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The Case for Physically Separated Bike Lanes
Posted by Glenn on March 31, 2007 - 10:30am in The Oil Drum: Local
Topic: Environment/Sustainability
Tags: alternative transportation, bike lanes, new york city, streetfilms [list all tags]
The Case for Physically Separated Bike Lanes (8:30 running time)
As an outgrowth of the fabulous Streetsblog, which challenges people to rethink the auto-centric street design, Streetfilms takes the experience to another level.
One of the best diagrams in the video is this, which shows the revolution in design needed to get NYC's biking numbers into the 20-30% range like Copenhagen.
This is just one of their videos. Other good videos are:
Portland's Safe Routes to School
Chicago Transportation Commissioner Meets Project for Public Spaces
Could not agree more regarding the need for dedicated bike lanes! One fact that really, really bothers me is that the majority of the civil codes that require bicyclists to ride on the street were written around 1910 when the average bicyclist was fairly capable of maintaining a compatible speed with traffic.
Riding on the streets of any sizeable city is simply a recipe for disaster. All it takes is that one careless driver or p*ssed off individual having a bad day and someone winds up in a wheelchair, or possibly a zipper bag. 200 lbs of man and bike is simply no match for 2+ tons of moving metal.
Yes, I am an unapologetic sidewalk rider. I obey the pedestrian signals relgiously and I match my speed to the amount of foot traffic present. I dismount and walk if there are simply too many people. In 10+ years of riding this way I have never had a collision with another pedestrian or cyclist. Even if I did ride in a less controlled manner the most likely bad outcome is some bumps and bruises, at worst a broken leg.
In college I was fortunate enough to attend school that had a compact campus, wide, wide sidewalks, some mixed-use and dedicated bike paths, and a police force that had better things to do than ticket bikers.
The city I live in now is a less fortuitous situation. The sidewalks are very narrow. They are cut up by many, many sidestreets, and drivers will simply block your travel or roll up on you as you cross the street even though they have a STOP sign. The one key advantage is that nearly no one walks on these sidewalks.
Better yet, the newspaper recently ran a story about the local police staging a 'crackdown' on people who ride sidewalks in the downtown area. Apparently a few bad apples have spoiled it for us all.
Perhaps I should just suck it up, get my deathwish on, and start riding the streetz to reduce my already fairly small carbon footprint!
Sidewalks are not safe above walking speed. A cyclist can't see around hedges, mailboxes, posts, plantings, all sorts of obstructions that are built right to the edge of the sidewalk paving. Pedestrians (and dogs, cars in driveways, toddlers) are not watching for anything coming down the sidewalk faster than a jogger.
Don't ride on the sidewalk. You endanger everyone,including yourself.
This depends entirely on the sidewalk and the amount of walking traffic. When I biked to work in Charlotte, NC I used the sidewalks religiously, where they existed. The only roads that are not cul-de-sac housing developments are insanely crowded, suicidal for bikes and with very fast moving traffic and lots of blind curves and no shoulders. In the two years I biked, I maybe saw pedestrians on the sidewalks twice, and they were waiting for the bus at bus stop signs. I would have endangered myself extremely by biking exclusively on the roadway.
Roadways have to conform to engineering codes and the important one in this case is visibilty. For sidewalks anything goes. Unfortunately bike paths are also usually anything goes.
If you want to claim that you have a spot where there's an exception to the rule be my guest. I break rules too. Just be aware that behind every tree and fence and shrub there is unpredictable and random interference and that your available reaction time is one small fraction of what it might be in a more standard right of way. I call sidewalk riders ER admissions.
As far as I know, roadways do not have to conform to any standards regarding bicycle traffic. Sidewalks that are straight and unobstructed by any of the things you describe are vastly safer for the bicyclist than the high traffic roads that I am referring to. Obviously a level of care is needed wherever one rides. I have been bicycling for over 40 years without ever colliding with a pedestrian and the only serious accident I ever had was misjudging some railroad tracks. The choice for sidewalk riding in the case I describe was more than obvious to me, maybe it would have been different to you. My point is that it is inappropriate to cast moral aspersions on a bicyclist who judges it better to 'hit the sidewalks' especially without knowing anything at all about the context.
