Pretty picture, terrible design.
Pretty picture, terrible design.
As a non-biker, and more importantly, a non-street designer, I'm curious, in this picture, are there any simple changes to be made to make the design safe and workable for everyone, drivers, pedestrians, and bikers alike?
Simplest: swap the bike lane and parking lane for a parking-protected bike lane. In addition to minimizing surprise "doorings", this reduces incidences of double parking in the bike lane, which cause people on bikes to swerve into general traffic if they're aggressive riders, ride on the sidewalk for safety if they're cautious riders, or not ride at all.
As a non-biker, and more importantly, a non-street designer, I'm curious, in this picture, are there any simple changes to be made to make the design safe and workable for everyone, drivers, pedestrians, and bikers alike?
No excuse for the sidewalk. I'd imagine the median riders are doing so because they want to turn left and are too nervous or stupid to ride between travel lanes.
As an aside, my #1 issue with bike share programs like HubWay is the number of damn fools who don't know how to ride a bike in the city insisting on doing so; riding the clumsy clunkers on sidewalks, or in traffic while not seeming to know what the rules are, or even how to competently break the rules. I see reckless cyclers on commuter bikes or road bikes, but they also clearly know what they're doing - kinda like many city drivers. The tourists and others are just ignorant of how reckless/lawless they're being.
I didn't notice this at first but why is traffic going the wrong way in that render? Are we in England now? I find the whole picture very confusing. Are all the people to right walking in the middle of the street, or aren't they?
This solution plays out at Prospect Park in Brooklyn. While it seems better, doorings still happen, and pedestrians get hit pretty often because they think that once they have passed the car layer, they are safe.
the BPDA graphic from the scoping review includes parking protected bike lanes.
Crossing my fingers they widen the median and tighten the traffic lanes. Or make the bike lanes bigger to narrow the car lanes.
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Crossing my fingers they widen the median and tighten the traffic lanes. Or make the bike lanes bigger to narrow the car lanes.