I've also biked on streets that became "super sharrow" streets: one lane striped with a giant green stripe that supposedly provides a big visual indicator that a bike can use the full lane. This was terrible.
> We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting money into this garbage is a mistake.
What bike infrastructure would you like to see, if not bike lanes?
That sounds pretty great. Unfortunately in my area the bike lanes are straight into the door zone (see for example https://goo.gl/maps/nMnKZEVZduEfkups8) and this seems to be the general design for bike lanes in the South Bay.
In fact, the city of Sunnyvale's own bike map [0] says to avoid the four feet door zone, yet the bike lane is less than 4 feet wide and straight in the door zone.
It's frustrating. You'd think they'd favor the safety of the unprotected squishy humans over the ones in two ton metal boxes, but it seems like the opposite most of the time.
[0] https://sunnyvale.ca.gov/civicax/filebank/blobdload.aspx?Blo...
In my experience, the more in the way of cars you are as a cyclist the safer you are. You still need to have clear markings, but you should always be in sight of drivers IMO, as an active participant in traffic.
- Gives cyclist false sense of security, since they need to yield to vehicles turning across "their lane"
- Little notice given to drivers that they need to take care, since they have right of way
- Cyclists have to stop at every side road, which can make taking the bike path as slow as walking
Experience cyclists won't use them and novice cyclists are given an unsafe and slow route; they will drive instead. What a waste of public funds.
A better solution, as seen in NL and some parts of London, is to make the motorist give way or even remove the vehicle entrance entirely. The transport mix you get is the transport mix you build for.
I definitely agree with you that people on bikes should be in the way of cars because that's what gives them the most visibility, but I'd disagree with the marking parts. See the commute post I have a little bit below, the only markings on that commute on streets are a few sharrows, no bike lanes at all.
What needs to happen is for bikes to be perceived as slow moving vehicles, not unlike tractors in rural areas. People overtake the tractors as soon as it's safe to do so and don't honk at them. That happens as soon as there is enough of a critical mass of people on bikes on streets.
Junctions are where drivers tend to kill cyclists, so junction improvements are far more effective than anything along the "normal" road. Bike boxes and, ideally, dedicated light phases for bikes help far more than lanes.
We have that in SF and in the year before COVID I basically spent every morning commute berating at least one person that tried to cross in front of me on a bike-only light. It's really hard for Americans to give up the right-turn-on-red.
In NYC they just hand out tickets like candy to people who don't know that right-turn-on-red is illegal through essentially the whole city. In 2019 though I didn't see any enforcement at all of bike-protection lights and lanes.
Actually, let me show you my commute when I was a student several years ago. This is in North America.
1. Walk to the local park (https://goo.gl/maps/CdCinYAp24MgCBBm7)
2. Grab a bicycle from the local bike sharing system (https://goo.gl/maps/46vzmXzx5CPSPFRE9)
3. Bike a minute to the bike path (https://goo.gl/maps/gpkXGcXxMHYH4epn7)
4. Hop on a bike path, wave to the other cyclists (https://goo.gl/maps/JiRSC6yhwqanRn1K7)
5. Bike some more (https://goo.gl/maps/jvSoQQ2rmB1F2NNo8)
6. And then some more (https://goo.gl/maps/u2WyLVGvJBfNL5718)
7. And then even more (https://goo.gl/maps/LcxSoUZ9BzgsovU97)
8. Exit the bike path (https://goo.gl/maps/AyqzZUuo89osSEPf6)
9. Bike on surface streets, sharing the street (https://goo.gl/maps/NNyhCU9gZEXVxk5D8)
10. Arrive at destination, drop off bike at the bike sharing system dock (https://goo.gl/maps/qCy5GESLL4AxHuL99)
That's an example of good bike infrastructure. For the parts where bikes interact with cars on low speed streets, the streets are either narrow so that cars drive slowly, or there is another lane for cars to pass bikes easily.
Note the lack of painted lanes; bikes and cars share the street, and cars pass bikes whenever it's safe to do so. Also note that in most of these street views perspectives, you can pan the camera and see other people biking.
I don't think there's really a solution to the turning problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every intersection for cars/bikes. I'm hopeful that newer cars' safety features help to fight this back (I would also like people to, yknow, pay attention when driving).
My principle (especially after getting a drivers license and realizing how little visibility one actually has while driving) is to not listen to music (so I can actually hear cars etc) and to basically slow down at every interesection that has even a bit of doubt. It's annoying but at least I'm not rolling the dice on every intersection (or at least not as much)
Personally I’d argue that it’s extremely odd that we dedicate so much public space for people to leave their private property laying around.
