I have discussed previously the importance of not only making cycling actually safer through the provision of cycle lanes, but also making it feel safer by ensuring those lanes are constructed to a high standard and provide some real shielding from vehicles. I can’t see too many people feeling that some green paint and a white line makes a huge difference to the likelihood of them being run over by a truck while cycling.
A recent Streetfilms video highlights the approach Chicago is taking, through what they call “protected bike lanes”. This is exactly the kind of thing that I think we need to focus much more on providing here in Auckland:
At a guess, I doubt this would be particularly expensive to do, especially along streets that do seem unnecessarily wide (Richmond Road and Surrey Crescent come to mind as candidates on this count).
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I think that the best thing we can do to encourage cycling is to slow down traffic to say 30 or less. That way cyclists will easily be able to merge with traffic and we don’t need to use up road space. Saying that, that’s probably only a good idea for town centres such as Newmarket. Dedicated lanes along some streets outside of town centres is probably the best way to improve cycling.
Cool. These are common on the avenue in NYC and they seem to work well. I’d say that the physical division is about actual safety as much as perceived safety.
These are great ways to simply re-work an existing street without having to adjust kerblines etc so should be cheap to do. Longer term when streets are remodelled such as the Panmure busway they should be looking to make grade separation between cyclists and cars as is common in places like Hamburg and Amsterdam,
Out of interest, if we were to install protected bike lanes like this what road would be the first candidate?
Tamaki Drive seems an obvious first candidate.
“it’s been a wonderful thing to launch the first protected bike lane in the first 30 days of the Mayor’s tenure”
Chicago Mayors must be a lot more powerful than Auckland ones.
Most mayors in US cities have enormous executive powers; much more so than even the Mayor of Auckland who is still the most-powerful local body politician in the country. The number of people who serve at Len Brown’s pleasure is tiny: a handful of CCO directors, and the Council CEO. The mayor of an equivalent-size city in the US would have the power to hire and fire dozens of commissioners, including the head of their transportation department. It’s amazing what incentive you have to get the mayor’s pet projects done when you might lose your job if you don’t.
Plus, councils there have a lot more power to draw taxation income. They can frequently levy sales taxes and personal income taxes, as well as property taxes. When you have control of the major part of your budget, you can make things happen really fast.
We would have to be careful with where these were applied in Auckland. From my experience they work well on main arterials that have limited property access and/or no parking, but not very well on roads that have parking and/or a lot of side streets or regular driveway access.
The type of cycle lane between properties and roadside parking almost eradicates sight lines for drivers pulling out from driveways or side roads. Not a problem if all these are signalised or at proper give way/stop controlled intersections (or if there is no parking to block sight). But if there is parking and lots of driveways or uncontrolled side roads, the simple outcome is that drivers need to pull across the cycleway to see the street they are trying to drive onto and wait for a gap in traffic. So you can have the cycle route totally blocked every few dozen metres at peak hour, and drivers will instinctively pull out to wait at the edge of the road lane (rather than the edge of the cycle lane) which is a major safety issue. You would also have the same sight line issue the other way: for a driver pulling into a driveway from the main street the parked cars would block their sight to the cycleway. They would either have to cross the cycleway ‘blind’, or nose halfway between the road and the parking to look up the cycleway before proceeding. In either case a potentially dangerous situation!
So in my opinion these could work on routes like Tamaki Drive (parking but no driveways and few side streets, almost nothing on the seaward side), on Dominion Rd (providing parking is removed in line with the recent proposal, and the protection is via space or those flexible posts only) or on some CBD streets such as the upper parts of Queen St or Nelson and Hobson (parking but few driveways and no unsignalised intersections). Not sure about Richmond Rd or Surrey Cres, they have relatively few driveways but a whole lot of little side streets without traffic lights.
Richmond Rd and Surrey Cres are chock a block with driveways. (If you’re talking about the ones in Grey Lynn)
I don’t see the problem with driveways. For people pulling out they would easily see cyclists.
People pulling out of driveways (and smaller side roads) and seeing cyclists isn’t the issue. Drivers pulling out of driveways and seeing traffic is.
These drivers will certainly be able to see the cyclists in front of the parked cars, but they won’t have a sightline for traffic on the main road on the other side of the parked cars. So they will drive forward to where they can see the traffic they want to enter, and wait there for a gap. This means waiting across the cycle lane blocking it. This is more of a functional issue, it means the cycleway can become totally blocked during busy traffic times.
Believe me this happens, there is an example of this in Fitzroy St, St Kilda, Melbourne that I had to give up on riding upon as it was constantly blocked… and this didn’t even have parked cars, it was only from poor sightlines on one busy side street and a couple of driveways.
The bigger safety issue is drivers pulling *into* driveways and not seeing cyclists behind the row of parked cars (especially if the driver is pulling in from the opposite side of the road, or if the cyclist is approaching from behind them).
“The bigger safety issue is drivers pulling *into* driveways and not seeing cyclists behind the row of parked cars (especially if the driver is pulling in from the opposite side of the road, or if the cyclist is approaching from behind them).”
I see what you mean, and the problem is with junctions as well as driveways. A car turning across a cycle lane isn’t going to be able to see cycle traffic until the car is almost on the lane itself because the traffic is hidden by parked cars. You’d gain a bit more visibility if you limited parking near corners, but some cyclists go real fast especially on downhill sections of lane.
