It’s really dangerous to ride a bike on the roads in my 3rd world city even walking is dangerous due to bike lanes basically being ignored, motorcycles weaving around traffic, and poor nighttime lighting.
I just thought that dedicated bike/walking only roads connecting the major parts of my city would be a big boost for safety and I think it would greatly reduce the amount of people using cars.
Has this been tried somewhere else? Was it successful?
In the US, we tend to call them “multi-use paths” rather than “bike roads” and they too often get designed more for recreation than transportation, but yes, even very car-dependent cities are building them.
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Beltline
The more popular parts of the beltline are basically unrideable on the weekends, with wall to wall people. Atlanta could be a great bike city—a year round bikable city—if they weren’t so focused on cars. It’s sad.
One of the towns I ride through has a really busy/dense section of the bike & pedestrian trail that splits into a pedestrian only section and a bike only section for 2 miles. The bike section always has people walking on it during the weekends, even when there’s plenty of room on the pedestrian side. Most weekends are still rideable, but some days I just ride in the street so it doesn’t take half an hour to go 3 miles.