Questions from WV:
>>> 1. What grid spacing should bike lanes have on the road grid? In a hypothetical rectolinear grid, there would be an X distance between- say the streets- and a Y distance between the avenues. Maybe 1 kilometer?
The theoretical answer is that every street should have bike facilities. The more practical answer is that you probably can't expect regular folks to go more than 2-3 blocks out of their way, so you need a facility at least every 5 blocks (so that you're never more than 2.5 blocks away from one).
>>> 2. if such a grid of bicycle lanes were laid out, where would the bicyclists ride between dedicated lanes of the bicycle grid? On the street or the sidewalk?
It's safer and more convenient for bikes to be on the street unless it's a major arterial.
>>> 3. On streets with bicycle lanes, does that mean that cars cannot parallel park on the outside of the bike lane? If permitted on the inside, what about open doors?
This is a regular bike lane, with cars parked between the bike lane and the curb. PROS: This is the easiest/cheapest kind of bike lane to install, and the bikeway surface is smooth. CONS: Cars often block the lane, and open doors from parked cars ("dooring") is a significant safety problem.
This is a cycle track, with the bike lane situated between the row of parked cars and the curb, and a painted buffer wide enough to avoid dooring. PROS: Much safer for cyclists and better at encouraging more people to bike. CONS: More expensive to install, usually a more rumbly surface for bikes, and usually reduces the amount of parking you can fit on each block by a car or two.
>>> 4. If I had hit him due to someone opening their car door in his way, should I be liable? Should the occupant of the car who opened his car door be liable?
In most states the person who opened their door into traffic would be liable. Bikes count as traffic, and it is illegal to open your door into traffic.
>>> 5. What, besides convenience do dedicated bike lanes provide?
That's a little like asking "what, besides convenience, do paved roads provide?"
Better infrastructure encourages more use. Dedicated bike infrastructure increases bicyclist safety, and increases the number of people who ride bikes. That, in turn, has larger consequences.
First of all, since bike infrastructure is much less expensive to produce and maintain than driving or transit infrastructure, the per capita cost of the transportation network drops significantly the more people we can get to bike.
Secondly, bike-friendly cities are much more safe than bike-unfriendly ones, for everyone (not just cyclists). Streets designed primarily for cars are extremely dangerous. Car accidents kill 3-4 times as many Americans annually as crime. Most suburbs are
statistically more dangerous than urban ghettos, because of the high car accident rate in suburban areas designed around driving. When it comes to bicycling, there is safety in numbers. One or two bicyclists don't make a difference, but if you have enough cyclists in your city so that car drivers learn to expect them on streets and adapt their driving to compensate (meaning they go slower and are more careful to watch where they're going), the street becomes safer for everyone.
Third, bikes require no fuel, meaning they don't pollute and don't contribute to fuel demand.
Finally, since bikes reduce the demand for car parking lots, they increase the efficiency of land use, resulting in cross-benefits to transit, pedestrians, and everything associated with Smart Growth. We can produce much more walkable and sustainable cities if we don't have to build huge parking lots for every building.
In short, we want to encourage lots of biking, and providing dedicated infrastructure is the best way to do it.
>>> 6. Should bicyclists or the bikes themselves be required to carry some type of insurance? My opinion is to license bikes and bicyclists and have some kind of insurance.
That wouldn't be practical (unless you want to try and license 4 year old children), and definitely wouldn't be desirable. We want to encourage biking for the reasons outlined above. Given that we already heavily discourage bicycling by virtue of inadequate infrastructure, adopting further barriers to entry would very likely kill non-recreational bicycling altogether, resulting in more expensive, less safe, less efficient, less sustainable cities. The negative consequences would far outweigh the benefits.
I'd be OK with requiring anyone over the age of 18 who rides a bike on a public street to carry ID, meaning they can be ticketed if they break a traffic law. That's as far as I'd be willing to go. Failure to carry a valid ID while biking would be tantamount to failure to carry a license while driving.
>>> 7. If you have a dedicated bicycling grid, should the bicyclists be able to ride their bikes on parallel streets? ... I can see their practicality if bikers had to dismount and walk their bikes between dedicated bike lanes in the grid
Think of dedicated bike facilities as the arterial streets of the bike network. They're not the *only* streets, they're the *arteries*. You wouldn't outlaw driving on local streets and force everyone to walk to the nearest arterial before allowing them to get in their car, would you? You can't do it for bikes either. Doing so would completely kill the practicality of bicycling.
If you do not allow bicycling in mixed traffic then EVERY street needs a dedicated bike lane. Period. This compromise idea of only providing good bike facilities every few blocks is contingent on bicyclists being able to reasonably access them. If you cut off reasonable access then the facilities are useless, and there is no compromise deal.
>>> 8. Have enforceable laws governing bicycle traffic and penalties for breaking them. If this were done, then dedicated bicycle lanes make a lot of sense.
I am totally in favor of adopting reasonable laws and then enforcing them, but unless you're willing to say that we shouldn't spend any more money on car infrastructure until all drivers stay within the speed limit, you cannot legitimately withhold your endorsement of investments in cycling based on imperfect behavior from cyclists. It is intellectually dishonest to demand perfect behavior from all cyclists while excusing universal lawbreaking by car drivers. Your demands are a two-way street.
With all due respect, questions 5-8 are classic examples of the "windshield perspective" phenomenon, whereby people think in terms of what they see from behind the wheel of a car rather than in terms of what makes sense overall. It's not a good way to run our cities, as the latter half of the 20th Century proved. We can't (and shouldn't) ignore cars, but we also can't allow their needs to dictate everything we do.
The fact that large numbers of bicyclists require city drivers to adjust their behavior does not mean we should regulate bikes out of existence. Bikers can't expect to get everything they want all the time, but neither can drivers. Living in cities requires all people to compromise.
Prev
Linear Mode
