The reason why roads were taken back by Dutch cyclists and pedestrians is that they never stopped doing it. At some dark moment in the 1970s the number of children run over by cars was too much for society to ignore. It was a battle won by blood.

But that's only part of the problem, the amount of entitled, and selfish drivers that ignore traffic rules, lights and sometimes even roads is crazy.

For the record, I am a cyclist. I would love to use it more. But the roads are too dangerous, and town hall meetings are always full of the same two sides talking past each other. It's a perception issue, but hardcore cyclists refuse to acknowledge it. So the situation continues to not improve.

No doubt, there are ruthless cyclists as well. Still, are you aware of the difference in numbers and quality of "car driver killed cyclist" vs. "cyclist hurt pedestrian"?

So you say, it is ok, that there are some asshole drivers but roads still needs to be build and maintained, but not OK, that there are some asshole cyclists and therefore no cyclist deserves more bikelanes? (Or do you want me to dig up numbers on how much is spend yearly on roads vs bikelanes?)

But for real? Arguments for support of cycling by allowing them to do so safe?

How about cycling is way more energy efficient. Does not poison the surrounding with toxic fumes and noise. Increases the health - studies showed it does so even despite the toxic fumes of their fellow car drivers who often overlook and directly kill or criple them and now want more arguments of why the tax dollar is not only for them?

This is the current battle in Toronto, Canada.

Last year, there were more people killed by cars than gun violence, but you wouldn't know it by the media coverage.

The city, largely due to strong local advocacy, has started to respond with physically separated lanes, but we're talking double digit KM/year, if we're lucky, when we need 100s of KM to link the city together like this Milan proposal.

Yeah, it doesn't help that the media used to almost exclusively refers to car crashes as "accidents", falsely implying there was nothing that could have been done to avoid the situation, putting zero fault on any drivers involved. At least nowadays you see headlines about "car crashes", although you'll still find ledes like "person struck by dies of complications". No need for passive voice, a driver struck and killed that person.

..and on that note, they are doing much of the same with gun violence, too. "A 14-year-old girl has died after she was struck by a stray bullet shot by police while in a North Hollywood department store. [0]" Passive voice, putting the intent on the bullet, not directly saying the girl was shot to death. To read that quote, you'd think the bullet took it upon itself to strike the girl, who died of her own volition.

0 - https://people.com/crime/14-year-old-girl-killed-by-stray-bu...

DOTs around the US measure vehicle traffic regularly, but very few measure any kind of other traffic, so they don't even know how many travelers are on roads that are not in a car.

Same thing in the Greater Seattle Anarchist metro area, but we don't get screaming Nextdoor or city subreddit posts every time there's a fatal automotive crash.

[1] https://imgur.com/aEwTSm0

[2] https://imgur.com/4Lreaar

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roundabout#Turbo_roundaboutsle... turbo-roundabouts.

I realised it minutes after posting it when I noticed the driving was on the left (as opposed to right in NL) :-). The architecture is very close to those in the NL though which fooled my lazy eyes. Pedestrian islands, enabling free movement of cyclists with clear markings etc.,

The usual cooperative approach of "I have right of way, I can help my peer by accelerating a bit so they don't have to wait so long" seems to only work with participants in roughly the same weight class.

Recently, local governments are moving away from the real small roundabouts like this one because in the dark, when it is raining, with cyclists who are without lights, these are still somewhat unsafe: https://www.telegraaf.nl/images/1540x866/filters:format(jpeg...

These are much more modern, and car drivers can more easily see cyclists and mopeds come: https://www.denhaag.nl/upload/0690e94f-f7ac-43a3-8c1e-4fb768...

Oh, and yes, car drivers can sometimes be aggressive. The same counts for cyclists though. I guess both kinds of people are just like normal people. And by the way, a lot of people are one day car drivers, the next day cyclist, there is a lot of sympathy.

