Interesting ideas, though I can't imagine it getting a lot of support in the US, since it prioritizes bikes over cars.
Chicago recently added separated bike lanes to one of its streets, and it's definitely much more enjoyable and less stressful riding on that street than the rest of the city. In fact, whether or not I can spend most of my commute in that bike lane plays a huge factor in deciding if I'm going to bike to my destination. Unfortunately, even that bike line is flawed. For one, it relies on painted lines to separate the lane, which as the video in the article says, isn't that great a solution, since it doesn't physically keep the cars out. Taxis are the worst offenders and tend to treat the bike lane as their personal parking space.
Chicago also implemented dedicated traffic signals for bikes, as the article recommends, which sound amazing in theory. Unfortunately, most cars seem to completely ignore them and drive as they would on non-protected streets. For example, when the bike lane is green, the turn signal for cars is red. I rarely see cars actually obey that red light and regularly turn into oncoming bike traffic. Even worse is pedestrians who view the bike lane as an extension of the sidewalk, and will wait in the bike lane to cross the street.
These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception, and following bike lane laws are taught in driver's ed and heavily enforced by police.
Unfortunately, nobody really cares about bikers. The New York Times had a great article last year about how hitting bicyclists isn't considered that big a deal[1].
That is a way to look at it. Other ones are that it prioritizes the human scale over industrial scale, clean(er) air over pollution, an environment that keeps the population healthy over one promoting a sedentary lifestyle, an environment where people interact over one that distances people from each other.
Also, including public transport: in many urban zones, public transport and biking infrastructure are large reasons why the city isn't gridlocked 24x7. In many Dutch city centers, that separate bicycle lane takes more traffic than the two car lanes alongside it. One can argue that a bike lane that gets used, even if it is built at the cost of a car lane, makes the other car lanes in the street less busy.
If you accept a few of those as valid claims, you are more likely to accept the introduction of separate bike lanes.
"These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception"
Agreed.
"and following bike lane laws are [...] heavily enforced by police."
That, I disagree with. If you still need strong enforcement, you aren't there yet. If almost every car driver also is, at times, a cyclist, or at least knows how it was to cycle regularly, you don't need strong enforcement anymore.
Those special two way bike lanes with the signals, down Dearborn I presume you mean, are the thing I avoid the most riding north/south. The "pedestrian extension" effect you mentioned is the sole reason why.
We have another big problem at least in Chicago, and that's that it's such a polarizing issue that it's easy to make news articles and stir up so much inflammatory debate that any sensible lawmaker is likely terrified to even approach that territory. (See the tribune and John Kass' infamously baiting articles that get tons of hits)
I am indeed referring to Dearborn. Is there a street that you prefer for north/south travel? While pedestrian extension is incredibly annoying and sometimes dangerous, it's still far better to me than biking in the middle of the road.
Can't say I've read any of Kass's stuff, but I actually think Emanuel's done a decent job at adding as many bike lanes as he has. When he entered office, he set a goal to add 100 miles of bike lanes to the city. He's been adding between 20-40 miles a year since then. They're not perfect, but at least they're steps in the right direction.
The reason people don't ride bikes in the US is not because unprotected bike lanes are scary. It's because our cities have been laid out with the premise in mind that everyone will have cars. We have disparate clusters/districts related to activities like 'work', 'play', 'shop', and 'sleep', rather than having these constructs evenly interspersed. We have supermarkets instead of markets. Monoliths instead of distributed systems.
We also have bad weather. Right now, where I live at least, a top 10 metro, it's around 90-95degF and 80-90% humidity or it's raining. Suppose I decide to ride to work. Google puts that at a 1 hour and 13 to 1 hour 23 minute ride depending on my route. It sucks but it's doable.
Now I arrive at work and I'm soaked either from sweat or rain. Now what? I can stink up the office with my B.O. all day while I desperately try to dry my clothes. Or I go through the indignity of getting to work, waiting an hour to cool-down and dry off, then trying to change out of my riding kit into some decent professional work clothes in a dirty stall in the men's room after giving myself a paper towel bath in the sink.
Then at the end of a long work-day, reverse this absurd course of events? Now instead of a 10 minute drive and 8.5 hours at the office followed by a 10 minute drive home (total time commitment under 9 hours), I've succeeded in turning my 9 hours of work time into a 10.5-11.5 hours of work time so I can put myself dangerously out in traffic, exposed to the elements and be uncomfortable the entire day and can't go anywhere else once I'm there?
Even if the stars aligned and I had door-to-door bike trails, I wouldn't partake in this uncivilized madness. I'd much rather just get home earlier, not smelling like exhaust fumes and body odor and go do a leisurely jog around my neighborhood park for a half hour or go to one of the 3 gyms next to my house where I can ride a stationary bike in a temperature controlled environment while watching TV.
Edit: for the record, I support dedicated bike lanes and infrastructure almost everywhere because of all the side benefits it brings. But I'm also not treating it as a religious issue, mindful of acute practicalities that explain the world better than assuming one of the most technologically sophisticated countries on the planet doesn't like to ride bikes to work because they're too stupid to do so.
Because in London, Amsterdam, Tokyo or Singapore the weather is amazing all the time - this must be a reason for all the bikers there...
You prefer comfort over bikes - we get it. But bicycling is not "uncivilized madness". Its common way of transportation in most of the world (with exception of majority of the US). Healthy as well (much more healthy than gym).
Living in France for a couple of years, and visiting London, Rome, and various other parts in that direction, I didn't see any more bicycle traffic than I see in the US. The one place where I have seen a lot of bicycles is Beijing, but that has completely disappeared in the past few years.
I wish we could discuss these things without turning it into a "the US is strange and stupid" whinefest.
It's perfectly valid to criticize the US based on how the US is. It's not valid to criticize it based on some notion that the US is unique in a way that it is not.
I have no problem with stuff like "the US should...." Where I have a problem is with "everybody else does it another way" when it's just not true.
Aside from adopting the metric system, I can't think of any legitimate criticism that fits that mold. Bicycles certainly don't seem to.
Yeah sure. Australia struck me as very "american" in feeling. Lots of the new Chinese development is specially car friendly. Same with new Russian development. I was surprised with how unfriendly Ireland was to anything but a car.
It's amazing when you get further out into the country in the Republic. There's almost no option to safely get down the road unless you are in a vehicle.
No, bike riding is incredibly uncommon the world over. Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect terrain.
Edit: keep down voting in spite of your own ignorance. I've been lots of places the world over, and not seen lots of bikes outside of very very few areas with near perfect conditions for them.
Driving is convenient when all variables are optimized: when there's lots of free parking, no traffic, no reckless/drunk drivers, good safe roads, gas is cheap, etc etc.
But as we all know, driving in major cities is no longer optimal.
Any city that chooses driving over all other modes of transportation has deliberately decided it is closed for further growth at some point. Once you reach that critical population point, car-dependent life just becomes hell.
100% agreed. I'm heartened that lots of new development is taking a mindful approach to smarter, mixed-use design centered around mass transit. It feels like, in the U.S. at least, we're on the cusp of a major transformation in some areas.
Unfortunately, for millions and millions of people, the city is viewed as a work location, not a living location. Building bike friendly infrastructure ends at the city limits and needs inter-government coordination and cooperation to achieve door-to-door biking. If you've ever dipped your toes in cross-county or other inter-government initiatives, you'll know that this is an extremely difficult proposition.
Which part exactly doesn't make sense? Illuminate me why cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't? Because apparently everybody outside of the Northwest Coast of the U.S. and the Netherlands must be idiots and morons who are simply overlooking a hassle-free and convenient utopia because they've been tricked by the big car and oil companies to prefer to get most places in the faster, lower effort, climate controlled and more convenient alternative.
Oh I'm sorry, this is apparently a religious issue and faith with get me over all practical issues.
cycling should work in the vast majority of the world and why cars don't
Nobody ever made this claim, so there's no way to illuminate you about it. Same goes for the part about the idiots and morons.
Which part exactly doesn't make sense
For instance the part where you say Is an inconvenient, slow, tiring way to travel in anyplace without a good climate or near perfect. That is merely a generalized opinion.
Yup, absolutely no illumination provided. Within this thread, I've provided support for the idea as well as anecdotes and data as to why more bike lanes won't get the average person on a bike. I've been downvoted and refuted with no particular counter argument leading me to believe that this is a religious issue and not a factual one. Bikers believe everybody should bike, and people who give reasons why they don't are summarily dismissed.
The dogmatic downvoting here is disappointing (no alliteration intended). You seem to be right. Reason doesn't work. I know there are reasonable cyclists, but few are speaking up here.
Canberra has quite a lot, and very good coverage of bike paths + lanes. I commuted by bike by default for about 6 years there, and got the bus when it was raining.
Now that I live in Sydney I don't ride at all - I just don't feel safe.
I live in the third largest city in Australia. Much of it is ridiculously hilly, the weather is usually stinking hot (apart from a few weeks of 'winter'), but we have plenty of cyclists... Not as many as the average European country but definitely enough to be annoying when you're driving!
Amen. I work in the valley and live in Red Hill, which, as you can tell by the name, is crazily steep. Anyway, we still have stacks of cyclists around here (and Paddington). Personally I walk and get the bus.
Because discerning tone from ascii text is hard. How could you not have come across that fact before? There's even a law about it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe's_law
Also because is followup reference to "all the bikers there" is straight-up true, there are loads of bikers in London, really, though it doesn't follow from the statement before. Is that an attempt at sarcasm that fails because of a failed attempt at a false statement? Who knows. Why can't
funkyy just say what they mean? Who knows.
In four total weeks in London, I can count on 1 hand the number of cyclists I saw.
Never been to Tokyo or Singapore, but if they're anything like Seoul, where I've spent months, riding a bike in the streets is both playing Russian Roulette and virtually impossible on account of the bad terrain (and for pretty much all the same reasons I brought up earlier). You also have almost no place to store them given the size of the average apartment. Outside of dedicated parks, I've almost never seen a person on a bike their either.
I've been to dozens of countries on almost every continent, and bikes are a very uncommon mode of transportation. That's why places like the Netherlands, where it is common, are so notable. If it was common, we wouldn't care.
Rather than being snarky, what's your suggestion for overcoming these practical and social issues?
