baltimorespokes

An association of transportation experts of 15 major US cities (NACTO) recently published new guidelines for bicycle infrastructure. They claim they are ‘innovative’ and ‘state of the art’ and based on ‘an extensive survey of expert knowledge, [and] existing guidelines from countries and cities around the world’. … But looking at the new NACTO guidelines we doubt they have [looked at the Dutch cycling facilities]…

And in the related link it explains why America has not fully embraced the Dutch way of thinking

On the resulting blog posts says of the statistics which surround cycling in the Netherlands that: Upon hearing these statistics it’s tempting to casually dismiss the entire Dutch cycling experience as irrelevant to our own, as if some exotic alien technology beyond our comprehension were responsible. I’m no biologist, but I’m pretty sure there is no unique bicycling gene only present in Dutch nationals that compels them to ride bikes way more than anyone else.

In my experience I have seen national “complete streets” talks give examples of “accommodating bicyclists on a bridge with a 3′ “bike lane” and a 12′ travel lane. Now let’s flip that and give cars the minimum width lane from AASHTO of 8′ and bicyclists the rest of the width of 7′. Big difference! There is too much stress in always providing motoring traffic “the best of widths” and bicyclists can get the leftovers, this has to change!

Case in point: Allysha Lorber over on B’ More Bikes posted this example of a “complete street”:

Any one else see the error? 4′ bike lanes on a “closed” section of road in violation of AASHTO minimum of 5′. And if you attend some of the on-line seminars of what’s in the next version of AASHTO standards and what they are recommending; 10′ travel lanes for motorist to improved safety at no cost to capacity.* and here they have 11′ lanes.

Bicyclists can get their (American) recommended width of 6′ bike lanes and cars can get their recommended width of 10′ lanes, every one wins! But noooo, they “have to” give bicyclists substandard facilities to increase car capacity.* and reduce the safety of the road.

*That’s twice now I have starred increase capacity. This concept is based on observations when you have really wide travel lanes on a freeway a few more cars go by per mile then narrower lanes and then someone mistakenly made a linear function out of this and applied it to local streets with the implication that if you made travel lanes just inches wider over a 10 mile stretch of road a few more cars can squeeze in. Now the question is such a benefit worth the cost bicycle lanes that are below standards? This is no where near the ideals of a complete street. I have to ask, have engineers lost what the numbers mean? We can get way more people using the street if we follow recommendations then always steeling space from bicyclists and giving it to motorists to encourage them to speed along irregardless of their surroundings.

Complete streets should be about equalizing everyones experience. Here they have provided nice shady areas for cars to rest in comfort but for the pedestrians the experience it is just “Do your business and get out.” This is how we design bathrooms! All they have really done here is put some trees along a car sewer and marked the door zone as a bike lane, this is not a public space use well and it is not where anyone would want to spend time.

Standard Dutch turning lane / bike lane design

I also want to point out the sharp turning radius of the Dutch vs our “complete street” with a wide turning radius to encourage fast turning by motorists at the expense of bicycle and pedestrian safety. There are so many details on this “example” that are missing it is truly shocking. Complete means “Perfect in every respect; having all necessary qualities” Where is the bike parking, pedestrian benches? Or are only cars allowed to stop and rest? Is there anything here for a cyclists or pedestrians to stop for, like an outdoor cafe or mini-park? Every thing about this design says “look how easy we are trying to make it to speed by all these building.”

While I remain skeptical of some of the ways the Dutch do things, mostly because of the differences in liability (in the Netherlands the motorist is always at fault) and I have gotten used to and comfortable riding without separate facilities but even so I can’t help being shocked by the vast difference on how they do things and how we do them supposedly in their imitation.

It’s like a bait and switch scam, and you don’t realize what you have been scammed out of till you look back at the original promises, the width for a one direction bike lane for the dutch is the width we end up putting down for bidirectional bike facilities. And the fact that too many “complete street” examples are attempting to scam us out of less accommodations then what AASHTO recommends is extremely egregious. Have you ridden Greene Tree Rd in Baltimore County? They removed one 10′ travel lane and replaced it with two 3′ curb lanes (at least they did not call them bike lanes.) This design is in complete streets and is less comfortable to ride on then before the “improvement”. I for one am getting very concerned about this end run around AASHTO to stick it to the cyclists by saying we are being considered but not really.
Continue reading “The Dutch are critical of our imitation of their bikeway system”

from Yehuda Moon and the Kickstand Cyclery