(yes, the answer will be "but children!", but I'm a believer in "treat cyclists like children and only children will ride bikes!" and I'd be a firm believer if the Netherlands didn't have this annoying habit of proving me wrong ;))

With a segregated bike lane the driver turbing right has the bike lane in front of them.

I suppose there's a better way. However, as a society, Dutch have decided to go whole nine yards to being a cycling friendly nation. And it shows and has its benefits.

Good news about Milan, though. That'll be such an improvement.

For example pedestrian bulb outs and daylighting reducing on-street parking while making pedestrians more visible. Bike lanes remove travel lanes or parking, making traffic slower. Lower speed limits make crashes more survivable, but slow down traffic. When used for safety (and not cash) speed and red light cameras increase safety, but make driving costlier.

I’m talking about policy changes that require a massive change in daily life. Wearing masks. Street redesigns that reduce parking or slow down cars. European-style gas taxes.

That being said, painted lines, in reality, do positively affect safety, both perceived (at least by me) and in accident statistics. Rethinking our cities towards multi-modal transportation will take time.

I believe maximalist positions ("only physically separated bike lanes are acceptable!" probably don't lead to better results, faster.

If they aren't there I feel like I get treated with more patience when I ride in my normal road position, about 75 cm from the kerb.

Obviously separated paths are the safest, although unfortunately in the US they often aren't maintained as well as the road surface, so for long trips it's usually more comfortable to cycle on the road anyway.

But when it comes to painted lines, the situation is a bit hazier. You're right that drivers tend to be ruder and more obnoxious when you - as a cyclist - leave the painted cycle path for some legitimate reason, like to avoid an obstacle or poor road surface... On the other hand, at least drivers who drive in places with painted cycle paths know how to share the road, even if they resent doing it.

For example, I can't count the number of times in the US where I cycled straight ahead in the straight ahead lane after the shoulder abruptly turned into a "right turn only" lane, only to have ignorant drivers beep and hurl abuse at me for doing what I was supposed to be doing. In areas with painted cycle lanes, the drivers understand that in this situation they are supposed to watch for cyclists, give way and then cross into the "right turn only" lane on the cyclists' right, instead of fuming and raging because a cyclist dared to follow the signage.

In places where drivers tend to be more educated about how to share the road, it might be the case that painted lines are more trouble than they're worth, but in the US I think it's still useful as a way to teach drivers how to handle having cyclists on the road.

While this works to some extent when a right turn only lane is present, this actually sets the cyclist up for a right hook when the right most travel lane can be used to proceed straight through the intersection or turn right. In that case, the bike lane is still painted to the right and leads to the situation where a motorist making a right turn is to the left of cyclist traffic going straight through the intersection.

> [I]n the US I think [that painted lines are] still useful as a way to teach drivers how to handle having cyclists on the road.

The problem in the US is that they paint lines in such a way that there's insufficient lateral space between the cyclist and motor vehicles. Most US states have passed laws requiring motorists to leave at least 3 feet between their vehicle and a cyclist.

In the case where a general purpose lane is 10 feet wide and the adjacent bike lane is 4 feet wide, you end up with a siutation where it's not possible to leave 3 feet of distance between the motor vehicle an and the cyclist. A typical larger vehicle is about 7.5 feet wide from mirror to mirror. Centered in a 10 foot wide lane, they have 1.25 feet on each side.

A cyclist is about 2.5 feet wide. 2.5 feet centered in a 4 foot wide bike lane leaves 0.75 feet on each side.

0.75 feet and 1.25 feet add up to 2 feet, which means that the distance with both the motorist and cyclist centered in the lane they're in is not sufficient. This doesn't account for moving side to side within the lane for either the motorist or cyclist.

I found there were quite a few stretches of road in Florida, for example, where there were 3 or 4 lanes of high speed traffic going parallel to a painted cycle path in the shoulder. It wasn't the most relaxing place to ride, but it still felt safer than going down some of the highways and arterial roads in other states where there were few (if any) cycle paths, simply because the drivers had more visual aids (signage plus lines) to tell them what to do when they saw a cyclist. I felt more confident cycling even in other parts of Florida without the cycle lanes because despite the drivers being fairly inconsiderate, at least they didn't visibly panic when they saw me there.

