Re:Cambridge's Ambitious Protected Bike Lane Law
by Fricken on Thursday April 11, 2019 @03:37PM
(#19638336)
My city has been doing half-ass cycling infrastructure implementations going back to the late 70s. Which each different era there were different designs and concepts. The network is patchwork and lanes stop and start arbitrarily. Intersections are more hazardous because drivers don't know what to expect. Road construction when bike lanes seems to get more hazardous. Often it's not clear what rules you should be obeying, like it's not clear if you should be acting like a pedestrian, a bicycle, or if you're vehicular traffic.
Our city implemented a pretty solid network of dedicated lanes downtown a couple years ago, much to the chagrin of angry drivers and the main benefit isn't the real estate that was given to cyclists so much as it is the real estate that was taken from cars. There's just less traffic, drivers are more attentive because they have more hazards to deal with, and they're moving slower. The traffic calming effect is, for me, the main benefit to having dedicated bike lanes.
It all boils down to the parts where these lanes intersect with car traffic. There is no use in adding a few lanes here and there, you need to have a concept and micromanage every intersection between cars and cyclists to get something that really pays off. Often this is prevented by the unwillingness of motorists to loose space to park or drive on and this results in pseudo-solutions that are more dangerous than having all cyclists using the middle of the road.