Wow really? You spent 4 weeks in London and never saw a cyclist? Were you out in the suburbs? I spent a bunch of time in London and saw a TON of cyclists in central London. Many of them took the train out to where I was staying too (outside Brixton).
I also don't buy the "small apartments" thing. We live in a 650sq ft apartment and have 4 bikes hung up on our wall. Where there's a will, there's a way.
It was so strange that I even remember one of the few riders I saw because he was using the DLR to get near the tower. I was curious if you could bring bikes on it and that answered my question.
Electric cars are a very uncommon mode of transportation too. Should we therefor not care about promoting that method of transportation? No, because then the status quo would never change.
The article discussed in this thread brings up one suggestion for overcoming practical issues. There are many, many more (proven) solutions to choose from -- when you make bicycle transportation pleasant enough, people will start using it.
If the "social issues" you talk about are because there's a group of people who thinks transportation by bicycle is uncivilized, I think it is a matter of education and tolerance. Once using bikes is common in a country, you will see that the only social issues are about people having unjustified fears (about the implications of considering bicycles as a method of transportation during city planning) and there are no real social issues other than people being dicks.
In Osaka / Tokyo / other large Japanese cities people ride bikes on the footpath instead of the road. They also ride comparatively slowly and the terrain is largely flat so in the cooler months sweating is a non-issue. Additionally folding bicycles are very popular because, as you say, the apartments are often very small.
Finally, because the cities are so compact you rarely have to travel a large distance to get to where you're going.
So all and all, I agree with you, it's common in these places because the combination of these things makes riding very practical and they're noteworthy because of it.
-edit-
I forgot to mention that most apartment buildings will have stacked locking bike racks. This combined with the generally low rate of theft, easily available recycled (read: cheap) bicycles makes them very affordable and low risk.
You cool off for a bit and then take a quick shower before starting work proper. Most offices that I've been to have shower/changeroom facilities, and the people that cycle to work use them.
Of course if your ride is over an hour you may want to consider alternatives, such as catching a train for part of the journey. I have known plenty of people that have 30-50 minute rides, and also others where riding a bike takes exactly as long as being stuck in traffic.
I think there are really some morning people, and night people? I can barely muster the energy to get into my car
and point it towards work. If I camped, I would be the
first one eaten by a Sabertooth Tiger. I quit a job because
they required me there an hour earlier than other shops. Even if I have a playmate over--hands off until I wake up.
Sorry Miss Simms--it wasen't you, I was tired.
In 20 years, I've only worked in one place that had a shower. To me, for practical and obvious reasons, it sounds like no number of bike lanes will get people riding if that isn't solved.
I bet your have a gym within walking distance to your office. If you go to the gym when you get home, just shift your gym time to before work. You ride to your gym, take your shower, walk to work. Bam problem solved.
Answers like this are one of the problems inherent with this issue. One side bases its position on real problems. The other side responds with gross generalizations based on completely uninformed speculation. Then some politician tries to compromise. The average solution between real problem and imaginary solution is worse than the status quo, and everyone loses. The tyranny of the vocal minority brings us all down while everyone else was trying to get on with their lives. Way to go.
You already pay a monthly fee to have a crap drive to work in your car. If only you could be charged for the negative externalities of driving, the actual cost of maintaining the road, to park your car, to fill your gas tank...maybe you'd have a different opinion.
I wouldn't call a 10 minute car ride a 'crop drive'. That's a pretty good commute.
Cost incurred by one car of maintaining the road is essentially negligible. The majority of road damage comes from heavy vehicles or weather. Additionally it's interesting you want to 'charge for externalities' when it's actually the cyclists getting a free ride in this category. License fees and gasoline taxes contribute to road funding. Nothing related to cycling does.
I agree with parking, but only if it costs something. If the office already has it, you not using it will not likely save the company any money by refusing to use it.
The only externality you might not be paying enough for to drive to work is the gas filling (assuming non electric). However, the numbers regarding the impact of CO2 are mostly just made up from sums of imagined future or previous natural disasters that can't be directly linked to CO2 emissions.
You mean the car he can use to go to the store, to visit family, to go on vacation, to drive in bad weather? The car he pays property tax, fuel tax, insurance, license fees, registration fees, etc on? Yeah, all those unrealized externalities...
Give me a break. Gas taxes are suppose to pay for roads don't keep up with inflation. All the savings of deferred maintenance on our highway system could account for that, but maybe not.
When I lived in Berkeley, I used to longboard part of the way and take the BART the rest. This transit experience is unmatched. I had half an hour of guaranteed reading time every day, and another twenty minutes in one of my hobbies.
When I drive, I suddenly realize what a waste of time it is. And it's not really fun because of traffic either.
I actually miss public transport. I also imagine that cyclists do similar things. The trouble in this argument is that maybe the cyclists also enjoy cycling like I did skating. To most people who solely drive to commute, it's a thing they don't particularly enjoy.
No, I don't particularly enjoy driving. I try to go out of my way to avoid it most of the time. I'd much rather walk, public transport, bike to work, but the reality is that, for most of the world, local practical issues make those alternatives far more inconvenient than driving and no amount of bike lanes in the world will change those conditions.
It can be subtly simple things, like, working in a job where you have to go across town to a customer site 3 times a week during the middle of the work day and can't afford to take 2.5 hours out of your day to bike there and bike. Or living in a place with lots of hills, or having no place to clean up once you get to work.
All those issues have to be solved long before bike lanes becomes part of the discussion for biking to become a practical choice. A few people who are really into biking, crazy spandex outfits and all, might be willing to ignore those practical considerations, but if you want to get the average citizen up on a bike like in the Netherlands, you have to solve the rest of the issues.
I'm surprised a 10 minute drive translates to a potentially 1:20 minute ride. I feel like one of these numbers is exaggerated.
Regardless, if it's not right for you it is right for someone on your approximate route. So if you can't be convinced to ride in but they can that's win-win. They have an easier ride into work on a bike and you have a less congested drive in because the biker is one less driver.
So how much kilometers is it then? (both for the car trip and the bike trip, depending on the area they can vary).
Btw I don't know where you get the 10mph figure, but assuming it applies to you without trying it is starting off on the wrong foot. Depending on age, fitness etc that can easily be 15mph, including hills.
How fast can you travel through town by bike and car?
The average travelling speed in Copenhagen is 15.5 km/h for cyclists and 27 km/hour for cars. In places with green wave for cyclist the average speed is 20.72 km/h.
Sure. We can't have one-kind-fits-all solutions. Which is appropriate in the context of a discussion about adding bike lanes to dense urban environments mostly designed for cars.
Ha! I'm even of the opinion that most urban environments should actively work to dissuade automobiles except for delivery vehicles and taxis. They should be walkable, public transport and biking meccas. So I sympathize that they aren't. But the discussion is also about "why don't more people bike to work" and the consensus seems to be "we need more bike lanes!" and I'm simply pointing out that that won't solve the issue.
> the consensus seems to be "we need more bike lanes!" and I'm simply pointing out that that won't solve the issue.
I really don't think that adding more bike lanes would get everyone biking or "solve the issue" entirely. That isn't a reasonable position. But nonetheless, we need more bike lanes. We need more separated, safe bike lanes. We need them in every city, except maybe for those who have got there already - i.e. Amsterdam, Copenhagen and very few others.
Survey after survey where I am shows that the main thing preventing higher (not universal, just higher) uptake of cycling to work is not the distance, or the weather, it's the fear factor, i.e the lack of safe facilities like bike lanes.
I don't disagree that we need more bike lanes. I'm a big supporter of more bike lanes because it usually comes attached to other efforts that make environments more livable for everybody.
But I've yet to see a discussion that talks about the "rest of the ride." Even with bike lanes, biking isn't feasible for most people for a wide variety of reasons. I've attempted to provide those reasons here, and I'm fortunate enough to have buckets of karma to shed because as you can see, nobody wants to concern themselves with prerequisite issues that are probably more important to biking (i.e. if they aren't solved, no amount of bike lanes will make a substantial difference).
The HN community suffers from a religious myopia at times that the living conditions and lifestyle of a single 20-something males in Silicon Valley represents the accumulated averages for the rest of the world and should be the model for everybody else. The community is shocked and disgusted when dissenting voices try to provide insight as to why most people are not single 20-something males in Silicon Valley. TBH, I don't think a discussion about bike lanes belongs on HN except that it brings up this demographic discussion. As you can see, the HN hive-mind is not receptive to people of different demographic groups, even if those groups might be better representative of the rest of the country or world.
I don't doubt the community myopia, but better bike lanes are relevant to not just "single 20-something males in Silicon Valley", but rather HN readers 20-50, any gender or relationship status, in New York, London, Berlin, etc. It's not everyone but it's not that narrow either.
I can't help but think of how simple things like injuries and aging affect everyone and how driving practically solves these problems.
You want to ride, go ahead. He wants to drive, that's fine. Neither one is more right or wrong than the other. Stop acting like driving is morally wrong (if you're not, many are).
Six months of near perfect bike riding temperature with moderate precipitation and unusually warm winters that far north.
In fact, the record high ever for the city isn't even within 10 degrees of the temperature I've had where I live over the past two weeks. Our all time average, not average high, is about the same as Copenhagen's record high.
Your experience is not universal. I live in a large, crowded city, and I know from repeated experience that in my case, in rush hour, cycling to work takes 30 minutes, public transport takes 40-60 minutes and driving in my own vehicle takes mental insanity and a parking space, which nobody has.
Cycling is not only the fastest method, it has the least time variance, and is cheapest.
What would drive me insane is being exposed to hundreds of multi-ton hunks of steel zooming around that could squash me like a bug if either I or they make a tiny mistake.
If there were zero cars, there would be more injuries, but they'd be less serious.
If there were zero cyclists, there'd be fewer injuries, and they'd be less serious. (Talking about crowded city traffic, not high speeds.)
When there are cars, and enough cyclists to cause problems, there are more injuries, and they're more serious. Cars and fleshbags--I mean, bikes--do not mix.
My experience may not be universal, but I bet it's statistically normal, or even slightly better for cycling than most places. Yet it's still a terrible alternative. The mystery of why more people don't cycle is pretty simple, it's not really viable in most of the world.
I don't know what "statistically normal" means, but I'd estimate that 20-50% of my colleagues are in the same position as me and so would benefit from better cycle infrastructure.
