Comment by marcosdumay 3 months ago
> Things are shitty for reasons but not for good reasons.
I dunno. At the first problem, impeding cyclists that want to merge into a walkway zooming at 20mph without paying enough attention to even see their lane is ending is a quite good reason.
Maybe he should be asking for some "cyclist-calming" measure instead, so they will slow down before not being able to make into the walkway.
Sort of suggested by the article. The article mentions putting information up, so that bikers will not be surprised.
It feels like zooming when you bicycle in those tight spaces at 9-12 km/h, which is a third of what you calld zooming. The point is that a collision at 12 km/h is pretty ok. The problem is that cyclists are always close to pedestrians so it feels unsafe even at slow speeds. The accident rate between cyclists and pedestrians are incredibly low so it is not really dangerous, but it feels like it.
What I read when I read about the bicycle lane is that bike lanes were a requirement, the user persona was assigned to a casual recreational rider on a small low speed recreational (<24" wheels) (aka kids under 10), when in reality, that hill is used by a road cyclist commuter, would only be used by a confident cyclist that close to traffic on that steepb of hill.
It's not that the traffic engineer didn't care about a quality product, they didn't care to research who bikes (and have car brain), and have never traveled out of the US, to the Netherlands, or met a cyclist.
The article explicitly says cyclists crash there going at ~30 km/h.
Crashes are another thing, cars going 100 mph here is probably proportionally the same as the people trying to take that at 30 km/h. The streetview of the location makes it even worse than I thought especially looking at the history of the spot.
Hum... The bike lane seems to be designed to fill space and make the street run better, instead of being designed for being useful for riding bikes.
I can see why people get angry about it. But still, the article is asking for the wrong solution. And yeah, the people crashing on that fence at 30 km/h would just die hit by a car a few meters down if the article's fix was implemented.
Yeah, my first reaction was "you should not move onto the sidewalk if you cant break and control the speed". Unless it is some kind of abandoned place where no one ever walks anyway.
I am cyclist by the way. It is just that looking at picture, it is not exactly super difficult turn, if you have those breaks.
I'm not inclined to be sympathetic to cyclists, but the bike-murdering signpost right there is all the proof I need that there are people who hate them more than I do and that at least one of those people works in city government. I winced. It might actually be a felony, that act of transportation engineering. I'd at least listen to the prosecutor's theory of the crime.