you wish your city had a lot of bike PATHS, it drives me mad that everyone keeps using the term “bike lane” because that very specifically means just painting a line on the road which is TERRIBLE.
If every bike lane was replaced with a wide sidewalk for both bicycles and pedestrians america would actually be a halfway okay place to live in, that’s the standard here in sweden and while it’s obviously not optimal, it means you can reliably bike just about everywhere and people with wheelchairs or mobility scooters don’t have to worry about having infrastructure available to safely get around.
it’s really frustrating that youtubers who talk about urbanism especially in places like north america don’t talk more about this distinction, i think it does a pretty significant amount of harm that people never get to learn the proper terms for these things.
Like, imagine getting into this stuff and you merrily contact local politicians and talk about how bike lanes would help cyclists and help the city, if that goes through you might think you’re going to see massive improvements and then you’re given a slap to the face when you see that they just… draw a line of paint on the roads…
Another thing that rather annoys me but it nowhere near as bad, is the insistence on separated single-direction road-level bike paths, often with shitty separation from traffic.
I think it would be more effective to campaign for simple wide multi-use paths, especially where there are already sidewalks you can just make those 3x as wide and paint a line at the edge of the old sidewalk, and suddenly you have something that lets EVERYONE get around safely and comfortably, even people in wheelchairs and large bulky mobility scooters, and it’s much easier to maintain than narrow bike paths with obstacles on either side.
But obviously i’m biased because that’s how it generally works here, however it works really well for establishing a baseline level of accessibility and cementing in people’s minds that living without a car is perfectly doable even if it’s not necessarily convenient yet.
Like, imagine getting into this stuff and you merrily contact local politicians and talk about how bike lanes would help cyclists and help the city, if that goes through you might think you’re going to see massive improvements and then you’re given a slap to the face when you see that they just… draw a line of paint on the roads…
And in the US, it’s even more malicious than that in reality. That painted line on the side of the road with a picture of a bike that the city says is for bicyclists? Yeah, people will still park their cars on it. And also now that you have a “bike lane” that you’re supposed to use, the city makes it a crime to ride bikes in pedestrian spaces.
So you, as a bicyclist, are riding along the road and see that someone parked their truck in the bike lane. You have two options: ride into the same lane as motor vehicle traffic and pray you don’t become one of the roughly 120 bicyclists injured or 3 bicyclists killed by cars in the US each and every day, or you switch to the sidewalk and live another day. You play it safe, choose the sidewalk (since there aren’t many pedestrians anyways either) but oh no! There’s a cop, they stop you and issue a fine. And if you ask why they haven’t ticketed the pickup truck for parking in the bike lane, they say it’s a matter of police discretion.
you wish your city had a lot of bike PATHS, it drives me mad that everyone keeps using the term “bike lane” because that very specifically means just painting a line on the road which is TERRIBLE.
If every bike lane was replaced with a wide sidewalk for both bicycles and pedestrians america would actually be a halfway okay place to live in, that’s the standard here in sweden and while it’s obviously not optimal, it means you can reliably bike just about everywhere and people with wheelchairs or mobility scooters don’t have to worry about having infrastructure available to safely get around.
i had no idea bike path and lane meant different things, i had bike paths in mind when i wrote that
it’s really frustrating that youtubers who talk about urbanism especially in places like north america don’t talk more about this distinction, i think it does a pretty significant amount of harm that people never get to learn the proper terms for these things.
Like, imagine getting into this stuff and you merrily contact local politicians and talk about how bike lanes would help cyclists and help the city, if that goes through you might think you’re going to see massive improvements and then you’re given a slap to the face when you see that they just… draw a line of paint on the roads…
Another thing that rather annoys me but it nowhere near as bad, is the insistence on separated single-direction road-level bike paths, often with shitty separation from traffic.
I think it would be more effective to campaign for simple wide multi-use paths, especially where there are already sidewalks you can just make those 3x as wide and paint a line at the edge of the old sidewalk, and suddenly you have something that lets EVERYONE get around safely and comfortably, even people in wheelchairs and large bulky mobility scooters, and it’s much easier to maintain than narrow bike paths with obstacles on either side.
But obviously i’m biased because that’s how it generally works here, however it works really well for establishing a baseline level of accessibility and cementing in people’s minds that living without a car is perfectly doable even if it’s not necessarily convenient yet.
And in the US, it’s even more malicious than that in reality. That painted line on the side of the road with a picture of a bike that the city says is for bicyclists? Yeah, people will still park their cars on it. And also now that you have a “bike lane” that you’re supposed to use, the city makes it a crime to ride bikes in pedestrian spaces.
So you, as a bicyclist, are riding along the road and see that someone parked their truck in the bike lane. You have two options: ride into the same lane as motor vehicle traffic and pray you don’t become one of the roughly 120 bicyclists injured or 3 bicyclists killed by cars in the US each and every day, or you switch to the sidewalk and live another day. You play it safe, choose the sidewalk (since there aren’t many pedestrians anyways either) but oh no! There’s a cop, they stop you and issue a fine. And if you ask why they haven’t ticketed the pickup truck for parking in the bike lane, they say it’s a matter of police discretion.