Moral aspersions? I don't think we are talking morality here, but rather what is safe and appropriate. I agree with "Old Hippie", that sidewalk cycling is not nearly as safe as many people suppose it to be. But I'm sure you're right, ET, to point out that conditions vary from place to place. Fortunately I live in a town where cyclists have asserted their right to be on the road. So, I would never consider using the sidewalk.
Okay, you guys come to my city and ride the four lane to my workplace where speeds exceed 50 mph on a daily basis and tell me how 'safe' that is.
Nuff said.
What city is it? If it's close, I might. I bike on five lane arterials every day. Everybody who doesn't bike in traffic thinks their roads are too dangerous for it.
Fair enough. I challenge you to come to my town and ride a bicycle on the roads between my home and my workplace for several days. At the close of that period please explain to me how 'safe' riding it is to ride on the roads here versus the sidewalks.
Thank you.
Obviously, I can't comment on how things are in your town. But Old Hippie pointed out prettly clearly the perils of sidewalk cycling. If motorists are so reckless and aggressive that they run cyclists they can plainly see right in front of them, I doubt that they are going to be watching out for bikes on the sidewalk as they whip around a corner. True, a slow and cautious sidewalk cyclist can anticipate these perils, and thus avoid disaster. Many don't, though, because they believe just being on the sidewalk is all the "safety" they need.
I think someone already pointed out that you have to vigilant no matter where you are. I agree. If you are an alert, experienced sidewalk cyclist, and the traffic culture in your town is hostile to cyclists who dare to use the road, fine, do as you think best. Where I am, sidewalk cycling is not a good practice.
Thanks for that defense. I was tired of it.
But now I'll throw in some more. The notion of cyclist/motor vehicle interaction leading to body bags is drastically overblown. A cyclist hit by a car - or truck or bus - does not even necessarily fall down. I don't. I can't possibly count how many times I've been hit but if I gave up each time I did this post would not exist. When you do go down there's no presumption you will be hurt. Many falls have no damage report whatsoever. If there is damage it is more likely to be paint polish or fabric than skin. When there is injury most cycling injuries are minor and heal. Collar bones and ribs predominate. Cuts, bruises, road rash. The occasional punctured lung. Yes there are severe injuries but they are not the norm.
My injury report for 300,000 miles is 3 stitches and a mild concussion (years before helmets) for injury accident #1, 50 stitches for injury accident #2. Most drivers do worse.
And yes I've had to crash the curb and lay the bike down in the road to avoid sidewalk riders blundering into the crosswalk. They think they're going as slow and being as cautious as pedestrians but they are not. And after you save their stupid butts for them they just act self-righteous and braindead.
The notion of cyclist/motor vehicle interaction leading to body bags is drastically overblown.
The notion of cyclist on the sidewalk danger from a car coming out of a driveway that is blocked by bushes is drastically overblown.
The only time I have been hit by a car while riding was when I was riding on the sidewalk. A driver pulling out of a gas station knocked me sideways onto the pavement. I got up, walked over to the car, and shook the driver's hand through the open window. He thought I was going to slug him. I was probably in shock, but he was more shook up than I. The bike was fine, and I was bruised but OK. And I (re)learned my lesson.
ca 1968: I was in the right shoulder of a two lane road in Damascus MD when a car turned right just in front of me, and I hit him.
ca 1974: On a rural road near Laytonsville MD, someone threw a beer or soda can at me, for no particular reason.
ca 1982: I was in the right lane of a four lane divided road in Four Corners MD, a guy in a pickup truck pulled up next to me screaming, "Use the sidewalk!"
ca 1983: I was riding my moped in right lane of the big loop on the VA side of the Key Bridge. A car changed lanes and knocked me over.
ca 1988: On the bike path near the 17th Street Bridge, I was crossing traffic turning onto the bridge from the GW Parkway. Some woman was looking behind, drove through the crossing and broadsided me. I lifted my legs and rolled over her hood, but the bike's wheels were ruined.
The code in my town is no bicycles on sidewalks but that is no problem since almost all roads with lots of traffic have parallell bike lane/roads. Most of the bicycle lanes/roads are walk and bike.
The odd thing is that some are ok for mopeds and other are not. I guess mopeds will be banned in the long run since they get more and more like motorcycles for each year. I also guess we will get some head scratching about light two wheeled EV:s in a few years. And there are at least two segways in town. :-)
I agree with "Cyclists fare best when they ACT and are TREATED as vehicles".
