Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

citylab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 485 posts

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#111

Post by hawaiianbrah »

CydeWeys wrote: post #77
amalcon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk, and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal under the new law. I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.

There are smaller vehicles that are used to plow just the bike lanes in some parts of the world. It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

Maybe. I stopped biking in the winters in Cambridge purely because the pathways are impassable because of the snow. Not because of the weather.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#112

Post by SECProto »

chadash wrote: post #27

> "Local law now requires the city to erect vertical barriers between cyclists and cars on any roadway that’s rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured" I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this for all new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on the main drags (where some of the new prote…

>I could be misinterpreting the language, [...] but the default seems to be that a typical side street would have a dedicated bike lane.

I think the key here is that it's for any roadway that is rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured. This is very rare for residential side streets in my experience - it would only come when roads are widened or curb lines are redone, which is more common on major streets and roads. Repaving is explicitly excluded.

I also think the exceptions are not nearly as limited as you. While 12.22.040.B explicitly calls the exceptions "rare", basically as long as they can prove in a public report that it's impractical (for financial constraint or physical features/usage reasons), they don't have to do a bike lane.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#113

Post by ghaff »

gnulinux wrote: post #75

As a biker in Cambridge, I have mixed feelings about this. Biking in Cambridge is subpar, I lived in Berkeley, CA 4 years and biking was MUCH more comfortable there. I'm worried this will hinder the progress and slow down constructing new bike lanes. I want more protection BUT I also want bike lanes every where. If they're not gonna construct more bike lanes because now it has more regulation, this is a negative deve…

Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists (and pedestrians) for some reason. Maybe it's all the students. It's probably a net good thing that cycling lanes are being improved although there are certainly tradeoffs given the traffic and parking situation. However, whenever I'm driving home up Beacon Street after dark, there are invariably cyclists zipping around with no lights, going up streets the wrong way, and pedestrians dressed in dark colors randomly quickly stepping out from behind parked cars into the street.

The bike lanes that now exist probably make things safer overall but there's a lot of dangerous behavior out there on the part of many types of infrastructure users (including cars as well).

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#114

Post by tashoecraft »

CydeWeys wrote: post #24
larrymyers wrote: post #14

I'm a huge fan of protected bike lanes. Chicago has a few of them, and they are far less stressful to ride on compared to just basic striping on the road. By far the biggest issue I have with striped bike lanes is trying guess when an Uber driver is going to do something crazy when picking up or dropping off a passenger.

My biggest problem with unprotected bike lanes here in Manhattan is that they are so frequently illegally blocked, not just by Taxis/FHVs but also by people parking in them. And a lot of the unprotected bike lanes are basically just the door zone of a line of parked cars, so you need to ride to the far outside of it to avoid getting doored. There's entire block-long stretches that I'll stay out of the unprotected bik…

It's so bad. I bike daily to work, and take a very extended route that tries to go purely on protected bike lanes, but there are still so many vehicles on them. Cops need to start ticketing heavily for this, but the problem is they are routinely the ones blocking the lanes. NY is getting much better for biking, but there needs to be a shift in actually protecting bikers, since obstructing vehicles causes traffic and inconvenience whereas obstructing cyclists leads to injury and death.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#115

Post by leetcrew »

just_steve_h wrote: post #68

I also wonder what all our resident PRIVATE PROPERTY enthusiasts think about on-street parking: what other of my 250 sq.ft. objects may I store on public property for free?

are you responding to a particular point in the article or just your own strawman?

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#116

Post by btrettel »

ahoy wrote: post #93
hirundo wrote: post #44

This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area pointing in both directions. One such concluded tha…

I don't know a single cyclist who agrees with that statement.

I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones.

Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#117

Post by screye »

est31 wrote: post #3
cure wrote: post #2

It is funny to see Cambridge labelled a 'Boston suburb'. That was clearly written by someone who has never visited Cambridge, MA or even the Boston area.

Never been there, could you explain?

You have twin cities situation going on here.

Although it is more akin to a left brain-right brain situation. 2 similar structures separated by one physical divide.

It helps to think of Boston and Cambridge as one city. (Though I am sure many don't like that) The city of Boston itself is pretty small to begin with anyways.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#118

Post by leetcrew »

souterrain wrote: post #92
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My city did that. Only they waited for most of the businesses to fold first. What a great reward for weathering the recession those businesses got. Turns out when you kill parking in favor of bike lanes in a small city that does a lot of business by being a commerce destination for the surrounding towns it doesn't work well. Also nobody bikes here because the entire city is hills (plenty of people walk though) so bik…

This part of Baltimore doesn't fit this model, however, since parking was not removed. The bike lane was inserted between the parking zone and the curb. Previously, the bike lane was between the rightmost travel lane and the parking zone. Poor driving, or factors related to poor driving, may be a contributor. https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-... Or, it may just be an anti-cycling bias, but…

in this particular neighborhood, the bike lane was also fairly unpopular with local cyclists too, who felt they were being forced to bike through the dirtiest, most obstacle prone portion of the road.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#119

Post by LeonidasXIV »

CydeWeys wrote: post #77
amalcon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk, and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal under the new law. I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.

There are smaller vehicles that are used to plow just the bike lanes in some parts of the world. It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

> It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

This is not necessarily true. Here in Copenhagen the amount of people cycling in winter is not significantly less than at other times of the year. That said, we don't have much snow, but the bike lanes are cleared before the road lanes (to incentivize not taking the car into the city).

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#120

Post by tashoecraft »

gnulinux wrote: post #75

As a biker in Cambridge, I have mixed feelings about this. Biking in Cambridge is subpar, I lived in Berkeley, CA 4 years and biking was MUCH more comfortable there. I'm worried this will hinder the progress and slow down constructing new bike lanes. I want more protection BUT I also want bike lanes every where. If they're not gonna construct more bike lanes because now it has more regulation, this is a negative deve…

I feel like unprotected bike lanes are near useless. Atleast in NY, drivers don't really care. Ubers/cabs will pull over quickly to let people off blocking them. Pedestrians don't look for bikes when they cross them, and bikers are often forced to leave the lane due to obstruction.
Post reply on HN