I've lived in Cambridge or neighboring Somerville every year but one since 1989. The cycling infrastructure is much improved and still deadly.
Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm. Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-size SUV leaned out his window and said loudly to me, "I hope you get hit!"
This morning on my way to work, a driver popped out of a side street from my left side directly in front of me. As I was along side of him, he swerved hard to the right and into a parking lot (no signal of course).
I've been a daily bike commuter in Cambridge for 12 years. We desperately need infrastructure that forces drivers to respect cyclists as equal road users. There is hardly a day that I don't almost get hit by car while cycling.
This, to me, signals the general attitude people have towards bicyclists in the US. The average person either doesn't care or, for some misguided reason or another, actively hates bicyclists. I've been yelled at by drivers for no apparent reason so many times I've lost count. I've had so many friends hit by cars. My partner was struck by a car last fall and broke her leg in two places. She's still recovering and frequently has to lie down for hours because her leg is so sore. Just the other day a friend of mine was struck and had to get stitches in her face.
I think the problem here is a mixture of infrastructure and attitude. The infrastructure side of things is usually what we talk about, which is obviously an important part of the discussion, but I don't think the problem with peoples' overall attitude towards bicycling gets enough attention. There are so many people out there who legitimately wish to harm bicyclists. Don't take my word for it, in 2016 a driver purposely murdered 5 bicyclists (in an area close to where I live, no less) with his vehicle and was sentenced in 2018[1]. Although most are likely accidents, there are other examples of drivers purposefully striking bicyclists with their vehicles if you look.
It's really sad, I think it's a symptom of something a lot more sinister happening to the hearts and minds of people in this country, and it's why I no longer ride my bike in the city anymore.
> This, to me, signals the general attitude people have towards bicyclists in the US. The average person either doesn't care or, for some misguided reason or another, actively hates bicyclists. I've been yelled at by drivers for no apparent reason so many times I've lost count.
My experience as a pedestrian (I don't ride a bike on the street so I can't speak to that experience) mirrors this. More than once, I've been honked or yelled at for being in an actual, marked crosswalk, crossing the street. (Never mind all of the driver complaints about my use of legal, unmarked crosswalks.)
On a former commute, I regularly got off the bus at a bus stop immediately adjacent to a signaled crosswalk that several of us used. We regularly got honked at by drivers bringing their cars to a screeching halt as the light changed and, once on a holiday, when it was just me and my kid, a driver yelled "if you weren't so fucking poor you wouldn't have to ride the bus!"
> It's really sad, I think it's a symptom of something a lot more sinister happening to the hearts and minds of people in this country
Agreed, and I live in a city where ways of getting to work and around town that aren't a single-occupant vehicle are now in the cumulative majority yet the pushback has increased even more. People regularly write letters to the local paper about how they "openly" use the bus and bike lanes for their cars because "[screw] those entitled people."
I hold a driving license and, until recently, owned a car that I regularly used. This behavior ought to be unacceptable and more actively enforced against but I can only imagine the uproar if an even light "crackdown" happened.
I would never yell at a bicyclist, and certainly would never hope one got hit. But I have to say, as an NYC pedestrian, I actively hate bicyclists.
They don't follow the rules of the road--at all. Red lights? Stop signs? Ignored. Pedestrians crossing in a crosswalk? Probably fine to whiz past them with 6 inches to spare.
I almost get hit by fast-moving bikes once or twice a year. A car has never even come close to hitting me in eight years. Not even those crazy taxi drivers.
I have no idea what possesses these people to blast through a red light, into a busy intersection, without slowing down or even looking, but they do it!
It has always seemed to me that bicyclists see something "different" about their mode of transportation that exempts them from most traffic laws. And the crazy thing is that they keep asking for more bike lanes.
(I'm not accusing you of being this way. But I think this may be the reason lots of people have a hatred of bicyclists. I know many people in the city who feel the same way I do.)
Ok, I'll say it - bicyclists tend to annoy me. Obviously, I don't shout at them, or try to hit them, or make them think I'm trying to hit them. That's nuts. That seems like a problem separate for bike/car relations. I doubt someone who behaves that way in a car gets out of it and suddenly becomes a calm and reasonable person.
But here's my assessment of why bikes annoy me. Not argument that they should, just some introspection.
* They make me nervous. Cars are easy to see, have lots of momentum to overcome, and generally exist on a predictable well defined plane. Bikes are different. They can enter the car plane from places I don't expect and didn't even realize existed. They can make 90 degree turns on a dime (relative to my sedan) and can stop in inches. They don't generally obey traffic lights, stop signs, one ways, or any of the other rules that lend predictability to car behavior. They don't have brake lights or signals. And in a complex driving environment, they're tiny and often poorly lit. They also have no protection. Slow moving car crashes aka "fender benders" are expensive and annoying, but rarely dangerous. Similar accidents involving a bike can end lives. Having a bike near me makes me worried I'm going to hit it. I don't want to live with that so I give it huge space and pay it lots of attention. If I could drive on roads that didn't have bikes I'd prefer it.
* Civic disagreement. The arguments in favor of making roads more bike friendly are generally: more healthy, more space efficient, more environmentally friendly. I agree on healthy and environmentally friendly. Though, it does seem odd when someone tells me biking is super healthy and super dangerous in the same sentence, but I cede the point. Space efficient? Yes and no. It is more space efficient for people whose options are bike vs car to ride a bike, but there's tons of people that doesn't apply to - people who live far away, people who need to haul things, people who have health issues, people who are too young etc. Also, lots of people don't want to bike in heat, rain, snow, etc. Also, not everyone has a place to change and shower when they get to work. The shower issue and the distance issue disproportionately impact people who are less well off. I get that biking can be part of the solution, but man does it get over hyped.
* Guilt/jealousy. I really enjoy biking! If I'm in my car and you're on your bike - I'm pretty sure you're having more fun than I am, and that makes me jealous. Then I start asking myself why I'm not biking, and sometimes the answer makes me feel guilty. Neither of those emotions often get followed up with - let's arrange it so I can experience more of this.
My guess is that the driver had been yelled at by a biker in the past. I've seen bikers chew out drivers, or yell profanities many times in SF. They sometimes/usually have a good reason to do so, but that kind of behavior just breeds contempt and animosity between the two groups.
It's easier to change infrastructure to be pro-cycling than it is to change the culture. I'll take mindful drivers over protected bike lanes, any day. The only protected lane in my town (Madison) is one that goes against traffic. Drivers here are generally aware and accommodating when it comes to cyclists. I feel safer biking here (snow and all) than any other city I've lived in.
I’m not sure how broadly this generalizes. Having lived in 7 different regions in the US I would say 4 were cycling-friendly and 3 were cycling-hostile.
I live in Kalamazoo and know people both who survived and were killed in that attack. At least our community responded positively with new passing distance laws and broad community support.
ETA: I should mention that I got hit and run on my bicycle by a drunk driver years before the mass murder. My friends tracked down the driver, the police took statements, viewed the damage to the car exactly as I described it, driver matched the description my riding partner and I gave, and the prosecutor still declined to press charges. It wasn't a no-harm-no-foul thing either, I was pretty severely injured. Still pretty sore about that.
I biked to work for several years. I see both sides somewhat. Cyclists are their own worst enemies, as many are a bunch of idiots that flaunt traffic laws, put pedestrians at risk and behave poorly.
Engineering practices don’t account for cyclists well. That’s getting better where i live, but more need to be done there as well as educating folks on what to do in difficult car/bike/pedestrian scenarios.
> This, to me, signals the general attitude people have towards bicyclists in the US.
Maybe, but if you have ever tried to get around in Cambridge, MA, you would understand that it is a disaster for everybody.
Pedestrians walk into intersections when they shouldn't and block traffic, sometimes indefinitely. Bicyclists ignore signs, lights, people, etc. and cut off cars randomly. And cars have to shove their way through the mess or they will never get anywhere.
Cambridge traffic is simply dreadful. Go read Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac" for a taste.
You have two parties who feel entitled to the road, while few parameters exist around how they share the road. Naturally anything a cyclist does that interferes with the driver ends up irritating him/her and vice versa.
Protected bike lanes go a long way to solving this problem. We need rules around how we interoperate.
It should be noted that the perpetrator in the murder case you referenced was on methamphetamine, muscle relaxers, and pain medication at the time of the incident.
