Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists

Pop-up bike lanes show that demand exists
bicycletimesmag.com

Normal white lines etc are made by melting plastic onto the road. They're very thick.

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0966692316...

(above is out of date, more recent work under review: http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/sdna/european-transport-conference-... )

So far I have shied away from simulating on-road cycle lanes, e.g. where motor vehicles and bikes are separated by a line of paint.

Firstly because the quality is so variable - hilarious examples about on the internet, and many cyclists would argue that a bad cycle lane is worse than none at all as it creates an expectation they should be riding in it rather than sharing the road.

Secondly because data on what's there - width, quality, obstructions - is so thin on the ground. (any time anyone wants to use deep learning to harvest this from streetview please go right ahead!)

Where am I going with all this? It's heartening to see a case where lines painted on the road actually made a tangible difference. I wonder how much came down to the temporary nature though - like some kind of campaign - as cultural effects are known to have a huge impact on cycling as well.

However the argument against cycle tracks focuses on resident car parking and becomes extremely political. So a key part of developing a good end to end cycle network, given that a network is only as good as its weakest link, is parking control. This is where paint fails and you create these bitty networks where drivers feel happy to park their cars in the cycle lanes, because they can.

A more interesting approach is to look at road capacity. A typical road consists of:

footpath|parking|lane|lane|parking|footpath = 19,000 pedestrians + 2000 drivers per hour => 21,000 people.

Converting this to: footpath|cycle track|lane|lane|cycle track|footpath = additional 14,000 cyclists per hour = 35,000 people

Providing a 67% increase in road capacity while protecting pedestrians, reducing congestion, and making a population healthier is a big win for any urban environment. Politcally this is finally becoming easier, but it is a fundemental recognition that our roads are not there to store private property.

More interstingly is that many cities are focusing on routes to centres of employment. The focus needs to be more on connecting schools to communities. An immense amount of congestion is caused by parents dropping their fat little kids off at school.

Analysis I did on UK Census 2011 data looking at range traveled across 112 towns and cities in England and Wales indicate 6 million residents drive to work in the city/town they live in. 1 million live within a 20 minute (2km) walk of work 3.5 million live within a 20 minute cycle ride of work.

Looking at Bath,UK that's about 20,000 local car journeys in a city that is 3miles in diameter. Add in the 5,000 kids being dropped off at school and you end up with 40,000 local car journeys.

BUT unless people feel there is a safe alternative choice this is not going to change and for some reason the UK seems fixated on strategic networks and hub centric public transport systems. Not actually fixing local journeys.

A nice intermediate step would be if states would make moped registration less onerous. As it stands most states require a motorcycle license ($), insurance ($) and registration ($) for anything more than a bicycle with an engine kit. If more people rode those parking would be less of an issue and it would be easier to get support for bike infrastructure since bike infrastructure is common with moped infrastructure in many cases.

Edit: I don't care how the moped is powered. I'm just pointing out that a moped that can keep up with 30mph traffic is a huge increase in utility over a bicycle while not taking up appreciably more space.