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Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

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Re: Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

#4
The "before and after" picture at the bottom of the page shows that both "before" and "after" have bike lanes. The bike lane has grown from 5' to 6" and is separated by a buffer, but it was there before.

What has sped up traffic is the creation of left turn pockets in the parking lane. But these could have been created in the "before" situation, by carving them out of the 8" curb-side parking lane.

So, the claim that "bike lanes have sped up traffic" is poorly supported.

Re: Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

#5
Protected Bike lanes are great and hopefully we start getting Protected Intersections to go with them.

This site has a great video which describes the protected intersection. Having traversed them quite a bit as a cyclist, motorist, and pedestrian, they are delight to use.

http://www.protectedintersection.com/

Re: Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

#7

They need to put up the concrete barriers on every lane. Biking on an ave A + ave B is still not safe.

I live around Ave A and in a couple block radius I've seen a woman almost get run over (her fault for running a light) and another get side-swiped by a taxi's door (looked like the taxi's fault). There's less traffic around Ave B and further east but also less room.

Re: Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

#9
I'm a fan of biking to work, but my inner skeptic is wondering about correlation vs. causation. You'd also have to compare the total automobile traffic levels to get a clear picture. It's possible that drivers are avoiding the streets because they assume they're worse with the bike lanes in place.

Edit: Oops, somehow I missed this part:

"You might imagine that these bike lanes decreased congestion by cutting down on the number of cars on the road. But if that played a role, it was very slight: on Columbus Ave., the DOT counted cars, and saw only a very slight drop in overall volume during morning rush hour, when travel times declined by 35 percent. Instead, it seems that a pair of design decisions are responsible."

Re: Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

#10
post #3

Having 2 of my coworkers killed this year on their bike( both by drunk drivers), I wont venture out on a bike until all my path is a completely protected from cars.

Wow, that's terrible. I am so sorry to hear that. Where do you live?

Chicago.
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