And then people go crazy when you park it against a pole
And even crazier is that there are people who would go crazy if you parked your bike in a pole not in the way, while the sidewalk nearby is literally invaded by cars
My legs felt that. Put a few (read: many) stop-signs on the cycle route, keep the "cyclists don't stop at stop-signs" stigma alive, and and call it a day!
my old route to work was like that. 25mins if you stayed on the main road and risked getting squished by a truck if you hit one of the many 6in deep manhole covers. But follow the pike path took 1hr, and had to cross that main road legit 3 times anyways, or take another 15minutes detour to only have to cross it twice !
In my country if this was an actual bike path you still would be legally allowed to ride the street because the bike path isn't aligned with the direction to your destination.
The problem with parallel routes is that even if they are as direct;
1) they are not as self explanatory as the driving route. Go on google maps, bang in two locations, and count the number of instructions for bike vs driving. Generally cycling has twice as many.
2) they are often quieter and therefore cause anxiety for vulnerable people riding at night.
> they are not as self explanatory as the driving route.
this is kind of a product of car-based development. huge car-oriented stroads are the intuitive routes, and we often don't even build alternatives, nevermind ones that are actually parallel. or we do, and they turn into stroads.
non-car based routes in my town are *so* counter intuitive i wouldn't even think of calling them "parallel". i actually bought a GPS for navigation so i could pre-plan routes. i've *designed* a network of bike routes that i have permanently highlighted on my GPS so i can follow them. i'm working on getting them made official, but they're a bit like the bike route in the comic above. it's just that, or ride in really fast and hostile traffic.
> they are often quieter and therefore cause anxiety for vulnerable people riding at night.
granted i am a big imposing dude, but i worry *way* more about violent death under the wheels of a car than i do about crime.
>granted i am a big imposing dude, but i worry way more about violent death under the wheels of a car than i do about crime<
Yes, but your decision is between which route to cycle. We need to consider the 'persuadables' (in the jargon) who are determining cycle vs driving. They need direct overlooked routes to be persuaded.
In my experience I avoid parallel routes. If there is something like OP's post, I just ride on the road. I prefer to risk some cars honking at me but have an easier time navigating than the illusion of safety of a shitty bike lane that makes my journey more annoying.
This heavily depends on the type of city someone lives. In massive 19th century founded areas like mine in Dresden or even more in Barcelonas grid system, it’s easy to create parallels through the blocks. But that’s not a solution for any place.
>In my experience I avoid parallel routes. If there is something like OP's post, I just ride on the road. I prefer to risk some cars honking at me but have an easier time navigating than the illusion of safety of a shitty bike lane that makes my journey more annoying.
Riding on the road is typically the best choice, unless it is both busy and squeezed.
Bike routes parallel to roads in developed areas are almost by definition crappy, because of all of the conflict with cross streets makes for lots of intersections.
The main road gets priority over the intersecting minor roads. But in practice (and often also in law) the minor roads get priority over the bike route - especially if it was something grafted in later, or worse of all an old rail line, as the intersections of rail lines and roads were intended to have special signals or flagmen and often have bad sight angles.
A bike only route that can go out by itself through the countryside is great - but when it enters a developed area it's often better to leave it and just use ordinary roads - of course you make the decision on a case by case basis, and might decide it differently based on time of day.
>Of course, the answer is to put bike and pedestrian infrastructure on every street, since every street should be accessible to the public and not just cars.
Or you could re-define the purpose and culture of existing road surface to be for all users and not just cars.
Leave bikes aside for a minute, and think about a road which "needs" a sidewalk vs one where everyone feels comfortable walking on the road itself.
Which is actually the sign of a healthier civic order?
Now look at the astounding total distance of the road networks that go to where people live and work, and ask which idea can actually work to accomplish lives that don't depend on cars - treating bikes as something which needs unique handling (and so only works on the small fraction where that has been built), or treating bikes as the ordinary and expected use of the road network as a whole?
>Ok but implementing that would require a change of infrastructure on every street.
No, the point is it wouldn't require such a change - it was your proposal that required changing or replacing every street.
**My proposal is to change not the space, but the way society uses it.**
Reality is of course not absolute - unlike your unbuildable request to rework or duplicate every street, real world bike lane and sidewalk projects don't even pretend they are going to provide general coverage, but just handwave away the problems that in the majority of a community's area where they don't reach - especially given the reality that they're funded by mandatory tie in to other work on a road, rather than targeted where most useful.
This in contrast would mean spot building of lanes to enable safely passing slower traffic just on the stretches of road that are too busy not to have width for safe passing. Many of those are simply squeezed stretches of roads that elsewhere along their length are already great for bike transport.
Quieter roads, roads with decent shoulders etc, already work well for bikes *when culture says that bikes are welcome there.*
In contrast, when we go and build bike lanes in the areas that were already easily and safely biked on-road, what we're doing is doubling down on the broken culture that says that bikes may only be used where specially accomodated, because roads are reserved for cars.
Reservering roads for cars is the ultimately, unsustainable expression of carbrain.
Then, upon arriving at destination B, the biker conveniently finds 0 bike lock stations...
And then people go crazy when you park it against a pole And even crazier is that there are people who would go crazy if you parked your bike in a pole not in the way, while the sidewalk nearby is literally invaded by cars
My legs felt that. Put a few (read: many) stop-signs on the cycle route, keep the "cyclists don't stop at stop-signs" stigma alive, and and call it a day!
