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  #21  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 4:12 PM
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The city that could really stand to improve its bike infrastructure is LA.

It’s almost perfect for biking: the climate is great, the density and distribution of trip generators is good for biking distances, and it’s at least relatively flat in an east-west direction, at least south of the Hollywood freeway. There are a lot of secondary roads that go straight through like Fountain and Adams that look like they could be downgraded from 2 lanes each direction to one lane, a centre turn lane and high quality bike lanes.
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  #22  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 4:25 PM
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Chicago bike lane network
I do recall Chicago's having a pretty decent bike network.
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  #23  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 4:25 PM
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Not “cool!” anymore?
Oh, sorry.

Back to cool.
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  #24  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 4:40 PM
TempleGuy1000 TempleGuy1000 is offline
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Google Maps incorporates Bike Share networks in a number of cities which is pretty neat.

Currently Philly has way to many bike lanes that ride next to the road and not fully separated paths. IMO true separated lanes are far superior than just the paint on the road. It could be a far better cycling city than it is due to the compactness and flatness.



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  #25  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 4:52 PM
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The "congestion" argument is also used by those Toronto mayoral candidates for their antibike campaign platforms. I think you don't solve congestion by accommodating cars. Cars are the problem in the first place. LA already has freeways everywhere, it is time to try something else. Toronto still has that Gardiner Expressway. That is the reason for the congestion, not the solution. Toronto: The Los Angeles of the North, as Wendell Cox would say. Both cities still stuck in the 50s.

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Toronto seems to have pretty good bike ridership along Queens Quay, I think? That arterial along the lake. In theory, it seems to be a pretty good city for bikes, with the relatively flat landscape and consistent density, though winters are a bit tough.
Toronto still far behind Montreal which is even colder. Visiting Montreal, the difference in bike infrastructure and culture is obvious. It is on a completely different level compared to Toronto.
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  #26  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 5:45 PM
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Originally Posted by TempleGuy1000 View Post
Google Maps incorporates Bike Share networks in a number of cities which is pretty neat.

Currently Philly has way to many bike lanes that ride next to the road and not fully separated paths. IMO true separated lanes are far superior than just the paint on the road. It could be a far better cycling city than it is due to the compactness and flatness.



I wonder if separating bike lanes from traffic lanes would result in basically giving dedicated space to dirt bikes and ATVs. They drive on the street, and on the sidewalks, but if they could be separated from cars and from pedestrians, they would have a great opportunity to take over bike lanes.
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  #27  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 6:01 PM
muertecaza muertecaza is offline
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Phoenix unfortunately lags behind the rest of the metro on bike infrastructure. They recently-ish finished a long-delayed north-south, two-way protected route on 3rd Ave. that goes into downtown:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4646...8i8192!5m1!1e3

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4601...8i8192!5m1!1e3

But the Downtown network is spotty and haphazard. And Phoenix in general has a much worse network that the East Valley suburbs, which generally have newer, wider arterials that all have bike lanes, in addition to being crisscrossed with multi-use paths along the area canals:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4272.../data=!5m1!1e3
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  #28  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 6:02 PM
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I'm sorry, but biking and Phoenix? That's a hard no. Maybe before dawn.
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  #29  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 6:15 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
I'm sorry, but biking and Phoenix? That's a hard no. Maybe before dawn.
Haha yeah, it takes a special kind of crazy in the summer that I'll happily admit to (plus a gym/shower at work). But other than the heat in May - October, it's a great city for biking - wide, flat, straight roads as far as the eye can see.
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  #30  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 6:38 PM
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Originally Posted by muertecaza View Post
Phoenix unfortunately lags behind the rest of the metro on bike infrastructure. They recently-ish finished a long-delayed north-south, two-way protected route on 3rd Ave. that goes into downtown:

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4646...8i8192!5m1!1e3

https://www.google.com/maps/@33.4601...8i8192!5m1!1e3
Cool.
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  #31  
Old Posted May 24, 2023, 7:26 PM
TempleGuy1000 TempleGuy1000 is offline
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Originally Posted by xzmattzx View Post
I wonder if separating bike lanes from traffic lanes would result in basically giving dedicated space to dirt bikes and ATVs. They drive on the street, and on the sidewalks, but if they could be separated from cars and from pedestrians, they would have a great opportunity to take over bike lanes.
Dirt Bikes and ATVs don't belong on city roads or paths. period. Electric bikes and scoopers though, I think there's a case to be made for them to use separated paths.
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  #32  
Old Posted May 25, 2023, 3:18 AM
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Originally Posted by Doady View Post
Toronto still far behind Montreal which is even colder. Visiting Montreal, the difference in bike infrastructure and culture is obvious. It is on a completely different level compared to Toronto.