The average commute in miles for Americans is 16 miles and 26 minutes for one way. That's 32 miles and 52 minutes for a round trip every day.
Let's assume we decide we want to get the "Average" American biking to work instead. We have to figure out how we can convince people who spend an hour on the road everyday to spend 8 hours on the road biking instead, or give up their houses and pay more for smaller accommodations closer to their work to shorten the distance.
The average speed of a bike commuter is under 10 mph. 32 miles thus takes more than 3.2 hours, * 2 = 6.4 hours per day biking the same distance as the average American commuter currently drives in 1/3 the time. Toss in a couple hills and you could easily hit 8 hours total biking time.
I doubt that commuting by car is 8 times faster than cycling, even if you live way out in the suburbs (which exist because of the assumption that everyone drives a car). My commute in city traffic takes 10 minutes by car, or 15 minutes by bike.
But can you average 60 miles per hour in your commute? Maybe if you're going 30 miles on the freeway and only a few blocks on surface streets, but for going short distances within cities, bikes can be comparable or even faster than cars (see: Bike messengers)
To be honest, I probably average more like 50. 3 blocks from my house to the road, then high speed almost all the way and 1 block off the main road to work. It's an easy drive.
You're right, the average American commute favors cars much more strongly. At 10 miles I'm remarkably close to my work and have a favorable biking environment most of the route. Yet it still is a bad alternative and in 7 years I have yet to see a single person bike along that route.
The question of "why don't Americans bike to work more" is not going to be solved with any number of bike routes (which I support the building more of BTW) until it can be solved for frankly trivial cases like mine. It suggests that local environmental conditions are probably more important to favoring biking than any number of infrastructure initiatives. Simple things like "bad weather" and "showers at places of employment" and "places to store bikes so they won't get stolen during the day" probably have to solved en masse long before bike lanes become part of the discussion.
All the unused empty bike lanes in the world aren't going to kick start a biking revolution.
Actually, at 10 miles, you're about median for distance. It's what's in between your home and your work that's abnormal.
Most employed Americans live, work, or both inside highly urbanized environments where parts of their commute involve roads that you can't reliably do 20mph on, much less 60. Crowded roads and stoplights put a real crimp on speeds, and it can take 5-10 minutes to cover a mile -- if you're lucky.
"How fast can you travel through town by bike and car?
The average travelling speed in Copenhagen is 15.5 km/h for cyclists and 27 km/hour for cars. In places with green wave for cyclist the average speed is 20.72 km/h."
It seems like Copenhagen is an especially unfriendly car environment.
Another advantage for cyclists is "right on red". Even though it's illegal, a lot of people does it. Sometimes the car lane to turn right is packed and you have to wait several intervals for you to turn right, and the cyclists just pass by.
The roads are small, especially compared to the US. And there're just too many cars!
Just because it isn't your personal preference doesn't mean no one should think about cyclists. There are many pro- and con-cyclist arguments, all of which are irrelevant to this discussion.
Yeah, but you don't shy away from setting up straw men you can knock down in service of your "I don't think its feasible to bike to work, so we shouldn't bother making it easier for anyone else" argument.
You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. I'm also not sure repeatedly dismissing the same minor points does much for the conversation (of course repeatedly raising them doesn't do much good either).
I think you are probably right that bike lanes alone aren't going to get a lot of people biking, but I think you are wrong that they don't matter. It's a situation where each piece of the puzzle needs to exist, so safe routes probably matter just as much as sensible city planning and shower availability and so on. The existence of safe routes could even impact planning some (because if there is significant interest in using them to commute, it should show up in housing decisions).
"You've made ~10% of the comments for this article and you are dismissing things other people say by accusing them of caring too much about the issue. "
You say that like it's a bad thing. At least I'm engaged on the issue and am actually trying to solve it rather than just paint lane markings all over creation and expect people to start hoping on bikes.
The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
My counter argument is that bike lanes, while important, are not sufficient. Much more important, larger and prerequisite issues need to be attended to before bike lanes become part of the discussion. But I'm arguing against people who have a vested interest in biking, and really don't give two rats asses that biking is a horrible inconvenience most everywhere and would rather shoot derision and scorn and the car driving masses. Weather, environment, convenience, terrain, distance, time, hygiene etc. be damned; clearly most people are simply too fat and stupid to enjoy the glories and obvious benefits of riding bikes everywhere. Everywhere is exactly like the Netherlands right?
I'm actually a strong supporter of bike lanes for lots of reasons beyond biking. But I'm also not deluding myself and understand that the central claim is flat out wrong.
But this is a self-serving religious issue, no amount of reason can penetrate that.
This is one of the topics that really pulls out in front the inadequacies of the demographic that tends to be HN readers. It's pretty disappointing to be honest.
I don't understand what issue you are saying you are engaged with.
I do think the people replying to you saying "You can so bike" are engaging in relatively pointless activism (for one thing, 10 miles really is plenty far to try to build into every day). But that also isn't really the issue at hand.
All the article really says is that 1 designer thinks that bike lanes that 'feel safe' will get more people using them (and then a few characteristics are explored). I sort of think that shouldn't be a controversy.
This article is about adding setbacks and curbs and bike specific signals and you are engaging in 'paint lane markings all over creation'.
Where is The claim being made, and the source of all my karma shedding on this is that adding more bike lanes will get more people to ride bikes. The "Field of Dreams" argument.
The comment you link agrees with you. There's not much glassy eyed pontificating about the wonders of bike lanes in the rest of the tree either.
Agreed. I guess I was responding to the part in the video where it said 'We know that protected bike lanes are the key to getting the average person to consider travelling by bike.'
> It's because our cities have been laid out with the premise in mind that everyone will have cars.
Some cities are like that, and others aren't. People can vote with their feet. Guess which one people like better? (Hint: People have been moving out of dense cities for 100 years now.)
Are you planning on forcing people to accommodate themselves to your definition of the perfect city?
> We have disparate clusters/districts related to activities like 'work', 'play', 'shop', and 'sleep', rather than having these constructs evenly interspersed.
Is that supposed to be a bad thing? The world is not sim-city. Not everyone wants to live near a shopping area.
> We have supermarkets instead of markets.
Markets are not large enough to carry everything, so when I lived in a place like that I never went to the market, so I got the worst of both worlds: High density (i.e. traffic) plus a long drive.
I moved out.
You are acting as if the layout of cities was a commandment given from on high, but actually cities are laid out as they are because people like it that way.
Cars replaced horses and carriages, not bicycles. Look at old photos of cities: do you see streets crowded with bicycles or with buggies? Reality is that people need to transport things besides their own bodies, including other people.
Reality is also that humans generally prefer having some room and space. Crowding people together CAUSES problems. If you've ever lived in an apartment building, you know this.
But it can't be any of that new technology enabling higher standards of living. No, it must have been an evil conspiracy. We should all ride bikes and live stacked on top of each other.
People are leaving the dense NE cities and going to the less dense south and west ones.
To pick the largest city in the US, the population density of Manhattan went from 21 in 1910 to 12 today. And Lower East Side went from 70 to 16.[1]
Also look at construction statistics, new home construction outpaces population growth, people are moving into less dense areas and need new housing.
They build a bit less than 1 million homes every year, and most of those are single family homes.[2] Population growth is about 2.8 million each year, but that's people not families.
That's fair, but that also doesn't necessarily mean that people are moving out of urban areas. Also, if you haven't noticed, NYC is still VERY dense (I used to live there). You could also make the argument that the mean center of the US has moved because there are a lot more people in the US now than there were in 1910 (I dont think anyone would argue against that) and more people have moved West as cars have become more prevalent and air travel is much easier. Therefore I don't think your argument stands.
I'll also present you with this about apartment construction now driving the economic recovery, not single family homes (disclosure: I work for rentals site hotpads.com, owned by Zillow) - http://time.com/102822/housing-apartments/
That doesn't have to be true. The NY examples can hold true, and the center of mass for population can move west, while overall population density still climbs. For example, the east coast cities could change in no way, while midwesterners moved to more dense western and southern cities (even if they are less dense than the East coast, it's still an improvment). This would result in the population shift you identified, while still restulting in an increased overall population density.
WRT NY's density falling, it could be an outlier or the norm. Still, from what I understand overall population densities are increaing in the US. [1]
Are we finally deciding to learn from the Dutch? The Netherlands has been doing this for a long time. I honestly don't know how long, but I'd expect someone from NL to read this, and have a yawn - you don't say?! kind of reaction. :)
I remember when Portland was called one of the most bike-friendly cities in the US, and its transit was also one of the top-rated.
After I spent ~2 years in Amsterdam, I think both biking and transit in Portland are a joke, in comparison.
Here's a great talk[1] about all the clever bike infrastructure in the Netherlands, and how it can be adapted to work in Seattle specifically. It's a great in depth look for anyone interested in this stuff, basically a tech talk for urban planning.
Edit: Here's a similar talk[2] I just found talking about adopting Dutch traffic planning to work in Vancouver.
As a Dutch person, I think the US has a long way to go, and these proposed bike paths won't really help all that much. I also feel that the US and the Netherlands can't be compared when it comes to biking. Some of the problems I see with biking in the U.S.
* The speed limit in residential zones in the Netherlands is always 50 km/h (31 mph). This doesn't seem to be the case in the U.S.
* Bicyclists are considered full first-class participants in traffic on the road in the Netherlands.
* We have no policy of allowing turning-on-right here. It seems like a dangerous thing to have if bicyclists are involved in traffic. These new bike lanes might help with this.
* In accidents involving both a car and a bicyclist, the burden of proof always lies with the driver of the car, not the bicyclist.
* Our cities are way, way smaller and arranged completely differently. Everything I need in daily life is within a 3 mile radius of my house. Convenience stores, clothes shops, electronics stores, restaurants, etc. I've never been to the U.S, but I wonder if that's the case over there.
I think the biggest problem the U.S has is that car drivers and law enforcement don't give a shit about bicyclists.
