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Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

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Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#291

Post by Thriptic »

screye wrote: post #28

A 2 key points about well designed bike lanes that aren't bought up enough are: 1. raised / structural separation between the road and bikes path. 2. bike paths can be used for just about anything that is not a car/motorbike or a pedestrian. Skaters, skate boarders, mopeds and bikes can all share a common separated path way. I have tried biking in Boston and it is a nightmare. Bike Lanes marked on the road are taken…

I agree that cycling in Boston is absolutely terrifying; I tried it for a few weeks and then gave up. Literally every single cyclist I know has gotten into at least one serious accident over the last 5 years in the city. While it is true that separated bike lanes would solve a lot of the alternative commuting problems in Boston, the problem is we simply don't have enough room for them across large swaths of the city and Cambridge / Somerville . I would suspect that the only way we could reasonably achieve separation across most of the city / outlying cities is if we totally banned on street parking which is a nonstarter to a majority of residents and commuters.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#292

Post by ams6110 »

waylandsmithers wrote: post #255
screye wrote: post #28

A 2 key points about well designed bike lanes that aren't bought up enough are: 1. raised / structural separation between the road and bikes path. 2. bike paths can be used for just about anything that is not a car/motorbike or a pedestrian. Skaters, skate boarders, mopeds and bikes can all share a common separated path way. I have tried biking in Boston and it is a nightmare. Bike Lanes marked on the road are taken…

I think the problem is Boston is that there aren't actual bike lanes-- they just painted some new symbols on the already existing roads that were designed for cars and called it a day. Everyone would benefit from separated bike lanes, either raised up or with the white cones. It never made sense to me that a whole line of traffic should have to slow down to 12-15mph because one person wants to ride their bike. Cars a…

Yeah that's the thing that annoys motorists (or at least what annoys me) -- bikes that you can't safely pass. Any time you have vehicles with greatly differing speeds sharing the same lane, it's unsafe.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#293

Post by toasterlovin »

chc wrote: post #257
toasterlovin wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just do yourself a favor and think long and hard about whether or not that's going to sustain you for the remainder of your 70-80 years on this planet.

Maybe not, but having kids doesn't seem particularly more likely to sustain them, does it?

Kids are the easiest, most straightforward way to give purpose to your life. You can find purpose in other ways, but kids are pretty much a sure bet. If you're not going to have kids, you should have at least given some thought to what else is going to keep you moored. That's all I'm advocating for.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#294

Post by Someone »

mjevans wrote: post #235
telchar wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd add that a significantly under-discussed element of safe biking infrastructure is safer intersections. My city has lots of bike lanes that are sufficiently wide (and many that aren't) and no consideration all at for how a cyclist is supposed to safely traverse an intersection. My commute requires me to cross several lanes of traffic to get from the bike lane to the left turn lane on a road where cars go ~40mph -…

The best practice that I'm aware of is: * AT AN INTERSECTION * Dismount and walk the bike across the cross-walk, as a pedestrian. IMO we've engineered intersections all wrong to begin with. There shouldn't even be cross-walks there (they should be mid-block dedicated services, placed where pedestrians WANT to cross and __VERY CLEARLY__ marked as existing; not the dinky lights many cities go for (Seattle comes to mind…

This is how to do it: https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/junction-desig...

Requiring dismounting would be the way to discourage cycling.

Separation of levels can work, too, but is more expensive and takes more room. Examples at https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/tag/tunnel/ and https://vimeo.com/71511991

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#295

Post by gascan »

oftenwrong wrote: post #94

A city that is bike-friendly is good, but a city that is walking-friendly is better. The bicycle is a great way to exceed "walking distance", but why should that even be necessary in day-to-day life? It is easily possible to build a neighbourhood where three generations of a family can live, work, attend school, shop, and more within walking distance. Walking is the simplest, most universal, and most natural mode of…

What do you consider walkable range? I bike five miles to work. But I find walking more than about a quarter mile with two day's groceries to be very unpleasant in the heat.

Maybe taking a backpack would do the trick. But loading up my bike, or my bike plus a trailer, is far more pleasant for all but the shortest distances.

Maybe I've just not experienced it yet, but it's hard to fathom every hardware store, grocery store, bar, restaurant, workplace, school, city rec center, post office, etc that I would ever really want to visit could reasonably fit into a quarter mile square.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#296

Post by nradov »

modzu wrote: post #286
modzu wrote: post #283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it is true the difference in total weight is quite marginal (maybe 1%?) but that doesn't mean the impact is equal to 1%. there is a perceptual quality that is often neglected when calculating the differences purely in terms of physical forces. we agree a lighter bike will only be marginally faster in terms of speed on the ground but to say a rider doesn't notice a 1% difference in their speed requires an appeal to pe…

another way to think about it is this -- you could say to someone, "don't complain about your bike -- just lose 10 lbs and you'll get to your destination faster than you would by changing your bike". yeah ok, but like losing weight is easy (actually it is if you bike a lot, hehe). but if you put that person on a walmart beater and compare their commute with a carbon bike, they sure as hell will report a difference, e…