There truly is a lot of hostility for cyclists out there, and I think it would be wiser to cite cases that don't have complicating factors like this, such as:
I've experienced this same anecdote in similar situations for the past 20 years as well. There has been a long push by auto manufacturers to make anything other than cars that use the roads seen as both illegitimate and illegal. For example, see the history of Jaywalking laws: https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-26073797. Starting around 1920's the auto-industry encouraged laws around the US to make crossing the street illegal. These laws have the downside of making car drivers feel entitled to the road.
Cyclists and other non-car users of roads have a deep hole to climb out of to change these laws, and to change the perception that streets are only for cars. Infrastructure is probably the only real mechanism we have that can make tangible changes, that don't allow the personal feelings of car drivers to get angry at being inconvenienced by cyclists and other road users.
We need to slow down auto-traffic and encourage more non-vehicular use of the roads, while making those roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, skate boarders, etc.
> We need to slow down auto-traffic and encourage more non-vehicular use of the roads, while making those roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, skate boarders, etc.
Is that the most efficient use of the roads? Especially in a place like Boston, where most people in the metro area don’t live in (and can’t afford to live in) the city itself. At a certain point doesn’t creating a preference for pedestrians and cyclists actually end up being a preference for wealthier people who can afford to live downtown, versus those who need to access the city but can’t live within walking or biking distance? (Note that bicyclists and skateboarders also slow down busses, which are what lower income people use to get around.)
The next round of laws that criminalize non-cars at the expense of cars might be impending with the rise of autonomous cars. Cf this recent tweet where zoox called a law abiding pedestrian a "Jaywalker": https://twitter.com/zoox/status/1115622929192980480
> Cyclists and other non-car users of roads have a deep hole to climb out of to change these laws, and to change the perception that streets are only for cars. Infrastructure is probably the only real mechanism we have that can make tangible changes, that don't allow the personal feelings of car drivers to get angry at being inconvenienced by cyclists and other road users.
The problem is that the infrastructure is often inferior compared to the actual road due to bad intersection management, bad surface conditions, significantly longer routes, or routes that don't take you where you need to go. Another approach would be to repeal the keep as far right as practicable laws and allow cyclists the right to use an entire traffic lane when riding and require faster vehicles to change lanes to pass.
> There has been a long push by auto manufacturers to make anything other than cars that use the roads seen as both illegitimate and illegal.
And the absolutely disgusting thing about this is we can't get away from roads. Every building has roads in front, and to get anywhere you have to cross a lot of roads.
Examples like this are exactly why bike lanes are not the only change needed to make cycling more accessible. What stops drivers from doing any of these if there were protected bike lanes? Generally "protected" bike lines are not protected at intersections, which is where most problems occur.
I live in Austin right now and I tend to avoid the protected bike lanes because drivers frequently turn across them without yielding to cyclists using them. The city put up signs saying to yield to oncoming cyclists, but in my experience those signs are followed less than 5% of the time. I'd rather ride in the normal traffic lane where I'm visible. Yes, I might be angering some drivers, but angering drivers is better than dying.
You put up separate lights, where there is a red turn arrow for the cars and a light for the bicycles, just like Europe. It's taken a couple of years for drivers to figure them out, but at this point you almost never see someone turn against them, and when you do, it's usually someone with grey hair and an out of state plate who has no idea what to do.
Another side of this puzzle is that we don't require drivers to update their education or competence on a recurring basis. If we required all drivers to update their education and demonstrate their physical fitness to drive safely every couple of years, this would all go more smoothly.
There's a certain burden to being vigilant and self-defensive on the road. Even if I'm not protected in intersections, a protected bike lane means that there's a lot less time I need to be worried that a car will hit me.
However, you're bringing up the point that protected bike lanes may make intersections even more dangerous for cyclists. While your reasoning makes sense, do you know if there's anything to corroborate that claim?
> Generally "protected" bike lines are not protected at intersections, which is where most problems occur.
Then also build protected intersections? These are common in truly bike-friendly cities. I see them frequently here in Munich (admittedly not as bike-friendly as Dutch cities, but much better than any US city).
The thing about cycling is that it’s basically fast walking. In places where cycling dominates people only ride as fast as a quick jogger (10 mph is a 6 minute mile). The correct model for cycling isn’t space on the road, it’s an extra sidewalk with an accommodating turning radius. This is what you actually see in The Netherlands. People think of public spaces as roads and as roads as places for cars to drive and park, so they get hung up on “sharing the road,” but really the thing to do is shrinking the road and enhancing places for people.
I was just in Amsterdam this past autumn. It was awesome how most streets have bike lanes that are at-grade with the sidewalk instead of at-grade with the street, and that everyone respects as being for cyclists and does not block.
You're underestimating some of the speeds involved though. People will bike at speeds that feel safe to them. There's bike lanes there that are long, straight, and that have people going much faster on them than anyone can run. Amsterdam is full of life-long cyclists; some of them go pretty fast when it's safe to do so. It was quite impressive seeing some of the people on the city-style bikes hauling ass, especially when they didn't look like you'd expect them to. I do that here in NYC too; no sense in making my commute take any longer than necessary. Although I'm generally on a road bike when doing so, not a city bike!
You won't find a cyclist who opposes dedicated, protected lanes that are separate from roads and sidewalks.
It is almost always the car drivers who don't want to sacrifice the single lane required to make a two way, protected bike lane. Case in point, Peachtree St in Atlanta ~3 years ago.
Huh? In the city center, speeds are greatly reduced for cars and bikes, but getting between metropolitan areas, both speeds can climb. You do know there's a whole bike highway system in the Netherlands, right?
I think the, "bikes as fast pedestrians" model is a bit outdated. I don't want to be seen as a very fast person on foot, while on my bike. I can hit 30+mph in a sprint, and go many hundreds of miles in a week.
> The thing about cycling is that it’s basically fast walking.
My commute while I take the kids to the daycare in a trailer takes me about 20 minutes one way. My ride to work takes me another 6 minutes. If I walked the same route, it would take me over an hour to get to daycare and another 30 minutes to get to work from there.
Bicyclists are not fast pedestrians. They're riding on vehicles that have similar dynamics to any other 2 wheeled vehicle like a moped or motorcycle. The only difference is that they're slower, but when going downhill, they can easily match motorized traffic speeds with little effort (I've managed to get up to 35 mph going down some steep grades).
Infrastructure designed for pedestrian speeds is not really suited for cyclists who ride for transportation.
I think average is closer to 12mph, at least according to google maps. I definitely could haul ass and go nearly twice that fast, but when I'm riding to go someplace and not to burn calories, the last thing I want to do is ride at a pace that's going to make me sweaty.
Yes, this makes sense. Nobody is arguing to ride a bike 17 inches from a train (and the train can't swerve into you!), why would you want to do it with cars? Separate places for bikes and people make the most sense.
Interesting. In my town, it's illegal to ride your bike on the sidewalk. And on a straightaway, most bikes are going substantially faster than people can walk.
I just checked my bike computer, and it tells me that my average speed is around 10 MPH, which means that roughly half the time I'm going faster than that.
> This is one thing I will never be able to wrap my head around - why would a human being say something like this to a fellow human?
Because he was frustrated and angry about something else that he has no power to affect (possibly the traffic that he was stuck in) and misdirected his energy at an accessible target to alleviate some psychic pressure.
I lived in Boston/Cambridge/Somerville/JP/Brighton etc etc for nearly a decade from mid 90's to early 2000's, half of it as a bike messenger and lived all you describe daily, 365. Hundreds of accounts in that time that do not paint a very warm picture of American "city" living during this era. For every stupid thing someone has done to or near me in a car I have seen an equally shocking occurrence on a bike. Maybe not daily but hooo boy, people are always stupid traveling in any mode of transportation. I don't think anything will change re: bike barriers unless the auto is completely removed from the picture like in various EU cities. EVEN THEN, people will still people on bikes. Count on it...
>I have seen an equally shocking occurrence on a bike.
Yes, as a pedestrian in C in the 60's i was hit by a Cliffe on a bike ... going the wrong way on a one-way street, mind you. We, as a species, need to integrate more with others: We are not our bodies etc, we are the world
I've experienced similar hostility, while just walking and minding my own business (and respecting traffic rules). For some reason, drivers get annoyed with anyone on the road that is not inside a car.
I've written about this earlier. People get seriously nasty in their cars. I've seen them honk at my 8 yr old daughter crossing the street from her school to come home.
I cycle with a helmet cam, and I typically inform the driver that they are being recorded. While I haven't done a scientific study, I believe this causes some drivers to restrain themselves.
