181–190 of 236 posts
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The curb is a hazard to cyclists, more so than a crash with inattentive pedestrians. The majority of Dutch cycle lanes are level with the sidewalk and how often do you hear of accidents (not caused by mopeds)?
A crash is hazardous to inattentive pedestrians more so than a cyclist who is better protected (helmet/gear). What to do, what to do?
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E-bikes! They're amazing. Bicycle with small assist engine. You start pedaling, and the bike engine helps you, so going up hills is easy. Riding one feels like you have super-strength.
Ebikes still cost way too much. You can get a really great bike for £500. An ebike is going to set you back £1500 or more. I think the price will come down but I don't think they're a great solution yet. Fortunately they don't need to be a great solution. In all but the hilliest places plenty of people will bike if the cycle lanes are there. Loads of people cycle in Bristol despite it being quite hilly and not really…
It would be awesome if you had something like a bicycle, only more comfortable that could hold you, a friend, and some of your things. You could enclose it to protect you from the weather, too. For longer distances, or people with disabilities, you could add some mechanical contraption in case you can't pedal that far. That'll be the day.
Some of those already exist! At increasing levels of car-like-ness: * https://www.wired.com/gallery/best-electric-cargo-bikes/ * https://www.contemporist.com/5-examples-of-enclosed-bike-des... * https://www.arcimoto.com/ (Studiously ignoring parent's intended snark) In all seriousness, I'm expecting an explosion of these new light vehicle body types in the coming decades, as global trends of cheap electric drive + ba…
Don't motorcycles already serve that purpose? Its already the chief form of personal transportation in most of the Earth's population.
The problem I see with all the concepts you posted is that they have all the drawbacks of a car and a motorcycle. They would fare as well as a motorcycle in a crash, and have almost the same footprint as a small car. Also, a motorcycle will handle much better than a trike with narrow tracks and short wheelbase at higher speeds.
Then, there are electric assist bicycle. They have two main problems that small motorcycles/scooters don't suffer from. A 350lb scooter/motorcycle is much harder to steal than a 50lb electric bicycle. I own a rather expensive electric assist mountain bike that I don't feel comfortable parking it out of my sight. You can't travel on the highway with electric bicycle unlike motorcycles.
Market St. has never been a significant thoroughfare for private cars. Of course there’s no traffic impact. Try the same thing on Mission, Howard, Folsom, Harrison, Geary, Van Ness, etc. and you’ll see a very different story.
You'd be surprised. Vancouver shut down its core arterial streets to traffic during the 2010 olympics (Broadway, Hastings) and spiked transit funding to compensate. Nothing bad happened and people shifted their behaviour pretty easily.
The linked article (1) says the redesign will have "sidewalk level bike lanes". If there's a way for local people to comment on this, please encourage these to be changed to in-between-road-and-sidewalk level. (Or road level with a continuous kerb in between). This makes it much, much easier for pedestrians not to accidentally wander into the lane. (2) 1 https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/Car-free-Market-...…
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You'd be surprised. Vancouver shut down its core arterial streets to traffic during the 2010 olympics (Broadway, Hastings) and spiked transit funding to compensate. Nothing bad happened and people shifted their behaviour pretty easily.
Did Vancouver's experience result in a shift in transportation priorities long term? Or after the Olympics, were people eager to go back to the prior status quo?
Later on with a new government transit funding increased and transit has subsequently been seeing double digit growth.
The entire exercise makes me feel pretty confident that you can close off road space and so long as you're funding viable alternatives things are fine.
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Bikes can certainly share pedestrian areas, they just need to ride slower, the walkways need to be wide, and the walkways should be easy to enter and exit in the case you need to ride around groups of people (shallow curbs you ride up and down). Look at Osaka, you have almost free reign on a bicycle there. Bikes are slow, cars are slow, but it all flows. Bikes even join foot traffic in shopping precints. But when it'…
Cars can certainly share cycle paths, they just need to ride slower, the paths need to be wide, and they should be easy to enter and exit in the case you need to ride around groups of cyclists. Pedestrian areas, yes - people usually don't commute through there. Sidewalks vs. cycle paths vs. car lanes - not a good idea. When people propose path sharing among pedestrians and cyclists, they often mean cyclists slowing d…
It's not good, the priority just isn't there to make it better. Overall I think mixing pedestrians an cyclists works, as long as people respect one another, but as you say mixing in commuters really is a bad idea.
There was a world wide meeting on transportation similar to the Paris climate change one, same result, almost everyone but USA committing to better standards for future - https://news.un.org/en/story/2020/02/1057721 The USA response that the market and self driving cars will fix this was pretty delusional.
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This is generally called Jevons paradox: When you make something more efficient, demand rises because it is more efficient, which in the end leads to using more of the base resource (but getting a lot more for it). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jevons_paradox#
Not true at all, like all paradoxes its loosely defined and not quantified, so should not be taken too seriously. Demand I crease assumes that demand is perfectly elastic, which it isnt for ant real world case - price of shoes dropping 100x would not result in demand for shoes going up by same amount. In fact many demands are totally inelastic, I.e. food consumption does not change much, because people have to eat th…
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Yes, some traffic is being taken off Market but it's a long way from being made into a pedestrian mall. I'm not sure you'd want one on Market anyway. It's not a very pleasant stretch of the city for the most part for reasons that are only somewhat car traffic related.
This brings up an interesting question. What street(s) in SF would be best for a truly automobile free pedestrian mall? My first thought would be the embarcadero, but it already has a very nice wide sidewalk and I think closing it to cars would be a pretty large hindrance to traffic.