At some point students started painting their own crosswalk, which would be removed again and again by authorities, until the city eventually got the hint and installed a permanent crosswalk with a traffic light and a pedestrian island.
Sometimes the way to get something is fixed is by demonstrating the fix.
[0] https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/comuna-unde-fostul...
[1] https://stirileprotv.ro/stiri/actualitate/situatie-absurda-i...
[2] https://www.antena3.ro/actualitate/locale/satul-sa-astepte-d...
Maybe there's no penalty, but a 6 lane road probably has traffic density/speed/flow enough to get to the "may only be crossed at intersections or junctions"
https://thelandmag.com/richard-ankrom-guerrilla-public-servi...
> And then…nothing. Caltrans didn’t notice. Passing motorists were thrilled but figured the improvement had taken place at the direction of Caltrans. It wasn’t until Ankrom leaked his actions to the press that the true story was known.
> The original sign with Ankrom’s artwork remained until 2009 when the whole thing was replaced by Caltrans. The paint had faded, but the message remained with a lasting impact. The replacement sign erected by the Department of Transportation proudly sports the 5 North placard exactly where Ankrom had put it nearly a decade prior, and it remains there to this day to help motorists that would otherwise be just as confused as he was.
And an update from 2023:
> In 2001, artist Richard Ankrom posted a "5 North" sign on the 110 N. in DTLA to alert drivers to get in the left lane for the 5 turnoff. His work was so impeccable (and helpful), Caltrans at first didn't notice, then allowed it to stay. "5 North" is now part of permanent signage.
The Swiss police under prosecutor Walther Cimino proceeded to investigate as if they were a crime syndicate, gathering forensics but also identifying 96 sympathizers and putting them under heavy surveillance, which included requesting total records from their banks, employers, phone companies, email providers (Google through the US DoJ), and even CCTV and purchases from their local supermarket.
I'm afraid of the possibility that what used to be "grassroots civil disobedience" will now be labeled "eco-terrorism" and prosecuted accordingly.
Ideally we have entirely separate paths for bikes. Of course this is infeasible for most established cities. Doesn't mean they are't inherently a problem in these cases though.
We have decades of bicyclists clamoring for infrastructure, and they've been starting to get it.
Meanwhile, e-bikes and delivery apps have caused a recent explosion in the number of motorbikes on the road. Cars think they're too slow. Cyclists think they're too fast. They're nimble and vulnerable like bicycles, but can be regulated like cars. Like taxis, they're often piloted by people who come from places with chaotic road cultures, and who have a financial incentive to bend the rules to get there faster.
Ideally, we'd be like the Dutch and have different outlets for different classes of transportation (mass + speed + amount of protection). Instead, everyone just gets pissed at everyone who moves differently than they do, and the road network fails to keep up with anyone's needs.
>Bikes don't belong on the road with cars and they dont belong on sidewalks with pedestrians and they don't belong in between.
The NYC bike lanes are inherently problematic. These are the "in between" that I'm talking about. They are not entirely separate paths in the way that I mean. They are a new lane within the existing path. What I mean by a separate path is something that is above, below, or in an entirely different location than the road/sidewalk.
Normally, if you’re turning right you’re in the rightmost lane, so nobody to your right is going straight. And likewise for left. A bike lane puts straight-through traffic to the right of turning cars so they come in from your blind spot. A "yield to bikes" rule doesn’t help much when you can’t see who you’re yielding to. And car traffic presents the same problem for bikes. They have to deal with this by merging all the way across traffic or cross and become a pedestrian. The fact that they may have to become a pedestrian is a major flag that they inherently dont fit.
Parking and buses have the same problem. The sidewalk and the road were designed to touch. When you put a bike lane between them, every trip from curb to car, bus, etc. has to cross it.
It’s essentially splitting 1 road into 2 with separate rules. It's inherently problematic. You can't introduce bikes without increasing the rule complexity and worsening the experience for everyone else.
There is plenty of basic intuition here.
- Pairs. Each pair of modes (car,bike,pedestrian) needs its own set of rules. Two modes is one pair. Three modes is three pairs, so adding one mode triples the relationships.
- Introducing a "middle": Every segment of one street crosses every segment of the other. Adding a middle lane on both sides takes an intersection from 9 overlap zones to 25, and from 4 where different modes meet to 16.
- Fixed width: The street doesn’t get wider. Any space dedicated to bikes costs car lanes, parking, or sidewalk.
For busy cycle routes, specific infrastructure to deal with this is installed like separate lights and banned turns to de-conflict the road.
Bike lanes making riders less safe has been known for decades. John Forrester’s book “Effective Cycling” [1] catalogues a lot of these dangers and warns cyclists to not assume that bike lanes are safer.