It is important to compare like with like, though. A "cycle path" which is just a bit of different-colored paint in the gutter of an existing traffic lane is pretty much useless. But if the painted cycle path is explicitly painted in what would otherwise be a full-width shoulder, I agree with other commenters here that it allows more flexibility to the cyclist than a separated lane (e.g. in turning left without needing to do a pedestrian-style hook turn) and it has the side effect of teaching drivers how to more carefully consider other traffic.

I really think a lot comes down to driver education. For example in areas where there is frequently slow farm equipment or horse and buggies on the main road, drivers have learned how to share the road, so it feels safe to cycle when there is no cycle path or even no shoulder at all. Unfortunately my experience in a lot of the US is that most drivers don't know how to deal with cyclists, so they'll ignorantly tailgate, cut you off or abuse you just for following the road rules. I'm not sure if that results in more casualties, but it certainly makes the experience of cycling more fraught, which means less people will want to cycle, so there is a vicious circle of increasing driver ignorance. I think painted lines at least provide some antidote to that.

You're not including mirrors in the width of the vehicle. Typical exterior mirrors on passenger vehicles extend out about 6 inches from the body, so that adds a foot to the vehicle's width. My VW Golf Sportwagen is about 7 feet wide mirror to mirror. My Honda Odyssey is about 7.5 feet wide mirror to mirror. I've measured both vehicles by dropping a string from the edge of the mirror housing down to the ground, and marking it on both sides and measuring the distance between the marks. Take a look at the interactive graphic towards the bottom of the page by Cycling Savvy[1]

Commercial vehicles like tractor trailers and buses are 8.5 feet wide at the body. Their mirrors extend out further, meaning that they're close to 10.5 feet wide mirror to mirror.

[1] https://cyclingsavvy.org/lane-width-space/

My complaint is the feeling of being forced to use them when they are the dirtiest and most dangerous part of the road. They are just dashed white lines that were designed by someone who drove down the street in a Transit van once.

Since I've been moved to WFH I exclusively cycle on country roads, I feel like if we had more segregated bike paths in the city I wouldn't mind being stuck behind people, I feel like commuting or cycling into town is a different thing from cycling for exercise or as a sport.

I live in a country where cycling as a mode of transport is basically non-existent, 95% of the people I see on bikes are on road bikes and wearing lycra, so it's possible I'd feel differently about segregated lanes if there more of a cycling-as-transport culture here.

Yes sure this is an enforcement issue I guess. Why not just build a physical barrier that doesn't require enforcement though.

The rationale behind riding closer to the edge of the roadway is that drivers of motor vehicles have more room to overtake. But would a motor vehicle be able to fit between you and another motor vehicle in an adjacent lane when overtaking while leaving sufficient distance between their vehicle and the cyclist?

I would posit that's not possible, meaning that there is no benefit derived from riding closer to the edge of the road. I would also assert that it's actually more dangerous compared to just riding in the center of the general purpose traffic lane.

When you overtake a cyclist driving in the middle of the road, you have a longer time on the other side of the road while overtaking, than if the cyclist drives on the right. So that can mean, a driver will sometimes do a more dangerous overtaking and then in fact, endanger you, when he quickly has to change lanes again to abort the overtaking.

The amount of time needed to move completely to the opposite side of the road as opposed to straddling the center line time 2 is not significant. The amount of time to actually overtake the cyclist easily exceeds that by a factor of 10 or more. In other words, there really isn't any signficant difference in terms of the time required to complete an overtake.

I've just been to Montreal, and with temperatures well below freezing and lots of recent snowfall, the segregated bike lanes were completely clear of snow. Every day. In the places I've been around town, I am not sure I've ever come across any significant debris, in any season.

