41–50 of 92 posts
Depending on the country and the governing agency, this roadway type can have different names. Examples include: 2-minus-1 roads (New Zealand, Denmark), Edge Lane Road (Denmark, US), Advisory Shoulders (U.S. Federal Highway Administration), Schutzstreifen (Germany), Suggestiestrook (Netherlands), and Advisory Bike Lanes (US).
ITT: People who've never done any research on this issue making very American conclusions. Confusion about how these roads work is actually good. It may seem paradoxical at first, but easy to understand roads with ample signage actually breed high speeds, congestion, complacency, and dead pedestrians. Many dangerous intersections have found that removing signage and leaving it up to drivers drastically reduces speeds…
I don’t think roads need to be mentally taxing as that just causes fatigue to already tired workers commuting. What you can do is offer visual and sensory cues so that the speed limit feels natural. For example, narrowing lanes, gradient changes, road material changes.
ITT: People who've never done any research on this issue making very American conclusions. Confusion about how these roads work is actually good. It may seem paradoxical at first, but easy to understand roads with ample signage actually breed high speeds, congestion, complacency, and dead pedestrians. Many dangerous intersections have found that removing signage and leaving it up to drivers drastically reduces speeds…
I recently did a few consecutive full day bicycle trips around the Netherlands and rode on many roads like this. I felt safe and drivers were respectful and patient when passing. I would never ride on one of these in the US. I can already imagine the Amazon delivery van or work truck parked in the bicycle section, forcing me into the center. I can also imagine the impatient drivers accelerating way beyond the speed l…
I've lived all over the US and I've mostly seen this on the east coast (NY, CT, MA). Totally insane to me that police don't ticket the hell out of delivery vehicles for parking in the middle of active roadways (not just bike lanes).
Drivers in this area are terrible in general, not just delivery drivers. Everyone likes to claim that their local drivers are bad, but as someone with a lot of broad experience, East Coast drivers are truly some of the worst.
As a Seattleite who uses a bicycle as the primary means of transportation (but not a bike enthusiast or “bike person”): these are nice (experienced them a bit in Ann Arbor) but the only way to truly make biking safe is going to be to remove cars from the equation in 90%+ of circumstances. No bike gutters (a derogatory word for bike lanes that are only protected by paint), dedicated bike infrastructure.
Upper middle class folks are much less likely to kill you regardless of what sort of road they're on (I can pretty much predict the probability of bad interactions simply based on looking at what folks are driving). And in the absence of any effective law enforcement with regards to traffic laws improving your priors is fundamental. (Heck in the WA state 10% of fatal crashes are due drivers who don't even have a license at all https://wtsc.wa.gov/download/12727 - apologies for the cert warning on the above)
And the other thing to look for is narrow streets (big feature of my neighborhood here) which keeps vehicle speeds down.
And don't bike after 10 PM at night (that's what buses and Uber is for) - too many impaired drivers after that point.
And keep in mind that separated infrastructure does little or nothing at intersections and driveways. There's a notorious separated lane across I-5 from me where lots of my friends have had bad interactions (including injuries) at parking garage driveways (a particularly nasty case is associated with the garage for a medical practice - we theorize that folks are coming out after unhappy doc visits distracted by the prospect of looming financial ruin - another US-specific feature ;-)
I take the lane there (which is scary as it makes drivers cranky, but again given the demographics they're not homicidal (at least so far)) but it beats getting squashed by someone speeding out of the garage.
I think the way forward in the US lies in achieving automated (and therefore safe and cheap) public-ish transport so we can give an alternative to the folks that can't drive safely and get them from behind the wheel. Short of that infrastructure (if built correctly) can be helpful but like bike helmets gets way more attention than warranted.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't know the rules in the US but in the Netherlands the car is always at fault in case of an accident, unless it is proven the cyclist was at fault. This makes the roads a lot safer for cyclists. When this law was introduced years ago the Dutch also made fun of it: https://youtu.be/ivY06w83fKU
You don't know the rules, but you can probably hazard a guess. In Toronto, a driver took their eyes off the road, reached for a water bottle on the floor, hopped the curb, hit and killed a pedestrian, and was found not guilty. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/gideon-fekre-sentence...
In Canada, drivers are not generally held responsible for driving that is normally incompetent. So the defence would of wanted to establish that such incompetence had occurred. It had to be a mistake that anyone could make.
It's a a pretty big problem, but no one seems to care...
Road Guy Rob did a video recently about a failed edge lane road experiment. Seems like a good idea to me as long as car traffic isn't too heavy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeynqnirofE
I think the big problem is nobody knows what the heck they’ve encountered. If you do it naturally people can figure it out: make the road very narrow but technically wide enough for two cars and people will hug the center naturally.
> This roadway configuration originated in the Netherlands where they have over 50 years and many hundreds of road-kilometers of experience with this facility. Well yeah, but we use this specific configuration with the shared centre lane only on the lowest tier of rural roads where traffic is limited and the speed limit is 60 km/h (roughly 40 mph), and some select urban streets where they act as a traffic calming mea…
ITT: People who've never done any research on this issue making very American conclusions. Confusion about how these roads work is actually good. It may seem paradoxical at first, but easy to understand roads with ample signage actually breed high speeds, congestion, complacency, and dead pedestrians. Many dangerous intersections have found that removing signage and leaving it up to drivers drastically reduces speeds…
There exist optimization criteria besides "reduce the number of deaths". In particular, the enjoyment of drivers is an important optimization criterion.
...or distracted or impaired motorists drifting out of the center and taking out motorists?
teenagers using both lanes to race each other...
the list goes on and on...