Anecdotally I cycle into Cambridge almost every day. I cross three cities: Medford, Somerville and Cambridge for an approximate 20 minute commute (vs 40 by car.)
I have never had issue with cars, granted I've only been doing this for the two years (and in college I used to commute from Roxbury to Cambridge for 2 years and only had 1 freak-out with a drunk-driver, but that's another story.)
On the other hand I've seen entitled cyclists lose their shit for no reason at cars.
I feel like there's a subset of cyclists that don't understand that cars may have blind spots and freak out at drivers when there's literally nothing the driver can do about it.
What you did was perfectly legal, and I assume that your state, like mine, has a law about stopping for pedestrians in the crosswalk. I feel the need to ask though why the race of the man who yelled at you bears mentioning?
Why do you find it worth asking why I mentioned his race?
There is certainly a strong relationship among perceived entitlement/privilege, apparent race and ethnicity, and apparent gender. I shouldn't need to explain this.
Question one: No, Massachusetts is very white. I can’t imagine any reason this information would be relevant or adds to the story in anyway. Someone please advise me how I may be wrong.
Question two: That would anger many people and cause much defensiveness.
It blows my mind that this is the reality I live in and that you are the only person to bring this up in this heavily commented thread.
As someone who grew up in left wing (espoused more than practiced) Boston but chose the search for truth over this hateful leftist religion I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand political and religious motives (really one and the same). One of the things I’ve come to understand is that it is human nature to find an easy enemy to fight even if there is none or you are too cowardly to fight a real enemy. White men have become this easy and compliant enemy for the left. Nevermind reality it’s too uncomfortable.
I don't think I've ever seen anyone 'rolling coal' in Cambridge. I can't imagine the cops around here would let anybody blow out that kind of smog under any circumstances without giving them a ticket.
Sounds good to me, as long as cyclists follow the same rules drivers do. Just yesterday I had a cyclist blatantly roll a stop sign on a side street, entering the main road I was on. If I was an inattentive driver I would have creamed him! He even looked to the left, saw me, and just kept rolling through!
Sounds like the cyclist properly judged the danger for himself, and his judgement was correct, because he's still alive.
When riding a bicycle, you often choose to endanger your own life and break the law in order to be less of an obstacle to motorists -- motorists, who in turn, almost certainly curse under their breath about how you should just obey the rules. Aggro assholes are gonna be aggro assholes.
Rolling a stop sign (slowly, if there's no one at the intersection) is safer on a bike than stopping. In SF the Board of Supervisors voted to make it legal, but the mayor vetoed it.
The difference is that in the car all you do is press brake & gas, cycling requires some physical work to start up again.
I know it's breaking the law, and I don't usually do it, but when I cycle on a quiet residential street, I'm going to roll a stop sign.
I know it's bad, but at that point I'm going home and I feel tired.
Cycling on the street is taking your life into your own hands. I avoid it whenever I can. Sidewalks are usually empty where I live.
Some places have a great network of bike and walk trails. I think this is the only viable option: roads or other paved surfaces where automobiles are not allowed.
Biking is a very contentious issue in Cambridge. It was one of the most discussed topics during the last council elections and the split, at least how I saw it, was quite generational.
There have been a few deadly incidents as well, adding fuel to the mix.
The simple answer is bikes and cars should never share the same infrastructure. They'll never get along with each other and the bike loses every time. It also doesn't help that bikers don't follow the laws properly. Bikers have to pay attention more than drivers, they should act like it
If almost all commuters are car drivers, then there won't be many bikes buzzing around inconveniencing them. And if there are enough bikes to inconvenience the drivers, then there are enough to justify investing in their own infrastructure.
Actually the City of Cambridge installed a bike counter on one of the main thoroughfares toward one of the bridges over the Charles River into Boston. There are more than 1000 trips in each direction on a weekday.
Traffic congestion and inconvenience are caused by cars in vast disproportion to bikes. The sheer volume of car traffic is the primary predictor of congestion.
I found a "simple trick that makes all drivers around me nice".
I put a pigeon on my helmet 8 years ago[1]. Everywhere I go I see smiles. I really makes every ride fun.
One of my friends recently started also doing it, so its starting to catch on.
Pigeonriding transforms me from an awkward software engineer into an interesting person who people want to talk to. I have only had a handful of bad experiences[2] with drivers and other bikers in 8+ years that I have been riding (a few of those years I commuted on a bike year-round).
This is brilliant!! It's such a fun, friendly, subversive way of communicating "I'm a person and not a roadblock/obstacle." I started bike commuting 3-4x per week and I may consider doing this.
I haven't needed it in the city I'm at now, but I used to wear a USA flag as a cape when riding in less biking friendly areas. It was night and day how drivers treated me.
5 years ago after a princess tea party I ended up with some tall silver tiaras full of sparkly gems, and I started wearing them on my bike helmets. A tiara fits perfectly into the spot for roadies to park their sunglasses.
The constant feeling of "hey my eyes are down here buddy" in public proves that it works!
For those less outgoing, anything that differentiates you, or stands out (from both the environment and other cyclists) seems to help. A sea of loud colors is just a din, and all spandex looks the same to a cager.
For those less outgoing, pigeonriding will probably work even better for you. You can just ignore people who try to talk to you which will make the pigeon seem much more real.
"oh that person really has no idea that bird is on their head".
Every person I know that bikes in Chicago has been hit at least once. Fortunately none of them have been seriously injured, but it is a constant danger.
There are lots of bike lanes downtown but they aren’t protected or respected. We have a long way to go to make biking a safe form of transport like it is in the Netherlands.
I've never been hit, but I also always have lights on my bike, I've completely covered my bike with retroreflective tape, and I live on the West Side.
I used to ride my bike to my job in East Lakeview every day, which was about about 9 miles each way, and the last mile of my commute was always the worst. Lincoln Park and Lakeview are full of the most entitled drivers on the planet.
I once saved a kid from getting hit by a left turning driver by picking him up just before a driver hit him. The guy was taking a left hand turn while looking at his cell phone. The mom had bent down for half a second to pick up a bottle that her kid in a stroller had dropped.
On another note, rideshare drivers are the worst drivers in the city. They are unpredictable, they have no idea where they are going, they don't have experience driving in the city, and they are always looking at their cell phones.
Chicago needs to crack down on ridesharing. I've almost been hit by rideshare drivers who aren't looking where they are going 3 times in the past month. Each time they were driving in the bike lane looking to drop someone off or pick someone up.
Plus, ride shares absolutely murder traffic. I initially started riding my bike because all the ride shares pulling over made my commute go from 20 minutes each way to 30 minutes in the mornings and 40 in the evening. Any arguments that ride shares somehow are more efficient than actual driving ignore the fact that most drivers don't pull over in the middle of a busy street for 30 seconds to 2 minutes at the beginning and end of their trip.
Edit: I should also mention that I credit disc brakes for part of the reason I've never been hit. I can stop so much faster with then than with rim brakes, partly because I can modulate braking force better, and partly because it always bites right away, rather than needing a revolution to clean road grime or water off that rim brakes sometimes need. I swapped after I almost got right hooked going under the Cortland bridge. There's always water pooled there, and I honestly thought I was going to slide under a car for a few seconds.
I used the lakefront path for years and fortunately never had any serious incidents. Beyond roadways, cities should be thinking more about paths that are not associated with the road network. For example, the 606 in Chicago is an elevated bike path built on an old train line. The riverfront would also serve as an opportunity for good bike infrastructure.
I personally know 3 ppl that died in chicago. Two of them were my coworkers, died in the same year. :/
Sorry but if you have kids and family you are fucking stupid to ride bikes on the street in chicago. White bikes on sidewalks are not street art. Go to lakeshore path/606 if you are dying to ride bikes.
I got doored 2 yrs ago escaped only with broken wrist.
> I got doored 2 yrs ago escaped only with broken wrist.
The best way to avoid getting doored is to not ride so close to parked cars. You should maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from parked cars while riding.
Yes, you are stupid and should become part of the problem. Be part of the industry of drivers, that are responsible for 40,000 deaths every year in the US.
> "Local law now requires the city to erect vertical barriers between cyclists and cars on any roadway that’s rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured"
I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this for all new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on the main drags (where some of the new protected bike lanes were amazing to have).
[0] Actual ordinance available at http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID.... I could be misinterpreting the language, and it seems they will allow for some very limited exceptions, but the default seems to be that a typical side street would have a dedicated bike lane.