It also seems to me that the people who bike in the U.S. take it way to seriously. I could very well be wrong on this; I'm not intimately familiar with bike culture in the U.S., but to me it seems you all ride extremely fancy bikes, work up a sweat on each ride and change clothes and shower every time you hop on or off a bike. That seems like a huge effort, and if I had to do it every time I took my bike, I'd probably just say "screw this, I'll take the car". In comparison, when I commute to work, I just get on my cheap $200 bike (not the cheapest category either) in my work clothes and slowly paddle to work. If there are hills, which we don't get much in the Netherlands of course, or if there are strong head-winds, which we do get a lot, I simply paddle slower. I could be completely mistaken of course, so please do point that out, but biking in the U.S. seems like a very tiring experience.
edit Some more differences:
* Round-abouts in the Netherlands are everywhere. Bikes and pedestrians have the right of way on these. Stop-light intersections are annoying and are easily avoided in the Netherlands.
* Nearly every city center (the shopping zones) is car-free in the Netherlands.
* The roads in our cities are layed out completely differently. There are usually a few main roads with heavy car traffic and lots of smaller side roads for destination-specific traffic. These side roads are much less crowded, and less car-friendly. That means cars generally stay on the "doorgaand verkeer" (passing-through traffic) roads. These generally have separate bike paths. This works because cars and bikes don't have to intermix all the time on those roads, unlike the grid-like road system in U.S. cities.
I use to live in Cambridge, which seemed to ban right-on-red citywide (more or less). This made the roads much safer for cyclists, pedestrians, and automobiles.
I think you're right about some cyclists in the US taking it WAAY to seriously. Because they're such a marginalized group, they define themselves by their difference. It's the American way :)
Ever since the introduction of roundabouts, car-on-cyclist accidents have risen in the Netherlands. Why? Because when a car leaves the roundabout, it basically has to take an almost blind right turn, where it's very difficult to see a cyclist approaching from the side / behind. Just a few months ago I was hit by a car in this exact scenario. It happens about two to three times a week where a car will not spot me in time when it leaves the roundabout (I cross about 50 roundabouts a week). I know this, so I adjust my cycling speed at roundabouts to near-nothing.
I'm not convinced right on red doesn't pose a dangerous situation, even if cars come to a full stop first. In a right on red scenario, the bicyclist always approaches from behind, in the blind spot of the mirror. I'm not saying the right on red policy should be abolished, just as I don't want roundabouts to be abolished in the Netherlands (I love those things). Just that, as a cyclist, it's primarily your duty to ensure cars have seen you. Let's hope that as cycling increases in the U.S., motorists become more aware of cyclists in the street.
It shouldn't be incumbent upon the cyclist to ensure motorists see her, beyond doing the things required by law. Cars are bigger, faster, and there's more of 'em. They need to watch out for everyone that is more vulnerable.
Right on red was introduced in the 70s to save on fuel back when cars had massive engines and weren't very fuel efficient. As there are more and more hybrid or pure electric cars on the road, the efficiency gains are going down. And here in Europe most manufacturers seem to be introducing stop-start systems on their new cars where the engine shuts off at stoplights. So in the near future there will be almost zero gains from right on red, but at that point it will be pretty embedded in American culture and will be hard to repeal, even if it does pose risks to other road users aka cyclists.
> There's nothing inherently wrong with right on red
As a pedestrian I disagree, because right-on-red means that I have to constantly keep scanning for vehicles that may not have been at the intersection when I started crossing.
The second aspect is that the drivers of the vehicles are invariably looking to their left for oncoming traffic, rather than to their right where cyclists and 'crunchy' pedestrians exist.
I'm a low-lander cyclist who moved across the ocean. For the most part, you're right. A couple of observations though...
The "right on red" seems to be a hack to address the fact that there are too many traffic lights. Indeed roundabouts would be better, those narrow Euro city centers are often faster. They also like their ridiculous 4-way stops instead of just yields. Right on red is indeed dangerous for cyclists, and when there's a bike lane, it is sometimes disallowed with a sign. Many drivers ignore them, and you always have to double check or risk getting creamed.
The "taking it too seriously" part is I think because biking in traffic here is an adrenaline rush. I do things here that I would never do at home, yet they are often the safer option. I sometimes bike into the third lane to make a left turn, I sometimes sneak a block on the sidewalk if it lets me use a safer crossing. Every single trip involves careful planning of your route. Often there is no bike lane, and you just have to share the road with traffic, while avoiding the swerving doors of parked cars.
Even worse is when they put a suicide bike lane between the first lane and the second/third lanes. The idea is that the first lane is a mix of parking, bus-stops and right hand turns. So you have all of those crossing through the bike lane, often cutting it short at the light, and hating you for being in their way.
The streets I rode on as a child to primary school were safer than the stuff being constructed here today. Pretty mind-blowing. They are slowly learning, but the entitlement from drivers (to whom 80-90% of the paved road is dedicated to) is insane.
To make it worse, pedestrians here just don't seem to understand cycling is a third mode, and they will obliviously wander into any bike lane even though there's literally a sign every 10 meters telling them to go onto the other path. A "shared bike/pedestrian path" is pretty much a shit show of people having 0 spatial awareness.
>the burden of proof always lies with the driver of the car, not the bicyclist.
Are there Russia-level[1] dashcam ownership rates, by any chance? That would certainly happen if you had any such law in Britain, because many cyclists are infamously reckless.
[1]Sure most people have seen all the 'crazy Russian dashcam' videos, but if not, just have a search on Youtube. In Russia, everyone has a dashcam because otherwise, insurance will try to wriggle out of paying out in an accident, plus people like to jump in front of cars, get hit, then try to sue the driver.
No, I've never heard of anyone having a dashcam in the Netherlands. I've also never heard of (liability) insurance companies not paying out. Jumping in front of a car in order to sue for damages is pointless here, since you cannot sue for emotional damages. Since insurance pays for physical damage only, there's simply no point in trying to commit fraud in that way.
This is more or less how they do it all over Germany. Parked cars next to traffic buffering bikes and then peds all the way on the inside. Much safer and more sensible design. The key word being design, not hacked on after thought that reduces the number of lanes for traffic.
The German scheme works well at major intersections, but creates a new danger where small side roads cut through the bike lane to join the major road to which it runs parallel. At these minor junctions, I had the experience that drivers on the side roads would often pull right up to the major road, without paying much attention to traffic on the bike lane they were crossing. Everything is a trade-off. The best long-term strategy, of course, is to reduce motor vehicle traffic.
I tend to disagree a bit here. Yes, that's how most bike lanes are laid out at the moment but in my experience, more and more bike lanes are moved on the road and inbetween car lanes to let cyclists become more visible. I welcome that because one can go much faster without having to take care of pedestrians.
That wouldn't work very well in most of San Francisco - there are driveways/curb cuts all over the place. That's fine if the cars are next to the curb, but if they are on the other side of the bike lane, it's pretty tough to get in and out of driveways (and screws up the bike lane).
Edit: as a note, some people are concerned about losing lanes, but if the lanes are (almost) always moving, and there is no redundant middle left-turn lane, you don't need as many lanes, freeing up the space for sidewalks and bike paths.
This is not a thing that can be changed overnight. It takes decades to update the city infrastructure, but the city planners can take small steps in the right direction each year.
Take a look at this short film from 2009 from my home town of how we re-invented the biking culture:
From a cyclist's perspective, intersections are basically death traps, where right-turning drivers threaten collisions at any moment.
A bike can travel on the right near an intersection only when it's passing traffic that is completely stopped. If traffic is moving at all, you shouldn't be on the right, you should be in the lane. If you still want to pass, pass on the left, although if there's only a single lane of traffic in each direction you should probably just ride in the lane and wait to pass until after the intersection.
I appreciate attempts to solve real problems like this, but I doubt this design will be an improvement. The most dangerous thing a cyclist can do at an intersection is blast off the sidewalk into the crosswalk. Such a cyclist is more dangerous than properly-crossing cyclists, because from motorists' perspectives he appears out of nowhere instead of simply continuing to travel in the street. He is more dangerous than pedestrians, because he's moving much faster. This new design appears to force all cyclists into that situation: traveling quickly and appearing, to motorists, out of nowhere.
Another problem with this design is it prevents large trucks from turning right.
Not sure of your familiarity with biking in major metro's, but separated bike lanes are getting more and more common. These bike lanes put you on the right side of the road and cars often times turn right into the path of the bike lane without looking for bikers.
My city is getting more of these and I always check before turning right. But last week I witnessed a car-bike collision that I'm unsure how to ever avoid: traffic in my lane was backed up to a standstill, but oncoming cars were flowing freely and one took a left into a restaurant parking entrance (between two stopped cars in my lane) just as a bike was passing the stopped cars in my lane on the right (NOT in a designated bike lane but even if it was, the left-turning car would have had no way of seeing the bike coming because all cars were stopped and blocking view.) Bike hit side of turning car at full speed. Neither saw each other coming. Bicyclist was seemingly ok and kept riding after 30 seconds. Do you just outlaw left turns in the presence of bike lanes?
As I said in this case there was no bike lane and my understanding is that this is a known danger and the cyclist should not have been passing all the stopped cars on the right. See example #8 on this page:
http://bicyclesafe.com/
In the bay area the bike lane becomes dashed at intersections meaning anyone can go anywhere.
The disadvantage with going into the lane is that cars have much shorter stopping distances. I had an accident a few months ago where I had just managed to merge into the lane (had to be going at the speed of traffic to do this) when all the cars in front of me slammed on their brakes and skidded to a halt -- I hit the back of the car with my head and smashed my helmet (and got cuts in my head where the helmet cracked; but I'd have been severely worse off without it!).
But right hooks are much more common than what happened to me. We just have a really bad road infrastructure in the US (even for driving -- I'm amazed every time I go back to the UK and can drive for miles through densely populated areas without stopping, all because of the roundabout -- the lockless n-way intersection).
I've lived and bike-commuted in Denver, Los Angeles, and Honolulu, so I'm somewhat familiar. I don't mind bike lanes when they're just another strip of road right next to the other ones. One must be mindful that other vehicles will unlawfully enter/occupy the bike lane, but that doesn't seem to require a different sort of awareness than cycling in general. Also one should ride to the extreme left of the bike lane to avoid the door zone.
As you imply, "separated" bike lanes are another matter. It's as if one is on a pleasant jaunt through bucolic parkland, punctuated repeatedly by intersections with angry vehicular traffic that can't possibly see the cyclist before she enters the intersection. It's probably possible to design these so that don't have problems at every intersection, but the concept in general doesn't lend itself to that. My suspicion is that separated lanes are an attempt to turn cyclists into pedestrians: stop at every intersection, never enter the street, stay the !#@% out of the way of red-blooded American car drivers. No thanks! When I want to travel as slow as a pedestrian (and in many cases I do) I just leave the bike at home.
