Cycle lanes on the sidewalk

Question

I noticed in some countries in Southern Europe that cities where the roads are old and were not designed for cycling, in the past 20 years, they added a lot of bike lanes just by painting a red strip on the sidewalk. That does not seem a good idea. The difference in speed between pedestrians and bicycles is big, so this already poses a danger. Moreover, when you walk and there are not many cyclists around, it becomes natural to invade the lane. The few cyclists who then try to follow these lanes find so many obstacles that they eventually give up. Even after years when I pass there I see almost no cyclists around, but a lot of people walking side by side or pushing baby strollers. It seems that such initiatives end up backfiring because at the same time drivers no longer want to see cyclists on the road, they expect them to use the bike lane.

The main problem is that the cycling routes are badly designed. They end up diverting cyclist traffic onto small secondary roads. The worst example I saw is in Rome. In the past 30 years they spent millions to either put cycle lanes on the sidewalks or build well separated cycle lanes that go to nowhere, usable for recreation and nothing else.

How much is this practice widespread and what usually is the reception by other cyclists?

Answer 1

As to how spread this is: This is widely used in Sweden, both using existing sidewalks and building newer wider sidewalks where pedestrians and cyclists are separated by only a painted line.

This is causing some discussions and accidents as pedestrians stroll into the bike lane and cyclists are using the pedestrian part.

To add further confusion, young cyclists are allowed on the Swedish pedestrian sidewalks up to 8 years of age. Older cyclists are following ths example, but this is probably a traffic rule violation.

Also, electric scooters are allowed on pedestrian sidewalks but only if they are traveling in "low speed" which is not specified exactly. Police have to make their own decisions regarding what is considered to be appropriate speed.

Answer 2

I've seen plenty of unusable shared pavements in both the UK and Spain as well as some good ones.

Good or bad, they can be truly shared or split with a line, but to be good they have to be:

• wide
• lightly-used (by pedestrians)
• built with sensible junctions with the road and signage to match, otherwise you can't catch them.

In one case near me, there's nominally one side for bikes and the other for pedestrians, but the (2-way) bike side isn't wide enough for 2 bikes to pass and there are few pedestrians, so bikes keep left (UK so we ride on the left) and have to slow down for pedestrians.

The issue comes more when they're put in by the local authority to meet some sort of target, without much thought. Then they're worse than useless for everyone:

• collision risk for pedestrians and cyclists. Even going barely over walking pace, pedestrians are still a hazard because they can side-step without warning.
• drivers expect cyclists to use them even when they're not usable, thus increasing conflict.

In one particular town a couple of hours' ride from me, the only way to get on the bike paths shared with pedestrians is to brake sharply when you see the dropped kerb and sign, then do a sharp 90° left turn up the ramp, followed immediately by a 90° right turn. Of course before you're halfway through the manoeuvre you'll have a fair chance of getting hit from behind.

But riding to get somewhere in a reasonable timescale is very different from a family leisure ride at the pace of the slowest kid - and infrastructure designers seem to think mainly about the latter.

There are moves to improve the facilities, such as the UK government's Cycle infrastructure design (LTN 1/20) Guidance.

Answer 3

Why does this happen?

Politicians are unwilling to take privileges away from cars, because the car lobby (both from motorists and from the car industry) is too strong. Never mind that >99% of roads are for cars already; reduce that to 98% and the populist right will take over the city hall and abolish all cycling infrastructure (Madrid). Exceptions exist. In cities/countries with enough cycling critical mass, or where most cars are from outside the city, there may be a political will to take away space from cars. Examples are The Netherlands, Denmark, or some cities in Germany.

Taking away from pedestrians is cheap, both politically and economically. Pedestrians do not have a lobby. There is no pedestrian industry lobbying politicians to pay for infrastructure for their users above all else. Pedestrians can complain. Nobody cares.

As an added benefit for the car lobby: pedestrians and cyclists are the vulnerable participants of traffic. Pitting your opponents against each other is an ancient strategy to increase your own power. If not the main aim of the "put cyclists on the pavement" strategy, it's an additional political benefit.

Sometimes they put the cyclists on bus lanes. Everything to avoid touching the holy privilege of the private car lobby.

There is no such thing as a city with no place for cycling infrastructure. Cycling infrastructure takes negative space if it comes in place of car infrastructure. The only places which really have no place for cycling infrastructure are medieval medina-like city centres, where the streets are no more than 2 metre wide, but that's rarely where political conflict on infrastructure is focussed.

Answer 4

It is a terrible idea, to take away from pedestrians and give that space to cyclists.

Pedestrians don't need any form of qualification to use their piece of the roadway - there's no such thing as a "walking licence" and there's no age restrictions either. Even non-humans are there and they can be quite unpredictable.

Generally there's no physical separation between the new painted bike lane and the reduced pedestrian footpath/pavement, so the walkers will walk whereever they used to.

What's the solution? I wish I knew. There is only so much roadway to go around, and sharing it between vehicles, bikes, parking, and walking is a challenge. The lowest-hanging fruit is on-street parking, but the older parts of a town doesn't tend to have carparking buildings sufficient for everyone, and businesses are quick to complain about loss of car parking.

Personally I'd choose to ride my bike in the vehicle lane, rather than bringing additional danger to the pedestrian space.

