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And the menacing component. A cyclist who stays in their lane is no concern, but one who leaps around erratically is seriously worrying to drivers.
Few things scare me more than a bike whizzing out of my blindspot and across (or near) the path of my vehicle
Do we think bike lanes may help with lane interactions by giving them a separated containment zone?
You mean traditional bike lanes, next to the parked cars? Sure, it helps a lot with the standard problems. When I’ve cycled in the past, I prefer routes with bike lanes. Where I live, they’ve extended them such that, at traffic lights, there’s a “bike box” ahead of the stop line that left-turning cyclists can use. So you don’t have to merge with traffic, you just get over when the light is red and mosey ahead in full view of the cars before getting back in your lane. It certainly helps that the vast majority of cyclists are commuters running predictable routes, so you can get away with skipping infrastructure on most streets.
Unfortunately, they’ve also pioneered a new kind of lane that goes behind the parked cars. This is supposed to protect you from getting doored, which I admit is scary. A lady almost managed to get me when I was around 20; turns out my reflexes work just fine. But they introduce two new problems: first, traffic from side streets has to cross over the bike lane in order to merge; second, turning traffic and cyclists are obscured from one another by a screen of parked cars. This is part of what actually stopped my work commutes. The added tension of having to slow at every intersection to figure out what cars were doing was unpleasant enough to make me just give up and find other means.
Can’t imagine it’s fun to be a responsible driver in that part of town either, which is why I avoid going there by car too.
The parked car / bike lane interactions are impossible and stupid. I don't know if I prefer road/bike lane/parked car or road/parked car/bike lane, honestly they both suck.
The real issue is parked cars on major streets. I cannot believe we still allow that. It would be a huge win for traffic too. The fact ~6 people storing their cars at massively subsidized rates on public space can destroy the throughput of a road by creating bottlenecks where it goes from 2 to 1 lane is insane. I think new buildings should have underground paid parking so we can still have ample parking supply, and then we can clear out major streets and increase traffic throughput for all.
You know, I don’t really feel the same way. I commute through the streetcar suburbs, and businesses there deeply need some kind of readily accessible parking for their customers, or they’re going to be forced to decamp for the malls and get replaced by walk-only substitutes like boba shops. That would leave major swaths of these areas unserved by any remotely niche businesses. I’ve seen this happen; I know a guy who lost his in-front parking to a bike lane and is considering moving for it. And I know this street well! Traffic doesn’t really back up around there, and there are extremely regular bus services for commuters.
This idea makes sense for max-density areas, but most of where I am is very old and divided in lots too small for any underground parking, unless you want to undermine small ownership in favor of the ubiquitous big developers. Personally, I like distributed decision making better.
Fairly certain this has been disproven over and over again. The vast majority of customers to downtown (and most streetcar suburbs are "downtown" at this point in major cities) do not arrive to stores by car. In Toronto, it's a tiny fraction vs walk/transit/bike.
Toronto's downtown BIA's are fighting the province who wants to remove bike lanes (they want to keep them). They protested when the bike lanes were put in, have seen the results, and now want to keep them.
Also what I am calling the "Iron law of road scaling" comes into play. Road capacity is fixed, population is going up. Eventually we have to change something, and on street parking is by far the lowest productivity use of road space. Inevitably it will have to go.
You do speak truth here. Streetcar suburb main streets/retail areas are infinitely better than condo podium retail areas. We need more pro-active municipal governments who nudge developers to make better retail spaces. There's no reason we can't have smaller retail units in condo podiums that mimic the way small storefronts on streetcar suburbs are.
No, the streetcar suburbs around where I live are definitely not downtown, and a very sizable fraction of the customer base for all the little squares comes in by car. It’s very visible. Thankfully, a sizable portion of that traffic can overflow onto the reasonably-but-not-overwhelmingly dense residential areas, which mostly have off-street parking and can absorb the surplus. This works in most mid-density suburbs and creates a nice environment, especially if you can take advantage of public transit on major commuter corridors to lower congestion at the worst hours.
I hate to say it, but the reason the small storefronts are better is that they’re managed independently. Centralized control has a way of making things anodyne and unpleasant. I’ve watched the million corporate developers try to ruin my homeland, and it makes me more certain than ever that such things should be left to the small.
This was the study I was talking about by the way. https://tcat.ca/resources/bike-lanes-on-street-parking-and-business-parkdale-danforth/
"72% of the visitors to the Study Area usually arrive by active transportation (by bicycle or walking). Only 4% report that driving is their usual mode of transportation.
Merchants overestimated the number of their customers who arrived by car. 42% of merchants estimated that more than 25% of their customers usually arrived by car."
I imagine Parkdale/Danforth neighborhoods are busier than wherever you live, so grain of salt and all that. This study is now over a decade old (holy shit) so the percentage of non-car trips will be probably be higher as biking is up in Toronto since then. Reading it again, 4% seems a bit low but whatever.
You're correct. I think the Asian model of retail where the storefronts are purchased and owned like condo units (vs leased) would help. Then the retail owners are essentially condo residents with a say/vote on how things go, and more autonomy than having to keep whoever is leasing happy.
While I appreciate this perspective (and don't exactly blame you for it) you are aware it's this exact attitude that is causing the housing crisis right? Which in turn is a huge drag on economic productivity and is absolutely poisoning the public sphere with resentment, anxiety, and stress. Western society has grown sclerotic and is crumbling under its own weight, and a refusal to accept that things need to change is a HUGE contributor.
I appreciate that you brought receipts! It let me look at the area you’re talking about. It’s about 2x as dense as the areas I’m familiar with, meaning the rules obviously change. Looking at Parkdale, it’s clear that all the antique shops cluster at the end of Queen Street where there’s a big parking lot. I’ve never been there myself, but this doesn’t seem coincidental! The rest of the street appears dominated by entertainment, like restaurants.
Wrong, actually. The housing crisis is a migration crisis: from old factory towns in middle America to the cities where prosperity seems to cluster. Why is that the case? Is that an inevitable property of reality, or is that the changing conditions of American markets driven by “knowledge economy” interests? There is an incredible amount of land in America. Why can’t people make a living in most of it any longer? This was not always the case, but it’s easier to talk about spoils in the few areas people have decided to fight over than the destitution of the rest.
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