How are drivers supposed to see bikers behind them when there's a lane of parked cars between them? This makes no sense. Bikers should act as if they're invisible and should come to a full stop at every intersection.
Bikers on public roads should also be licensed and insured just like car drivers. Equal rights, equal responsibilities.
It depends on the country. For instance in France a cyclist as no business alongside pedestrians : you either share the road with cars, use a dedicated line or get off your bicyle and walk alongside pedestrians. So I can definitely understand the feeling that bikers are appearing out of nowhere when crossing as if they were pedestrians, just very very fast ones.
Here (Japan) bikes have a complete disregard for the rule of law, other bikes, pedestrians and cars. I bike everyday to work (30 minutes each way), and the most frightening are in order : cyclists, pedestrians and cars. Cars mostly follow the rules, so they are highly predictable. Bicycles just storms from anywhere at any time, crossing red lights without braking or even checking if something/someone is incoming... terrifying.
I'd love to see something like this paired with a project like this that takes parks and parklets and treats them like nodes in a graph and converting part of the streets into dedicated park lanes forming green edges between the green nodes. Taken all together, this turns the city into a veritable park.
Most of the PCN I ride on isn't converted from streets. Usually, it's part of a park or a sidewalk. So it's pretty much like biking on a sidewalk, including having to dodge pedestrians who zig zag around while staring at their phones.
>Falbo proposes that at big intersections bike lanes should have their own signals to synchronize movement.
I'm not sure if this is the same in the US, but at least here (UK), cyclists are extremely infamous for ignoring traffic lights, to the frustration and occasional fear of both pedestrians and drivers alike.
In the case of a car, they always have to use extreme caution when a cyclist is coming up to a junction as there's probably a 50% chance they will blast straight through a red light without slowing, and if you hit them, you're going to be the one they expect people to blame. In the case of a pedestrian, you always have to look out for ones who do similar things at crossings, in addition to treating the pavement as a cycle lane in roads without a dedicated lane.
I know that both represent a minority (albeit a large one) and I personally know many responsible cyclists, but I think perception of cycling in general (and so concessions made) won't change until the irresponsible ones are a thing of the past.
It is very common in the US as well. Cyclists are meant to have equal right to the road and, in turn, are meant to follow the vehicle traffic rules. We have lots of campaigns for drivers to "share the road" and "watch for cyclists". But I have yet to see a campaign imploring cyclists to actually follow vehicle traffic rules. Occasionally, I've seen a story about a cyclist getting a speeding ticket and it is usually met with much criticism of the police. I have never heard of a cyclist getting a ticket for blowing a stop sign/light.
Same situation here - I think it has happened once or twice ever for simple traffic violations; most action has been when they actually run someone down on the pavement or crash into the side of a car after running a red light.
Major problem with people on bikes in the cities is not safety caused by cars (its issue, but not major for regular biker that drives from a to b at regular speed). Its the fact that most bikers ignore laws. They drive through red lights, use side walks as their own, change lines like crazy...
I am a biker myself and I see first hand all this people getting themselves in dangerous situations by ignoring road rules and then complaining how bad and ignorant car drivers are. Bicycle bays wont help much here...
I used to blame other cyclists for this, but at some level I understand. After getting buzzed by yet another car while going downhill at 30 mph on a 25 mph road, and then getting pulled out in front of by a car off a side street, who assumed that I was moving slowly. I then got to a stop light that didn't change in my favor due to the sensors not being quite sensitive enough to pick up a bike which forced me to make a decision between running the (traffic-less) red light or fully unclipping, and shuffling my way 20 feet and up a 6 inch curb to the pedestrian button.
While technically I may be a "vehicle" in the eyes of the law, in reality, I'm between a pedestrian and a "real vehicle" without the benefits of either. Add to this strange intersections with traffic, where the cars have a stop sign (side road) and the bike path traffic have the right of way (in theory). Or worse, places where bike paths strangely end leaving a biker unfamiliar with the area unsure as to how to proceed. Adopting seemingly inconsistent and strange behavior is the only way to make cycling feasible in many places. The adoption of standard ways for interaction with traffic and better signage would decrease the cognitive load required to cycle and produce more consistent cyclist/vehicle interactions.
Regardless of my dislike of certain car behavior, such as overtaking without giving space, and misjudging speed, I much prefer riding on speed limited (25mph-35mph) streets to bike paths simply because I know how to act like a car, and people generally expect me to act like a car.
I try to sympathize with reasonable cyclists like you, but I can't help but think of it as swimming with sharks and complaining about it being dangerous. Humans aren't designed to live in the ocean. Roads (the ocean) are filled with cars (sharks). People who swim with sharks do so in cages (cars). Forego the cage at your own risk.
A more reasonable solution, as strange as it might seem, would be to have elevated or underground bike tunnels. Cars and bikes SHOULD be completely separated. Trying to cram them into the same space is asking for trouble.
But you're assuming a car first approach. And on a high-way, I agree with you. It's a car's world, but in a city, or town on a non-major thoroughfare, cars and bikes should be able to co-exist peacefully. To stretch your analogy a bit, low speed roadways would be like swimming in non-shark infested waters. Sure, you are liable to see car but you shouldn't feel like you are in danger when your are passed by the car, and on the other side, drivers shouldn't feel like they are within inches of killing a cyclist when they use a road legally and responsibly. (I add responsibly there because many drivers will complain that they feel they have to pay more attention when the drive near cyclists. I find this a wholly unconvincing argument, if you aren't paying attention while driving you aren't driving responsibly)
I also don't have any desire to use a car frequently. I shouldn't be forced to resort to a car to travel anything less than 15 miles due to fear or lack of infrastructure. And we face a chicken and egg problem. It would be great if we could have elevated bikeways tomorrow, but the truth of the matter is we should be encouraging bike use now not hypothetically in a utopian future. Because without proven use, there's no way major bike infrastructure projects will happen.
I agree to an extent. People on bikes tend to believe that normal traffic laws don't apply to them, and I think it's largely due to ignorance of said laws. There have been many times that I've cringed while driving through New Orleans because someone on a bike decided to enter an intersection during a red light. Making it worse is that the city is old by American standards, and the streets weren't designed for multiple cars driving down the road at the same time, much less the addition of streetside parking because virtually everyone here owns a car and many homes don't have driveways.
That is a major problem, but far from the only major problem, and since this plan attempts to address a different problem, this would seem to be completely off topic.
I don't understand why any discussion of bicycles must have a comment about law-breaking cyclists. It doesn't happen with other topics even though there are plenty of other topics where lots of people involved don't follow the relevant laws.
I agree with you, again for me this comes from personal cycling experience and seeing a lot of bikers ride dangerously. My take is that the traffic fails to accommodate cyclists sufficiently, which creates a kind of 'impedance mismatch' so to speak.
For example, say a bus overtakes a cyclist and stops 40m in front. A car would signal, wait for a space, turn, then catch up to the traffic. For a bike, it needs to signal, wait for a space, then start peddling, which is very much slower than a car. A car following the bike needs to slow down creating a hazard. I experience this many times in the past few months, especially where one has to peddle up hill.
The reason I noticed this is because recently I tried electric bikes, they greatly help with the initial peddling which I feel make me less of a target for cars. An easier route for a normal bike is to take the side walk and avoid that hazard all together.
Another is when waiting for green light, bikers tend to peddle before the traffic light turns green because they can get a head start peddling. Personally I feel pressured to do so to avoid the cars behind me overtaking dangerously.
Nobody ever makes this same argument about cars that disobey the laws. "Changing the speed limit in this neighborhood will not stop car drivers who disobey the laws from hitting our children!"
I think you could imagine that when cyclists are in protected lanes (and thus are first-class citizens on the road), they won't NEED to break laws that shoe-horn them in with 2-ton automobiles.
Why are motorcycles and mopeds never part of the discussion? Better fuel economy versus a car. No need to revamp basic infrastructure because they keep up with traffic. And, at least for motorcycles, a requirement to carry insurance and generally accept personal responsibility for one's safety instead of demanding bogeymen cagers change three generations of urban habits. For example: killed on a bicycle implies stupid car; killed on a motorcycle implies idiot motorcyclist. I see no difference.
As a long time bike commuter, I've never liked the "protected" bike lanes put in in Chicago. The few streets they work WELL on were already great cycling routes before they had the lanes, and the other streets they haven't worked well on they are often repurposed by whatever entity decides to repurpose them.
Several of them are somehow converted into school children drop off zones for cars during the morning (i.e., at the time that people should be commuting on them they're made even more dangerous - Des Plaines Ave near the church school for example) And of course despite multiple calls out to advocacy groups and local leadership, nothing seems to beat the "for the children" argument, despite the fact that what it's really doing is "for the traffic" more than anything.
That's one of many examples though, but the short of it is - things like protected bike lanes ignore the real problems in urban commuting, of which there are essentially four, in my opinion:
1 - Traffic is too fast - The basic speed limit unless posted otherwise, in the city of Chicago is 30mph. this speed limit is nearly NEVER enforced by police (Hello free revenue stream?) and traffic down major streets regularly goes at 50+ mph.
2 - Traffic is too slow - congested streets cause just as many problems as speeding. Being in a car when you're stuck in stop light to stop light traffic is infuriating. People are constantly looking for a move they can make to avoid it. Even with a bike lane, cars will constantly try to pass on the right, use what's supposed to be parking to make moves towards turning early, etc. This has been the source of my own collisions with automobiles 4/5 times I've had them in 10 years.
3 - Lack of a safe place to stow the bike. Any respectable bike will cost $500.00 and up. Sure, you can get some used single speed or old ten speed for less, but walk into any shop, and you won't see much below that. Locking those outside, especially on a regular schedule, makes them not last very long. (not to mention weather, which while often fine to do a short ride in, all day exposed to can wreak havoc on even a great bike).
4 - The whole, stinky at work, work stigma, aging building infrastructure problem. Sure, a few downtown offices have showers, but it's certainly the exception (spoken as a developer who's worked in many offices over the years) and in some companies being "that guy" seems to have it's own negative connotations.
