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A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

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Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#271

Post by aeharding »

DocTomoe wrote: post #259

Something that often is neglected: Destroying Car parking for bike corals in inner cities tends to affect out-of-towners, people who cannot bike into cities because of distance, disproportionally. Noone drives their car low distances within cities because that would mean losing their spot.

There are so many alternatives other than commuting by car and parking on the street...

1. Bus 2. Bike 3. Walk 4. Carpool 5. Move 6. Parking ramps

^ And combinations of these, such as park-and-rides, parking outside the core downtown area and bus/biking in, etc.

Not to mention, at least in my City (Madison, WI) there's thousands of off-street car parking spots in public ramps, and removing 5 spots for 5 corrals in high demand areas negatively affects nobody. Unless you happen to be the 0.00001% of downtown car traffic affected by this and needing to walking a block or two from the nearest ramp to park your private vehicle is such a big deal...

There's zero argument here.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#272

Post by u801e »

PeterStuer wrote: post #222
mrmanner wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The basic idea of “experimentation is good” holds for bike lanes as well — before making a permanent strategy decision for an entire city they could try painting bike lanes in a neighborhood or for one commute where people are willing to try biking. When it works out, it’s easier to convince car people that they’re better off when there are fewer cars on the road even if the road is smaller.

Wrong. A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really. However, a switch to cycling needs to be systemic and can take a fairly long time, so I'm not sure how a limited and 'one street' experime…

> A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really.

These cause problems because then the bike lane cannot be cleaned and also, these barriers cannot extend through intersections where the majority of collisions happen.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#273

Post by lmm »

kd5bjo wrote: post #269
lmm wrote: post #261

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> So, queue jumping is a moral act as long as the people you’re jumping in front of are bad people? I see it as more like a "10 items or less" queue: if you're taking up less (checkout/road) space then you get to go in a shorter queue that moves faster than the queues of the people who are taking up more space. That's fair, isn't it?

That would be fair, if the infrastructure reflected that. It doesn’t, however: often there’s only one lane downstream from the traffic light that can’t be effectively shared, so there’s only one resource to queue for. That’s why we should get some proper bicycle infrastructure built already, but bicyclists angering drivers with their behavior isn’t going to help.

In my experience whether there's a painted bicycle lane or not makes little difference to how angry drivers get about it. Filtering past them is still the safest course of action either way; I'm not going to compromise that for the sake of their unreasonable anger.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#274

Post by DocTomoe »

aeharding wrote: post #271
DocTomoe wrote: post #259

Something that often is neglected: Destroying Car parking for bike corals in inner cities tends to affect out-of-towners, people who cannot bike into cities because of distance, disproportionally. Noone drives their car low distances within cities because that would mean losing their spot.

There are so many alternatives other than commuting by car and parking on the street... 1. Bus 2. Bike 3. Walk 4. Carpool 5. Move 6. Parking ramps ^ And combinations of these, such as park-and-rides, parking outside the core downtown area and bus/biking in, etc. Not to mention, at least in my City (Madison, WI) there's thousands of off-street car parking spots in public ramps, and removing 5 spots for 5 corrals in hi…

Not every city is Madison, Wi, which you yourself considered to be a special case when it came to parking just seven little months ago.

And not everyone can bus - especially in America, where public transport is essentially a sad joke. Not everyone can walk - distances are actually a thing. Not everyone has the ability to find someone to carpool with (which might either be related to different schedules or different locations). Not everyone can move, especially not for rare city business (city living is expensive, not everyone is a VC-funded startup engineer). And parking ramps are a thing, but still limited - the issue is not with "parking options exist", but with "parking options in sufficient availabilities exist".

That being said, I would love to see you haul a fridge three miles on foot to your next parking ramp.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#275

Post by PeterStuer »

u801e wrote: post #272
PeterStuer wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrong. A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really. However, a switch to cycling needs to be systemic and can take a fairly long time, so I'm not sure how a limited and 'one street' experime…

> A painted bike lane provides no sense of security, and is for the most part completely ignored by car drivers. You can use temporary solid barriers, concrete or those water fillable plastic ones, or bolted posts instead. Anything that atleast damages a car on impact really. These cause problems because then the bike lane cannot be cleaned and also, these barriers cannot extend through intersections where the majori…

Around here we have quite a few of these types of protected bike lanes, and I can assure you there is no problem cleaning them. The same equipment used to clean sidewalks works just fine.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#276

Post by aeharding »

DocTomoe wrote: post #274
aeharding wrote: post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are so many alternatives other than commuting by car and parking on the street... 1. Bus 2. Bike 3. Walk 4. Carpool 5. Move 6. Parking ramps ^ And combinations of these, such as park-and-rides, parking outside the core downtown area and bus/biking in, etc. Not to mention, at least in my City (Madison, WI) there's thousands of off-street car parking spots in public ramps, and removing 5 spots for 5 corrals in hi…

Not every city is Madison, Wi, which you yourself considered to be a special case when it came to parking just seven little months ago. And not everyone can bus - especially in America, where public transport is essentially a sad joke. Not everyone can walk - distances are actually a thing. Not everyone has the ability to find someone to carpool with (which might either be related to different schedules or different…

What city do you live in?