[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262516945/effective-cycling/
Vehicular cycling techniques can help in situations where there is no bicycle infrastructure, but they are not safer than good bicycle infrastructure.
What was the result?
A stunning INCREASE in pedestrian deaths and no significant effect on bike deaths.
I’ll take a full lane here in Miami. Screw these thin bike lanes next to the curb with F-150s and Cybertrucks. I’ve seen too many bike falls. Pass me safely and that’s that.
I haven't checked the statistics but it seems to work. There's one near me that's packed with bikes during coomute hours, and I think the cost to the city was negligible.
There is also the question of what you are going to do with your bike once you are at your destination, where are you going to park it?
For those who went to Amsterdam as a pedestrian, I don't know how it felt, but to me, it was not great. Lots of narrow sidewalks littered with stuff, the stuff in question is often bikes, so you have to step onto the adjacent bike lane, where you are usually greeted by an angry cyclist, because for some reason, parking your bike on the sidewalk is fine but stepping on the bike lane is not.
So, as a pedestrian, I wished Amsterdam converted its car lanes into trams and sidewalks rather than bike lanes. And yes, I hated bikes for as long as I stayed in Amsterdam, and so did everyone in my group.
The cars vs bikes debate tend to get a lot of attention, but the bikes vs pedestrians and public transit aspect matters too.
Note that bikes + buses can be a particularly dangerous combination. Buses are long and can block off the path of a careless cyclist as they turn, who may fall right under the wheels of the bus.
There were well-maintained sidewalks everywhere I needed to go. The reduced amount of automobile traffic made it easier to cross smaller roads and intersections without risking my life. At larger intersections, I often received a crossing signal almost immediately upon requesting one, instead of waiting multiple minutes.
Negotiating interactions with cyclists was trivial, because I could always make eye contact with them. Unlike drivers, who barely pay attention to those outside of cars, have their heads buried in their phone, or are obscured behind tinted glass.
It was also the quietest major city I've ever visited, which I largely attribute to the prevalence of bikes instead of automobiles. Some of the semi-tractors / HGVs I saw making deliveries were even electric, which is a great reduction in noise and other forms of pollution.
If I ever have the pleasure of visiting Amsterdam again, I intend to rent a bike. I hope to explore more of the city via the obviously superior mode of transportation, as demonstrated by so many locals.
It's out of the question in most places, it slows car traffic down and makes it harder for people to park in places where parking is already scarce. Then residents and customers of local businesses have nowhere to park.
If you actually make a sufficiently high-quality bike network to convince people to bike that would otherwise drive, I would expect this to speed car traffic up by taking a lot of cars off the road.
I guess heavy snow isn't too common there, maybe if we plowed the bike paths? Ok, now I'm getting distracted imagining a bike-path-plow, it would presumably be mounted on a powered bike of some sort, or maybe on those little parking enforcement trikes.
The opposite is also true: If you take a place where people primarily walk and bike, and take out the sidewalks and bike lanes to widen the road, people will also be pissed.
All you're pointing out is that humans are resistant to change. We already know that is true. The question is not whether people don't like change, the question is: which is better urban planning? What is a better environment to live in?
So stupid all the suburbanites blocking my driveway to come eat at nice restaurants because all they have out there is fast food; such a huge waste of resources
And the whole idea is to encourage biking, ergo less parking is a good thing.
Drivers and pedestrians hate each other too. Everyone gripes about any minor impediment to their own travel, particularly other modalities, but also their own. I mean, drivers universally complain about being "stuck in traffic", but they are traffic.
And also there were dedicated bike lanes which should be a must in any self-respecting place.
https://time.com/archive/6683576/signal-failure/
https://bikecity.amsterdam.nl/en/experiment-traffic-lights-d...
http://dutchcycling.nl/get-inspired/sarphatistraat-amsterdam...
Considering the rise of additional micromobility vehicles, this is such an obvious solution when you see it in practice.
It simply is not. The problem is sacrificing an unreasonable amount of space to drivers. There is a ton of space for human-scale vehicles.
It's a method for a cyclist turning left at an intersection. Turning left from the bike lane on the right is of course impossible, because the land is on the right, despite being a basic function of biking somewhere.
So the cyclist wants to turn left. They go through the intersection and move off to the side, near any pedestrians waiting to cross. When the light turns they and the pedestrians can cross.
Otherwise the biker must leave the bike lane and merge across traffic.
In either case the bike lane is inherently problematic.
I said it is inherently problematic, not exactly that it's infeasible.