Want to spend that bike-focused infrastructure money well? Start offering tax breaks to companies providing showers (I'd hear this was a thing once, but never found any proof of it), or safe places to store bicycles indoors. Want to create more of that bike-focused infrastructure money? Start enforcing speed limit laws that exist already, and start looking more towards traffic patterns for cars as a whole, and stick to shared lanes and painted lanes.
I both agree and disagree with you. As a bike commuter in San Francisco, which is a much more bike friendly city than New York where I used to commute to Union Square from Park Slope, I definitely experience the "traffic too fast" thing. I am lucky to have an office now where I can store my bike in our office (we have dedicated bike parking inside on the 11th floor where our office is), but I also know that is rare. However, it does make it more likely that I'll ride to work (and do every day).
Regarding getting to work sweaty, why not ride slower? Sure, you might live in a hotter place than I do, but if you reduce your speed you'll sweat less. I think many of us on bikes are still getting out of the lead foot mentality of driving a car.
Traffic too fast can be controlled. Traffic too slow? That's one that can be solved by separated bike lanes. Look at the Netherlands and how they solve it. I personally hate the combined bike/traffic sections of Market St in San Francisco. Those are the most terrifying 7 blocks of my commute.
Here [1] is an electric-assist bike I recently purchased which can be configured to:
* Measure one's pedal torque and cadence, thus calculate and display "Human Watts" input to the bike while cycling (update rate = once per crank rev)
* Supply a configurable amount of electric-motor power assistance directly proportional to one's "Human Watts" input -- at selectable, configurable, default power amplification factors of 0x ( assist off ), 1x or 2x.
With this instrumented, pedal-power-amplified bike I've found:
* I won't break a sweat if I keep my "Human Watts" below about 30 to 60 (power assist on or off, doesn't matter)
* Breaking 100 - 150 "Human Watts" for more than a few seconds will break a sweat for me.
* (Off topic ) Efficiency comes out to an excellent 2 to 4 Watt-Hours-electric per mile with my settings and low-power riding style, having gotten over 100 miles on my first, not-yet-fully-depleted battery charge.
It's also possible to configure a throttle power control to deal with hills where my "no sweat" rate of 50 Watts -- even with 2x power assist -- won't make it up a grade.
But I configure the throttle as disabled as I don't have hills like that on my commute. I config pedal power amplification for a cut-in speed of 6 mph and a cutoff speed of 13 mph just right so as to stay dry and safe for me and those around me. Un-assisted cyclists frequently pass me; that's fine.
I stick to what roads on my commute have painted bike lanes. My scariest road encounter (a motorist who crowded me toward the curb with his car, twice) would have been impossible were I riding in a protected bike lane and making the kind of protected right turn this new design affords.
Disclosure here - I'm a racer, own some 10 odd bikes for various disciplines, but realize my 4 mile commute to the loop every day does nothing to further that. It's essentially the "garbage miles" your typical racer talks about. As a result, I typically ride at a pace into work that is focused on not sweating as much as possible, but there are 4 months out of the year that it's so cold out that I've got to put on enough clothes that unless I get it JUST right (almost impossible in chicago) I have to err on the side of being too hot, and 2-3 other months where no matter if I'm wearing my fancy near-mesh high tech Assos jersey or not, barely going at a pace to beat walking, I'm going to be soaking wet from the heat.
As far as "Separated" I guess it becomes important to define separated. If there were physical curbs between, I could see it - but where I have seen that those tend to become even more pedestrian travelled, but even the flexible post at interval type ones, I've seen most of those destroyed in the first year they'd been put in by plows, UPS drivers, you name it. It's a bit of a tall ask to put in full on curbs, as much as I think it could work. Most of our major downtown streets aren't much wider than SF's smaller streets, with parking on both sides.
Interesting points for sure. At some point I just say that sweating after a commute is something we have to deal with (same as getting fat by driving a car :-)). I'd rather bike and be sweaty than fat and driving a car (yes, I know not all car commuters are fat, but in generalities...).
The separated thing is super interesting to me. Obviously we couldn't do it on all streets, like the very skinny SF ones you talk about (I live near many of them in the Lower Haight). On those, which are not major thoroughfares, mixing bikes and cars is fine. But when it comes to a 4-6 lane street like Market St (or some in Chicago), separated makes sense. The traffic will go around if the street is less amenable to them. It's the same argument as taking down a freeway through a city. SF did it both at the Embarcardero (well, that one was by natural causes aka an earthquake), but then also at Octavia. Traffic slowed, neighborhoods revitalized. Studies have been done showing that taking these down doesn't greatly increase driving times, and often the traffic driving them doesn't actually stop in the city that they pass through. Instead they pollute the air and leave. Strong argument for taking them down, IMO.
But I've digressed. I agree there are challenges and never a one-size-fits-all solution. But there are solutions that are not currently being put into place that benefit the vast majority.
Your association with being fat and driving is idiotic. A commute to work on a bike is not an intense activity so it's still very easy for overweight people to do. About 1/5 of the bikers I see (South Bay) are overweight. 95% of them I see commuting are not exerting themselves so they aren't getting meaningful exercise.
Sometimes the sweating just can't be avoided. The last few blocks of my ride ascend ~150 ft. It's steep and on any morning that's above 55 I'm breaking a sweat. And riding slower only drags out the effort for longer.
One of the main reasons I use my bike is because it is significantly faster than other methods of transport I have available (metro, bus, walking). Slowing down to avoid sweating negates that benefit. (Though in summer, I usually bring a spare t-shirt. Sweat itself doesn't smell, only after bacteria have had a time to act on it. Cycling to work after a shower then a change of t-shirt works fine for me - though I am not a heavy sweater).
> 1 - Traffic is too fast - The basic speed limit unless posted otherwise, in the city of Chicago is 30mph. this speed limit is nearly NEVER enforced by police (Hello free revenue stream?)
Interestingly some cities and towns in England are having trouble because they are being accused of over-enforcing parking regulations in order to get income.
The amount of income they get is a reasonable amount but trivial in terms of the total budget. And people breaking parking rules are usually pretty clearly breaking an obvious rule.
But it cause great offence and distress and councils need to spend time and money explaining what they're doing and why; and also on the appeals process.
The use of roaming CCTV vehicles which travel to parking blackspots is being investigated at the moment, and might be regulated out.
I agree with the rest of your post! Offering better bike parking and some changing facilities would be helpful.
Another idea, that would not work in US cities, is to remove all road and pavement marking. There's just a broad road with no kerbs (but pavements are marked with slightly differen paving) or lines and everyone, pedestrians cyclists and vehicles just use it. Vehicles entering this area suddenly slow down and look out for people.
Looks like a death trap to me. My problem when cycling is the j-hook when cars pass me and then turn right. That's killed at least two cyclists in the bay area in the past couple years. This intersection makes the problem worse -- it moves cyclists where they are less likely to be seen. Better to add a handful of "right turn must merge to bike lane" signs which is the law but poorly followed.
How does this move the cyclist where they are less likely to be seen? The video addresses this point directly, and claims that moving the bicyclists one car length ahead of the stopped cars and requiring a tight turning radius for cars will increase their visibility.
Most right-hooks happen when the light is already green, not when starting from a stop. So imagine that the car and bike are moving at the same speed and the driver doesn't check their mirror or doesn't notice the bike before they turn right.
Once a car has started the turning process, its driver is no longer looking for bicycles behind it, but is looking in its direction of travel, as it should be. It's too late for it to stop and allow a bicycle to go in front of it.
Cyclists should come to a full stop at every intersection, even if the light is green in its direction of travel.
No. The dude sitting his ass in his comfy car is the one who should come to a full stop at every intersection. Don't like it, ride a bike. No sarcasm here.
That's unreasonable and illogical. Think about it:
1. Cars burn gas all the time. Decelerating, idling, and accelerating all waste fuel.
2. Cars take longer to accelerate to average speed in city traffic than a bike does to get up to its average speed.
3. Cars are the enormous majority of traffic.
2 and 3 put together means that cars stopping at every intersection would kill the flow of traffic. That's why traffic signals are used instead of stop signs.
4. Cyclists have far greater visibility, meaning they can more easily see their surroundings. This makes the "stop and look" penalty lower and quicker than for a car or truck.
5. Vehicles are much easier to see than cyclists. This means that cyclists can see cars more easily than cars can see cyclists. This means that the burden of spotting the other kind of traffic should be on the traffic more difficult to be seen. IOW, cyclists should pretend they are invisible to cars (which they often are). This might seem callous to the poor, unprotected cyclists, but by disabusing them of the notion that they are special and protected, it would actually increase their safety.
6. You simply need to face reality. In the west, cars are the vast majority. Your mindset is irrational. By trying to force cars to respect cyclists, you're actually harming cyclists' safety. Cars are big heavy machines, and cyclists are unprotected bags of flesh. Mixing them together is foolish and asking for trouble.
It's not a software problem, it's a hardware problem. Instead of trying to write a driver that accepts bologna in a floppy drive without tearing it up, stop putting lunch meat in the grinder.
I saw it happen to someone two days ago crossing the Caltrain tracks and going over Alma on Meadow in Palo Alto. White van went past the cyclist and then turned right into him -- luckily he just hit his front wheel (though the van drove off, ignorant of everything).
It happens all the time and it's a function of poor design. I'm not sure what the right fix is (preventing right turns on some Alma crossings? Forced right turn lane to the right of a green lane?). With this intersection at least the cyclists start out ahead of the traffic when waiting on a red -- but if the light is green and a cyclist is at the speed of traffic then this design does nothing to prevent right hooks...
Speaking without specific knowledge of the junction you mention, but with 20 years' experience of urban cycling, my observation is that this type of accident is usually a function of cycling too close to the curb. I've learned to move a foot or two further out into the street when approaching an intersection where cars are likely to turn right, and the effect is that drivers will tuck in behind me to turn rather than overtaking.
1. License and insure all cyclists on public streets. Equal rights, equal responsibilities.
2. Require all cyclists to stop at all intersections, no matter what. Any cyclist who runs into a vehicle is at fault by definition.
Have we ever considered underground biking lanes? I wonder if they could be fairly shallow compared to subways, and would definitely be safer than the proposed option above by entirely avoiding conflict with cars. Better even, with underground biking lanes, we could try to build infrastructure to avoid weather problems. Snow, rain, flooding and cold are the problems I'm referring to.
