Timeline for Arguments for/against bike lanes?
Current License: CC BY-SA 2.5
22 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Dec 12, 2019 at 23:26 | comment | added | Relaxed | Are there discussions of pro's and con's of sidewalks (aka pedestrian lanes)? Well, yes, there is actually. That's where the concepts of living street and shared space come from and you can find designs doing away entirely with the separation between the sidewalk and the rest of the road. You can also find many places in the world with no sidewalks, not as a fancy design but simply because pedestrians are not a priority and people are expected to move by car (the drawback here is costs and lost space for automobiles). | |
| Apr 26, 2015 at 14:16 | comment | added | gaurwraith | Translated to con, bike lanes as understood these days, are too narrow and easily clogged to absorb significant bicycle traffic. A car sized lane put to bicycle use would be wonderful | |
| Apr 26, 2015 at 12:54 | comment | added | gaurwraith | Replace newbie with someone going slow on the middle of the lane. As for me, since I don't like this, I ride trying to leave place for overpass no matter if I go fast or chilling, and always take looks after me and allow people to pass if I see them trying to do so. But the point is that bike lanes are becoming too narrow as number of cyclists increases. The problem where I live is that there is no possibility to widen many of them lest you remove a "car" lane | |
| Apr 26, 2015 at 12:17 | comment | added | Huygens | @gaurwraith and Murph we human are unperfect, we do mistake, we also sometimes misbehave and this is fine. But We often don't want to recognise that and are blaming the others ("other road user" not me ;-) or "some newbie" but I wasn't ever one of course ;-) ) The thing is we have to share the available road infrastructures between all of us and that includes the young ones (who are experimenting/learning) the older ones (who might be more cautious) and any other person with every walk-of-life. We just have to share and the politics, road engineer should just try to make this task easier. | |
| Apr 24, 2015 at 19:45 | comment | added | gaurwraith | A con for bike lane is that it might be free to flow when the motorist side is completely jammed and not moving, and a con, that usually some newbie riding at 10 km/h might jam it easily, more so in rush hour, tempting people to over pass in risky manners. | |
| Nov 18, 2010 at 8:54 | comment | added | Murph | You are willfully missing two points - one: that I don't necessarily disagree with much of what you've said and two: that the problem is with other road users not with politicians and will exist even if the implementation of the facility is perfect (it may even be a greater problem in this case). | |
| Nov 15, 2010 at 22:21 | history | edited | Huygens | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 14, 2010 at 22:20 | comment | added | Huygens | Demo: In Toulouse (Fr), there's a small street named "Ste Catherine", it's really narrow, the sidewalk's barely wide enough for a normal person and car cannot by pass a cyclist there. Toulouse has a high problem of driver desobedience. So the mayor decided to put small pillars (1m high) on the sidewalks to prevent cars to park there. However, when applied in Ste Catherine street, there was no place left for pedestrians to walk. So they walk on the road, and women with baby carriage too. Now cars gets angry about them. The problem are not sidewalk though, but the politicians that did that! | |
| Nov 14, 2010 at 22:12 | comment | added | Huygens | Small story: "A worker has to do a task within 1 week. After a week of hard work the task is still unfinished and the project gets delayed. The customer is unhappy so the worker's getting blamed for that." That's the obvious 1st reaction. But mine was: the manager is to blame! Either he wrongly evaluated the worker's aptitude or his planning's just plain wrong. Now back to the cycle lane, your view's the obvious a cycle lane (sidewalk?) can have pro's and con's. My view is, the implementation of a cycle lane or a sidewalk can be rightly or incorrectly done, hence the politician is to blame. | |
| Nov 12, 2010 at 9:13 | comment | added | Murph | Sigh its nothing to do with politicians. There is a significant chunk of MOTORISTS that think that cycles do not belong on the road - in these motorists cycle lanes encourage and reinforce this belief. Yes, this is an education problem, no its not right but sadly it is a fact (not helped by poor behaviour of some cyclists in disregarding traffic regulations). | |
| Nov 11, 2010 at 20:55 | comment | added | Huygens | @Murph - ok then a more pragmatic view would be that we need to improve the understanding in politician minds that cycle lanes are much needed but it is not just about putting a bit of paint on the road. It takes heavy thinking and communication to all road users (pedestrians to drivers). | |
| Nov 11, 2010 at 19:31 | comment | added | Goodbye Stack Exchange | @Murph - No issue with repeating parts of what others have said, as long as you can improve it or have a different take on the material. | |
| Nov 11, 2010 at 9:07 | comment | added | Murph | @neilfein - well I could, I suppose, but I'm afraid I'd mostly be repeating other people... but that doesn't make the opening statement right which is a shame because the rest is valuable (which is why I haven't downvoted it). | |
| Nov 11, 2010 at 9:06 | comment | added | Murph | @Huygens - far too philosophical. Can a cycle lane (a well implemented, safe, sensible, useable cycle lane) be bad? Yes if it engenders in the motorist an opinion that cyclist should never be on the road and, sadly, in the UK it does in some. So emphatically yes cycle lanes can have cons. You're being far too clever and this is actually quite simple. | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 23:12 | comment | added | Goodbye Stack Exchange | @Murph - Rather than refuting this one in the comments, it sounds like you could probably write your own answer to this question. | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 22:50 | history | edited | Huygens | CC BY-SA 2.5 |
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| Nov 10, 2010 at 22:47 | comment | added | Huygens | You didn't get what I was saying. A cycle lane is not wrong in it's self (it's neutral), much like wine is not wrong (unless it tastes like vinegar), it's the use of it that could be wrong. So in the case of bike lanes, if it feels wrong in some places it's because it was poorly implemented and badly managed. So we shall not speak of bicycle lane as bad or good, this can't be, it's just a necessity. Please re-read my answer. | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 22:29 | comment | added | Murph | No, actually it isn't an overstatment - you state, "there are no cons" and I state one that exists in a great many places regardless of quality of implementation (I agree that its by no means universal, I know from experience that in Denmark and Holland the relationship between motorist and cyclist is much better so its not the case). Cycle lanes are good in theory and when done properly and when integrated into the traffic system as a whole and when the attitude of the motorist is sympathetic to the cyclist. When we get to "separate but equal" it works rather less well. | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 21:42 | comment | added | Huygens | "You're wrong" is a bit of an over-statement :) I hope you can do better at communicating too ;) | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 21:40 | comment | added | Huygens | @Murph then this is bad communications by the politics who installed the bike lanes. :-) There are numerous countries or places where this is not the case: Netherlands, Germany, some parts of France (esp. the Eastern regions). | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 21:29 | comment | added | Murph | You're wrong - simply because bike lanes encourage in the motorist (as group and in at least in some countries) the belief that cycles do not belong on the road at all. | |
| Nov 10, 2010 at 20:55 | history | answered | Huygens | CC BY-SA 2.5 |