Bicycles
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A place to share our love of all things with two wheels and pedals. This is an inclusive, non-judgemental community. All types of cyclists are accepted here; whether you're a commuter, a roadie, a MTB enthusiast, a fixie freak, a crusty xbiking hoarder, in the middle of an epic across-the-world bicycle tour, or any other type of cyclist!
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I trust the Dutch with this design, bikes are treated as priority with a lot of respect. Not the same in the US… and in this test, I especially wouldn’t trust college town kids and local drivers who asked for (and got) additional parking on the same street.
You never arrive at your destination unless you start moving towards it. Knock it off with the defeatist American exceptionalism.
I’m going to assume positive intent and not the hostile tone “knock it off” reads like to me.
True… roundabouts took some time but are pretty prevalent now in my region and people have gotten used to them. I don’t think the US shouldn’t try things, just pointing out a difference in culture and attitude towards cars & bikes in the US compared to Dutch. I also don’t think a college town is the right place to test something like this, maybe I’m wrong and discounting younger drivers too heavily.
I almost got into an accident just yesterday because a car tried to enter a roundabout when I was in it and had right of way. We're getting better, but at least in my semi-rural area, there are still some issues. To be fair, this was a really poorly designed roundabout with a stoplight about 50-75 ft from one of the entries, so it seems to always get backed up (and the car in question was coming through the intersection to the roundabout).
Oh wow, that’s scary. I’m semi-rural too, thankfully I don’t hear much about accidents or incidents in roundabouts at least locally. I’m curious about areas where there are pedestrians and bikes that cross roundabouts too… where I’m at they are farther away from walkable/bikeable territory so it’s really just cars using them.
Most are far from walkable/bikeable areas, but there are two right next to each other near a park that has a lot of car, bike, and foot traffic.
We have a couple of these in my local community. Same thing happened, a bunch of hysterical postings, and then it worked and people just forgot about it
IDK, I'm not a fan of parking on both sides. In the examples you showed, there was either no parking or parking on one side facing oncoming bicycle traffic. If you put parking on both sides, bicycles end up in the door zone if they stay in their lane. Cars will push cyclists into the door zone with this design because they feel they have a right to the center lane.
I would be okay with this if the parking were only on one side.
Glad someone made this comment before me. Here's the MLive article the clickbait is based on. You can learn more about edge lane roads here.
Generally these are good for slower speed routes that don't seea lot of traffic. Residential streets are a perfect example. It's basically how drivers instinctively navigate down slow narrow streets. Not too familiar with that area of Kalamazoo to know if it's a good fit for that road but I'm generally in favor of this road layout and think we need more of them in the US so it's not seen as some scary confusing thing by motorists.
Design a road that will deter cyclists from using it without saying you're designing a road that will deter cyclists from using it.
The idea of having protected bike lanes and bike paths that are completely away from roads is because NOBODY CAN TRUST DRIVERS. It's as simple as that.
Keep us as far away from these vehicles of mass destruction if you care at all about safety.
Having the entire road unmarked seems like it would work better than whatever this is.
Mmmm, yeah, let's have a novel road concept that will confuse unfamiliar drivers and also pit cyclists directly against cars in the same lane. Sounds great.
This was done in some town in California I think a few years ago. It actually did slow traffic and caused drivers to pay more attention. Overall though the area wasn't happy with it and they reverted it. I think in that case, though, the municipality just changed it overnight without warning or consultation.
I'm just so baffled as to why this is something being proposed