That got me thinking. What if instead of tunnels, you dug channels in place of sidewalks and put grates along the top. Basically tunnels under the sidewalk except you don't have to worry about the weight of earth or cars on top of the tunnel--just pedestrians. You do the digging much cheaper from the surface, and it wouldn't require ventilation.
Excellent points. OK so the grating is solid on the top with mesh on the sides for ventilation.
It was just a half baked idea, and now that I think about it drainage would be a pretty big problem as well. If the drains got clogged it could turn into a death trap pretty fast in a heavy downpour.
What does super expensive mean? Expensive is a relative term. When weighed against the costs of other options, tunneling consistently comes out ahead on a cost basis. This is proven by the fact that tunneling projects are undertaken regularly across the world.
If that "proves" anything, it's only that public entities spend money according to priorities other than thrift.
But really, your response to a plea for a single example of an economically-defensible tunnel project was "tunneling consistently comes out ahead on a cost basis"? You never took rhetoric, did you? It's not as though I asked a question that someone "in the industry" wouldn't have the background to answer.
Public entities do not spend money according to priorities other than thrift, in general. Rather, they assign dollar values to everything (sometimes irrationally) and then compare based on a dollar valuation. Some entities pretend to not do this by obscuring things with a neat naming convention like a "contractor score" or "ranked qualifications" but, in the end, it's all about money because the public has people, such as yourself, who are ready to hang them in a second if they think their money is being mismanaged.
The reason I don't give a single example of a tunnel project is because they are, quite literally, all over. Your local water/sewer district has probably put in tens in the past year. If you live in the Bay area, Caldecott's fourth bore has just been completed successfully (on time, under budget) and this installation was obviously much less costly than blowing up the mountain. If you live out East, Liberty University just completed a jacked box tunnel install that was less costly than the alternative of rerouting train traffic or continuing to use a less safe at-grade crossing.
Are there examples of tunnels that have gone awry? Certainly, and I'm sure you're more than willing to rattle off a few results that you found on Google. The fact is, good and cheap (relative to the other options) tunneling jobs happen all the time, around the world.
Your use of scare quotes does not diminish the fact that you are completely ignorant of the pros and cons of tunneling and that you are arguing from that position of ignorance.
Around here, we dig a trench when we want to set a pipe or a box culvert. Sometimes it's a deep trench, but it's never a tunnel. (I was on a road job where a culvert trench wasn't a trench but rather a valley.) The tunneling I see is that of the "gas line under the highway" variety, which if that's what we're talking about, makes sense -- it takes two guys a few hours. It's not multiple lanes of traffic through a mountain.
But thanks for answering the (ignorant, obviously...) question!
This design is like all others that involve separated, segregated facilities: Cyclists are at extreme risk of getting right hooked by turning drivers who will assume they have the supreme right of way even if they do see the bicyclists they mow over. Little tweaks like moving the stopping positions around have no effect on oblivious cagers.
So his solution for cyclists feeling uncomfortable is to take away a lane of traffic at every intersection? And he wants a special light for cyclists to proceed while all the cars are stopped? This would be a traffic nightmare.
I agree that the taking away the lane would likely be a problem for traffic, the special light for cyclists works very well over here in The Netherlands. Once every few minutes the green light turns on for all cyclists and is red for all cars -- cyclists can manage having a "free for all" while crossing the intersection where cars cannot.
Before you say "but that means that there is less time for cars to cross the intersection", consider the fact that a lot of the people using bikes would otherwise have to use other means of transportation, resulting (at least partially) in reduced traffic.
Does the bike free for all really work that well on popular routes? In my old bike commute there were a couple spots where lots of cyclists would pile up (draw bridges, stop lights on a bike path) and I can't imagine having that many cyclists having to wait and then crossing each others direction of travel at every intersection.
Well most of the time it does. Whether to go for a free for all or more "complex" strategies depends upon the complexity of the intersection.
For a lot of the less popular intersections, free for alls work good enough and trying to be clever would be a premature optimization. In other situations, there are generally two approaches:
* implement a more complex routing strategy that can route both cyclists and cars concurrently; an example would be [1], where the blue line is how the cyclist should travel.
* avoid the intersection al together with tunnels[2] or bridges[3] -- this is the most desirable strategy, but probably the most expensive one. It is used fairly often in popular-by-cycle cities such as Utrecht and Amsterdam.
No lane is taken away. This image is showing two cross roads with separated bike lanes. So the curb stop is in the lane where parking exists. If anything, the additional bike infrastructure would keep cars within the box and stop them from cutting it really close to the corner.
Regarding the lights - sure. Cars have a special light, pedestrians have a special light. Why wouldn't bikes? Having a usable bike infrastructure that doesn't make bikers feel like they're going to die at every intersection would promote safer biking. I'll run a red light on my bike because I can see the cars coming from my left and right, but I can't see the car coming from behind and turning right into me.
The right turn lane is removed. Now, instead of having straight traffic moving through while right turn traffic shifts to the right out of the way, that traffic will have to slow behind the right turning cars. The added set-back of the cross walk helps, since one car can wait for e.g pedestrian traffic completely out of the flow of through traffic, but there is little doubt the traffic will flow more slowly.
As somebody elsewhere said, if you get more people riding, you are removing their cars from the road, but there is a real chicken and egg problem, as drivers will be very upset if they see their commute lengthen.
These are city streets, not highways. We want to encourage more pedestrians and cyclist, not merely bow to the demands of automobiles. Being auto-centric creates poor urban environments.
I can only speak to my own experience, but in both cities I've lived in (Vancouver and Victoria), there's basically no such thing during working hours. Dedicated parking lanes start at 6pm, before that they're normal traffic lanes.
Seems like a fine design, but doesn't it require a lot of space? It looks like you would have to widen existing roads by at least 10 ft or so, which wouldn't be practical for a lot of roads in the city.
They are in the major east coast cities and some west coast cities. I'm sure they aren't currently viable in plenty of cities, but that doesn't mean the infrastructure shouldn't be built to allow for bikes.
Are you going to take your kids to school on a bike? Ride in your business suit? Go to Ikea or Costco? Going to ride in from the suburbs?
Bikes work as primary transportation for active 20-somethings who live in cities near work. They do not work for the vast majority of people, and never will. Wanting to make cities bike-friendly is fine. Wanting to do so at the expense of the 80% of the population that needs a car is addle-brained.
I live in one of the worst cities for cycling in the US and I do all of those things regularly.
I bike to Costco and Ikea all the time, but sure you do have to get big stuff delivered unless you have a trailer (https://www.bikesatwork.com/blog/move-it-by-bike-moving-serv...). I used to commute to downtown from the suburbs daily. When I was young my dad used to bike me to daycare/school all the time. If you need to be somewhere in a suit you bike in pants + undershirt and add the rest when you get there.
All of these things are possible, admittedly there is a real limitation of needing to live within a 15-20 mile radius of work. The best data I can find suggests about 23% of commuters have a commute of more than 20 miles. So I would say cycling is a perfectly reasonable solution for the majority of people.
Well show me some data then. Like I said, it seems like the majority of people live within a reasonable radius of work to make cycling feasible. I'm not saying it's easy, and there are plenty of people it doesn't work for, but I seriously doubt it's 80% of people.
I don't need to show you data. That is ludicrous. Use your imagination. There are a million reasons and situations that make bicycles not in any way a suitable replacement for cars. You are generalizing wildly while demanding data to contradict you. Daily life is all the data you need.
It's not wrong to live more than 2 miles from your job, or to have a family, or to want or need to transport more than you can on a bicycle, or to refuse to risk your life more than necessary by mixing cycling with automobile traffic.
A friend of mine was killed riding her bike when a cop ran into her. I live in a relatively small city, and traffic was not busy at the time.
It's a simple fact that cycling with automobile traffic is far more dangerous than driving. Take that risk if you want to; it's your life (though if you're killed by a car, it could be your fault, and it could ruin the driver's life too). It's not wrong to refuse to take that extra, unnecessary risk!
If you think that everyone should do what you do or else they're "doing it wrong", you are thinking wrongly.
There is something very, very wrong/unsustainable at a systems level if people are forced to use cars (or some other singular mode of transportation not based on their own power). Perhaps we need to have goods delivered to us, or have our own supplies of things, or be able to remote in, or whatever...
Indeed, if biking is so dangerous, I propose that there is something wrong with the traffic rules--there's a great writeup about how streets were (at the beginning of the 20th century) almost completely mixed-mode transportation and that car companies pushed for redefining norms to plant the idea that they were only for cars.
In college I didn't have a car so I walked/biked/bussed everywhere. Going to the market was still a hassle and I only had to buy for 1 person. I still had to go often because there was only so much I could bring home in one shot. Now, when I go to the market, I'm buying at least a week's worth of groceries for a family of five. I would need a pretty big bike trailer to get all those goods home. And since it would take quite a bit longer, I'd also probably need to add something to handle the frozen/refrigerated things. So, I bike for leisure and not for utility.
> When I was young my dad used to bike me to daycare/school all the time.
How did all your siblings fit? Or did your Dad make multiple trips?
> live within a 15-20 mile radius of work
You really think people want to bike 20 miles? That's going to cost you about 2,000 calories (round trip). That's completely unrealistic for most people. They would have to double their food, plus end up exhausted every day at work.
And that's for perfectly flat terrain!
(The weirdest part is the extra food costs more than the equivalent gasoline, and produces more CO2.)
My dad used a bike seat for me, which was doable since my brother and I were different ages and weren't often going to the same place. There are of course bike trailers for hauling 2-3 children around and don't forget pedicabs which regularly haul around 3-4 adults.
After you get used to it you don't really feel exhausted. Yes commuting 20 miles by bike is definitely an upper limit, at least for me, but I do know people with longer bike commutes.
So assuming you fuel yourself with pure beef, the most unsustainable food I could find, you'd need about .85 kg to get 2000 calories. On average the production of beef releases about 13.3 kg of CO2 per kg of beef, so we're looking at 11.305 kg of CO2 per commute. The average CO2 produced for a medium sized car is about .5 kg per mile. So for the same 40 mile commute you're looking at around 20 kg of emissions. So even if you choose to only eat the most unsustainable food it's still better than driving. If you switch to pork or poultry you can reduce that 11.305 kg of CO2 by about 75%. Cars just don't even come close.