EDIT: after reading the actual ordinance again (and as a comment below pointed out), it seems that this only applies to streets that are rebuilt or improved and are part of the city's plan for streets that should include bike paths. In other words, most random side streets wouldn't get bike paths.
It's required only during maintenance made as part of a pre-existing 5-year reconstruction plan on roads that were included in the 2015 Bicycle Plan (or any subsequent plan the Council approves). That's still a dramatic expansion from Cambridge's current separated bike lanes, but it's not "any roadway" as the article claims.
Better bike infrastructure will encourage groups of people who don't currently bike to start. More protected lanes means more kids, more old folks, more women of all ages, will start cycling. And more cycling is a good thing!
There's many things that are good things. However, you need to balance them against the cost (money, space, time, whatever) required to achieve them. For some smaller roads, the cost might not be worth the benefit.
You’re not in the group of people who do not bike due to the lack of barriers.
It’s possible that this group is extremely tiny, in which case it may not make sense, but whether existing bikers feel they needed it is not really the relevant question.
But that’s only considering the “get more people biking” aspect. The truth is that protected bike lanes are statistically safer than ones that are not, so there is good reason to require it just to reduce injury or death even if it does not lead to an uptick in biking.
Here's a map from the Globe of bike accidents reported to Cambridge police from 2010-2014 [0]. Unfortunately the map no longer loads for me, but the accidents are mostly along major roads and the area is still discernible, especially when compared side by side with a map of the area [1]. As the article says, Cambridge Street, Broadway, Beacon Street, and Mass Ave are all hot spots.
Would love to see data combined with Somerville, since I'm sure the stretch of Beacon between Porter and Inman would be similarly populated. These are also only accidents reported to police, so I would bet they lean towards more serious accidents.
I think our cities are learning from what Scandinavia has been doing for ages. This is exciting news. Smart streets keep everyone safer and raise awareness to pedestrians and people with mobility issues, too.
In Ottawa, Canada that appears to be a realistic problem (according to my colleagues that live there; I have limited personal experience). They try to use the sidewalk-cleaning smaller machinery, but it's still a struggle due to shapes and barriers.
Most of the existing separated bike lanes are incorporated into the sidewalk, and therefore protected by the curb. There are a few that are "protected" by rows of parked cars or bolted-down pylons, but this would seem to not be legal under the new law.
I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.
This is Cambridge, MA.. it is incredibly hard to go most places in Cambridge and ever find a parking space on the side of the street.
If you are not a resident the majority of non-metered parking is not legal for you to park in.
The metered parking has strict maximum time limits and they enforce parking aggressively. It can be very hard to find a parking space at all.
If you need to travel in for business/pleasure in a car you basically are forced to either go to a subway/train station with a parking lot and then park there and take the subway/train/bus into Cambridge, or you will need to go in and have a parking garage ($$) to park at, and then walk a long way.
It is seriously stressful to use a car in Cambridge and Somerville.
It's already so dense & hard to use cars that the retail businesses don't really have anything they can complain about. By locating their business their they already decided to be hostile to customers who want to use a car.
For one-way streets this is avoided by reducing one lane of travel and using it for parking, putting the protected bike lane where cars used to park. Example: https://goo.gl/maps/9FoAZgKirbQ2
>I could be misinterpreting the language, [...] but the default seems to be that a typical side street would have a dedicated bike lane.
I think the key here is that it's for any roadway that is rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured. This is very rare for residential side streets in my experience - it would only come when roads are widened or curb lines are redone, which is more common on major streets and roads. Repaving is explicitly excluded.
I also think the exceptions are not nearly as limited as you. While 12.22.040.B explicitly calls the exceptions "rare", basically as long as they can prove in a public report that it's impractical (for financial constraint or physical features/usage reasons), they don't have to do a bike lane.
It's the perfect time to do it. Building the protected bike lane in the road design from the get go is the most effective way to make both cyclists and drivers happy and safe.
I totally agree with you. If you are re-doing a road, that's the best time to build a bike lane. But I'm personally not convinced that it's necessary on every new road. I lived on a side street in Cambridge that saw maybe one car every twenty minutes. I was lucky to have a private driveway, but my neighbors would have been pretty angry if you took away their street parking to put in a bike lane on a street with very little traffic. In my opinion, there should be some additional criteria, such as needing a bike lane on any new street with expected traffic of more than one car every minute (or some reasonable time frame). As a biker when I lived in Cambridge, I always felt safe on side streets where I could just bike in the middle of the street and move over for the occasional vehicle, but I was much more afraid on major (or even minor) thoroughfares. I personally would love to live in a world where fewer people own cars in the first place because public transportation is so good, but that's an ideal that we are no where close to achieving, so a lot of people need to own cars.
But it isn't the perfect reason. I live on a dead end road (road ends at the creek), it doesn't take much intelligence to realize the pavement is nearly worn out and so will be replaced soon. However because the road doesn't go anywhere, there is no need for any bike lane. If anything it needs a basketball hoop in the middle - all that hard surface is wasted on cars: let the kids play when there isn't a car coming.
I've got to wonder how this will actually help at intersections - are stoplights really going to get dedicated phases akin to walk lights? Are there going to be stop signs where cars cross the bike lane?
I once hit a car on Mass ave (just south of Central Sq) that popped out across the bike lane (but stopping to oncoming cars), and I couldn't simply move left due to cars on my left. Luckily it was raining so the reason I couldn't stop was traction rather than having been going wicked fast. If there is simply a cut in a barrier for cars to go across at every existing sidestreet, it seems like more barriers constraining bikes (and visual noise for drivers) will make that even worse!
I'll admit it's been over a decade since I've commuted city streets on a bike, and I've never personally seen benefit from city bike lanes. Worrying about being doored, pedestrians stepping off the sidewalk, cars pulling out, and avoiding road debris all require keeping far enough left, and the bike lanes I've experienced actually hamper that. The only times I've ever worried about cars straight up plowing me from behind (/ wind suck!) have been on suburban/rural roads.
What this means is the rich get new roads, the poor don't. The cost of adding these lanes will be enormous, especially in tight areas where you may need to seize property or realign streets. Nobody will advocate for the poor areas to ever be redeveloped at these cost levels.
This is long term controversial issue. If you think the right answer is obvious you probably haven't dove down to the details, where it's much murkier. See in particular John Forester's _Effective_Cycling_. Forester believes that "cyclists fare best when they act and are treated as drivers of vehicles" and are not segregated from them. There are studies in this area pointing in both directions. One such concluded that putting bikes on multi-use trails makes cyclists less safe. A lot depends on the design of the bike paths, and a badly designed one can increase the risk over none at all.
That's a very US-centric (and outdated) viewpoint, coming from a perspective of bike infrastructure being entirely non-existent in the US back in the 1970s. Contrast with Amsterdam's approach, where cycling is a properly treated third form of at-grade transit that has all its own paths just like cars and pedestrians do. That's way safer and has much higher usage than you'd ever see if no separate paths were provided for cyclists at all.
I've been a transportation cyclist for roughly a decade and I agree with everything he said. Many cyclists do, particularly more experienced ones.
Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.
I'm a single cyclist and I agree with that statement. Separated bike lanes, as implemented on my commute in Seattle are the places where I'm most concerned about my safety. I'm not yet to the point where I just bike with cars to avoid them, but it's probably going to happen. Some of the separated lanes are nice though, Western ave by the market, going uphill is a long stretch with pretty inactive driveways and it's nice to have space to go slow; although, the separation means street sweeping doesn't happen, so glass from broken bottles stays on the ground for weeks.
We could have a true scottsman argument about well implemented separate bike lanes vs vehicular cycling, but I don't have the opportunity to use a well designed system, I just have the system that's in place. Putting me on the wrong side of parked cars, so I can't see traffic, and traffic can't see me means instead of worrying about doors, I need to worry about whole cars taking my lane to turn right. If I needed to turn left at one of these intersections, there's no way for me to get in the right lane position at the right time, unless I avoid the lane for the whole block.
For me, biking is utilitarian; it's literally the fastest, least hassle way for me to get to the office, given I take a ferry to Seattle. Forcing me into a bike lane where I can't make turns, or pushing me onto a multi use trail with pedestrians slows me down and reduces the utility.
Their argument is that bicycle collisions increase at intersections and, I assume, decrease in segregated bike lanes. That is understandable since most automobile accidents also happen at intersections.
I'm a long term cyclist (> 100,000 miles) and I live in the Metro Boston area and have bike commuted into Cambridge before.