And here are some statistics:
"bike paths" more dangerous
http://www.csua.berkeley.edu/~piaw/accident.txt
anti-car stats:
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/almanac-safety.html
bike lanes:
http://bicycleuniverse.info/transpo/bikelanes.html
Many of the links from the above links support bike lanes (as distinct from separated paths, multi-use paths, ...).
Separated bike lanes may work well in NYC where they would probably be well maintained (kept free of snow, debris, tacks, pot holes repaired), but they are not the answer in every case (as enough of the people did say during the video).
I'm well into my second year as a cyclist - only 4000 miles, but after donating my car, I'm in it for the long haul. I routinely ride with intense traffic. I aim to be visible and conspicuous -- and I often am performing a holy grail of transportation cyclists - left turns in multi-left turn lanes.
I'm getting better at waving (with a smile) at drivers that honk at me (one time the driver had two lanes to pass me, but felt it necessary to honk multiple times).
I too wish for cyclists to get in the road, away from pedestrians (and obstacles like mailboxes, signs, poles,...) ride faster, and at least statistically, safer.
In Portland I've heard it's a ticket offense (never gotten one...) to ride in the downtown area on the sidewalks... but everywhere else... that is, in most of the city.... riding on the sidewalks is legal.
That seems reasonable. If I ride with my kids in the neighborhood we ride on the sidewalks. When I commute to work, I ride in traffic.
But Portland Oregon is a different world maybe...
I'm not going to dive into the bike lanes or no bike lanes morass. Nope, not going there today.
But I will state my opinion that it is our car culture that is the strongest deterrent to the rise of transportation cycling in the US.
So whether we build bike lanes or not, the situation won't change much until we change the culture.
Of course, Peaksters know changing behavior and culture by a different name - Demand Destruction.
Sincerely,
Peter Wang
League of American Bicyclists Cycling Instructor
Petroleum Geophysicist
I guess the question is: how do we change the car culture?
Yes, agree on this, bike lanes don't change anything.
People that take up cycling have to learn how to stare down car drivers. Aggression works when dealing with cars and you should never back down. Aggression is the car culture and you have to deal with it on those terms.
I have seen some hideously placed bike lanes, located in the middle of the street to the left of the drivers. The drivers are not used to the placement and they take out bikers who think they have safety in terms of some painted lines on the street.
So I say stay aggressive and defensive at the same time. I never wear a helmet (unless I am forced to for a road race or triathlon) and I think this helps to show the drivers who is actually the boss of the road.
And if you believe any of this, you are as crazy as I am.
In my home town Linköping with about 130 000 people in the whole municipiality we have about 400 km of bike lanes and I am absolutely sure that it matters to fill in gaps in a bicycle lane network.
The map is unfortunately 5 years old and outdated:
http://www.linkoping.se/Organisation/Namnd/TeknikSamhallsbygg/Samhallsby...
Dotted lines are mixed traffic and small circels are tunnels or bridges for bicyclists. The largest numbers of bikers are students, the second largets are engineers and workers at the Saab plant where the Gripen fighter is made.
The plans for the new railway station that mostly will be built for a new high speed train to Stockholm will probably include about 2000 indoor and 2000 outdoor bicycle parking places.
Next year we will change the bus network into a denser one with slight more frequent busses that probably will look like this: http://www.ostgotatrafiken.se/upload/Bilder/Bilder/72dpi_rgb/Karta%20lin...
If I remember it right it will mostly be 20 min traffic
All in town busses and most taxis run on locally produced biogas: http://www.svenskbiogas.se/sb/english/
But the largest investments before the new railway station will probably be some new car roads to fill in missing links and a new parking house in the central town. We realy need all three networks to work well in parallell to make our town nice to live in and to work well comercially.
The longer range plans also include a possible tram line and the new train station will be built for a 3x increase in collective travel and to accomondate trolley buses and tramlines if such will be built.
Now we only need 10-15 more good years to build all of this. Linköping is slightly ahead of most other Swedish municipialities. The Swedish bid for EU decrease in CO2 emissions were 30% to 2020 wich probably reflects our "no mobilization" ability to economically decrease oil use since export of nuclear electricity etc isent counted in that.