Montreal has quite possibly the best bike infrastructure outside of Northern Europe. That said, I think you're selling Toronto short: it's made pretty big strides in terms of infrastructure in recent years, while the topography & the general way the city is set up enables bikes as an effective mode of transport even on major streets without dedicated lanes.

Having biked extensively in both cities, Toronto's infrastructure & bike culture is much better than even Vancouver's much-lauded network, IMO.
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  #33  
Old Posted May 25, 2023, 3:12 PM
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Montreal has quite possibly the best bike infrastructure outside of Northern Europe. That said, I think you're selling Toronto short: it's made pretty big strides in terms of infrastructure in recent years, while the topography & the general way the city is set up enables bikes as an effective mode of transport even on major streets without dedicated lanes.

Having biked extensively in both cities, Toronto's infrastructure & bike culture is much better than even Vancouver's much-lauded network, IMO.

Yep. Montreal's infrastructure is still quite a bit better than Toronto, however I don't feel like the cycling experience fully reflects this difference. As to your last point, cycling culture in central Toronto is quite good with many streets seeing a critical mass of cyclists in warmer months (and still busy in winter). Despite traffic being atrocious I do find that drivers are generally aware of bikes and altercations are less than one may imagine. Another good indicator is the number of bikeshare riders on the street, which has increased significantly year over year with quite good coverage over all of the central city - now expanding into other nodes.

While I'd prefer both top notch infrastructure and great culture, if I had to choose only one it would be the latter. It reflects actual experiences on the street, which as someone who's bene a year-round cyclist in Toronto for over a decade matters. I felt far less safe cycling in Chicago despite the latter having better infrastructure at the time (that's not really the case anymore based on last year's visit though).
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  #34  
Old Posted May 26, 2023, 4:20 PM
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Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin View Post
Having biked extensively in both cities, Toronto's infrastructure & bike culture is much better than even Vancouver's much-lauded network, IMO.
Toronto definitely wins "most improved" bike network in Canada, but there are still a few things that Vancouver does better than Toronto in this department:

1. Way-finding. Instead of anonymous route numbers and a tiny shield, Vancouver gave their bike routes clever names (my favourite is "Off Broadway" - the route that parallels Broadway), revamped the street signs on bike routes so it's clearly marked, and even put in special overhead street signs that hang from traffic light standards when they cross arterial roads. They even paint bike symbols and arrows on the pavement when a route makes a turn onto another street;

2. The network extends into suburban areas of the city. In Toronto, the network is starting to become good south of Davenport, but it's still thin and a decade behind in the urban-but-not-core areas between Davenport and Eglinton and then completely non-existent north of that. In Vancouver, the bike network covers the whole city, including areas like Killarney in the southeast that only got built out in the 1970s.

3. Push signals to activate lights at intersections that are placed at a bicyclist's reach. In Toronto, some intersections (not all) have a sensor built into the pavement that not too many people know about, and they seem a lot less responsive - and certainly feel less user-friendly than the push button. Very often, a cyclist that doesn't know about the sensor will be half on and half off preventing someone who knows about the trick from positioning themselves on the signal and triggering the light.
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  #35  
Old Posted May 26, 2023, 6:24 PM
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some intersections (not all) have a sensor
Anecdotally, I think that the pavement sensor by the apartment I am at is great.
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  #36  
Old Posted May 26, 2023, 8:14 PM
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horrible, because we have zero in staten.

supposedly the dot is committed to equity, so maybe someday, but it would take private or subsidies to the nyc citibike program:
Most of Brooklyn and Queens are not covered either.
The Brooklyn neighborhoods close to SI don't have Citibike. The furthest it goes is Sunset Park.
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  #37  
Old Posted May 26, 2023, 8:20 PM
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Parts of South Brooklyn have been resistant to separated bike lanes, so Citibike will take a few years. Staten Island will probably take a decade. Citibike doesn't go past Prospect Park, for now.

Citibike, right now, is enormous, because it's such a dense network. I'm pretty sure it will be the largest network on earth once the current phase is completed. I think once this phase is done it will be something like 40,000 bikes and 2,000 stations, and ridership this spring has topped 130k daily, so you know the summer numbers will be good. But current phase isn't done till 2024, and it only covers like 20-25% of the city's geography (though more like 40% of the population).