And like for deliveries... what do you want people to do? Not stop in front of the place they are delivering?
If there's an argument for it being a public space, it's also a public space for things like deliveries, dropping people off, etc. "People should be more careful" is a glib thing to say for this stuff, and I think we should make improvements to things, but if we're talking about public space, cyclists are _also_ not the only thing on the road and accomodations can be made for stuff like delivery
When you make a delivery, do you just stop dead in the middle of the lane you were driving on?
If yes, please proceed.
If not, why not? Don't you want to stop in front of the place you are delivering to? Why do you think that it is ok to completely block bicycle lane for the same purpose, but it's not ok to block a car lane? For an extra point, assume the car lane is a single-lane one-way road, and the delivery takes 5 minutes.
So, yes, you stop "in the car lane" and it affects people.
There are also times where you change lanes because of obstructions. Just like intersections, stop lights, so many things that prevent the "just speed right ahead without any concern in the world" use case.
There are safety reasons for isolating bike/pedestrian traffic. But acting like it's uniquely unfair to bikes to have any form of obstruction... this is what roads are. Shared area for movement.
And while I do agree that it isn't uniquely unfair for bicycles, it seemes that when there is no isolation between a car lane and a bicycle lane, during the busy hours there is a random car, van, taxi parked every 30-50 meters. (Well, used to be, 2 years ago)
Where do you live where the parallel parking spots in front of businesses are always open? Where I’ve lived things like UPS will just stop in the road if necessary, and other cars will go around.
Deliveries in areas without lots of parallel parking is a solved problem; we don’t need to pretend like reducing or eliminating street level parking will have unknown impacts on things like delivery vehicles.
It establishes the wrong principle - it makes drivers feel entitled to exclude cyclists from the main road lanes. A bike lane that isn't wide enough, isn't adequately maintained (sweeping, filling potholes...), leads to blind corners, or just dumps you out into the main lanes at junctions, is worse than useless - it actively makes cycling more dangerous, because drivers feel no need to share the main road lanes.
> I don't think there's really a solution to the turning problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every intersection for cars/bikes.
The solution is to have bikes be part of the main traffic stream at that point. If you have a bike box at the front of the queueing area, and ideally a bike phase on the lights, that can help a lot.
In the Netherlands, for example (well, much of the Netherlands, I haven't been everywhere), the bikes are on the bike lanes, the cars are on the car lanes, and that's that. You have no motivation to go on the car lanes (except on small alleys with no lanes), since the bike lanes just get you wherever you want to go.
These are some of the fist ones through the CBD - https://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/traffic-and-transport/roads-... - As part of this they closed a major bridge in the middle of the city (Victoria Bridge over to South Bank) to road traffic. Before it was two bus-only lanes and two car lanes, but now it's three bus lanes and a separated bikeway.
They're also building four bridges over the river dedicated to cycle and pedestrian to link up different bike routes, and the State Government has been doing some good work with their 'Veloway' next to the M3 highway. A lot of intersection and road upgrades (and new roads) are starting to add separated bike paths too, like the overhauled Kingsford Smith Drive that finished recently.
I'd be especially curious to know what the good alternatives are.
IIRC physical dividers like reflector poles actually do make bike lanes safer, and sharrows are mixed on whether or not they make lanes more effective.
Open Streets: https://openstreetsproject.org/
From my experience (in the UK) how usable those lanes are depends hugely on pedestrian discipline. There's one of those running alongside the seafront in Brighton that in my experience works well. The same style of lane that I've seen in and around London generally doesn't work as well: there are often pedestrians on the wrong side, not infrequently looking into their phones and/or wearing headphones.
What makes matters worse is that in the UK the rules are asymmetric: while it's an offence for a cyclists to go on the pedestrian side, there are no rules preventing pedestrians from walking on the cycle path (source: [1]).
Not to mention that, in my jurisdiction, if this sort of behaviour led to injury or damage to property, the cyclist would almost certainly be found to be at fault, at least partially.
Except now every street crossing becomes a death trap because you're outside the cone of visual awareness of drivers.
Traffic travels too fast in the US, and I do not want to share roads with cars going 40+ mph
Bikelanes also are mostly just there (in practice) for rideshare services and delivery services to drop off goods. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, given the problems with right turns and doorings mentioned earlier. It is problematic in name however, but because new cyclists treat them as actual bike lanes and are just gambling with the probability of eventionally getting hit.
We should have more bike infrastructure, but putting money into this garbage is a mistake.