This is in stark contrast with many (especially older) bike lanes in the UK, which are basically unrideable in any season as they're covered in drain covers, potholes and debris.

I think the difference here is not so much the difficultly of cleaning as the commitment to doing it.

Could you cite any studies to that effect? Some studies suggest painted cycle lanes are actively dangerous:

https://findingspress.org/article/18226-cycling-injury-risk-...

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S00014...

But a not-bad lane implementation (either enough room for well-sized lanes for both cars and bikes or making the remaining car lane clearly too narrow for double file), yeah, I'd take it over fully separated any single time. Much better coordination with right turning traffic (occasionally, when speed happens to match, I even merge through the right turn lane so they don't have to give me right of way, clear win-win), much safer access to left turn lanes if you need it, much easier merging into traffic when the bike infrastructure is blocked (plenty of occasions, both sides of legality) and in general sooo much less interaction with stray dogs, children, cyclists who ride against traffic because in their mind they are a pedestrian with wheels instead of a very light vehicle, pedestrians who walk there because in their mind they are cyclists (yeah, that has happened to me, I admit) and so on. I love painted lanes! Just please avoid those horrible mistakes that you have to avoid while setting them up when you set them up.

See for example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_the_Netherlands#/me...

The decision of just painting over curbs for cost is the main infrastructure mistake and 'false saving' in a lot of European cities outside NL.

The current standard technically doesn't allow for bicycle gutters: Traffic should be either fully mixed on low speed, low volume streets or fully separated. Though bicycle gutters do still get made (space being the primary excuse), from what I've seen it's primarily old roads that have yet to be renewed since the standards changed.

https://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2020/08/12/cycle-lanes-in...

Furthermore, the legal management of cycle lanes is a lot harsher in the netherlands: drivers are not allowed to drive, park, or stop in cycle lanes. Cycle lanes with solid lines can not be encroached on at all, while cycle lanes with dashed lines may be crossed or used to pass an obstacles.

These decisions aren't made by highway engineers, they are made by politicians.

The highway engineer puts a proper bikelane, makes the highway wider, and tells the politician that its going to cost 100 million dollars to do a couple of kms.

The politician says that there is no money for that, at most 10 million, and that they "promised it", and suggests whether one can't paint a line or something for cheap instead. Otherwise, the engineer is fired.

So the cousin of the politician ends up being paid 10 million $ for painting a shitty 1000$ line that serves no purpose.

There is a systemic difference between the UK and the Netherlands.

Suggesting that the UK doesn't have good bike lanes cause Netherlands has better highway engineers is as accurate as suggesting that the UK did Brexit cause their highway engineers are bad.

The highway engineers were generally trained in the 80s or thereabouts to value vehicle throughput and continuous speed as their principal outputs. So they continue to build junctions with massive corner radiuses, shared-use pedestrian/cycle paths to maximise the space available for cars, priority for turning cars at side-road crossings, and so on.

Here in Oxfordshire you could describe the situation as "officer capture" - the officers continue to design dreck, and the elected politicians aren't (yet) strong enough to reject it.

They are made by the public. We need to persaude other citizens, not rely on (and blame) some higher power.

Yikes! That's criminal. You can get an excellent bikelane with a few bollards and a paint can. I would say that's a failure of the engineering profession.

If you leave the 2 car lanes, and make them smaller to fit to one bike lane per car lane, such that cars barely fit, and such that cars can't leave a proper distance when overtaking bikes, you end up with the crappy unsafe solution that the OP is complaining about.

You annoy car drivers, and you give bike riders the impression that cycling is unsafe, so this is actually counter productive.

I moved from Oxford to the Netherlands a couple years ago and let me tell you: cycling here is a bliss.

It's of very inconsistent quality, besides workarounds that are tolerable given circumstance, like that the path cuts off at one point and resumes on the other lane in the street, the abundance of bike lanes that lack any separation at all from the main street makes it so morons use it as a place to stop their cars or trucks, and then you have to make dangerous maneuvers to get around them, or stop and hope some car gives you right of way when the street is busy.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FHZG-kPX0AQs4wf?format=jpg&name=...

