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Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen

Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen congestion and quality of life.

jdblair 10y ago
You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bike pass-through would be just as effective at stopping through traffic in a neighborhood. The point is to block routes through a neighborhood and force car traffic back to the main roads, stopping through traffic in a residential neighborhood.
- thenipper 10y ago
  It'd probably make plowing a lot worse though as the plows had to cut in and out.
  - Jtsummers 10y ago
    Depending on the road layout, the plows could just be making Us through the side streets from the main avenues. Leave main, go to mandatory right/left turn, go to mandatory right/left turn, return to main. The problem with this is that east coast cities are typically not laid out on nice grids like most cities west of the Mississippi.
    - thenipper 10y ago
      True but those non-grid layouts can also help with traffic issues as they're sub-optimal to cut through. I live in the Boston area, i'm pretty well versed with crappy layed out streets
- _delirium 10y ago
  Fwiw many newer residential developments (from roughly the 1990s) are built like this in the first place, which is why there are so many back-to-back cul-de-sacs, and rarely through streets that go more than a few blocks. It's mainly older neighborhoods that have the traffic cut-through problem, because they were built before developers started laying out neighborhood streets with the explicit goal of preventing through traffic.
  - oftenwrong 10y ago
    The Berkeley solution has the advantage that it doesn't hurt the utility of walking and cycling.
    - oh_sigh 10y ago
      But it does negatively affect some home prices while positively affecting other home prices.
      - enoch_r 10y ago
        It's much more difficult to change streets into cul de sacs after the fact, but I can't imagine that forcing through-traffic to take certain streets doesn't reduce the value of homes on those streets, regardless of the method you use to do so.
    - plorkyeran 10y ago
      Cul-de-sacs could easily be built with connecting bike/pedestrian pathways if that was something the developers actually cared about.
      - _delirium 10y ago
        That's pretty common. I lived in a suburban neighborhood in Houston for years and the back-to-back cul-de-sacs always had sidewalks connecting them, so it was only with a car you'd have to go around the long way. As a result it was actually a lot nicer to travel through subdivisions if you were going somewhere by bike/foot, rather than going on the busy main roads.
geofft 10y ago
But a "bicycle" boulevard with no bicycles still solves the problem: you can use non-major streets for local car traffic, but not for through traffic. A bicycle boulevard isn't closed to cars; it just has a barricade every couple of blocks. You can still reach everywhere you want to reach by car. Contrary to the stereotype there are plenty of Berkeley residents who don't own bikes.
infecto 10y ago
In this kind of solution bicycles are not the solution. Its about blocking residential roads to vehicles and forcing these vehicles to use planned routes, around or through. Sure, bicycles can go through them but its really about forcing cars to use engineered paths. Hopefully they did proper traffic studies for these paths but thats another issue.
TulliusCicero 10y ago
Oulu, Finland has eight months of winter, yet they have a bike mode share triple that of Portland. Snow is not a barrier if a city actually cares about cycling: https://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-finland-winter-cycling-capital-of-the-world/ https://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-finland-winter...
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  European cities are also extremely dense compared to American sprawl.
  - TulliusCicero 10y ago
    1. Bikes don't really depend on high density the way transit does. They don't do well in rural/exurban sprawl, true, but standard American suburbs are usually dense enough to make a good number of bike trips practical (the infrastructure is another matter entirely though). 2. Wikipedia says Oulu's urban density is 2300/sq mi, which is really not very dense at all. 3. In fact, apparently the suburb in the article (Takoma Park) has a density of 8000/sq mi, so more than triple that of Oulu.
    - serge2k 10y ago
      The problem is people live 30 miles from work and come and go at the same time.
      - TulliusCicero 10y ago
        > people live 30 miles from work Agreed, sprawl is an issue. > come and go at the same time. Yes, but at the same time, there are good reasons for why most people have roughly in sync schedules: it makes any kind of socialization much, much easier. Yeah, you can dodge traffic by leaving for work a few hours later than everyone else, but then hanging out with any of your friends or family will be painful or outright impossible. And it's particularly important for anyone with kids to have a schedule that roughly matches them being in school.