Raising the cycle lane on top of a speed bump through intersections would be of benefit and they do that a lot in the Netherlands. That forces cars to slow down and (hopefully) check left and right properly. But I wonder about the wisdom of hiding cycle traffic behind parked cars.
There enough idiots who poke their cars out of side road into bus lanes during the morning peak. I can’t imagine fewer would do the same into cycle lanes.
And check out the changes in NYC [cool chart]: http://blogs.reuters.com/felix-salmon/2011/12/10/chart-of-the-day-nyc-biking-edition/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter&dlvrit=60132
I think by having the bike lanes more visible with more defined paint this would make a big difference to safety. Couple that with an unbroken bike lane and I think you would make drivers much more aware of cyclists. What seems to happen in NZ in so many areas is a half-arsed approach to things. Biking around central Auckland how often do cycle lanes suddenly appear at traffic lights and then dissolve again. Consistent bike lanes along Greath North or New North would be easy to do, and probably take a few drivers off the road.
Barriers are over the top for me. It’s a bit too pc, I’m not sure how much safer it makes cyclists.
One of the other things that Chicago has to promote cycling is dedicated covered cycle parking building next to the main downtown train station (complete with cycle maintenance facilities and other cycle-friendly extras).
Funnily enough there seemed to be something operating in very similar fashion today for the Harbour bridge rides. The two eastern most lanes were closed off, with buses parked end-to-end along the entire length of the bridge and down towards the Oneway interchange. I couldn’t tell whether they were just there to seperate the cyclists from the motorway traffic, or were being parked to pick up passengers at a later point, but it was cool to see.
They were there to block the motorway traffic, they also had the cyclists using the busway
“Up to 51% mode share during rush hour”. That sounds like a lot of bikes.
I didn’t see any smashed bottles in the video. If it’s anything like Auckland they’d need a fleet of sweepers. The bus lanes and roads in general are bad enough for broken glass, where vehicle movements clear it reasonably quickly.
The parked cars are a safety hazard, doors, children, visibility, etc.
The parked cars cause a few visibility problems there but no car door problems — there is a painted exclusion zone where dooring might occur. And pedestrians/children don’t look like much of an issue there either. Even if there were lots of peds around, the cyclists could just slow down a little — existing cycle culture based on acting like a car as much as possible often needs to be modified when good cycle infrastructure gets introduced.
As people have mentioned above, the problem with implementing these types of lanes is not so much executive powers or will (though those would help a lot!) but the driveway and side street issue. As explained by others, this can lead to serious safety issues where parking isn’t removed, and even then can still lead to issues as motorists block the lanes. For similar reasons, we find it difficult to add as many shared ped/cycle footpaths as we’d like – see my article on another blog http://cyclingauckland.co.nz/general/2011/11/its-infrastructural-why-we-arent-getting-as-many-off-road-paths-as-we-want-devils-advocate-edition/
So the type of lanes shown above isn’t the solution for Richmond Road – they are the type of thing we should be building on Nelson Street in the CBD! Much fewer driveways, no (or much less) on-street parking, and signalised intersections to take a protected cycle lane (or a protected TWO-way path) across the intersections.
I am a cyclist. I cycled to work this morning and do so most mornings. I have to watch for traffic pulling out from side streets and driveways, and parking spots *all* the time – whether in a dedicated cycle lane or not, it makes no difference. Opening car doors is another special.
Having said that, I feel heaps safer in a cycle lane as it provides visibility to motorists of cyclist entitlement to use the roadspace, and cars respect this 99% of the time. The cycle lanes up Vincent Street and along St Lukes and Mt Albert roads are great and I wish there were more of these. The problem with main roads like K Rd and Ponsonby Rd which do not have cycle lanes are getting squeezed into lanes which aren’t wide enough to accommodate a small cycle and a rather larger vehicle trying to pass. I quite often have to find refuge on the footpath. K Rd leading to intersection with Symonds St is an example of how not to provide for cyclists. More dedicated and connected cycle lanes please wherever possible, especially along the main busy traffic routes.
Working on it, Jennifer. Glad you find cycle lanes helpful even where they are “only paint”. Too often, Council engineers and cycling advocates feel like it’s hard to make *anyone* happy.
(Oh, and you may have seen that we managed to get the uphill cycle lanes on Vincent Street extended north on Mayoral Drive for another 50m as you come up to the Vincent / Cook / Mayoral Drive extension – not greened yet, but already marked)
I’d really like to see the end of left turn green / red lights for cars. i’m sure they help traffic flow generally, but as a cyclist they give me the willies. i end up jammed against the kerb waiting for the main green light to change with cars turning left outside of me. horrible.
I use to use a separated bike lane in london and didn’t like it. the problem was the interface with trafic lights – there wasn’t enough room to leave the lane, inetgrate with traffic and then cross to the right-hand lane to turn right. as a result many people just used the road, and this proved unpopular with the traffic. so the other issue is that if a spearated lane is provided, the expectation amongst non-cycling traffic is that bikes must use it.
london also had a spectacular two-way protected lane which was hilarious. for reasons known only to the traffic engineers, ( i did figure out why, but have forgotten ) they swapped the directions of the lanes partway along. handy hint – don’t bother, unless its for comedy value.
Chris – sad to hear your experience with the lanes was negative, but all I really read from it is that they need to be designed right, and that half-measures can be worse than no measures. That is a fair comment, though we need to be careful that it doesn’t tip into the “too hard” basket either.