The problem is car dominance. 20mph speed limits are flagrantly ignored everywhere, even right next to schools etc. Most drivers have zero experience on the road except for in a car. Cars are getting bigger and bigger and more and more powerful. Streets are lined with cars. Pavements are filled with cars. It's cars everywhere. We've a long way to go before even stopping the tide, let alone turning it around.

Even when Netherlands style infrastructure is introduced in the UK it's a laughable failure. It ends up making things worse. See the Dutch style roundabout in Cambridge, for example. It turns out you can't change people's behaviour by painting a few lines on the road.

It was built in Spring/Summer 2020. You may start from 1:00 if you're in hurry, you'll get the idea. They moved the parking area towards the center to make way for a protected bike path. The road is narrower for cars but it was stop and go anyway (mostly stop).

Further North, on the way out from the city, they didn't move the parking area. They painted a line between the cars and the parking area.

Jason of the Not Just Bikes YT channel calls these bicycle gutters:

* https://twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1431260478303518724

However, what they are currently trying to do by keeping the level of motor traffic and simply slotting in lanes for cycles where there is space clearly doesn't work.

I think a few places like Bristol have been a bit more forceful but they are large enough to have alternate routes for motor traffic.

What does “completely screwed” mean? And is anyone really proposing something that will “completely screw” drivers, or is that more fear speaking than reality?

The existing system of prioritizing cars was never built on fairness for all, and hasn’t been fair to cyclists and pedestrians, nor even really to people who can’t realistically use private transport. It has to be okay for the most privileged among us to experience some changes in their road usage, if we’re to improve the situation for all.

What kind of people can't use public transport but can drive a private car?

That said, haven't seen them actually used yet. Pass a lot more cyclists that choose the road, still.

https://activetravel.tfgm.com/bee-network-vision/

I have seen too many cyclists hit and bloodied up by automobiles that I would never think twice about cycling on the road in my area, either.

It's just not safe.

The Quickways proposals are focused on East Oxford where there is enough space. Broadly speaking, all of the East Oxford arterials have enough space for a segregated track on at least one side, usually both. It's only the immediate vicinity of the Plain where they're very narrow. But you could get two protected tracks along the Cowley Road as far as Marsh Road, assuming you reworked the road furniture and parking spaces; one protected track along the Iffley Road from the Plain to somewhere round Magdalen Road, and two from there on; two along most of Headington/London Road, Marston Road, and so on.

You can expand this out to so many other areas, like building code too. It's enormously frustrating that everyone thinks they're a unique snowflake, they cannot learn from other jurisdictions and they must re-invent the wheel.

There are so many issues that so many cities are facing that are solved problems in other places.

On some on way side streets they have this weird system where the bike lane and takes up half the road and shares it with parked cars

The British version is about half as wide, and often allows parking for large parts of the day (i.e. is only a lane for a couple of hours).

I've never been to Oxford, but someone mentioned Abingdon Road [1]. Just some bike symbols painted on the road.

Or a little further up [2] -- that thing on the left is a British cycle lane. If you go forward 3 clicks, you can see it ends almost immediately.

You obviously wouldn't take small kids through crap like this: [3]. Unbelievably, this is "National Cycle Route 57" (the StreetView car is pointed the wrong way to see it, but if you search you can find the tiny blue "57" sign at the roundabout.)

Other than the bridges, the only part of Central Copenhagen with painted lanes I can think of is Bernstorffsgade [4].

I'm not really sure where you're thinking of for "lots" of bike paths. A little further out [5] is this, where at least the lanes go behind the parked cars, and are wider. https://osm.org/go/0NWvDIpQ-?layers=C shows solid lines for painted lanes, and there aren't many.

[1] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7378951,-1.2521828,3a,70.1y,...

