If you #bike in #Baltimore, you might be interested to know that Margo Bruner-Settles's anti-bike-lane billboard truck ran a red light in front of me today.
It's the morning rush hour in Downtown Bellingham and, clearly, the newly installed bike lane on Holly Street is leading to hell-in-a-handbasket traffic conditions for area motorists who are now denied one of three travel lanes!
Bike Route Buddy's great video of some Geelong examples of the intentionally sabotaged bike lanes that make up the majority of bike lanes in Victoria.
'Car door death-zone' bike lanes that encourage drivers to illegally close pass are worse than no bike lanes at all.
This video agrees so strongly with things I believed already (see one of my long-pinned posts, for instance) that I was hesitant to post it, fearing a confirmation bias reflex. I sat on it and watched it a few more times and …well, I still think it's really right on. You should watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ReXaS4QausQ#BikeTooter#BikeLanes#ClimateChange
The barrier to #30daysOfBiking for most people was never the weather, hills, or distance, it has always been the luxury car and/or SUV #drivers with tinted windows who don't stop for crosswalks, or otherwise brandish their vehicle as a weapon to cow people into giving up their rights to public space.
Of course, the #drivers who FTY at #crosswalks and block #BikeLanes also came up the other side of the hill, using the small neighborhood street (which lacks sidewalks on one side, barely complete on the other) as their cut-thru to avoid driving on nice big streets that go around the hill to within a block of the school with nice 💸💸 traffic signals. This is what you get for leaving every street open to cars for cutting through in every direction: every street has too many cars. #InducedDemand
"The most effective way to deal with opposition from local businesses is to just get the bike lanes built. Before-and-after surveys tend to show that in the long run, everyone winds up satisfied."
The 'banana' and 'cone' bicycle intersection from @BicycleDutch
Having a crossing that starts wider (to allow many bicycles to wait) and narrows in the intersection.
We do this sometimes with car infrastructure too, where we have two lanes before an intersection that immediately merge in to one on the other side of the intersection.
Of course this design is much more effective with bicycles.
via @gerrymcgovern
“The results show that making streets friendlier for #bikes — and sidewalks friendlier for #pedestrians — is actually good for #business. The rise of #completestreets and #roaddiets, as urban planners call them, has been a huge boon to businesses in #cities”
“survey after survey has shown that business owners overestimate how many of their customers drive to their stores, versus #walking or #biking”
#Lethbridge, #Alberta, City Councilor Dodic will propose to remove the brand new downtown #bike lanes & halt future construction, citing inconveniences for motorists & negative impacts on businesses, despite studies showing increased sales!! He advocates for painted lanes, dismissing safety concerns. The motion risks wasting taxpayer money. Urgent action is needed! Share this callout & oppose the motion by contacting council:
A few new projects in planning, I think mostly replacing older speed humps with nice bike-friendly bumps and repaving.
Then the 3rd Street protected lane. Some concern with dropoffs at the biology building, still a lot of planning to do - but should be done here in the next month or two.
Asks for resident-led traffic calming projects. I suppose they wouldn't go for my idea of calming Business 37 😁
Bay Area considers removing bike/ped lanes from Richmond-San Rafael Bridge
"Bay Area transportation planners are taking another look at what it would take to open the westbound shoulder of the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge for commuter traffic...Critics, mostly commuters and their employers, say traffic is worse than ever, while supporters maintain the path is a successful multimodal connection between the North Bay and the East Bay."
Great pictures in this article. I really want to go visit all these places!
"From bustling cities to small towns, communities from coast to coast amplified their commitment to better biking with an unprecedented surge in safer, more comfortable places to ride in 2023...thousands of additional projects planned across the country"
NYC Streetsblog: Mayor Adams failing spectacularly to construct bike and bus lanes
"Adams failed...to meet a legal mandate to construct 50 miles of protected bike lanes and 30 miles of protected bus lanes. What happens now? Nothing. And therein lies the problem."
"Far from meeting the established benchmarks, the city under Mayor Adams has run away from high-profile fights, delayed and slow-walked contentious projects"
When I got to San Francisco in 2010, I really wanted to do it all
Build a startup, create change through technology.
But the more I learned of the culture, the less I wanted to succeed according to its rubric. The turning point for me was Airbnb
Around 2011, Airbnb was REALLY taking off. All the benefits of a software business, none of the drawbacks of a real estate business. The best of all worlds.
@clive@danilo@glyph though, to be fair, we were out one day and met a young couple riding e-scooters on the San Francisco sidewalk. All of us waiting at a loooong light. Nice people. Why were they on the sidewalk? Well, they tried the street ( the label says not to ride on the sidewalk (giggle)). And the drivers terrified them. So, onto the sidewalk. And guess what? They hated the e-scooter experience, would never do it again. (Speaking as one who bicycle commuted through a Chicago winter, I stopped bicycling because of safety concerns/ bad drivers.)
Think of how much better it would be, if instead of thinking of the sidewalk as a hot new property to squat on, the brilliant tech mind had actively engaged with the city to develop good protected lanes for bikes & scooters? They'd be heroes. And their political clout would have accelerated development of a safe, fast travel network.