The Netherlands is excellent support for my claim because of what you just said. The cities support less car traffic and slower driving speeds. Something has to give and in that case its drivability. In fact there are a lot more streets where cars can't go at all, or are just mostly bikes correct?
And the 3 modes/lanes in one place is still not even solved while minimizing cars. Cyclist are more than 1/3rd of Dutch road deaths and the Fietsersbond has even argued that the middle lane. https://swov.nl/sites/default/files/bestanden/downloads/FS%2...
FWIW I think that is a fine trade-off. I think people don’t truly realise how poorly cars scale until they take a really large step back and take a holistic view on infrastructure- which is inherently difficult for most people as they are so close and bought-in that they can’t even conceive of life being different than what they’re used to.
And they reach for exceptions to prove the requirement, when less cars in cities frees up the roads for those that truly need it (LGV and disabled access, but slow thus disincentivised unless actually required and thus less likely to cause accidents).
Sometimes it doesn't even require sacrificing a lane, because many North American cities have lanes that are wildly larger than necessary or even appropriate given the posted speed limits. The lanes can simply be narrowed, and then this also causes the drivers to naturally drive at safer speeds, reducing traffic accidents, speeding tickets, and the unplanned delays that those both cause.
People are already stupid, put them in a car and their brains start leaking out of their ears.
Street space really is zero-sum, though more people in bikes and out of cars free’s up so much infrastructure that it can make less space work even better for cars- I’m sure urban designers are aware of this.
The major issue I presume that is faced in urban design is how to handle people coming from far away, the regional hub/spoke design (with train stations around a radial that have good parking allowing train access into the city) is not something actively pursued by advanced economies for some (presumably good) reason.
This is also why suburbs and rural areas are a better fit for cars. Space is much more available and you can afford to be wasteful with it.
> though more people in bikes and out of cars free’s up so much infrastructure that it can make less space work even better for cars
Yes, you've reiterated my point...
Toxic entitled drivers hate bikers. Some bikers are toxic on sidewalks. Most sane people are actually able to exist with all three.
> Bikes don't belong on the road with cars and they dont belong on sidewalks with pedestrians and they don't belong in between.
Bikes belong both on road and in between. Childrens bikes belong on side walk. Bikes moving in small speed can be on sidewalks too.
I honestly think if we invited this type of empowerment/interaction in the physical world a bit more it would probably be good for spurring creativity in society (I think we do a pretty good job of it in software). It’s just a nice reminder that everything is just made up by someone else, likely no smarter than you.
Also I can’t believe this was 10 years ago, I remember being super involved in SPUR in SF (and getting coffee there almost every day) and going to talks about this kind of thing
Have we really gotten to the point where we can't trust public infrastructure to be properly implemented, and so the only solution is to take it into our own hands? What are the tax dollars paying for then?
Not that there shouldn't still be some kind of standards and community approval, but I think we can afford to set that at a lower bar for certain categories of easily reversible projects.
And hopefully incorporating more of these ideas can teach us to be more efficient on transit infrastructure projects in general, where the US often significantly trails other countries on cost and implementation time.
Don't forget the short-sighted NIMBYism.
I use a 5km stretch of bike lane daily going to work and back which was built this way. It runs along a railway line, so while it was navigable previously, off-season (so now) it would be covered in mud.
The initiative was spearheaded by just one lady who had an idea and a concrete proposal how to implement it.
Guerrilla Public Service Redux (2017) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23325319 - May 2020 (110 comments)
Guerrilla Bike Lanes: San Francisco Makes Illicit Infrastructure Permanent - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12953150 - Nov 2016 (137 comments)
Guerrilla Bike Lanes in San Francisco - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12333604 - Aug 2016 (266 comments)
I think this applies to so many things. Centrally planned things rarely work exactly as planned, especially if the people doing the planning are separate from those executing the plan.
Much of the time, it's better to observe what's working in practice (even if in a messy way) and systemize it rather than have a perfect concept that disintegrates upon contact with reality.
The lesson from residents who built a bridge for less than 2% of the budget projected by the city government Overpass collapses in Belo Horizonte, killing two
The bottom line is when there is political interest, even guerrilla infra might work, but nothing survives corruption and neglect. The case of the makeshift bridge is only a matter of making the required tests and adaptations to make it legal or condemning the structure and building a new one.
https://www.reddit.com/r/BikeLA/comments/1pl8guj/i_started_a...
So, political vandals?
If you haven't noticed this entire thread is about illicit infrastructure. There could be a moral argument to be had (which you are not making) but no one is denying the vandalism aspect.
Maybe not as profound or important as the Civil Rights movement. But important nonetheless for public safety. (Assuming the guerrilla bike lanes themselves are safe and well thought out.)