Your mindset for all of those questions is mistaken. You're thinking that we all live in vast urban sprawl. A lot of us don't live there. Come see what life is like in a functioning city with good planning and density, like Manhattan.
1. Take your kids to school on a bike?
If you're living in a dense metro area, your school in within walking distance. So yes. You could bike there, but more likely you'll walk with them. If they go to a further away school, they'll take the subway or a bus.
2. Ride in a business suit?
Yes, I see it all the time with Citibikes. Even on Wall Street.
3. Go to Ikea or Costco?
Sure you'll go there, but you'll have your items delivered like any sane person who doesn't live in BFE.
4. Going to ride in from the suburbs?
People do it every day. You'd be surprised how many showers and locker rooms are right next to corporate bike rooms.
Just because you can't imagine something doesn't mean it isn't normal in another part of the country.
Someone should conduct a study asking what most people are doing with their cars in a series of given cities. I'd imagine most people could replace their vehicle with a bicycle but I'm not sure.
So why not just ban all cars, and use the existing road infrastructure for bikes? The answer, of course, is that cars are vital to making city life feasible in most cities.
This is not "new" as other commenters have pointed out.
I'm a proponent of the floating parking lane we've adopted in NYC as it also keeps cyclists away from pedestrians and melds nicely when a bike line ends.
How do you do right hand turns on red in this? Oh, it's actually worse -- it basically means every 2 lane road is now a one lane road. Also, you're going to slow down every intersection for cars and pedestrians by a minute or two per cycle?
Seems highly unlikely to be something people support unless bikes are >25% of all traffic in an area. I don't know anywhere in the US where that's the case. (Maybe on a university campus or something?)
It's a catch 22. Less people ride bikes when the infrastructure sucks.
In Washington, DC, 4.1 percent of working residents regularly commuted by bike last year; it was 3.8 percent in San Francisco, 2.3 percent in Philadelphia, 2 percent in Boston, 1.6 percent in Chicago, and 1 percent in NYC. NYC increased from .6 percent to 1 percent over the course of a few years by investing more heavily in bike infrastructure.
One thing to keep in mind is that these numbers are for daily commuters. When you look at casual riders, people running errands, etc, and then hone in on certain neighborhoods the numbers can sky rocket. The Brooklyn chapter of Transportation Alternatives has done mode (of transportation) counts in certain neighborhoods and in many areas count 20-30% of all traffic on the street as being bikes, going over 50% in some neighborhoods for some sprints.
Japan might be a partial counter-example to that.... There's traditionally been almost no dedicated bike routes or even lanes in Japan, although this has (very slowly) been improving a little in recent years and there's fairly extensive bike parking infrastructure in many places. Despite this, bike usage is very high in many parts of Japan, with numbers dwarfing anyplace in the U.S. (~20% mode share in some places).
However, the situations aren't entirely comparable, as typical bike usage in Japan is fairly local (to local shops or between home and the station), with public transport being used for longer trips (thus the emphasis on bike parking around stations and other major destinations). Japanese urban layout, which clusters housing and commerce around the nodes of an extremely large and dense public transport network, tends to encourage such usage.
Americans, as I understand it are more likely to view bicycling as an alternative to public transport rather than as an adjunct to it, and thus want faster speeds and more extensive bike routes.
I don't think I'd ever consider taking a bike on BART, even though my commute is essentially optimal for bike + BART (15 min walk, BART for 10+15min, 15 min walk, each way, with SF commuter check paying the $3.30 each way fare). I'd rather BART+walk (which I tend to do on game days), or drive (which sucks because it's $4-6 bridge toll + $10 car operating costs + $12-90 to park, but can be done in 18-30 minutes each way, depending on traffic).
Probably buying a street motorcycle as soon as my health insurance kicks in, though, which solves all of this.
People in Japan don't bring bikes on public transport either (it would be utterly unworkable given the crowding levels), but the transport network is generally structured so that most work/shopping destinations are a reasonable walk from transit. So it's typically only the "home" end where people use bikes, and suburban stations can have massive amounts of bike parking to accommodate people leaving their bikes there while they go off to work or play. [There's parking for many thousands of bikes around the biggest station near my house (distributed amongst many locations of varying sizes, some underground or multi-story)....and no car parking at all.]
Because of that greater transit-network density in the more central areas, bike usage is generally greater in the suburbs and slightly less dense areas of the city.
I assume bike-theft in Japan is lower than in a place like Oakland (or even normal parts of the USA), so they can have high density vs. high-security bike parking, too.
So far as I'm aware, yes that's true... There is some theft but I think not so much the pervasive professional theft that seems to be an issue in some other places. The sort of giant bike lock which is pretty much standard equipment in the U.S. is something you almost never see in Japan....
When people lock their bikes at all, it's mostly with very simple locks, thin cable or just a sort of built-in thing that stops the wheels from rotating. That's enough to discourage very casual (or accidental) theft.
I guess partly it's cultural, but also compared to the modern U.S., I think expensive high-end bikes are less common in Japan, so maybe bike theft is also less profitable. [Though I have seen obviously very expensive carbon fiber road bikes and the like just locked up in an alleyway with a thin cheap cable lock...!]
Every bigger intersection has a similar system in Munich. Works pretty well. But in Munich (and Germany as a whole), the road-hierarchy is "the weaker one is right", thus car drivers must be very careful not to run over pedestrians and bicycles.
When you take driving lessons in Germany, an essential part of it is how to handle traffic around you. There are many intersections you need to watch out for pedestrians and bicycles, when turning left, and the hard part is, sometimes bicycles drive faster than cars!
I think they might be building one in the last weeks on Giselastraße. Not obvious at all what it was though. There is a disastrous roundabout there on the way into the English Garden that nobody knows how to use.
Another short term improvement until self-driving cars take over. Asking for better bike lanes is like asking for a faster horse. I'd even consider modern public transportation to fit that bill although I recognize that puts me in a minority viewpoint.
He didn't say it replaces biking. He implied that it replaces the need for bike lanes.
I can see that as being plausible, assuming self-driving cars become required. We won't need bike lanes to provide safety for cyclists then because the self-driving cars will be good at not running into cyclists.
If that's the case I disagree, even if self driving cars were flawless I would want to have signage that makes my interaction with the self driving cars obvious and obviously safe.
I'd like to hear that argument too. Also, there are a lot of people who prefer cycling over even decent public transit. Doesn't apply in SF, but does in NY/Brooklyn.
In a city with half-decent public transportation, bikes don't take cars off the road, they take people off the trains/buses and pedestrians off the sidewalk (on nice days).
I've lived and/or worked in Boston/Cambridge for 20 years and can't think of a single person who ever took a bike that would have otherwise driven (as evidenced by the fact that they would take the train during the winter or bad weather).
This is probably true for marginal cases, but I expect it's not true on average.
Bikes, trains, buses and walkable neighborhoods all offer alternatives to cars. If a city only had the last three but not bikes, I expect more people would have cars.
Some people uses cases would be fully covers by the final three, but some might find it more difficult and drive.
For example, I live in Montreal. I walk, take metros, and bike. I don't like buses, and can't be bothered to figure out schedules.
Without bikes, I'd just walk and metro. But if I didn't live near a metro, and couldn't bike, I'd probably use the local short term car rental options more often.
All four options are complementary. Remove one, and you'll harm the ensemble.
Exactly my point. You wouldn't buy a car. People who live in Boston/Cambridge only use their car to get out of the city, not travel within it. For people outside of the city coming in, bikes are not a replacement (trains and buses are).
Now if the plan is to have fewer people coming into the city, then bike lanes are great for discouraging that, but I'm going to guess that is not what the cities want. For example, I have a new startup and since we mostly live outside of the city proper and are tired of commuting in (especially to the nightmare of Kendall Square), we're setting up shop in the suburbs where there is unfortunately no public transportation.
I feel you're quoting me out of context. I used to not live near a metro. If I hadn't had bikes then, and could have afforded a car, I would have driven.
My point was that all factors count. In cities without metros, some people still take transit and bike, but more people take cars. In cities with poor biking, some people still metro and bus. But the more non-car options you have, the easier it is the not have a car.
You're making the argument "since bikes are not required in most cases, they're not useful". But you could say the same about any of the other four factors I listed.
Commuting from out of town to Kendall Square is a great example of multi-modal, depending on where you live in the suburbs or surround towns. Since it's on the Red Line, if you're coming from Lexington/Concord, you could easily park your car at the massive Alewife garage, and take the 20 minute T ride to Kendall.
Or, I know this is a dramatic suggestion, you could move to Cambridge. You could encourage your employees to move to Cambridge. Then you'd be able to walk/ride to work. You'd probably have to give up your yard, and perhaps pay rent instead of a mortgage.
Since we're throwing around anecdata, I once had a summer commute from Back Bay -> Lexington. It was 1:45 by T/bus, 45 minutes by car, and an hour by bike. I was in school at the time so I was hesitant to bring my car to the city, but it would have been the obvious choice if biking hadn't been so damned convenient.
Chicago recently added separated bike lanes to one of its streets, and it's definitely much more enjoyable and less stressful riding on that street than the rest of the city. In fact, whether or not I can spend most of my commute in that bike lane plays a huge factor in deciding if I'm going to bike to my destination. Unfortunately, even that bike line is flawed. For one, it relies on painted lines to separate the lane, which as the video in the article says, isn't that great a solution, since it doesn't physically keep the cars out. Taxis are the worst offenders and tend to treat the bike lane as their personal parking space.
Chicago also implemented dedicated traffic signals for bikes, as the article recommends, which sound amazing in theory. Unfortunately, most cars seem to completely ignore them and drive as they would on non-protected streets. For example, when the bike lane is green, the turn signal for cars is red. I rarely see cars actually obey that red light and regularly turn into oncoming bike traffic. Even worse is pedestrians who view the bike lane as an extension of the sidewalk, and will wait in the bike lane to cross the street.
These problems won't be fixed until protected bike lanes are the norm, rather than the exception, and following bike lane laws are taught in driver's ed and heavily enforced by police.
Unfortunately, nobody really cares about bikers. The New York Times had a great article last year about how hitting bicyclists isn't considered that big a deal[1].
1: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to...