Maryland has snow. Berkeley does not. Bikes only reduce traffic when people can ride them. Applying a Berkeley solution to a Maryland problem could only worsen congestion and quality of life.

jdblair 10y ago

You misunderstand - its not the bikes that are reducing traffic, the bike access is a side-effect of the traffic calming barriers. The same barriers with no bike pass-through would be just as effective at stopping through traffic in a neighborhood. The point is to block routes through a neighborhood and force car traffic back to the main roads, stopping through traffic in a residential neighborhood.

thenipper 10y ago
It'd probably make plowing a lot worse though as the plows had to cut in and out.
- Jtsummers 10y ago
  Depending on the road layout, the plows could just be making Us through the side streets from the main avenues. Leave main, go to mandatory right/left turn, go to mandatory right/left turn, return to main. The problem with this is that east coast cities are typically not laid out on nice grids like most cities west of the Mississippi.
  - thenipper 10y ago
    True but those non-grid layouts can also help with traffic issues as they're sub-optimal to cut through. I live in the Boston area, i'm pretty well versed with crappy layed out streets
_delirium 10y ago
Fwiw many newer residential developments (from roughly the 1990s) are built like this in the first place, which is why there are so many back-to-back cul-de-sacs, and rarely through streets that go more than a few blocks. It's mainly older neighborhoods that have the traffic cut-through problem, because they were built before developers started laying out neighborhood streets with the explicit goal of preventing through traffic.
- oftenwrong 10y ago
  The Berkeley solution has the advantage that it doesn't hurt the utility of walking and cycling.
  - oh_sigh 10y ago
    But it does negatively affect some home prices while positively affecting other home prices.
    - enoch_r 10y ago
      It's much more difficult to change streets into cul de sacs after the fact, but I can't imagine that forcing through-traffic to take certain streets doesn't reduce the value of homes on those streets, regardless of the method you use to do so.
  - plorkyeran 10y ago
    Cul-de-sacs could easily be built with connecting bike/pedestrian pathways if that was something the developers actually cared about.
    - _delirium 10y ago
      That's pretty common. I lived in a suburban neighborhood in Houston for years and the back-to-back cul-de-sacs always had sidewalks connecting them, so it was only with a car you'd have to go around the long way. As a result it was actually a lot nicer to travel through subdivisions if you were going somewhere by bike/foot, rather than going on the busy main roads.

geofft 10y ago

But a "bicycle" boulevard with no bicycles still solves the problem: you can use non-major streets for local car traffic, but not for through traffic. A bicycle boulevard isn't closed to cars; it just has a barricade every couple of blocks. You can still reach everywhere you want to reach by car. Contrary to the stereotype there are plenty of Berkeley residents who don't own bikes.

infecto 10y ago

In this kind of solution bicycles are not the solution. Its about blocking residential roads to vehicles and forcing these vehicles to use planned routes, around or through. Sure, bicycles can go through them but its really about forcing cars to use engineered paths. Hopefully they did proper traffic studies for these paths but thats another issue.

TulliusCicero 10y ago

Oulu, Finland has eight months of winter, yet they have a bike mode share triple that of Portland. Snow is not a barrier if a city actually cares about cycling: https://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-finland-winter-cycling-capital-of-the-world/ https://wintercyclingblog.org/2014/10/17/oulu-finland-winter...

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
European cities are also extremely dense compared to American sprawl.
- TulliusCicero 10y ago
  1. Bikes don't really depend on high density the way transit does. They don't do well in rural/exurban sprawl, true, but standard American suburbs are usually dense enough to make a good number of bike trips practical (the infrastructure is another matter entirely though). 2. Wikipedia says Oulu's urban density is 2300/sq mi, which is really not very dense at all. 3. In fact, apparently the suburb in the article (Takoma Park) has a density of 8000/sq mi, so more than triple that of Oulu.
  - serge2k 10y ago
    The problem is people live 30 miles from work and come and go at the same time.
    - TulliusCicero 10y ago
      > people live 30 miles from work Agreed, sprawl is an issue. > come and go at the same time. Yes, but at the same time, there are good reasons for why most people have roughly in sync schedules: it makes any kind of socialization much, much easier. Yeah, you can dodge traffic by leaving for work a few hours later than everyone else, but then hanging out with any of your friends or family will be painful or outright impossible. And it's particularly important for anyone with kids to have a schedule that roughly matches them being in school.