Yeah so frustrating! I've visited so many towns and small cities and neighborhoods in big cities, where the only bike infrastructure was on the main drag. With cars going 45mph and nothing but paint to protect you
We need to bicyclize the small streets first, and the main drag after
In places built during the era of the cul-de-sac, sometimes the main drag is the only route from a to b. That way means we need to create woonerfs, pave the often already existing informal paths that connect one cul-de-sac neighborhood to the next
I think the reason city planners put bike lanes on the main drag is partly that it's visible, so it looks like they're doing something. And partly that it doesn't occur to them that someone might take back streets to get from one place to another
Obviously the solution is to stack the planning committees with bicyclists, and give them a larger budget than the part of the transportation department that deals with car streets
Somehow we need to convince people that the future is micromobility, and any money spent accommodating cars is probably wasted
That is such a good idea!
I wonder if you could get it to happen by disguising it as something positive. Celebrating our bicycle infrastructure! Follow the route kids take to school! Ice cream sundaes at the school!
The trick is you gotta have it during rush hour 😈
@NilaJones City planners don't put bike lanes anywhere. City engineers do. I think the main reason they put them on the main drags is that those roads get touched more often than neighborhood streets and so they get the opportunity to restripe them vs neighborhood streets don't really need bike lanes if the speed limit is 20 mph. Better signage, yes. But lanes, no.
Planning commissions also have no dog in this fight. They do not make engineering decisions.
I haven't seen a map oriented feedback system like that for my city. But I do subscribe to their newsletter where they list the surveys, and I fill out the surveys!
And I used to write documents when they were soliciting public input. But eventually I figured out that they really didn't want input from individual people. They want input from groups. So I'm trying to find the energy to start a group
(I was at a city council meeting one time, and they were like, '... and feedback was submitted by This group and That group and.... Nila Jones.' And then everyone looked uncomfortable, at me)
I don't know how it is in different places, but I've been pretty frustrated with the process here. I've been on committees, I've submitted feedback as a person or part of a group
There's a huge emphasis here on getting feedback from the public, but it really doesn't seem like the feedback is incorporated. It seems like the enormous amount of time and effort that is spent on feedback gathering comes after the decisions have already been made
The last official thing I did, I was on a committee to review the zoning code and suggest changes
We met weekly for about 6 months. We went through the whole code, and applied our expertise. We went through bucket loads of suggested changes from citizens, figured out when people were saying the same thing in different words, and which suggestions could be combined. Eventually we came up with a list of 30 or so top priority changes
THEN, after all that, they told us that they were only going to make three changes, and they had to be super minor like correcting typos
People involved in the process were pretty mad, and spoke up about it at the meeting. The folks from the city looked shamefaced, and said that they would do another process in 10 years where we could make slightly larger changes
I don't want to discourage people from getting involved in local government. But it's really important to find people who can tell you how stuff really works. I thought I had done enough of that, but I guess I didn't
That's not how bicyclists get places
They don't go along the main drag, unless they are in a neighborhood that doesn't have any quiet through streets
And even then, they probably cobble together a zigzag route, that avoids the main drag as much as possible, cuts through alleys and parking lots and dirt trails, etc. Anything to avoid being where the cars are
After traveling a mile or two on back streets, they go the final block on a busier street, to get to the actual destination
The question is, how do we codify this and make it safer?
Really good points! Thank you
I don't go in the white wealthy burbs myself, so I didn't think about that. Are people from outside passing through on bikes?
Maybe part of creating a safe route is letting people know where it is
And as you say, making sure it is safe for everyone!
I'm thinking about, for example, 'the wiggle' in San Francisco, which is a way of getting around the hills, staying relatively level, off the car streets, and also within the poorer neighborhoods
It's shown in a bright color on the bicycle map!
Ughhhhhhh 😱
@NilaJones @HayiWena @ai6yr There is a method to codify what a sufficient bike lane is for the car traffic and it is commonly used by industry (those LTS numbers used above) called Level of Traffic Stress.
https://peterfurth.sites.northeastern.edu/level-of-traffic-stress/
I promise you, if the bike lane is low enough stress, people /will/ bike on the main street, even with little kids in the middle of the winter
https://mas.to/@DemonHusky/114048940987545302
Well, this is getting into potato potahto territory
I've used bike lanes like that, with serious separation, and on a fairly busy street
They're not personally to my taste, I still prefer to take the quiet street one block over, where I can cruise along and look at buildings and greenery, and not have to focus on pedestrians constantly stepping out in front of me, lights at every intersection, etc
But I can certainly see how some people might prefer the busy shopping street
@DemonHusky @HayiWena @ai6yr @TheWarOnCars
That's really interesting! I thought it was exactly the opposite
The cities I know, where biking to work is a normal thing, year round, have the neighborhood green streets. And the cities I know that have the bike lane along the main drag, nobody bikes there
But I would have counted Portland in the former group! When I've been there, in the winter, there were a lot of people biking
@DemonHusky @HayiWena @ai6yr @TheWarOnCars
That is a very interesting point
I was thinking in terms of a third group, the people who get on a bike with their kids on a sunny weekend day, but it would never even occur to them to take their bike to work, or grocery shopping. Because biking is a recreational family activity
I was thinking that the boutique street separated bike lane was targeting that group
But you're right that there's a whole other group, the people who don't think about biking unless they see a bike lane at the place that they are headed to in their car, and then they think hey I could do that maybe
@NilaJones @DemonHusky @HayiWena @ai6yr @TheWarOnCars
Related to the one street over: noise levels matter, and contribute to my sense of safety and enjoyment.
You give me a separated super safe bike lane on a busy street and I most likely will still be one street over …unless I have to cross a bridge or something. just another aspect of it, at least for me.
@CJPaloma @NilaJones @HayiWena @ai6yr yeah, I've thought about noise, even had a short conversation with Prof Furth about how it might be missing from LTS. He has worked on an adjustment based on hilliness, so I think a similar thing could be for noise.
There's a great river path in Boston that sometimes is right next to the highway. There is a real highway barrier between the path and the highway so it's not really a safety concern, but the noise still makes that section more stressful.
AI6YR Ben
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CJPaloma might be hiking