Quote:
Originally Posted by badrunner
Those are both considered dedicated bike lanes, and they are few and far between in London.
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If vehicles can access a cycle lane at will then it isn’t a dedicated cycle lane. I’ll expand upon what I stated previously, but your example are nicknamed
’murderstrips’. They offer no protection from a vehicle exiting/entering the parking space, doors opening unexpectedly, double parking and other obstructions, or more importantly from vehicles straying into the lane. They also give a false sense of security to both drivers and cyclists which leads to an increased level of accidents, hence their nickname and why in the UK they’re being replaced by more substantial infrastructure. Interestingly, as of today, where these sort of lanes remain in London, if you block or drive in them you’ll be liable for a $200 fine.
Quote:
Originally Posted by badrunner
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If we went just by the green lines on the Google Maps, you’d think New York had a more comprehensive cycling infrastructure than Amsterdam.
Yet a lot of those green lines in New York, the
‘dedicated bike lanes’ that you refer to, are trash, as the following examples demonstrate:
That isn’t to say that London doesn’t have dodgy cycle lanes, because it does, and it still has a massive way to go until it is anywhere near the level of bike adoption and quantity of infrastructure present in Amsterdam. Indeed, in terms of active modal share, whilst London might be nearly double that of New York, it is 28th out of the 40 largest cities in UK.
New York is of course at least trying to make cycling more attractive to people, and it is an outlier relative to the majority of North American cities. There are even some actual dedicated (i.e. segregated) cycle lanes in New York that you could have highlighted, e.g. parts of the Hudson River Greenway, and there are even some roads where bike priority lights exist, but they are far and few between. Hence the comparison with London is a bit peculiar when you consider the far broader dedicated cycle network, lower speed limits, pedestrian/cycle-only roads, school streets, and prevalent use of traffic calming measures. London then has a massive number (hundreds?) of modal filters (to reduce vehicle through-running) and LTN’s that I couldn’t see present in New York, despite the more simplistic grid layout that would make it pretty easy to implement
Talking about LTN’s, this is my neighbourhood. The London Borough of Waltham Forest closed a few roads to vehicles (but accessible for pedestrians and cyclists) and made other road layout modifications to create a neighbourhood more conducive to pedestrians and cyclists. An interesting side effect wasn’t just reduced traffic, or the corresponding decline in noise and air pollution, but a reduction in crime, which is why there are now so many LTN’s being introduced across the capital. Note: the below map is slightly out of date as they’ve since closed some other roads.
Image sourced from Walthamstow Village Review: https://www.enjoywalthamforest.co.uk...port-FINAL.pdf