Bike lanes are not good enough

Go to www.rethinkingstreets.com/ to get the design guides! You'll have to click through to another site to download, but it's worth the effort, I promise!

"the US isn't Europe" - another argument is that both Copenhagen and Amsterdam were super car centric 40-50 years ago.

There are some great isolated bike infrastructure in lots of US cities. What we really need is COMPREHENSIVE network planning for entire cities. I've seen too many examples of an ideal corridor ending abruptly and becoming cycling hell immediately. This is almost worse than no infrastructure because it takes away road space from drivers - creating resentment - while not providing enough benefit to attract cyclists. Less than ideal bike lanes rigorously planned for continuous navigation are better than localized 'perfect' infrastructure.

downlaods pdfs, turns on cities skylines, HEAVY BREATHING

Another argument against the "bikes won't work in the US" and "our cities aren't made for this" is: The Dutch cycling infrastructure hasn't been around for as long as bikes have, our cycling infrastructure projects started in the 70s, and by the 80s-90s bikes were as big a part of dutch culture as our tulips and windmills.

Advisory bike lanes (ABL)? In Belgium the term for those advisory bike lanes "Moordstrookje" has been voted word of the year 2018. A literal translation is "murder strip". In Germany we have tons of those. An official name for them is "Schutzstreifen" (literal: protection strip) but cycling activists call them "Schmutzstreifen" (dirt strip) or "Scherzstreifen" (joke strip). What is wrong about them is that they indicate "this is where bikes should be" and "the rest is car space". Two things happen as a consequence: Firstly, whenever someone rides outside of this ABL, motorists view them even more as obstacles because they assume that the cyclists belong in their strip. So if you want to turn left or overtake another cyclist and move out the ABL for that you are honked at, cut off, yelled at, and endagered even more by motorists than on regular streets without ABL. Secondly, motorists assume that so long as they drive outside the ABL they can overtake cyclists that are in the ABL. Since there is no buffer zone between ABL and "car space", this leads to dangerous close passes at high speeds. ABLs only are safe in a world where streets without any biking infrastructure are safe too: A world where drivers accept cyclists as viable part of traffic and as human beings that must not be endangered. In the world we have though none of that is the case and therefore ABLs are what Belgians call them: murder strips. ABLs are what lazy traffic planners do, when there is not abundant space and they are too big of a coward to take some space from cars or they want to brag about how many km or miles of cycling infrastructure they have created but at the same time are not given any money by politicians. Paint is cheaper than actual traffic construction. But PAINT IS NOT INFRASTRUCTURE. So please stop telling people that advisory bike lanes are good. They are simply dangerous, lazy pieces of pseudo-infrastructure.

I had the unique opportunity to talk to a city planner while on a long distance ride in 2012. He was from my city, he told me after asking me where I was coming from/going. He mentioned all the great projects the city had undertaken to increase cycling safety. At the time they had lanes that would start on the road then combine with the sidewalk and vice versa. They weren't separated from traffic very well either. He asked me what I thought of them and I told him it was better than nothing, but was frank that the city could do much better. Fast forward some years and the city has started putting in separated lanes and making a real effort towards cycling. Wish I could meet that guy again and thank him.

Jay Foreman made a good argument about special bike lanes in London. Copenhagen and Amsterdam don't have a bunch of crazy bike people. They just have special and segmented bike lanes. Edit: Even though London is a dense city, not too many people bike because, just like here, they don't want to bike next to cars. London doesn't have those special bike lanes.

Cycling improves personal health. It's like an investment into the healthcare. More cycling infrastructure will reduce the cost of healthcare in US ! The cycling roads also need less maintenance, because they do not suffer as much wear as the road under the car. It's like saving public money, while having a bit more options for trips available.