EDIT Also I am a little confused by

> That being said, I would love to see you haul a fridge three miles on foot to your next parking ramp.

I thought we were talking about commuting? I am not saying get rid of your car, I am saying perhaps don't commute with one every single day and then expect to park on-street, because there might be better options...

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#277

Post by Lio »

rayiner wrote: post #256
Lio wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Small folding e-bikes solve that “last mile” problem for lots of people. They allow people to quickly reach mass transit hubs when none are near by, fold up and hop on. What’s missing is normalisation and support from transit providers. I’d add, that it would be nice if Google/Apple would add multi-mode transit routing for maps so that you could tell when it’s quicker to cycle direct and when it’s quicker to cycle to…

No they don’t. Even a folding ebike wouldn’t work if everyone brought them on the DC metro or NYC Subway. It’s packed shoulder to shoulder already.

Hold on, metro/subway capacity isn't the issue being addressed by the parent comment.

You raised the problem of metro stations being further than a walkable distance on either end of the commute.

If a subway or train service is at standing room only capacity right now even before you help new people to get to it then it's kind of a moot point anyway; you need more capacity before you can add more people.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#278

Post by kqr »

AceyMan wrote: post #229
AceyMan wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>It makes no sense to take entire lanes out of service for the tiny minority of people who can integrate biking into their daily commute. Cart meet horse. I believe we have to "build it and they will come." It's a 'tiny minority' (well, minority) due largely to lack of infrastructure (bike lanes, sharrowed roads with modest speed limits, &c.). Then, you hit upon the other issue... >And for most people in the US, publ…

[errata] s/not just/only in ¶ starts "America needs ..." (I double-negatived myself after an edit .)

Pah, you could as well have gone full sed: /^America needs/,+4s/not just/only/

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#279

Post by filoleg »

Steltek wrote: post #98
filoleg wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What I hear all the time with programs like this (where politicians almost have the opposite problem) is basically this type of (slightly made up) media dialog: “won’t it be dangerous to force children to ride bikes from age one?” >“Yes, but if we are to meet the emission goals by 2025 we have no choice”. Yeah, I don't think that you will succeed in convincing any parent with this kind of argument. Getting their kid…

As a parent in this exact situation, my reason is not primarily climate change (although it's high up on the list); it's about fostering independence and confidence. I'm pissed off that it's families and cyclists that somehow bear the enormous responsibility for improving driver behavior and justifying road infrastructure. We admit that our streets are by default "never safe" and then shrug and walk away.

>I'm pissed off that it's families and cyclists that somehow bear the enormous responsibility for improving driver behavior and justifying road infrastructure

It shouldn't be this way, and I agree with you that the burden should be on car drivers.

However, I don't think it will be enough of a consolation for most of the parents in a situation where their kid on a bicycle got injured or, worse, killed. Not many parents would be willing to accept the trade-off of potentially sacrificing health or life of their child in the name of a greater good. And I am saying that as someone who doesn't even have children or ever plans to have any for rather selfish reasons. I can easily imagine that people who actually have children probably have way stronger feelings on this than me.

Re: A “bike platform” that temporarily swaps one car parking space for ten bicycles

#280

Post by kqr »

tastygreenapple wrote: post #192
gbrown wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I humbly suggest that you dig deep and examine whether your opinion has more to do with the anger and frustration you experience while driving than objective fact, or any measureable harm you receive.

I don't own a car. I just call it like I see it, I don't think cars are great but bicycles seriously randomize the road, it's beyond stupid that 4000 lb cars driven by people who don't even operate the vehicle that well 'share' the road with 10-30 lb bicycles.

> it's beyond stupid that 4000 lb cars driven by people who don't even operate the vehicle that well 'share' the road with 10-30 lb bicycles.

I agree, but how do you get from there to "bicyclists are the problem"? Neither type of driver conduct their vehicle very well (only humans, after all) but one is infinitely more fatal than the other.

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