By adamg on Wed., 7/12/2017 - 9:02 am
Devin Cole shows us the new cycle track - bike lanes marked off by more than just paint - along Brattle Street in Harvard Square.
HUGE upgrade for safety and access.
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+1 on the passenger dooring.
By anon
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 7:49am
+1 on the passenger dooring. You used to be able to look out for cabs, who were a common source of this, but Uber/Lyft has added a whole new dimension of passengers unexpectedly hopping out and you can't be 3' from both the parked cars and the travel lane, so either you sit in traffic by taking the travel lane or you use the bike lane and risk dooring from one side or the other.
The new cycle track does not
By anon
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 11:25am
The new cycle track does not prevent dooring. Cars have been parking slightly into the buffer zone. Their doors extend a foot or two into the bike lane.
And unlike a traditional lane where you can move as far left as necessary (if you check over your shoulder first), in this cycle track you're limited how far you can stay from parked cars, without encroaching into the oncoming cycle lane, or getting too close to the curb.
Statistics
By anon
Wed, 07/12/2017 - 2:00pm
The people who installed these did so because the safety statistics say that they are safer than lanes that are adjacent to traffic.
The oft-cited studies have
By anon
Thu, 07/13/2017 - 1:58am
The oft-cited studies have fatal flaws.
The Rusk study of Montreal didn't make fair comparisons between streets with bike lanes and cycle tracks. They compared very quiet streets with cycle tracks, with busy commercial streets with lanes and on-street parking. Not surprisingly, the busy streets were more dangerous. http://john-s-allen.com/reports/montreal-kary.htm
Local cyclist Paul Schimek has this to say about the BICE Vancouver/Toronto study:
"The analysis was based on *only two blocks* of cycle track (Carrall St, Vancouver) out of hundreds of miles of road in Vancouver and Toronto. They found only 2 injuries on those 2 blocks whereas their method (which is highly questionable) predicted they would find 10. This is not exactly convincing evidence, don't you think?"
Oh My
By SwirlyGrrl
Thu, 07/13/2017 - 11:07am
We gots ourselves a "vehicular cycling" cult devotee.
Funny how VCCs always find "fatal" (read picayune or obscure or declared by fiat) flaws in the methodology of studies that don't support their religious beliefs, yet produce zero substantive studies of their own (and kill any efforts toward that when it is clear that the data don't bear out their hypotheses).
Vehicular cycling started out as an adaptive approach with some value, but it has sadly turned into a dogma for those who hate the idea of having to share their roads with a lot of other cyclists.
I provided two studies, along
By anon
Thu, 07/13/2017 - 7:00pm
I provided two studies, along with critiques. Here's another study, analyzing bike crashes on Comm Ave: https://www.scribd.com/document/240561402/Comma-Ve...
You provided...a bunch of insults.
You're an experienced bicyclist. How do you feel about the cycle tracks that have opened in the last few years? Do you really think https://goo.gl/maps/wUi9nDmXZRz is better than a traditional bike lane? How about https://goo.gl/maps/CNeU26J4WT62 and https://goo.gl/maps/3gA2xNcBrGm ?
Crashes on Comm Ave
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 1:31pm
Where there is only recently anything approaching this sort of bike accommodation.
Okay.
Neither of your examples are peer-reviewed. You know why? Because John S. Allen (who lives in Maine and refuses to listen to anybody who lives in an actual city, BTW) and Paul Schimick are well-known ideologues in the Cult of Vehicular Cycling. They don't submit their "reports" or "analyses" to critical review, and both strenuously resist anybody questioning what they have done or concluded for decades now. My husband used to moderate a large local cycling listerv and I've been around the cycling community for a quarter century, so I know this.
You are going to have to come up with something far more substantial than the theoretical, unfiltered meanderings of a couple of well-known ideologues.
Right, because standard
By cden4
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 2:30pm
Right, because standard striped bike lanes are never blocked by delivery trucks and double parked cars :-D
In my experience, protected bike lanes are clear a heck of lot more often than striped bike lanes. Vassar St has gotten much better with pedestrians not walking in the bike lane. People are figuring it out.
Here are some studies showing
By anon
Thu, 07/13/2017 - 7:07pm
Here are some studies showing the dangers of sidepaths: http://www.bikexprt.com/bikepol/facil/sidepath/sid...
Bog entry != study
By SwirlyGrrl
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 1:57pm
These are not "studies" - they are not published, they are not peer-reviewed, they are not scientific, and they do not meet the standards of the planning community for factual and objective information.
What you have is a single biased person's 2002 "analysis". No actual data that is relevant to current conditions, etc. This is not local data, either, and the assumption of what constitutes "side path" is wrong, too.
Also not peer reviewed.
John S. Allen is a crank who is completely unfamiliar with urban cycling and yet demands that everybody follow his ideas about how urban areas should be configured.
Like I said above: he's been known to leave cycling groups because they don't "believe" and blindly follow his theories and actually refute his assertions with evidence and other mean things.
Typically no parking near intersections
By anon
Wed, 07/12/2017 - 2:03pm
These designs typically prohibit parking near the intersections -- and the best designs eliminate it with physical barriers.
Of course, you're always legal to ride with traffic in the motor vehicle lane.
Hope it helps! I never want
By anon
Wed, 07/12/2017 - 3:04pm
Hope it helps! I never want to see anyone injured or killed by a motor vehicle, be they on foot, a bike, a wheelchair, a segway, or what have you. With regards to the issue of cyclists on this thread upset with jaywalkers: as someone who walks everwhere in Boston and Cambridge, I can tell you that all too often crosswalk signals do not work and when they do, cars and bikes blow theough the intersection anyways! We walkers are MOST at risk and not everyone can physically dash out of you car-driving and bike-riding paths! Cyclists AND auto drivers MUST STOP for pedestrians in crosswalks. Stop gunning for us and stop screaming at us just because you have to delay your bike rides and car rides for a mere 30 seconds for those of us on foot and in wheelchairs trying to get across the street.
Hey now I can legally ride
By Rat
Wed, 07/12/2017 - 9:47pm
Hey now I can legally ride this street into harvard square instead of salmoning like I have been doing for a decade! Thanks Cambridge!
The lane starts at James
By anon
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 11:44am
The lane starts at James Street. So you'll need to salmon, or walk your bike, the short block from Mason Street.
wheelchair van access
By anon
Fri, 07/14/2017 - 11:39am
How are people who use wheelchair vans supposed to use this street?
Problems include:
1) Can the ramp reach down to the street rather than a raised curb? The dropoff from the road's crown/gutter makes this worse.
2) There might not be space at the end of the ramp for the wheelchair to turn, without the curb getting in the way.
3) The ramp would block the cycle track while it's deployed.
4) The chair user might have to go a long distance in the cycle track to reach the nearest curb cut.
Ever actually driven a ramp van?
By anon
Mon, 07/17/2017 - 9:37am
Note the spaces marked "VAN" at your local grocery store ... no curb!
I used to drive a friend for errands. She had a handivan. I never had a problem unloading her + a heavy chair in one of those spots. They handle pavement in wide open parking lots just fine!
Strawman.
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