301–310 of 317 posts
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Don’t be purposely dull. Yes the value of the issue depends on how dangerous bicycling is relative to other things. That’s no surprise. 1:100,000,000 != 1:100
Don't be purposely dull by implying the parent comment doesn't understand the difference between one hundred million and one hundred.
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Not all protected bike lanes are parking protected. Don't think this is common in the Netherlands. Parking protected is better than having bikes on the other side of parked cars, but yes visibility is less than ideal. Anyway, you're ignoring the other two things I pointed out about protected intersections. It makes the bike lane itself more obvious, and the curb design forces drivers to slow down more.
> Parking protected is better than having bikes on the other side of parked cars, but yes visibility is less than ideal. Without visibility, the motorist and cyclist could be on a collision course and not even know it until it's too late. On the other hand, if the cyclist is on the road in the middle of the general purpose traffic lane, the motorist will see them in advance and either change lanes to pass or slow dow…
No. You don't seem to understand how protected intersections work. The design of the intersection itself forces cars to slow down quite a lot to make the turn. You can see this here: https://images.app.goo.gl/XnppCCtEhs8vdgd39
Plus, generally you make the parking lane end a bit before the actual intersection, precisely to improve visibility.
Anyway, as I said, parking protected is not the ideal situation anyway. It's a compromise with municipalities that aren't ready to give up more street parking in the interest of safety.
What you're describing is vehicular cycling, which has been a complete failure. There are zero countries that use it with high rates of safe biking, whereas there are a bunch of countries that use protected lanes and intersections with success that directly correlates with how much they're used, with the Netherlands being the foremost example.
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Why would we want to make it more expensive to bike, when it's better for the environment and saves the city money as it is? Some German cities are going in the opposite direction, giving subsidies for people to purchase electric cargo bikes.
Lost revenue from parking tickets. The city is in a very precarious situation right now with debt of 81k per resident and high tax paying citizens leaving the city faster than they are being replaced. Pension obligations are exploding and since 1% of the population funds 50% of the tax revenue, we can’t afford to lose anymore. Building bike lanes is very kumbaya but these types of things are not sustainable as-is. So…
You're not going to make significant revenue off of bikes, and in any case switching trips to bikes saves cities money. If more money is needed for infrastructure in general, that's what property and sales and income taxes are for.
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> Parking protected is better than having bikes on the other side of parked cars, but yes visibility is less than ideal. Without visibility, the motorist and cyclist could be on a collision course and not even know it until it's too late. On the other hand, if the cyclist is on the road in the middle of the general purpose traffic lane, the motorist will see them in advance and either change lanes to pass or slow dow…
> Without visibility, the motorist and cyclist could be on a collision course and not even know it until it's too late. No. You don't seem to understand how protected intersections work. The design of the intersection itself forces cars to slow down quite a lot to make the turn. You can see this here: https://images.app.goo.gl/XnppCCtEhs8vdgd39 Plus, generally you make the parking lane end a bit before the actual int…
I'm well aware of how NACTO[1] claims they work.
> The design of the intersection itself forces cars to slow down quite a lot to make the turn.
According to NACTO, they make drivers slow down to about 10 mph to make a right turn (see page 11, paragraph 2, sentence 1).
> Plus, generally you make the parking lane end a bit before the actual intersection, precisely to improve visibility.
This doesn't address the case where a cyclist approaches the motorist from behind from the motorist's point of view. In other words, the only time the motorist will have a chance to see the cyclist is when they're in the process of making a right turn. We can't assume that the cyclist will yield to a motorist or even be paying attention to the adjacent roadway (think of an 8 year old cyclist who doesn't have the concept of how intersections work).
The document makes the assumption that a cyclist will traverse 50 feet in 3 seconds (about 16.67 feet per second which is about 11.4 mph). On page 13, they have a figure depicting the motorist's field of view as they make their way around a protected at a speed of around 10 mph.
If you measure the bikeway setback line shown on page 12 and compare it with the horizontal measurement from the drivers field of view cone (from the origin to the left most extent), you'll find that the driver can only see about 8.2 feet down the bikeway.