[2] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7471822,-1.2563676,3a,75y,18...

[3] https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7504861,-1.2448391,3a,75y,12...

[4] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6698747,12.5700607,3a,75y,31...

[5] https://www.google.com/maps/@55.6598222,12.6187002,3a,75y,16...

Cycling in the UK is 1% of road traffic, and are drowned out of the conversation on how roads are built up until very recently. They are the most vulnerable things on wheels. They are treated as second class citizens on the road, and are subject to abuse car drivers do not get. I'm not 'anti-car', I'm 'anti-getting-killed-while-cycling'.

If a cyclist crashes into a car, the cyclist comes off worse. If a car crashes into a cyclist, the cyclist comes off worse. It's not even close. The relentless amount of hate cyclists receive in the UK is genuinely shocking to me, and any time any sort of positive action is attempted to be brought up (e.g. building new cycling infrastructure) the haters come out of the wood-work to act as if they're being oppressed.

Do you cycle? My money is on 'no'.

This is why I think this sort of rabid us-vs-them crap should be kept to its own bubble: it has no place in a civilized discussion among even-tempered people.

My reply told you that I own cars, I enjoy driving, I enjoy working on them. I find mechanics interesting, cars and bicycles both. I tried to explain that I do not sit in the 'us-vs-them' camp, I pay VED, yet I cycle a lot too. I think I can see both sides of the issue.

I think my response was even-tempered.

You complain about things being 'us-vs-them', yet you think adding cycling lanes is 'anti-car pro-bicyle'. I think you should look at whether or not you sit in a certain camp, to me, the language you use is telling.

Can you recommend some alternative material for cyclists who want to see the other side?

In densely populated temperate areas, cars are often no faster than other modes of transport (although they may be more comfortable), and they impose a very high cost on others, including: fatalities and injuries associated with traffic accidents, premature deaths and reduced quality of life due to air pollution and noise pollution. Parking and road lanes typically consume a great deal more space per passenger mile than buses, trains, trams, bike or walking.

I'm not sure I understand what you mean by hurting 'people who need help the most', but in most urban situations owning a car for personal transport is not an option for those with the lowest income, and no realistic policy will make it affordable.

Again, I'm happy to have my views challenged on this.

Also, it's much more difficult to manage a family without a car. A woman I worked with had to pick her kids every now and then. She wasn't making a lot of money and she had to pay for her own parking. It was a good job for her, so she tried to make the commute work, but it's difficult. It was difficult before, but the quality of life has gone down because people want their bicycle utopia.

I've ridden a bike in Boston since the early nineties and I don't think it's any easier or any safer. I can't tell if the bike lanes are really for bicycles or for people who want to create a hassle for people who depend on their car for their family or job.

Did this help at all?

Ultimately it just depends on your vision of what you'd like your city to be like.

I would like everyone to have the option of cycling or walking around their city without fear of death or hospitalisation. It doesn't seem like an extremist position - the roads are for everyone, there is no intrinsic reason to prioritise cars.

It's so frustrating that it becomes part of some car vs bike culture war.

The public transit buses have been highly impacted by the bike lanes. By reducing the main roads to one lane because of the bike lanes has created more traffic so it's harder for the busses. The solution to that was to create lanes that only busses can travel, in certain parts of the road, which in turn has created even more traffic and not really improved things. I applaud them for trying, but it really doesn't look like it working from a quality of life stand point.

I think your right how it's become a part of the culture war.

Drivers in Boston are being asked to _share_ 1% of the road infrastructure with bikes.

I don't even think cyclists make up 1% of the users of the road. Maybe at rush hour you'll see more, but it's not much. And there are only a few diehards that bike in the winter and in the rain. So we're cutting the main roads in half for 1% of the road users that don't use the roads all the time? I'm not sure that makes sense. They don't run the subway or busses after 12 when I'm sure people would use it to get home from the bars. Although the subway and busses cost money to operate whereas the bike lanes don't.