It’s something that happens when cities insist on prioritising reducing how much it annoys car drivers over producing the best possible active transport infrastructure. They build these bidirectional bike paths down one side of the street instead of having a bike path on each side. And that inevitably means that sometimes you’re going to get this.
There are certain risks with it. In my advocacy I always try to push for uni-directional paths on each side of the road because of that. But honestly the safety concerns are minimal when compared to no bike path at all, or just an on-road bike lane.
The biggest danger is people coming out of driveways or side streets failing to look both ways. It’s extra useful, therefore, to use wombat crossings across side streets, and to put small, sharp speed bumps beside the path on driveways. Here’s an example near me:
(Just ignore the stencilled white pedestrian indicator on the bicycle-path green-painted path. That’s a whole separate problem of poor inconsistent design…Especially since there’s an unpainted concrete footpath right next to it.)
But even if you don’t do that, it’s pretty damn good. It takes away all fear for 90% of the length, and just requires attentiveness from the cyclist when they approach intersections. Less than perfect, but still quite good.
Oh right, you mean the intersection shown in the article? Yeah nah, that’s a complete non-issue. First, remember that the “right on red” rule is widely regarded by the rest of the world, quite rightly, as utterly fucking insane. When there’s a red light, you simply cannot go.
So that weird crossing shown, turning from the right-hand side of one road to the left-hand side of the other, is totally fine. You just design the light phasing so that there is no phase in which people can cross over each other.
It’s something that happens when cities insist on prioritising reducing how much it annoys car drivers over producing the best possible active transport infrastructure. They build these bidirectional bike paths down one side of the street instead of having a bike path on each side. And that inevitably means that sometimes you’re going to get this.
that makes sense in a daft way but seem super dangerous
There are certain risks with it. In my advocacy I always try to push for uni-directional paths on each side of the road because of that. But honestly the safety concerns are minimal when compared to no bike path at all, or just an on-road bike lane.
The biggest danger is people coming out of driveways or side streets failing to look both ways. It’s extra useful, therefore, to use wombat crossings across side streets, and to put small, sharp speed bumps beside the path on driveways. Here’s an example near me:
(Just ignore the stencilled white pedestrian indicator on the bicycle-path green-painted path. That’s a whole separate problem of poor inconsistent design…Especially since there’s an unpainted concrete footpath right next to it.)
But even if you don’t do that, it’s pretty damn good. It takes away all fear for 90% of the length, and just requires attentiveness from the cyclist when they approach intersections. Less than perfect, but still quite good.
it is the intersections i’m specifically referring to, i feel like idiot drivers would be prone to plowing into that curved cross
it happens to cars now with uneven lanes accross intersections, we have two of them in my city
i do like the speedbumb idea
Oh right, you mean the intersection shown in the article? Yeah nah, that’s a complete non-issue. First, remember that the “right on red” rule is widely regarded by the rest of the world, quite rightly, as utterly fucking insane. When there’s a red light, you simply cannot go.
So that weird crossing shown, turning from the right-hand side of one road to the left-hand side of the other, is totally fine. You just design the light phasing so that there is no phase in which people can cross over each other.
Compared to what? That’s the entire point, isn’t it?
compared to exactly what the other guy suggested with it properly split