I read Effective Cycling a long time ago and took it to heart and I put a large amount of my safety over the years down to following the "Vehicular Cycling" model. Drivers are WAY less likely to honk or yell at you when you follow this model too because you are behaving in a way that is consistent with the rules of the road. In the end the law in 99% of places actually mandates you ride according to Vehicular Cycling.
I don't have a problem with bike lanes but they are all highly imperfect. Boston, MA has a very large # of very very very dangerous bike lanes because the bike lanes encourage/force the cyclist to behave inconsistently with other traffic.
A lot of the bike lane advocates appear to be from the anti-Vehicular cycling.
The problem with a lot of the bike lanes is even they are protected it is impossible for them to protect against collisions at intersections. Most of these bike lanes place the cyclist who is traveling straight off to the right side of the vehicles which are trying to take a right turn at the intersection. This is an absolute disaster in the city and we had a high profile fatality of a woman cyclist a few years ago in Boston that was directly caused by this kind of bike lane.
You can't protect straight traveling cyclists going through an intersection where the cars need to turn right and left. As soon as they get to the intersection the cyclist is placed in the most dangerous place for them.
If the lane is unprotected the cyclist can exit the bike lane and enter the "travel straight" lane of traffic and avoid this. If the bike lane is protected the cyclist might not be able to do this at all and is forced into the "travel straight to the right of the right turning traffic."
If the road designer insists on putting a protected bike lane to the right of the right turning traffic the only thing I see being safe is a stop light for both the cyclists & cars, and the cars can't take a right when the cyclists have a green light and the cyclists can't go straight when the cars have a red light. The cars would have to be given a "No Right turn on Red" as well.
Again my experience is a lot of the advocates of some of this non-vehicular cycling stuff do not have that clear of a picture of what is actually safe because:
- They don't actually ride that much
- They spend a lot of time riding on Multi-Use-Trails instead of roads.
- They use sidewalks a lot of the time and advocate use of sidewalks
- They often think the rules of the road are invalid for cyclists
- Never got a motor cycle license or learned to ride a motorcycle
- Maybe don't drive cars at all
My experience is there is a cavernous gap in behavior between these folks and long term long distance riders & racers. The long term long distance riders & racers fall into vehicular cycling and are very very safe over the years.
This same kind of thing happens with left turns. The Vehicular cycling way to do this is signal left and move across the lanes of traffic as you approach the intersection and get to the left turn lane, just like a car or a truck. I've been doing this for decades safely and without conflict on roads as busy as 8 lanes wide. It works incredibly well. The non-vehicular way (Forrester always called this the "cycling inferiority complex" way of riding) is to hug the right side of the road even if you're in a right turn lane, and then take a left across all the right turning & straight turning traffic in an incredibly dangerous way that is also illegal.
Any cycling behavior that would get you a ticket if you did it on a motorcycle or in a car should be a red flag behavior for you because the ticket would be issued because you were engaging in flagrantly dangerous behavior.
A cyclist who is experienced in Vehicular cycling can move in and out of the bike lanes when they are safe or not safe and get the best of both worlds.
I agree with you in the sense that especially in America a lot of the bike lanes are really just faded single lines littered with gravel, and practically speaking following the Vehicular Cycling model has been very successful for me in interacting with cars.
However, while I can nimbly integrate with traffic being in shape and experienced, trying to get friends and family who are not experienced in this are usually met with an awful time, further discouraging bicycle use.
A fully segregated path, where you can get comfortable and learn without impatient drivers honking or zooming past 45+MPH would be infinitely valuable in helping. Cities need to stop half-assing bike lanes and either provide a safe, effective path or not bother because like you said they can even more dangerous.
There are plenty of intelligent solutions to the intersection problems, as well.
I'm a huge fan of protected bike lanes. Chicago has a few of them, and they are far less stressful to ride on compared to just basic striping on the road.
By far the biggest issue I have with striped bike lanes is trying guess when an Uber driver is going to do something crazy when picking up or dropping off a passenger.
My biggest problem with unprotected bike lanes here in Manhattan is that they are so frequently illegally blocked, not just by Taxis/FHVs but also by people parking in them. And a lot of the unprotected bike lanes are basically just the door zone of a line of parked cars, so you need to ride to the far outside of it to avoid getting doored.
There's entire block-long stretches that I'll stay out of the unprotected bike lane entirely for, because it's so frequently blocked or so close to parked cars that it's more dangerous to be in there.
The protected bike lanes, on the other hand, are much better. I wish we'd get this law here.
It's so bad. I bike daily to work, and take a very extended route that tries to go purely on protected bike lanes, but there are still so many vehicles on them. Cops need to start ticketing heavily for this, but the problem is they are routinely the ones blocking the lanes. NY is getting much better for biking, but there needs to be a shift in actually protecting bikers, since obstructing vehicles causes traffic and inconvenience whereas obstructing cyclists leads to injury and death.
The fine for parking your car in a bike lane should really be a tow. Predatory towing companies in my town can grab a car in 10 minutes; it's spooky. They even have scouts. I feel like towing companies should be chomping at the bit to get action on this parking ignorance with bike lanes, which seems to be universal in any city with them.
It's the same in London too. Outside the city center nearly all of the 'Cycle Superhighways' are just bus/taxi lanes. And someone driving a 15m long vehicle who has spent the last 10 hours dealing with stupid drivers isn't going to pay as much attention to cyclists as they should.
Excellent point, the relative lack of blocking is one thing that makes protected bike lanes better.
To be honest, though, I'm not entirely a fan as protected lanes make left turns much more difficult to the point where to make a left turn I usually make a right turn and then a U-turn in a protected bike lane.
In SF, striped bike lanes are frequently painted next to parallel parking. The likelihood of getting a door prize makes riding in those lanes far more dangerous than riding in the car lane.
Apropos of nothing, but the dutch reach should really be taught in every driver's ed class.
I used to bike every morning from my house on Morrison Ave in Somerville to Riverside Boat Club, then from RBC to Central Square. I would then bike the reverse in the evenings.
Rides could be treacherous because the tension between drivers and cyclists when they share the road. There is a hard division established for commuting by foot (sidewalks) and drivers (roads), but none for cyclists. Both cyclists and drivers feel entitled to roads, but there are few parameters around how they interoperate with one another.
I think designating a division for cyclists is a great idea in a city with a high volume of cyclists.
Just got back from a trip Amsterdam. If you want to see what the future of Cambridge could be - take a trip there. The cycling infrastructure is phenomenal and very heavily used. It seems the majority of streets had dedicated and protected cycle lanes on both sides. Even more impressive is that it doesn't stop at the city limits. It goes far far out into the countryside. They even had parking garages for bikes.
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Just yesterday, I approached an arterial Street from a side street at 6pm. Cars on the arterial were moving about 8 MPH. I dismounted my bike, and began walking across the arterial in the crosswalk. As I re-mounted on the other side and resumed riding, a white man in a mid-size SUV leaned out his window and said loudly to me, "I hope you get hit!"
This morning on my way to work, a driver popped out of a side street from my left side directly in front of me. As I was along side of him, he swerved hard to the right and into a parking lot (no signal of course).
I've been a daily bike commuter in Cambridge for 12 years. We desperately need infrastructure that forces drivers to respect cyclists as equal road users. There is hardly a day that I don't almost get hit by car while cycling.
This, to me, signals the general attitude people have towards bicyclists in the US. The average person either doesn't care or, for some misguided reason or another, actively hates bicyclists. I've been yelled at by drivers for no apparent reason so many times I've lost count. I've had so many friends hit by cars. My partner was struck by a car last fall and broke her leg in two places. She's still recovering and frequently has to lie down for hours because her leg is so sore. Just the other day a friend of mine was struck and had to get stitches in her face.
I think the problem here is a mixture of infrastructure and attitude. The infrastructure side of things is usually what we talk about, which is obviously an important part of the discussion, but I don't think the problem with peoples' overall attitude towards bicycling gets enough attention. There are so many people out there who legitimately wish to harm bicyclists. Don't take my word for it, in 2016 a driver purposely murdered 5 bicyclists (in an area close to where I live, no less) with his vehicle and was sentenced in 2018[1]. Although most are likely accidents, there are other examples of drivers purposefully striking bicyclists with their vehicles if you look.
It's really sad, I think it's a symptom of something a lot more sinister happening to the hearts and minds of people in this country, and it's why I no longer ride my bike in the city anymore.
[1] https://www.mlive.com/news/kalamazoo/2018/05/charles_pickett...
