turning right is mostly a solved problem in the netherlands. If you ever run into a situation where it's dangerous they just haven't upgraded that intersection yet. The solution here is to make sure a car has the space to make the full turn to the right before encountering the cycle lane. That way the car driver doesn't have to look behind them for bikes, but can see them clearly out the front window.

Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#145

Post by QuarterReptile »

yourapostasy wrote: post #142
QuarterReptile wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you talking about? Can you define some of the problems you're trying to solve? It feels like you're writing a parody of something. The post is about keeping bike lanes simple and cheap so we'll just build them already. Yours is the opposite, no?

In the US, obtaining right-of-way to build bike lanes in metropolitan areas is infeasible. I've sat in neighborhood meetings with my state's Department of Transportation engineers and planners discussing main artery expansions, and they explained that there isn't sufficient demand for bike paths to include them in any new planning funded by taxpayers; whenever they've tried to include dedicated bike lanes in the past…

I hope this isn't too unfair an analogy, but your idea reminds me of trying to get wealthier people to ride buses with wifi and frills, when it's consistent, frequent, reliable service that they want (just like everyone else; the difference is the poorer people on the bus don't get to fall back on anything else.) In the same way, the staples for biking are probably safe/moderately convenient access to many places (not a single or even a couple of linear paths) and safety from negligent drivers.

Like buses, I'm afraid that you're just throwing yourself at a wall as long as our development pattern provides such an enormous subsidy for cars. Also like with buses, I would love to be proven wrong.

Re: Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

#146

Post by jnty »

usrusr wrote: post #115
jnty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you object to using sidewalks which are also suitable for children to walk on?

If that means that you either get a sidewalk covered in the expensive soft rubber floor used on modern playgrounds or no sidewalk at all, then sure, I will definitely prefer a complete network of hard sidewalks where it hurts to fall over insular sprinklings of rubber-sidewalks here and there.

It may have escaped your notice that sidewalks like these don't exist outside of children's playgrounds, yet children successfully use sidewalks safely worldwide. The same can be true of bike tracks - have you not seen any videos of what has been achieved in the Netherlands?
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