In part by keeping up pressure for things like dedicated separate bike lanes. With enough good examples around, when real demand destruction hits for gasoline, there will be an important part of a solution (silver BB) there that has been well thought out and shown to be workable.
Be patient. It's going to change! Involuntarily. Be there to pick up the pieces.
The take back the street/critical mass rides cause awareness and attract some people to bike activism. However, those groups are often lacking in polish, to put it kindly, or some of the people come across very kooky at times. Someone with some really good marketing skills should come up with some schemes to attract other large market segments to cycling. If the celebrities du jour all loved cycling, there'd be a revolution almost overnight, for example. The freaks who like to cycle are weird/intimidating enough to turn off many people. Just telling it like it is (coming from Vancouver and considered weird and freaky by many myself).
So, maybe invite your local movie stars and celebrities to support the cycle culture. The car culture is *very* easy to slam, but we should go easy on that, as it turns people way, way off. Better for it to be criticized with a more politic tongue. I have a motor vehicle, because I need it in this hick town and for canoeing, but I actually hate the car culture and the way it dominates our landscape and soundscape. I find it extremely oppressive.
"I relax by taking my bicycle apart and putting it back together again."
and
"... I used to tell people that the reason my lips were so big is that I fell off my bicycle facefirst, and they swole up and they never went down. And I so convinced myself that this was true that when I was about twelve my mother had to say, 'No, Michelle. That's not what happened.'"
I agree, Peter. I don't want to wade into the dedicated bike lanes controversy either. I use bike lanes, sidewalks, the road -- whatever's available and looks safest.
For pure pleasure, dedicated bike paths can't be beat. Quiet, safe, non-stressful. No worry about drunk drivers, drivers on cellphones with sun in their eyes, teenagers showing off...
Several of my friends have been seriously injured by drivers who weren't paying attention. As a result, I no longer suggest that people take up bicycling on city streets.
I look forward to the day when streets and highways are closed to cars, and made into gigantic bike paths that take you right where you want to go. Hundreds of bicycles and human-powered vehicles streaming past, quietly, safely, with only an occasional tinkle of a bicycle bell or squeaking of a rusty chain.
Bart
Energy Bulletin
What controversy? You are making stuff up.
The video is quite clear: swap the bike lane with the parking lane - done. I was recently in Barcelona where the traffic is incomprehensibly bad... but biked everywhere due to separated lanes. Same cost and safer, it will just take a while to percolate to all the traffic engineers. This is simply a no-brainer.
Argue all you want about "bike only" roads or riding on sidewalks but that is just FUD and a straw man attack cast toward this quite simple to understand video presentation.
Gary
For an intro to the controversy, see Wiki on:
Segregated cycle facilities
Cycle path debate
Bart
But there are people who call while cycling... despite the fact that it's far more difficult to brake with only one hand on the bars (and I doubt they practice that skill). Of course that only proves that there's some people like that in any large group.
(But there sure are a lot of them around my location... I actually met one guy who was convinced cycles have the right of way over powered vehicles at all times and that traffic signs don't apply to them - he'd just barely escaped a collision after running a stop sign.)
Edited to add:
And that layer of parking in the digram is an important buffer: a co-worker of mine was almost hit in a curb-separated cycle lane (without intermediate parking) by a driver swerving to avoid a pile-up ahead of him.
In 300,000 miles on two wheels I've been injured by motor vehicles twice. First time the driver was drunk and was exiting a blind enter-only alley at speed. I got the ticket (as I'm being loaded into ambulance!) and the drunk got a pass. Second accident I got hit in a separate dedicated bike lane, a one-way bike lane. The post office truck was coming the wrong way down a bike lane and was still parked in that position when the California Highway Patrol arrived. That driver also got a pass. It later turned out that driver was using a fake green card and a fake driver's license. The simplest roadside check could've determined that on the spot.
Police simply hate bicycles. They see us blowing stop signs and otherwise being scofflaws and know they can't spend the time to enforce their standards of proper behavior. When a cyclist is injured they will not blame anyone in a motor vehicle. Make motorists liable for what they do and the streets will get safer.
I can't stand the cyclists that blow through traffic signals. My simple rule is this: when on the street obey vehicular signals. When on sidewalks obey pedestrian signals.