My experience as a pedestrian (I don't ride a bike on the street so I can't speak to that experience) mirrors this. More than once, I've been honked or yelled at for being in an actual, marked crosswalk, crossing the street. (Never mind all of the driver complaints about my use of legal, unmarked crosswalks.)
On a former commute, I regularly got off the bus at a bus stop immediately adjacent to a signaled crosswalk that several of us used. We regularly got honked at by drivers bringing their cars to a screeching halt as the light changed and, once on a holiday, when it was just me and my kid, a driver yelled "if you weren't so fucking poor you wouldn't have to ride the bus!"
> It's really sad, I think it's a symptom of something a lot more sinister happening to the hearts and minds of people in this country
Agreed, and I live in a city where ways of getting to work and around town that aren't a single-occupant vehicle are now in the cumulative majority yet the pushback has increased even more. People regularly write letters to the local paper about how they "openly" use the bus and bike lanes for their cars because "[screw] those entitled people."
I hold a driving license and, until recently, owned a car that I regularly used. This behavior ought to be unacceptable and more actively enforced against but I can only imagine the uproar if an even light "crackdown" happened.
They don't follow the rules of the road--at all. Red lights? Stop signs? Ignored. Pedestrians crossing in a crosswalk? Probably fine to whiz past them with 6 inches to spare.
I almost get hit by fast-moving bikes once or twice a year. A car has never even come close to hitting me in eight years. Not even those crazy taxi drivers.
I have no idea what possesses these people to blast through a red light, into a busy intersection, without slowing down or even looking, but they do it!
It has always seemed to me that bicyclists see something "different" about their mode of transportation that exempts them from most traffic laws. And the crazy thing is that they keep asking for more bike lanes.
(I'm not accusing you of being this way. But I think this may be the reason lots of people have a hatred of bicyclists. I know many people in the city who feel the same way I do.)
But here's my assessment of why bikes annoy me. Not argument that they should, just some introspection.
* They make me nervous. Cars are easy to see, have lots of momentum to overcome, and generally exist on a predictable well defined plane. Bikes are different. They can enter the car plane from places I don't expect and didn't even realize existed. They can make 90 degree turns on a dime (relative to my sedan) and can stop in inches. They don't generally obey traffic lights, stop signs, one ways, or any of the other rules that lend predictability to car behavior. They don't have brake lights or signals. And in a complex driving environment, they're tiny and often poorly lit. They also have no protection. Slow moving car crashes aka "fender benders" are expensive and annoying, but rarely dangerous. Similar accidents involving a bike can end lives. Having a bike near me makes me worried I'm going to hit it. I don't want to live with that so I give it huge space and pay it lots of attention. If I could drive on roads that didn't have bikes I'd prefer it.
* Civic disagreement. The arguments in favor of making roads more bike friendly are generally: more healthy, more space efficient, more environmentally friendly. I agree on healthy and environmentally friendly. Though, it does seem odd when someone tells me biking is super healthy and super dangerous in the same sentence, but I cede the point. Space efficient? Yes and no. It is more space efficient for people whose options are bike vs car to ride a bike, but there's tons of people that doesn't apply to - people who live far away, people who need to haul things, people who have health issues, people who are too young etc. Also, lots of people don't want to bike in heat, rain, snow, etc. Also, not everyone has a place to change and shower when they get to work. The shower issue and the distance issue disproportionately impact people who are less well off. I get that biking can be part of the solution, but man does it get over hyped.
* Guilt/jealousy. I really enjoy biking! If I'm in my car and you're on your bike - I'm pretty sure you're having more fun than I am, and that makes me jealous. Then I start asking myself why I'm not biking, and sometimes the answer makes me feel guilty. Neither of those emotions often get followed up with - let's arrange it so I can experience more of this.
ETA: I should mention that I got hit and run on my bicycle by a drunk driver years before the mass murder. My friends tracked down the driver, the police took statements, viewed the damage to the car exactly as I described it, driver matched the description my riding partner and I gave, and the prosecutor still declined to press charges. It wasn't a no-harm-no-foul thing either, I was pretty severely injured. Still pretty sore about that.
Engineering practices don’t account for cyclists well. That’s getting better where i live, but more need to be done there as well as educating folks on what to do in difficult car/bike/pedestrian scenarios.
Maybe, but if you have ever tried to get around in Cambridge, MA, you would understand that it is a disaster for everybody.
Pedestrians walk into intersections when they shouldn't and block traffic, sometimes indefinitely. Bicyclists ignore signs, lights, people, etc. and cut off cars randomly. And cars have to shove their way through the mess or they will never get anywhere.
Cambridge traffic is simply dreadful. Go read Neal Stephenson's "Zodiac" for a taste.
So is your response to just drive a car then? That's a most-poignant tragedy of the commons.
You have two parties who feel entitled to the road, while few parameters exist around how they share the road. Naturally anything a cyclist does that interferes with the driver ends up irritating him/her and vice versa.
Protected bike lanes go a long way to solving this problem. We need rules around how we interoperate.
There truly is a lot of hostility for cyclists out there, and I think it would be wiser to cite cases that don't have complicating factors like this, such as:
* https://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2010/01/cyclist-sente...
* https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/may/31/why-so-hard-...
* https://nyc.streetsblog.org/2017/08/11/video-cyclist-survive...
* https://www.narcity.com/news/this-ontario-driver-has-been-ch...
* https://www.pressdemocrat.com/news/7502828-181/chp-hit-and-r...
* https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/must-reads/video-motorist-...
* https://metro.co.uk/2019/03/22/smirking-driver-records-braki...
* https://www.dailybulletin.com/2018/11/03/police-bicyclist-ki...
* https://www.ldnews.com/story/news/local/2018/05/16/cyclist-h...
* https://ggwash.org/view/34715/driver-assaults-bicyclist-poli...
* https://cambridge.wickedlocal.com/news/20170505/police-drive...
Cyclists and other non-car users of roads have a deep hole to climb out of to change these laws, and to change the perception that streets are only for cars. Infrastructure is probably the only real mechanism we have that can make tangible changes, that don't allow the personal feelings of car drivers to get angry at being inconvenienced by cyclists and other road users.
We need to slow down auto-traffic and encourage more non-vehicular use of the roads, while making those roads safer for pedestrians, cyclists, scooter riders, skate boarders, etc.
Is that the most efficient use of the roads? Especially in a place like Boston, where most people in the metro area don’t live in (and can’t afford to live in) the city itself. At a certain point doesn’t creating a preference for pedestrians and cyclists actually end up being a preference for wealthier people who can afford to live downtown, versus those who need to access the city but can’t live within walking or biking distance? (Note that bicyclists and skateboarders also slow down busses, which are what lower income people use to get around.)
The problem is that the infrastructure is often inferior compared to the actual road due to bad intersection management, bad surface conditions, significantly longer routes, or routes that don't take you where you need to go. Another approach would be to repeal the keep as far right as practicable laws and allow cyclists the right to use an entire traffic lane when riding and require faster vehicles to change lanes to pass.
And the absolutely disgusting thing about this is we can't get away from roads. Every building has roads in front, and to get anywhere you have to cross a lot of roads.
I live in Austin right now and I tend to avoid the protected bike lanes because drivers frequently turn across them without yielding to cyclists using them. The city put up signs saying to yield to oncoming cyclists, but in my experience those signs are followed less than 5% of the time. I'd rather ride in the normal traffic lane where I'm visible. Yes, I might be angering some drivers, but angering drivers is better than dying.
Another side of this puzzle is that we don't require drivers to update their education or competence on a recurring basis. If we required all drivers to update their education and demonstrate their physical fitness to drive safely every couple of years, this would all go more smoothly.
However, you're bringing up the point that protected bike lanes may make intersections even more dangerous for cyclists. While your reasoning makes sense, do you know if there's anything to corroborate that claim?
Then also build protected intersections? These are common in truly bike-friendly cities. I see them frequently here in Munich (admittedly not as bike-friendly as Dutch cities, but much better than any US city).
You're underestimating some of the speeds involved though. People will bike at speeds that feel safe to them. There's bike lanes there that are long, straight, and that have people going much faster on them than anyone can run. Amsterdam is full of life-long cyclists; some of them go pretty fast when it's safe to do so. It was quite impressive seeing some of the people on the city-style bikes hauling ass, especially when they didn't look like you'd expect them to. I do that here in NYC too; no sense in making my commute take any longer than necessary. Although I'm generally on a road bike when doing so, not a city bike!
