View Single Post
  #172  
Old July 17th 18, 12:49 AM posted to rec.bicycles.tech
Frank Krygowski[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 10,538
Default Making America into Amsterdam

On 7/16/2018 2:05 PM, Joerg wrote:
On 2018-07-16 10:14, Frank Krygowski wrote:
On 7/16/2018 1:20 AM, wrote:
On Wednesday, July 4, 2018 at 11:21:46 AM UTC-5, duane wrote:

Is there any place that is seriously looking at bike infrastructure to
increase revenues?

Here the motivation is to reduce the number of cars in a city that
can't
handle much more traffic.Â* Cycling is treated in much the same way as
public transit. The city wants to reduce motor vehicle traffic in town.

In my city, which has many miles of bike paths, the bike paths are
under the parks and recreation department of the government.Â* In my
city we treat bike paths as parks.Â* Recreational areas.Â* I doubt any
park in the country has paid for itself.Â* Parks are generally built as
a quality of life enhancement.


And I strongly agree with that policy. Almost all bike paths, IME, are
really linear parks.

Trouble is, there are many of these linear parks that are built using
transportation funds. I don't think that's appropriate.


That assertion is wrong.

https://www.cityofberkeley.info/bicy...walkingguides/

It even says transportation on their web site. Because that's what many
bike paths are.


sigh Joerg, what are we talking about here? The maps they have up
there mostly cover streets, not trails. Yes, streets are for
transportation. But as I said, almost all bike paths are really linear
parks. IOW their recreational use _far_ exceeds their transportation use
- like by a 100 to 1 ratio.


Although there are a few miles of bike paths alongside the busy roads
going into the downtown.Â* I suppose those are for vehicle reduction
purposes.


Those can possibly justify transportation funding. With them, the issue
tends to be quality of design. There's currently too much pushing for
crazy and confusing "innovation."


Unless it's done right.


The apologists for weird facilities are always saying "Well, the old
facilities weren't done right. Now we're doing it right."

But DC's quite new "protected" lanes had intersections with crash rates
between two times and five times worse than before the installation.
Columbus, Ohio's one mile of "protected" cycle track had a crash
increase of over 600%. No, that's not a typo. That facility was put in
just three years ago.

Deaths in "protected" cycle tracks keep popping up in the news, usually
because a straight-ahead cyclist surprises a turning motorist. Hmm: A
straight ahead bike lane hidden from view, to the right of a right turn
motor vehicle lane? Gosh, what could go wrong?

--
- Frank Krygowski
Ads
 

Home - Home - Home - Home - Home