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Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

citylab.com

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Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#101

Post by screye »

tsmarsh wrote: post #52
biswaroop wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, why do you hate Cambridge so much? I find it a reasonably great place, but I'm just a graduate student here.

Here is my list: * Its ridiculously ugly. * The layout seems designed to amplify the wind and somehow manages to do it in all directions. * Building restrictions that prevent affordable housing from being built. * They're happy to hike prices on parking to reduce cars, but the Red Line is unreliable which forces people to use cars. * Central * They managed to make bike lanes that are more dangerous than roads * North…

These do not seem like very legitimate complaints.

1. The city is generally considered nice looking. What about it do you find ugly. It has a very nice 19th century feel to it.

2. Idk about the wind. The city is windy, but so is all of Boston. Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with city planning.

3. It is a step in the right direction. The busses and red line (despite the admittedly bad reliability) are more frequent and numerous than most cities in the US.

4. I have biked in Boston, NY and Cambridge. Cambridge was the safest of the bunch. It is rated as one of the best biking cities in the US. NY was easy, because everyone was going slow, but was full of the not nice type of surprises. Boston in the other hand is a proper death trap.

The housing restrictions are a pain. I will give you that.

Also, if those are your main complaints about a city. Then I would have guessed that you love it, not hate it.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#102

Post by danielecook »

pselbert wrote: post #11

Every person I know that bikes in Chicago has been hit at least once. Fortunately none of them have been seriously injured, but it is a constant danger. There are lots of bike lanes downtown but they aren’t protected or respected. We have a long way to go to make biking a safe form of transport like it is in the Netherlands.

I used the lakefront path for years and fortunately never had any serious incidents. Beyond roadways, cities should be thinking more about paths that are not associated with the road network. For example, the 606 in Chicago is an elevated bike path built on an old train line. The riverfront would also serve as an opportunity for good bike infrastructure.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#103

Post by duxup »

twoodfin wrote: post #91
chadash wrote: post #27

> "Local law now requires the city to erect vertical barriers between cyclists and cars on any roadway that’s rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured" I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this for all new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on the main drags (where some of the new prote…

It's required only during maintenance made as part of a pre-existing 5-year reconstruction plan on roads that were included in the 2015 Bicycle Plan (or any subsequent plan the Council approves). That's still a dramatic expansion from Cambridge's current separated bike lanes, but it's not "any roadway" as the article claims.

That makes more sense.

So I'm guessing their bike plan drew out routes and arteries and such for bike paths and the requirement just applies to those?

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#104

Post by screye »

ar-nelson wrote: post #42
dsfyu404ed wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The entire state of MA is highly unwelcoming to anything with two wheels and a motor that is less than a motorcycle (and even then it kinda sucks for them too). You say "scooter" or "moped" and suburban soccer moms and uptight politicians get images of New Dehli in their heads and that's too low class for MA so any organized attempt at doing that gets blocked by the power of arbitrary enforcement. As another commente…

Eastern MA is like this, but Western MA is surprisingly bike-friendly. The Amherst/Northampton/Easthampton area is wonderful for biking.

Yes! I stay in Amherst and it is lovely for biking.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#105

Post by analog31 »

ahoy wrote: post #96
wool_gather wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree mostly, except that there needs to be a usable non-bicycle alternative to cars too. I love riding, but not everybody can do it all the time, for a large variety of reasons. Reducing in-city car usage is good, but just forcing it to be even more unpleasant is not going to solve anything.

Sounds like a job for.... public transportation!

Indeed, cycling and public transit go hand in hand. Even in the Netherlands, people don't ride bikes exclusively. For longer distances, they may ride their bikes to the train station, then take transit to the city center, or something like that. This makes it a lot easier to live without a car.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#107

Post by amalcon »

CydeWeys wrote: post #77
amalcon wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk, and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal under the new law. I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.

There are smaller vehicles that are used to plow just the bike lanes in some parts of the world. It probably doesn't matter so much though because the percentage of people who continue biking even in cold winter and with adverse snow conditions is quite low.

It's true. It's actually very disconcerting how much less snow there usually is on the bike lane, than on the sidewalk it's built into. There are stretches where folks just walk in the bike lane, because the sidewalk is so unsafe.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#108

Post by bluejekyll »

just_steve_h wrote: post #61

I've lived in Cambridge or neighboring Somerville every year but one since 1989. The cycling infrastructure is much improved and still deadly. Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm. Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-siz…

I've experienced this same anecdote in similar situations for the past 20 years as well. There has been a long push by auto manufacturers to make anything other than cars that use the roads seen as both illegitimate and illegal. For example, see the history of Jaywalking laws: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797. Starting around 1920's the auto-industry encouraged laws around the US to make crossing the street illegal. These laws have the downside of making car drivers feel entitled to the road.

Cyclists and other non-car users of roads have a deep hole to climb out of to change these laws, and to change the perception that streets are only for cars. Infrastructure is probably the only real mechanism we have that can make tangible changes, that don't allow the personal feelings of car drivers to get angry at being inconvenienced by cyclists and other road users.

We need to slow down auto-traffic and encourage more non-vehicular use of the roads, while making those roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, skate boarders, etc.

Re: Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law

#109

Post by btrettel »

just_steve_h wrote: post #61

I've lived in Cambridge or neighboring Somerville every year but one since 1989. The cycling infrastructure is much improved and still deadly. Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm. Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-siz…

Examples like this are exactly why bike lanes are not the only change needed to make cycling more accessible. What stops drivers from doing any of these if there were protected bike lanes? Generally "protected" bike lines are not protected at intersections, which is where most problems occur.

I live in Austin right now and I tend to avoid the protected bike lanes because drivers frequently turn across them without yielding to cyclists using them. The city put up signs saying to yield to oncoming cyclists, but in my experience those signs are followed less than 5% of the time. I'd rather ride in the normal traffic lane where I'm visible. Yes, I might be angering some drivers, but angering drivers is better than dying.

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