It is almost always the car drivers who don't want to sacrifice the single lane required to make a two way, protected bike lane. Case in point, Peachtree St in Atlanta ~3 years ago.
https://www.ajc.com/news/traffic/bike-lane-plan-for-peachtre...
https://www.ajc.com/news/local/bike-lanes-peachtree-road-for...
Huh? In the city center, speeds are greatly reduced for cars and bikes, but getting between metropolitan areas, both speeds can climb. You do know there's a whole bike highway system in the Netherlands, right?
I think the, "bikes as fast pedestrians" model is a bit outdated. I don't want to be seen as a very fast person on foot, while on my bike. I can hit 30+mph in a sprint, and go many hundreds of miles in a week.
Some people ride slow, and some ride fast, and it's facetious to conclude that average biking speed is slow.
Also as a jogger, I wouldn't every try running on a busy sidewalk somewhere downtown, but I will need to bike home in rush hour.
My commute while I take the kids to the daycare in a trailer takes me about 20 minutes one way. My ride to work takes me another 6 minutes. If I walked the same route, it would take me over an hour to get to daycare and another 30 minutes to get to work from there.
Bicyclists are not fast pedestrians. They're riding on vehicles that have similar dynamics to any other 2 wheeled vehicle like a moped or motorcycle. The only difference is that they're slower, but when going downhill, they can easily match motorized traffic speeds with little effort (I've managed to get up to 35 mph going down some steep grades).
Infrastructure designed for pedestrian speeds is not really suited for cyclists who ride for transportation.
What does this mean? Why not slow motorcycles?
Cycling at 10mph at all times would feel pretty slow.
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The safest engineering solution is to separate heavy motorized vehicles from human scale things.
I just checked my bike computer, and it tells me that my average speed is around 10 MPH, which means that roughly half the time I'm going faster than that.
This is one thing I will never be able to wrap my head around - why would a human being say something like this to a fellow human?
In my experience this comment brings together a few things:
1. Many drivers just have no respect for "Share the Road" and specifically no respect for cyclists
2. This type of "speak your mind" attitude is very New England and specifically Boston (and suburbs).
3. Just speaks to the need to accelerate bike access and harmonize/integrate more with infrastructure.
This news is a good step forward...
> This is one thing I will never be able to wrap my head around - why would a human being say something like this to a fellow human?
Because he was frustrated and angry about something else that he has no power to affect (possibly the traffic that he was stuck in) and misdirected his energy at an accessible target to alleviate some psychic pressure.
Cars seem to act as a stress multiplier.
Because what they see isn't a human, it's an obstacle.
Yes, as a pedestrian in C in the 60's i was hit by a Cliffe on a bike ... going the wrong way on a one-way street, mind you. We, as a species, need to integrate more with others: We are not our bodies etc, we are the world
My usual retort to this, as the cyclist:
"I hope you find true Love!"
I have never had issue with cars, granted I've only been doing this for the two years (and in college I used to commute from Roxbury to Cambridge for 2 years and only had 1 freak-out with a drunk-driver, but that's another story.)
On the other hand I've seen entitled cyclists lose their shit for no reason at cars.
I feel like there's a subset of cyclists that don't understand that cars may have blind spots and freak out at drivers when there's literally nothing the driver can do about it.
There is certainly a strong relationship among perceived entitlement/privilege, apparent race and ethnicity, and apparent gender. I shouldn't need to explain this.
Question two: That would anger many people and cause much defensiveness.
It blows my mind that this is the reality I live in and that you are the only person to bring this up in this heavily commented thread.
As someone who grew up in left wing (espoused more than practiced) Boston but chose the search for truth over this hateful leftist religion I’ve spent my whole life trying to understand political and religious motives (really one and the same). One of the things I’ve come to understand is that it is human nature to find an easy enemy to fight even if there is none or you are too cowardly to fight a real enemy. White men have become this easy and compliant enemy for the left. Nevermind reality it’s too uncomfortable.
When riding a bicycle, you often choose to endanger your own life and break the law in order to be less of an obstacle to motorists -- motorists, who in turn, almost certainly curse under their breath about how you should just obey the rules. Aggro assholes are gonna be aggro assholes.
I know it's breaking the law, and I don't usually do it, but when I cycle on a quiet residential street, I'm going to roll a stop sign. I know it's bad, but at that point I'm going home and I feel tired.
Some places have a great network of bike and walk trails. I think this is the only viable option: roads or other paved surfaces where automobiles are not allowed.
There have been a few deadly incidents as well, adding fuel to the mix.
Dead Comment
I put a pigeon on my helmet 8 years ago[1]. Everywhere I go I see smiles. I really makes every ride fun. One of my friends recently started also doing it, so its starting to catch on.
Pigeonriding transforms me from an awkward software engineer into an interesting person who people want to talk to. I have only had a handful of bad experiences[2] with drivers and other bikers in 8+ years that I have been riding (a few of those years I commuted on a bike year-round).
[1]:http://www.pictureboston.com/blog/2011/08/14/a-leica-camera-...
[2]:https://www.youtube.com/watch?reload=1&v=2hJ_hzjlQsw
(File under: it's a small world, I probably shouldn't act so surprised.)
The constant feeling of "hey my eyes are down here buddy" in public proves that it works!
"oh that person really has no idea that bird is on their head".
There are lots of bike lanes downtown but they aren’t protected or respected. We have a long way to go to make biking a safe form of transport like it is in the Netherlands.
I used to ride my bike to my job in East Lakeview every day, which was about about 9 miles each way, and the last mile of my commute was always the worst. Lincoln Park and Lakeview are full of the most entitled drivers on the planet.
I once saved a kid from getting hit by a left turning driver by picking him up just before a driver hit him. The guy was taking a left hand turn while looking at his cell phone. The mom had bent down for half a second to pick up a bottle that her kid in a stroller had dropped.
On another note, rideshare drivers are the worst drivers in the city. They are unpredictable, they have no idea where they are going, they don't have experience driving in the city, and they are always looking at their cell phones.
Chicago needs to crack down on ridesharing. I've almost been hit by rideshare drivers who aren't looking where they are going 3 times in the past month. Each time they were driving in the bike lane looking to drop someone off or pick someone up.
Plus, ride shares absolutely murder traffic. I initially started riding my bike because all the ride shares pulling over made my commute go from 20 minutes each way to 30 minutes in the mornings and 40 in the evening. Any arguments that ride shares somehow are more efficient than actual driving ignore the fact that most drivers don't pull over in the middle of a busy street for 30 seconds to 2 minutes at the beginning and end of their trip.
Edit: I should also mention that I credit disc brakes for part of the reason I've never been hit. I can stop so much faster with then than with rim brakes, partly because I can modulate braking force better, and partly because it always bites right away, rather than needing a revolution to clean road grime or water off that rim brakes sometimes need. I swapped after I almost got right hooked going under the Cortland bridge. There's always water pooled there, and I honestly thought I was going to slide under a car for a few seconds.
Sorry but if you have kids and family you are fucking stupid to ride bikes on the street in chicago. White bikes on sidewalks are not street art. Go to lakeshore path/606 if you are dying to ride bikes.
I got doored 2 yrs ago escaped only with broken wrist.
The best way to avoid getting doored is to not ride so close to parked cars. You should maintain a distance of at least 6 feet from parked cars while riding.
It’s a death wish.
I'm all for better bike lanes, but it seems kind of extreme to require this for all new roads [0]. I used to live in Cambridge and rode my bike quite a bit. I never felt like I needed a dedicated lane on every side street, just on the main drags (where some of the new protected bike lanes were amazing to have).
[0] Actual ordinance available at http://cambridgema.iqm2.com/Citizens/FileOpen.aspx?Type=4&ID.... I could be misinterpreting the language, and it seems they will allow for some very limited exceptions, but the default seems to be that a typical side street would have a dedicated bike lane.
EDIT: after reading the actual ordinance again (and as a comment below pointed out), it seems that this only applies to streets that are rebuilt or improved and are part of the city's plan for streets that should include bike paths. In other words, most random side streets wouldn't get bike paths.
So I'm guessing their bike plan drew out routes and arteries and such for bike paths and the requirement just applies to those?
Dead Comment
It’s possible that this group is extremely tiny, in which case it may not make sense, but whether existing bikers feel they needed it is not really the relevant question.
But that’s only considering the “get more people biking” aspect. The truth is that protected bike lanes are statistically safer than ones that are not, so there is good reason to require it just to reduce injury or death even if it does not lead to an uptick in biking.