Answer 5

Such bike lanes are not unheard of in Germany. It is a cheap way to establish a bike path, without the typical material separation by means of a curb or visible marking through a different pavement. (As a side note, apparently it is more dangerous (link in German) to ride on a bike path than in the street together with cars, mostly because bicyclers on a bike path are not in the field of view of right-turning cars.)

I think that a general hostility against these after-the fact attempts, unless they are unsuited because they are too narrow, is unwarranted. There are different groups of bicyclers. There are fast riders, for example regular long-haul commuters or competitive riders who find the small spaces, small turning radii and the proximity to slow, vulnerable and unpredictable pedestrians uncomfortable. They have to slow down or they run the risk of collisions with pedestrians. Slowing down defeats the purpose of their ride though. Fast riders typically feel less unsafe in the (city) street together with cars — they are faster so that car drivers have more time to recognize them, assess the situation and come up with a plan of action for safe passing. It is not uncommon to be as fast as the city traffic so that no passing is necessary. Being faster also means to be less of an obstacle so that drivers caught behind the bike don't become impatient and feel the need to take more risks in order to finally pass.

But then there are many casual, occasional, slow riders who feel very uncomfortable and unsafe in the street. Why, they are! Grandma going half a mile by bike to do her shopping is extremely happy about the painted bike path. She is not a danger to anybody and is slow enough to have time to react when an inattentive pedestrian steps into her path. She is by nature slow enough to be safe there. She would often be tempted to simply use the sidewalk even if no bike path was painted, and in many places that would not be a problem. The paint simply condones that reasonable and pragmatic behavior and organizes the traffic participants.

Bottom line is that no size fits all. Painted bike paths can improve safety and "city usability" for slow riders, but their use should not be mandatory: Every bicycler should be free to ride in the street. This is actually the case in Berlin even with most regular bike paths because they lack the blue sign which would make them mandatory. Many of them are indeed not well suited for fast riders.

Painted bike paths should also be considered a temporary solution. They should ideally be established only as a first step in a master plan laying out general, substantial and integrated improvements for pedestrians, public transport and bicyclers alike.

Answer 6

I don't know how widespread it is. In my own city (Austin TX USA) I see some version of this intermittently. In many parts of Austin, there are no sidewalks, or there is a sidewalk on only one side of the road, so there's a limit to how much this could be used.

I do see it on some major roads. I know of one 4-lane road where the bike lane is diverted onto the sidewalk for at least 1 km (but is at street level elsewhere). In my own neighborhood, the city has reconfigured an intersection to divert existing bike lanes onto the sidewalks so that bikes go through the intersection at the crosswalks, and then return to street level.

I think it's a terrible idea. The most charitable interpretation I can make is that these changes are designed to reassure unconfident cyclists. I also think that moving bike lanes onto sidewalks is intended to create/preserve bike lanes without taking space away from car lanes, because cars have higher priority.

Answer 7

This is very common throughout Europe. In Poland, where sidewalks have a lot of spare room, a separate asphalt-covered lane—either delimited by posts or only a painted line—separates them.

I actually think this the best possible solution to have the bike lane physically separated from car lanes, even at the cost of sidewalk. While the speed difference between pedestrians and cyclists is bigger, the difference between cyclists and cars is even more so: in Warsaw, as per my observation, cyclists hardly ever exceed the speed of 10-15 km/h, which is twice that of a pedestrian (7 km/h being military march).

I am basing this on no empirical data, but my belief is that it's orders of magniture worse for a cyclist to crash into a car at the speed limit of 50 km/h, especially that in most countries people tend to drive over the limit. I am personally terrified of sharing lanes with car when I am cycling, because I know how poor my compatriots are at driving.

Answer 8

I am from Italy, i.e. southern Europe, and in my city this practice is very common. So common that we have a whole bunch of what they call "cycling paths": narrow walking paths that are for both pedestrian and cyclists (no painted lines here: you can do whatever you want) ending at crossroads where you find yourself on the zebra crossing and you must get off the bike to cross the road. Then, we have wider walking paths, usually on one side of roads only, that are divided by the famous painted line but people do whatever they want too. Finally, we have something our administration calls "cycling paths" which are same as a mixed walking path, but built mostly outside town, i.e. it's a bit wider from time to time, where you find families with playing kids, elder people walking everywhere, strollers, teenagers of any sort...at the point that is impossible to use a bike until you are quite far from any form of village. In our "cycling paths" if you attempt to cross a certain (and very slow speed), be ready to be reprimanded. In my experience none of those that I listed are good for cycling and you are far better off on the road. I do not use walking paths even though they claim to be for cyclists, and I don't see many cyclists using them either. You can find the occasional slow rider that uses it but it's totally inconvenient for both walkers and riders.

Answer 9

Do not drive like a steam locomotive, have the clear view of the complete path you need for stopping. When you pass a pedestrian, slow down.

With these simple rules the shared or weakly labelled lanes are mostly survivable but they are slow. The average speed may end up being less than half of the speed the cyclist would like to travel (10 km/h or about) so I understand why they are disliked. I commute 7 km so be with this, but who commutes 25 km may not be happy at all. Still, this is probably better than no infrastructure at all.

The number of accidents should decline over time after also pedestrians understand that walking on the bicycle lane is about as wise as strolling into the middle of the car road.