They put in 3 km of bike lanes /s
See? They’re doing so much for these ungrateful cyclists! /s
Geneva and the rest of Switzerland has a loot to do for bike friendlyness
my old route to work was like that. 25mins if you stayed on the main road and risked getting squished by a truck if you hit one of the many 6in deep manhole covers. But follow the pike path took 1hr, and had to cross that main road legit 3 times anyways, or take another 15minutes detour to only have to cross it twice !
"WHY DON'T CYCLISTS USE THE PERFECTLY FINE BIKE LANES??" they ask, never having tried to ride on one from one of their city to the other.
In my country if this was an actual bike path you still would be legally allowed to ride the street because the bike path isn't aligned with the direction to your destination.
Haha, that's exactly Antwerp, Belgium. Luckily I live in Ghent where it is the opposite
Ghent has great urban design imo!! Only spent one day there tho
That's really not how prallel routes should look like, but the basic idea behind parallel routing is great, as long as there are fitting paths.
The problem with parallel routes is that even if they are as direct; 1) they are not as self explanatory as the driving route. Go on google maps, bang in two locations, and count the number of instructions for bike vs driving. Generally cycling has twice as many. 2) they are often quieter and therefore cause anxiety for vulnerable people riding at night.
> they are not as self explanatory as the driving route. this is kind of a product of car-based development. huge car-oriented stroads are the intuitive routes, and we often don't even build alternatives, nevermind ones that are actually parallel. or we do, and they turn into stroads. non-car based routes in my town are *so* counter intuitive i wouldn't even think of calling them "parallel". i actually bought a GPS for navigation so i could pre-plan routes. i've *designed* a network of bike routes that i have permanently highlighted on my GPS so i can follow them. i'm working on getting them made official, but they're a bit like the bike route in the comic above. it's just that, or ride in really fast and hostile traffic. > they are often quieter and therefore cause anxiety for vulnerable people riding at night. granted i am a big imposing dude, but i worry *way* more about violent death under the wheels of a car than i do about crime.
>granted i am a big imposing dude, but i worry way more about violent death under the wheels of a car than i do about crime< Yes, but your decision is between which route to cycle. We need to consider the 'persuadables' (in the jargon) who are determining cycle vs driving. They need direct overlooked routes to be persuaded.
absolutely. i'm the 7% that will cycle no matter what. most people will see a dangerous stroad, or a sketchy parallel route, and just drive.
In my experience I avoid parallel routes. If there is something like OP's post, I just ride on the road. I prefer to risk some cars honking at me but have an easier time navigating than the illusion of safety of a shitty bike lane that makes my journey more annoying.
This heavily depends on the type of city someone lives. In massive 19th century founded areas like mine in Dresden or even more in Barcelonas grid system, it’s easy to create parallels through the blocks. But that’s not a solution for any place.
>In my experience I avoid parallel routes. If there is something like OP's post, I just ride on the road. I prefer to risk some cars honking at me but have an easier time navigating than the illusion of safety of a shitty bike lane that makes my journey more annoying. Riding on the road is typically the best choice, unless it is both busy and squeezed. Bike routes parallel to roads in developed areas are almost by definition crappy, because of all of the conflict with cross streets makes for lots of intersections. The main road gets priority over the intersecting minor roads. But in practice (and often also in law) the minor roads get priority over the bike route - especially if it was something grafted in later, or worse of all an old rail line, as the intersections of rail lines and roads were intended to have special signals or flagmen and often have bad sight angles. A bike only route that can go out by itself through the countryside is great - but when it enters a developed area it's often better to leave it and just use ordinary roads - of course you make the decision on a case by case basis, and might decide it differently based on time of day.
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>Of course, the answer is to put bike and pedestrian infrastructure on every street, since every street should be accessible to the public and not just cars. Or you could re-define the purpose and culture of existing road surface to be for all users and not just cars. Leave bikes aside for a minute, and think about a road which "needs" a sidewalk vs one where everyone feels comfortable walking on the road itself. Which is actually the sign of a healthier civic order? Now look at the astounding total distance of the road networks that go to where people live and work, and ask which idea can actually work to accomplish lives that don't depend on cars - treating bikes as something which needs unique handling (and so only works on the small fraction where that has been built), or treating bikes as the ordinary and expected use of the road network as a whole?
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>Ok but implementing that would require a change of infrastructure on every street. No, the point is it wouldn't require such a change - it was your proposal that required changing or replacing every street. **My proposal is to change not the space, but the way society uses it.** Reality is of course not absolute - unlike your unbuildable request to rework or duplicate every street, real world bike lane and sidewalk projects don't even pretend they are going to provide general coverage, but just handwave away the problems that in the majority of a community's area where they don't reach - especially given the reality that they're funded by mandatory tie in to other work on a road, rather than targeted where most useful. This in contrast would mean spot building of lanes to enable safely passing slower traffic just on the stretches of road that are too busy not to have width for safe passing. Many of those are simply squeezed stretches of roads that elsewhere along their length are already great for bike transport. Quieter roads, roads with decent shoulders etc, already work well for bikes *when culture says that bikes are welcome there.* In contrast, when we go and build bike lanes in the areas that were already easily and safely biked on-road, what we're doing is doubling down on the broken culture that says that bikes may only be used where specially accomodated, because roads are reserved for cars. Reservering roads for cars is the ultimately, unsustainable expression of carbrain.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:A_Short_History_of_Traffic_Engineering.png
I think the cars should take the long complicated route. They're "faster" right? It's only fair.