I don't think the entire city will be covered for 20 years, at least. It will take time.
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  #38  
Old Posted May 26, 2023, 9:32 PM
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Originally Posted by hipster duck View Post
Toronto definitely wins "most improved" bike network in Canada, but there are still a few things that Vancouver does better than Toronto in this department:

1. Way-finding. Instead of anonymous route numbers and a tiny shield, Vancouver gave their bike routes clever names (my favourite is "Off Broadway" - the route that parallels Broadway), revamped the street signs on bike routes so it's clearly marked, and even put in special overhead street signs that hang from traffic light standards when they cross arterial roads. They even paint bike symbols and arrows on the pavement when a route makes a turn onto another street;

2. The network extends into suburban areas of the city. In Toronto, the network is starting to become good south of Davenport, but it's still thin and a decade behind in the urban-but-not-core areas between Davenport and Eglinton and then completely non-existent north of that. In Vancouver, the bike network covers the whole city, including areas like Killarney in the southeast that only got built out in the 1970s.

3. Push signals to activate lights at intersections that are placed at a bicyclist's reach. In Toronto, some intersections (not all) have a sensor built into the pavement that not too many people know about, and they seem a lot less responsive - and certainly feel less user-friendly than the push button. Very often, a cyclist that doesn't know about the sensor will be half on and half off preventing someone who knows about the trick from positioning themselves on the signal and triggering the light.

Definitely agreed on the wayfinding - it's a lot easier to find a bike route in-the-moment (without having to stop and check Google Maps) in Vancouver than in Toronto; and Vancouver's feels like more of a complete, cohesive network. It's more well thought out, whereas Toronto's is a bit of a hodgepodge of bike lanes wherever they can fit them (though as more and more get built, that becomes sufficient as an actual network). That said, there are a few major advantages in Toronto's favour:

- Better inner-city coverage. Vancouver's downtown network is arguably better than Toronto's, as are those of its suburbs. But downtowns are best suited to walking, and suburbs to driving - it's the mid to high-density inner neighbourhoods where cycling is most viable and most useful as a means of transport; and therefore, where the infrastructure gets the best returns.

- More coverage on commercial streets & major thoroughfares. Most of Toronto's bike lanes are on major commercial thoroughfares like Bloor, Yonge, Richmond, Adelaide, Roncesvalles, and so on. This is important, as these tend to be the most direct routes, are major trip generators/destinations, and have the highest traffic volumes (ie. where cycling is the most dangerous). In comparison, Vancouver's bike routes tend to be on adjacent side streets so as to not take away car capacity on thoroughfares like Broadway or Commercial. This makes sense from a traffic planning perspective, but is less natural as a user - and also have less need for the infrastructure as they're streets with low vehicular traffic to begin with.

- Toronto is easier to bike in outside of the network. This is simply the result of being an older city with narrower, slower streets (the streetcars really help as well, by following a predictable path and controlling the flow of traffic) and a flatter topography rather than the work of any particular planning genius, but the end result is the same: people are more likely to use bikes to get around. This then has spinoff effects as it makes drivers more aware of cyclists, and in turn makes cycling safer & easier; which fosters a culture of more casual bike-users. In Vancouver, there are a lot more fast-moving arterials & bus lanes that can make cycling quite risky (or at least unpleasant) where there is no dedicated infrastructure.
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  #39  
Old Posted May 27, 2023, 3:35 PM
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Originally Posted by Crawford View Post
Parts of South Brooklyn have been resistant to separated bike lanes, so Citibike will take a few years. Staten Island will probably take a decade. Citibike doesn't go past Prospect Park, for now.

Citibike, right now, is enormous, because it's such a dense network. I'm pretty sure it will be the largest network on earth once the current phase is completed. I think once this phase is done it will be something like 40,000 bikes and 2,000 stations, and ridership this spring has topped 130k daily, so you know the summer numbers will be good. But current phase isn't done till 2024, and it only covers like 20-25% of the city's geography (though more like 40% of the population).

I don't think the entire city will be covered for 20 years, at least. It will take time.
The bigger issue for CitiBike in South Brooklyn is taking parking spaces for the bike kiosks.
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  #40  
Old Posted May 27, 2023, 3:39 PM
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The bigger issue for CitiBike in South Brooklyn is taking parking spaces for the bike kiosks.
Yeah, a lot of the South Brooklyn demographics will resist CitiBike. The Orthodox neighborhoods, the Russian neighborhoods, the old-line Italian or Irish areas. They already fight all bike infrastructure. The Orthodox areas claim that hot young women on bikes will tempt their young boys.
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