Remember that both the cyclist and the car are traveling at a speed of around 15 feet per second. Also, the average reaction time of someone who's not expecting an event is around 1 to 1.5 seconds. This means that the motorist will not have enough time to see the cyclist in order to yield to them. The picture right below it showing the cyclist entering the intersection makes that evident.
> What you're describing is vehicular cycling, which has been a complete failure.
Vehicular cycling is the safest way to cycle in the current environment and addresses the problems of intersection conflicts by positioning the cyclist right in front of the motorist who will have no trouble seeing them well in advance of catching up to them.
The sidepath type intersection actually increases conflicts due to lack of visibility as I described above.
[1] https://nacto.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/05/NACTO_Dont-Give...
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I've looked at the statistics and cyclists don't break the law significantly more than drivers do. Drivers break different laws that are socially acceptable to break, like speeding. About 2/3 of drivers admit to speeding: https://news.uns.purdue.edu/x/2008b/081107ManneringSpeeding.... That fits with my experience. You can find wildly varying estimates of how often cyclists run red lights: https://bikeportland.org/201…
That's perhaps the least dangerous of the bicycle maneuvers. Its the dashing from lane to lane, from street to sidewalk and back, into and out of blind spots unexpectedly that makes bicycles a hazard to themselves.
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Driving in between two posts doesn’t seem that much effort to me (doesn’t seem harder than parallel parking for example). And I suspect many of them do understand what the flexposts are for, and just don’t care. Drivers park in clearly signed bike lanes all the time, and when cyclists alert them to this fact they often respond with anger, not understanding or contrition. Common excuses are “I’ll just be a minute” or…
I don't know that driving brings out terribly different behavior on that front, it's more that cars are so big that they act as this inconvenience multiplier that allows one person to easily create a much bigger hassle or hazard for others than they could with their bare hands. For example, I have plenty of run-ins with stepping out of a storefront and nearly getting creamed by a cyclist who's zooming down the sidewa…
With a bike people wouldn’t just dump it on the sidewalk typically because they’d be worried about it being stolen (of course with the rentable scooters and dockless cycles, people do exactly that since they don’t have to worry about theft).
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> how do you know whether you’ll be next to a car wanting to turn right by the time you reach the junction? Prior to the junction, you move into the center of the lane corresponding to your intended direction. If you plan to go straight, you get behind the vehicles that are going to make a right turn or go straight. Depending on how dense traffic is, you'll have to do this further in advance from the intersection. A…
> Prior to the junction, you move into the center of the lane corresponding to your intended direction. Over here in the netherlands we're phasing these out, crossing traffic at a diagonal like that means that drivers will need to look almost 180 degrees behind them to spot you. It's a fine solution if there's only one lane of cars, but as soon as there's more than one lane merging movements just make it plain too da…
I believe you misunderstood what I was trying to convey. What I was saying was that the cyclist should change lanes to the one corresponding to their desired direction of travel through the junction (like one would do when in a car or on a motorcycle).
> means that drivers will need to look almost 180 degrees behind them to spot you.
Why couldn't they use their mirrors?
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I commute on my bike in NYC daily and I am far more terrified of pedestrians and other cyclists than I am of cars. Cars for the most part pay attention and obey traffic rules. Cyclists less so and pedestrians ignore rules entirely and frequently aren't even aware of cyclists.
Does someone know the name of this bias/fallacy?
This is big time for America. If our biggest city can’t show leadership on pedestrian and bicyclist safety, we can’t expect any other city to as well. New York is really lagging behind where it should be. Despite being by far the biggest American city, it is overrun with cars. Protected bike lanes, street improvements to make crossing the street safer, and dedicated bus lanes will improve the city for all New Yorkers…
> The dangers came into focus this year after 25 cyclists were killed on city streets — the highest toll in two decades. The "highest toll in two decades" gives some context, but I wish writers would share ratio metrics rather than absolute numbers in cases like this. I.e. the number of active cyclists on the road might be outpacing the deaths, but we don't know when you just say "25 cyclists were killed in 2019." Al…
Are you saying the value of these cyclist's lives is based on how many cyclists there are?