"There's no reason to treat bikes and scooters any worse than we treat cars." Exactly! There's a pervasive notion that cars have a monopoly on the use of roads and the rest of should just grateful for any space they allow us to have. It's almost a "might makes right" type of idea, and it seems to be the philosophy behind a lot of bad street planning. Fresno recently built a Bus Rapid Transit system and extended the curbs at bus stops so that the bus blocks a lane of traffic and reduces loading times. Many locals are indignant over the idea that the city would do anything that makes driving even slightly less convenient (like having to briefly move over one lane to get around a bus), despite the fact that most cars only have one person in them and most buses have many more than that. It's often just treated as a self-evident truth that the convenience of somebody in a car ought to take precedence over the convenience of bicyclists, pedestrians, scooter riders, and public transit users.

I live in a medium sized town in in West Texas and have bike commuted for a year and a half. I still get a lot of warnings from coworkers that I should drive a car because a bicycle isn't safe. I disagree. Commuting to work is win win for me. I can't understand why the people I work with can't see that.

I guess I am privaliged as someone living in the netherlands.

I think the whole "America loves their cars too much" argument is a bad one. There are loads of people out there who want not just bike lanes, but increased public transit also. They just are not vocal. We tend to have 2 major misconceptions that alter how we build. The first is that need should lead to construction instead of the "if you build it, they will come" thought. Just because no one is actively campaigning for things doesn't mean there isn't a want. We feel like we should build only after the need is shown. This video does a good job showing how a proactive approach is best. Just because no one is riding bikes on the road doesn't mean people wouldn't, it just means that people aren't comfortable riding their bike on that specific road making them choose another option. The second is more about transit. We have this view that a transportation system should make money. Why? It's job is to move people from one place to another, just like roads. But, we don't expect a road to be "profitable". How many roads out there are toll roads; that is truly the only way a road can make money. We should view these things as infrastructure instead of a company that needs to break even.

A sure way to get bikes to work, is to mix residential and commercial properties together. It's not the only way, but it sure makes it work 100% of the time. Build shops and restaurants on ground level, adjecent to the street with apartments on top of them. People can go out grocery shopping every day and it only takes a minute or two to get to a store and pick up what you need. No hour long drive once or twice a week. If you need to get to the other side of town, just take the bike or public transport and you're there in no time! If you make sure people have to drive a long way between services and their homes, you will never have people biking everywhere. It makes no sense to do so then. That's why Americans think biking doesn't work, they're used to everything being so far away. But that's only by design and doesn't have to be like that. In fact, it's only the US and Canada that do it like that to their extremes

As a Copenhagener I definitely approve of the sidewalk level bikelane. They're shielded from traffic that way, not to mention if a cyclist was ts to stop at a store they find interesting, they won't have some crazy bump to get over. This could even work when the bike lane is right next to the cars as there's still the elevation buffer. Here in Copenhagen most street has a middle ground with bike lanes elevated one bit (about 10-15cm) above the road and the sidewalk elevated another bit so that everyone feels safe while not compromising convenience

But also, make sure bike lanes are FUNCTIONAL and lead somewhere. Too often here in the USA I feel biking is considered recreational only. In my town they just added a new transit station (woohoo!), with bike parking (woohoo!), but with bike lanes leading out into large express-ways, where there are abandoned (boo!). We have to be serious about biking and actually make them usable - not just an afterthought to car-centric projects.

We need to copy the Dutch bike solution to traffic control. We need to make it safer for children and seniors.

Cycling is the future of cities and we need to get ready for it. Especially during the current pandemic there is a perfect opportunity to reevaluate the distribution of space in our streets and build Bike-lanes and better intersections more easily. Talking about health, going by bike is also the healthiest form of getting around (that is, if you are not hit by a car due to bad eg car oriented traffic planning).

I love bikes. I lived in the Netherlands. When I came back to the USA I tried to ride my bike and almost got hit twice in one commute. There are no bike lanes in my town.

2:05 “[bikes] also don’t take up a lot of space, which literally makes them a good fit for dense urban spaces.” OMG, someone who correctly uses the word “literally”, thank you!