A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
i disagree. There are good and bad separate bike lanes.
In this one, cyclists will be overlooked a lot when crossing the lane. They are hidden behind parked cars.
edit: apologies in advance. I am glad you built this one, which is already a good step in the right direction.
This is literally how 99 percent of the separate bike lanes in NL are built. Check Not Just Bikes on Nebula.
Not correct. And misleading. I know not just bikes well. Infrastructure is way more than one bike lane. It is also about how traffic crosses a bike lane. The crossing is slowed down by speedbumps (?) or the bike path is elevated by a curb, etc. and a wide area of visibility is provided, so they are visible before crossing. And most importantly, the car drivers are taught about it. What i mean is, that like in this foto, might work well in the Netherlands, but not so much in other countries.
It is part of a much larger plan. But in the Netherlands it also started small, and took all the way until the 1990s when it started to scale.
I think the idea is that the cars shield cyclists from potential accidents on the road.
you trade one danger for the other
Though IMO anyone on a bike in areas where they must interact with cars should anticipate right turners going through their lane without even considering if there's a cyclist about to enter that space. Right of way only matters when looking back at an incident to determine if anyone should be fined or arrested.
I do the same shit while driving, just assume that anyone around me might actually be completely incompetent and could try changing into my lane at any moment.
Indeed and give the bicycles the right of way like the Netherlands. However, with proper traffic controls and the bicyclists must follow the rules too.
I didn't know Americans had cycle lanes
I would guess that Boston Massachusetts has the best bike lanes in America, but there are many American cities I haven’t been to. I have bike lanes in my town, but nothing like I saw in Boston. That city takes biking very seriously.
Very good (for America) cycle infrastructure here in Portland Oregon!
Haven’t been, but I’ve heard good things!
DC and the surrounding areas do it pretty damn well. Tons of dedicated trails and a solid community.
I hear America is full of cycopaths
This, fucking everywhere!
There are like eight cities in the US that give me hope for you guys.
Not a crazy amount of hope, to be clear. But I like seeing this more than the good old find out half of the imperial boomerang.
I have to find a new home at some point and it’s good that not every single community in one continent has decided to continuously shoot itself in the foot at every opportunity. I’ve got friends who moved to Boston and they say it’s nice. Frankly any place where a house costs eight billion dollars better be nice.
They plow them too. Same city, different street, this week:
Wow, here in Germany, the bike path has to be cleared by the residents in many places. You can imagine how well that works. In other words: I've been driving my car instead of riding my bike for the last 3 weeks.
Just move to Slovenia. We don't get snow anymore anyway. ಥ‿ಥ
Oh a Slovenian! I have questions for you if you don't mind 🙏
We're planning to go there by train next summer, and were wondering if it was a good country to visit with bikes, or if you'd recommend a car rental or just trains?
You definitely can do it by train. You can also take your bikes on pretty much any train within Slovenia afaik.
Now there are many nice areas to bike here even though there are not as many bike paths as such. I don't know what you want to visit and what kind of biking you usually do so a rental car would be dependent on those things. Many places can be reached via train but many more cannot.
Now if you bike to get around then no issue but if you prefer going somewhere than doing a bike ride that would change things.
To clarify we either wanted to rent a bike and travel around the country with it + some trains. Or just walking + trains and public transports.
Renting a car would be my least favorite scenario but I wouldn't mind if it's the only good way to visit the country.
As for things we wanted to visit, Ljubljana of course, and then mostly the countryside and the cool nature places Slovenia seems to have to offer.
You can also take your bikes on pretty much any train within Slovenia afaik.
Even ebikes which are larger than regular bikes?
Thanks a lot!
Yeah even ebikes pretty sure. Now many nature places can be reached with train and then some biking. But many are quite far from any good connections so until you know a bit more of the specific places you wish to visit I cannot help much
That's already very helpful, ty so much!
You a normal bicycle road in the Netherlands in every town. All equipped with own traffic signs and own traffic lights. Even with broader bicycle expressways cross country between towns.
Yeah but those would never work in American because our needs are special. We’re “special needs” /s
Post pics! It's not that I don't believe you, I just want to be more depressed with my country
I'm not the person you're replying to but here's one:
You can just do an image search for "Netherlands separated cycle lane" to see a bunch more.
Here are some videos about road design in the Netherlands you might find interesting:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5aNtsWvNYKE
I can guarantee at least one of those links is NotJustBikes without even clicking on them.
It's frustrating how many comments are focused on comparisons to the NL. When someone does something hard that was easy for you, do you gloat or do you celebrate their efforts?
Everyone in this community knows that NL has amazing bike infra and this is normal (and better) there.
Hope to see more permanent protected bike lanes in the US. Thanks for sharing OP
Appreciate your view and I would love to see more of it.
I live in NJ, which is probably the most suburban state in the US, and so we were built with cars and houses in mind. Fortunately, we are seeing a shift toward biking infrastructure, albeit a little slow, but progress is progress. Jersey City certainly leads the way, and new developments that come online, which there are many, are often required to put in protected bike lanes.
Beyond that, we've seen work started on a Greenway connecting Montclair and Jersey City, nine miles through very dense, urban landscape, where there will be dedicated bike lanes throughout. NJ has so many old rail lines that there's been an effort to turn into pedestrian ways. There's one that comes to mind that's 20 miles. Ideally we would also take some of those old railways and make them unold, and add additional rail lines, but things move slowly in a tiny state with 565 municipalities.
All I know is I'm fortunate to be part of the Northeast Corridor of the US, which is seemingly one of the few places that tries to do some forward thinking.
Yeah so this wasn't easy for the Netherlands either. They just started trying earlier, so they had more time to fail and try again. This would maybe not fly anymore in a newly designed street in the NLs now, but it sure as heck looks a lot like some older roads in the Hague that are still waiting on their update to the new guidelines.
So well done guys, you are def. going in the right direction with this 🙏.
The only thing you could maybe argue is why they are not just asking for a bit of help from a Dutch road designer during the design process. I mean, the knowledge is all there already, why not use it? 😉
From the Netherlands myself. I'm always really happy to see improvements like this elsewhere. I know what it looks like in other countries.
I used to live in Somerville! Good town.
I also had my arm broken by a reckless driver hit and run on my bike there, so I'm happy to see bike infrastructure improving a bit.
Any improvement is good improvement. All of the "that's it?" comments are wild
In my country this is “standard” bike lane.
Netherlands?
It'd be red and very distinguishable from the rest of the road
Right? What's up with all these regular-road-coloured bicycle paths in other countries?
Beautiful, I just wish they hadn’t insisted on keeping the parallel parking and planted some trees instead.
I'm going to hit my head on that tree's branches
One of the best things about recumbents is I'd go right under it
Bonus points if they raise the entry from the road to the parking lot to separate things further!
That automotive crossing in frame center is seriously bad vibes. The car parking immediately adjacent to the driveway - A driveway that presumably leads to more car parking - Means zero bike visibility for drivers turning right off the street. That's a near-guaranteed cyclist injury or death in the future, which becomes even more likely the smaller the cyclist is. None of the road signs seem to warn of the presence of the bike lane. And there's another car crossing 20 feet after that! Aesthetically this lane looks pleasing to the North American eye but I expect it wouldn't actually pass muster in a place like NL.
It's certainly a move in the right direction but I'd stop short of calling it "good" when it's not even safe.
Wow this is what I first noticed as well. But then I thought at least it's better than what we have in my city, which is nothing.