Would love to see data combined with Somerville, since I'm sure the stretch of Beacon between Porter and Inman would be similarly populated. These are also only accidents reported to police, so I would bet they lean towards more serious accidents.
[0]: https://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2016/10/05/map-bike-crashe... [1]: https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3773046,-71.1224085,14z
In a snow emergency (i.e. when cars are forced off one side of the street for plowing), the vertical barriers can be manually removed.
I'm actually not sure how they manage to get those bike lanes cleared, seeing as how the sidewalks are always covered in snow, but there seems to be some method.
If you are not a resident the majority of non-metered parking is not legal for you to park in.
The metered parking has strict maximum time limits and they enforce parking aggressively. It can be very hard to find a parking space at all.
If you need to travel in for business/pleasure in a car you basically are forced to either go to a subway/train station with a parking lot and then park there and take the subway/train/bus into Cambridge, or you will need to go in and have a parking garage ($$) to park at, and then walk a long way.
It is seriously stressful to use a car in Cambridge and Somerville.
It's already so dense & hard to use cars that the retail businesses don't really have anything they can complain about. By locating their business their they already decided to be hostile to customers who want to use a car.
Overall it's pretty clearly been a net gain, but there's definitely some short term pain there.
I think the key here is that it's for any roadway that is rebuilt, expanded, or reconfigured. This is very rare for residential side streets in my experience - it would only come when roads are widened or curb lines are redone, which is more common on major streets and roads. Repaving is explicitly excluded.
I also think the exceptions are not nearly as limited as you. While 12.22.040.B explicitly calls the exceptions "rare", basically as long as they can prove in a public report that it's impractical (for financial constraint or physical features/usage reasons), they don't have to do a bike lane.
I once hit a car on Mass ave (just south of Central Sq) that popped out across the bike lane (but stopping to oncoming cars), and I couldn't simply move left due to cars on my left. Luckily it was raining so the reason I couldn't stop was traction rather than having been going wicked fast. If there is simply a cut in a barrier for cars to go across at every existing sidestreet, it seems like more barriers constraining bikes (and visual noise for drivers) will make that even worse!
I'll admit it's been over a decade since I've commuted city streets on a bike, and I've never personally seen benefit from city bike lanes. Worrying about being doored, pedestrians stepping off the sidewalk, cars pulling out, and avoiding road debris all require keeping far enough left, and the bike lanes I've experienced actually hamper that. The only times I've ever worried about cars straight up plowing me from behind (/ wind suck!) have been on suburban/rural roads.
The cycle continues.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effective_Cycling
Bike lanes can be helpful, but they are not the panacea many people make them out to be. I think the main benefit bike lanes have is increasing the number of cyclists which leads to the "safety in numbers" effect. I think far too many bike lanes are made poorly, however, and these ones seem to be less safe than if there was no bike lane.
I'm a single cyclist and I agree with that statement. Separated bike lanes, as implemented on my commute in Seattle are the places where I'm most concerned about my safety. I'm not yet to the point where I just bike with cars to avoid them, but it's probably going to happen. Some of the separated lanes are nice though, Western ave by the market, going uphill is a long stretch with pretty inactive driveways and it's nice to have space to go slow; although, the separation means street sweeping doesn't happen, so glass from broken bottles stays on the ground for weeks.
We could have a true scottsman argument about well implemented separate bike lanes vs vehicular cycling, but I don't have the opportunity to use a well designed system, I just have the system that's in place. Putting me on the wrong side of parked cars, so I can't see traffic, and traffic can't see me means instead of worrying about doors, I need to worry about whole cars taking my lane to turn right. If I needed to turn left at one of these intersections, there's no way for me to get in the right lane position at the right time, unless I avoid the lane for the whole block.
For me, biking is utilitarian; it's literally the fastest, least hassle way for me to get to the office, given I take a ferry to Seattle. Forcing me into a bike lane where I can't make turns, or pushing me onto a multi use trail with pedestrians slows me down and reduces the utility.
I read Effective Cycling a long time ago and took it to heart and I put a large amount of my safety over the years down to following the "Vehicular Cycling" model. Drivers are WAY less likely to honk or yell at you when you follow this model too because you are behaving in a way that is consistent with the rules of the road. In the end the law in 99% of places actually mandates you ride according to Vehicular Cycling.
I don't have a problem with bike lanes but they are all highly imperfect. Boston, MA has a very large # of very very very dangerous bike lanes because the bike lanes encourage/force the cyclist to behave inconsistently with other traffic.
A lot of the bike lane advocates appear to be from the anti-Vehicular cycling.
The problem with a lot of the bike lanes is even they are protected it is impossible for them to protect against collisions at intersections. Most of these bike lanes place the cyclist who is traveling straight off to the right side of the vehicles which are trying to take a right turn at the intersection. This is an absolute disaster in the city and we had a high profile fatality of a woman cyclist a few years ago in Boston that was directly caused by this kind of bike lane.
You can't protect straight traveling cyclists going through an intersection where the cars need to turn right and left. As soon as they get to the intersection the cyclist is placed in the most dangerous place for them.
If the lane is unprotected the cyclist can exit the bike lane and enter the "travel straight" lane of traffic and avoid this. If the bike lane is protected the cyclist might not be able to do this at all and is forced into the "travel straight to the right of the right turning traffic."
If the road designer insists on putting a protected bike lane to the right of the right turning traffic the only thing I see being safe is a stop light for both the cyclists & cars, and the cars can't take a right when the cyclists have a green light and the cyclists can't go straight when the cars have a red light. The cars would have to be given a "No Right turn on Red" as well.
Again my experience is a lot of the advocates of some of this non-vehicular cycling stuff do not have that clear of a picture of what is actually safe because:
- They don't actually ride that much
- They spend a lot of time riding on Multi-Use-Trails instead of roads.
- They use sidewalks a lot of the time and advocate use of sidewalks
- They often think the rules of the road are invalid for cyclists
- Never got a motor cycle license or learned to ride a motorcycle
- Maybe don't drive cars at all
My experience is there is a cavernous gap in behavior between these folks and long term long distance riders & racers. The long term long distance riders & racers fall into vehicular cycling and are very very safe over the years.
This same kind of thing happens with left turns. The Vehicular cycling way to do this is signal left and move across the lanes of traffic as you approach the intersection and get to the left turn lane, just like a car or a truck. I've been doing this for decades safely and without conflict on roads as busy as 8 lanes wide. It works incredibly well. The non-vehicular way (Forrester always called this the "cycling inferiority complex" way of riding) is to hug the right side of the road even if you're in a right turn lane, and then take a left across all the right turning & straight turning traffic in an incredibly dangerous way that is also illegal.
Any cycling behavior that would get you a ticket if you did it on a motorcycle or in a car should be a red flag behavior for you because the ticket would be issued because you were engaging in flagrantly dangerous behavior.
A cyclist who is experienced in Vehicular cycling can move in and out of the bike lanes when they are safe or not safe and get the best of both worlds.
However, while I can nimbly integrate with traffic being in shape and experienced, trying to get friends and family who are not experienced in this are usually met with an awful time, further discouraging bicycle use.
A fully segregated path, where you can get comfortable and learn without impatient drivers honking or zooming past 45+MPH would be infinitely valuable in helping. Cities need to stop half-assing bike lanes and either provide a safe, effective path or not bother because like you said they can even more dangerous.
There are plenty of intelligent solutions to the intersection problems, as well.
https://www.industrytap.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/duth....
By far the biggest issue I have with striped bike lanes is trying guess when an Uber driver is going to do something crazy when picking up or dropping off a passenger.
There's entire block-long stretches that I'll stay out of the unprotected bike lane entirely for, because it's so frequently blocked or so close to parked cars that it's more dangerous to be in there.
The protected bike lanes, on the other hand, are much better. I wish we'd get this law here.
To be honest, though, I'm not entirely a fan as protected lanes make left turns much more difficult to the point where to make a left turn I usually make a right turn and then a U-turn in a protected bike lane.
Apropos of nothing, but the dutch reach should really be taught in every driver's ed class.
I kind of wish they were required to have "check for cyclists before you open door!" signs like I've seen in some taxis.
Rides could be treacherous because the tension between drivers and cyclists when they share the road. There is a hard division established for commuting by foot (sidewalks) and drivers (roads), but none for cyclists. Both cyclists and drivers feel entitled to roads, but there are few parameters around how they interoperate with one another.
I think designating a division for cyclists is a great idea in a city with a high volume of cyclists.