Walmart bikes are miserable to ride because of the horrible groupsets, not the frame material. Carbon fiber bikes are available now for much less than $10K, but if you're on a tight budget it's usually better to pick a bike with a cheaper metal frame so that you can get a more expensive groupset.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#297

Post by gascan »

village-idiot wrote: post #13
CloudYeller wrote: post #5

In most cities, especially in America, there's a vicious cycle: 0) Cycling is dangerous because there are too many vehicles on the road 1) There are so many vehicles on the road because everyone knows it's dangerous to cycle 2) Go to 0 Breaking out of that loop requires building safe infrastructure for cycling, like indestructable cement dividers between bike lanes and vehicle lanes or no-vehicles-allowed-in- days

And creating the infrastructure is wildly unpopular, because typically it involves either taking lanes away from cars, or slowing them down. The initiative to reduce car-pedestrian collisions in LA has stopped because the drivers put pressure on politicians to stop slowing traffic down. Advocates are implying (and sometimes outright saying) that a few dozen deaths a year are an acceptable price to pay for a shorter c…

Not to mention the drivers who are offended by the simple act of spending a dollar on someone who is not them.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#298

Post by Johnny555 »

Retric wrote: post #281
Johnny555 wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed -- many of the shared paths have low 10-15mph speed limits for pedestrian safety which is fine for a recreational cyclist, but for someone going to work, 20mph on the flats is doable by a reasonably fit cyclist. When there's a road next to a mixed-use path, I'll usually take the road since it's safer and easier than sharing with the pedestrian traffic.

A sub 3 mile commute at 5-10 MPH is not that bad. You don't need a shower or change of clothes etc. So it's more about commute distance than a pure question of speed.

Though a sub 3 mile commute is also easy to serve with transit.

I have a 12 mile bike commute. The bus is an option, but it only runs once an hour.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#299

Post by wott »

village-idiot wrote: post #176
jbob2000 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't live in the US so those aren't really concerns for me. My quiet suburb has been able to keep the roads and pipes maintained while also keep property tax low. I think it's actually easier (read: cheaper) to maintain infrastructure in low density areas because there are less complications. Laying pipe through an open field is easier than laying it under 100+ years of city development. Distance isn't the big cos…

Complexity matters, but gets swamped when you start talking about increasing infrastructure per person by an order of magnitude. Keep in mind that spread out suburbs also produce less tax revenue per acre, and thus less revenue per public dollar spent. There are “rich” suburbs in the US where a 100% tax rate wouldn’t cover future maintenance obligations.

No, I confirm what jbob2000 said: in my country (which is probably different from his), the local taxes (and the state subsidies) go up as density goes up. Those are per inhabitant (and they don't comprise funding for regional equipments, just for the use of the municipality). I think they are a very good proxy for public infrastructure cost.

They are lowest in rural municipalities, then they are small towns, then it gradually grows as you go closer to the centre of a metropolis through the suburbs.

Every single infrastructure work costs a lot more in a dense area. It also needs to be fixed a lot more often, it degrades faster. It also affects negatively more people and businesses. It also cannot be upgraded so easily when population grows (the streets cannot be made larger, or for example at my place I cannot use water any more between 7 and 8 am because there is not enough pressure when everyone pulls water in the morning since every year the neighbourhood gets denser).

Empirically it seems the cost of infrastructure (construction, maintenance, upgrade) grows faster than the number of inhabitants it supports, contrarily to the theory.

And furthermore they are often less efficient: if you compare the speed of transportation in a dense city and in a small city or between small cities, it is night and day. Walking is slower in a dense city, cycling is slower, driving is slower, public transportation is slower... It barely gets compensated by the reduction in distances between origins and destinations. I mean, it often takes close to one hour to do less than 10 km in a dense city or its close suburb by public transportation. You'd do 40-50 km by country bus, or 75 km by car, or 120 km in train in the same time across the countryside. Small cities also barely know about traffic congestion.

I mean, I used to believe that density was a magic bullet since you could pack proportionality more people on the same resource. But the observation showed me otherwise, so I changed my mind.

Re: Cycling Is Key to Safer, Healthier, More Vital Cities

#300

Post by gascan »

chrissnell wrote: post #12

I love cycling. I grew up in my father's bicycle store and nearly 50 years later, he's still running the business and we've all worked in it at one time or another. I ride bikes around the neighborhood with my kids every day. With that said, the U.S. is not the Netherlands. Like most Americans, I depend on my vehicle to get my kids to school and myself to the grocery store, which are 4-5 miles away from my house. Thi…

Better street design can improve traffic & flow with fewer lanes. My local muni has been converting super cramped four lane roads to two lanes plus turn lane and comfortable bike lanes. They are nicer to bike, nicer to drive, and back up less often (mostly due to the turn lane). Roundabouts on these roads have generally improved flow too.

None of these experience miles of gridlock like LA, but it's been enjoyable to see & experience.

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