There is no pick and choose, there is no, "Hey, that light is red but I don't see any cars nearby so I'll just blow through it," allowed. If me people rode like this and set a good example I think that law enforcement would adopt a friendlier attitude toward cyclists.
Now that Chicago has real fulltime career bicycle police it's conspicuous that the police blow all the stop signs and most of the stoplights.
I don't blow stoplights, only four way stops when there is not another car there first. It's just too tempting. You have such great visibility and it is so much work to start a bike from a dead stop compared to a slow roll.
300,000 miles? That's pretty good. I thought I was intense but 300K would mean I would have had to ride 27 miles a day for 30 years.
I cheated. I've been a rider 48 years now.
Florida made it a felony to hit a biker. They coupled that with an educational campaign to teach drivers to leave at least 3 feet between them and the biker. Also, if they were passing a biker on a double yellow road they could ease over the line to leave me room. It has made a difference where I bike. I noticed it right away, after the TV news shows had a few blips on the new rules.
Basically, I stay on the sidewalks where I can and am as careful as possible when I need to go on a road. Never ride at night; that is just asking for trouble. No wrecks so far. A car will make you feel like a hockey puck no matter how careful they are.
I commute to work on a bike. Nobody hates me. I'm pretty sure of that.
Here is a column I wrote last year on the same subject: Guess what kind of resopnce I got in small town midwest!?
Columns > Natural patriotism
Consumption lifestyle endangers our country, future
I was coming home from work the other day. It was a beautiful sunny day. I was minding my own business when a large SUV flew by me very close. He honked and yelled, “Get off the #$@%ing road!”
I ride my bicycle to work as often as I can.
I get this a lot. And it’s too bad. As someone who is all about conserving natural resources I feel that I am doing the right thing. The patriotic thing. Yes, I consider myself a patriot.
I am a patriot because I believe in the democratic process. Unlike what is going on in our county today. I am a patriot because I work to protect this process through words and deeds. But the point I’d like to make now is - I’m a patriot because I conserve energy.
Doesn't sound very romantic or heroic, does it? But that’s what I do. You see, that SUV that flew by me was burning away our future. The very act of filling up our cars, heating our homes, even doing the things many of us do at our jobs is supporting the very “petro-authoritarianism” that is at the root and the financial backing of all this hate directed at us.
(“petro-authoritarianism” - Thomas Friedman "Foreign Affairs" columnist for The New York Times)
You want to be a real patriot? I’m talking about doing something for our country. Not armchair quarterbacking an illegal war. Try walking or biking to work. Get a smaller or a hybrid car. Get a smaller house and keep the thermostat set as low as you can stand it in the winter or as high as you can in the summer.
We have a finite supply of non-recoverable energy on this little planet and the people that control most of it are not us. The quicker we learn to power our future with safe, clean, renewable energy the sooner we can live in peace. Yes, really - in peace.
Our gluttonous ways have only fueled (no pun intended) the waves of hatred and terrorism we now face. Policies set in play by our administration for the benefit of the oil and military industries have repressed, choked and all but destroyed any hope of working together with the nations that control most of the oil.
Right now we need to start conserving everywhere in our lives. We have to reduce our consumption-period. That includes unnecessary highway projects, another plastic toy, driving land yachts, etc... Mostly we need a government that can not only see this future, but actually spend as much time working on a solution as they do lining their campaign contributor’s pockets with no-bid contracts.
We have to start investing individually, corporately, and mostly civically in alternative (non-nuclear) renewable energy, like solar and wind, to fuel our tomorrow. I do. The value of my IRA has almost tripled in the last year. I only invested in alternative energy companies. Not bad for a tree hugger?
Becoming an energy independent America will take an effort like we’ve never seen or done before. It could take 30-40 years. It could be too late already! But it’s the most patriotic thing we can do!
So, the next time you see someone on a bicycle don’t get mad and yell at them. Slow down, move over and think hard about the patriotic gesture that they are making. Or better yet, join them.
Shoot, I was hoping you'd enlighten us about the response you got...didn't want to just leave it up to my sordid imagination.
one of my favs...
"And I'll tell ya one thing, if he gets in my way on his pansy bicycle, he'll get an earful from me too. Mr. Cocchiarella is no patriot. He's a pathetic excuse for an opinion columnist. Do us all a favor Nino, move to San Francisco or somewhere like that so you can maybe be able to live happily in your made up utopia."