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Great research, I wish you luck! One of the things the mayor said interested me: > If someone's blocking [a bike lane] for thirty seconds while they get their

by apeace 9y ago

Great research, I wish you luck! One of the things the mayor said interested me: > If someone's blocking [a bike lane] for thirty seconds while they get their groceries or drop their kid off, I don't think they should get a ticket for that. Do you agree? And do you have any data on how much of the blocking going on is A) the "thirty second dropoff", B) driving in the lane, and C) stopping and parking for any period of time? Lastly, I'll add that as a walker in NYC (no car, no bike), I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. I rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all, and have frequently come 1-2 feed away from being side-swiped while a bicycle blows through a red light. Since you're so passionate about this I'm sure you follow traffic laws, but maybe you'll be inspired to take a look at bike behavior too!

tucosan 9y ago
Bikelanes are for cyclists. Blocking them even for 30 seconds endangers the cyclists, how will have to merge into car traffic. That your mayor does not understand this, is testament to his ignorance of the issue.
- nostromo 9y ago
  It's not that simple. In most cities cars are supposed to merge into unprotected bike lanes when turning right. This is safer for everyone.
  - StudentStuff 9y ago
    Not sure where your at, but this is generally considered poor road design, and even on 2 lane streets you'll add a bike box to keep drivers separated from bikes. Having 2 ton boxes of metal and glass interact with bikers unpredictably is risky!
    - nostromo 9y ago
      I'm only familiar with this on the west coast, but yes, you're usually required to merge into the bike lane to turn right. Here's an image: http://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Right-Turn.jpg http://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Right-Turn.... From CA directly: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/turns https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/turns > To make a right turn, drive close to the right edge of the road. If there is a bike lane, drive into the bike lane no more than 200 feet before the turn. This is also true in Washington State. Not sure about Oregon.
      - StudentStuff 9y ago
        Up here in Seattle, SDOT got rid of this style of bike lane over the past few years. Outlying suburbs keep the edge of the bike lane solid at turns (not like the dashing shown). Portland has gone the same direction, separating bicyclists from drivers as much as possible. Having spent some time in Cali, I very much appreciate our infrastructure up here. Lots of law and order type politics down there, but when it comes to actual issues like public health, its given nary a glance till upper middle class people are dying.
      - rootusrootus 9y ago
        In Oregon, moving into the bike lane to make a turn will get you a ticket. I see people do it pretty often however, and I have only ever known one person who got caught.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Blocking a bike lane is potentially causing severe injury to a bicyclist, as now your car is blocking their path and they could end up smashing into your illicitly parked vehicle. I've had friends end up going through the rear windshields of cars, getting doored, etc here in Seattle, so even though I don't bike, I make a point to go and harass people illegally parked in bike lanes (which is really common north of the ship canal). What if a bike can't stop in time coming down the hill? They're going to likely get horribly injured due to your illegal parking job. The bike lane is for bikes exclusively, even in the suburbs.
  - wkearney99 9y ago
    If you can't control your vehicle (bicycle or otherwise) you have NO business being on a city street. Or are you ignoring the potential for all other manner of obstacles to be present in the roadway? Strollers, pedestrians, debris, etc. Can't stop for those either? As for getting doored, well, how are motor vehicles avoiding this? Oh, right, by WATCHING WHAT'S GOING ON. Noticing brake lights in parked vehicles, or someone seated in the vehicle. Can't see? GIVE ROOM. Honestly, I'm willing to give considerable support for cyclists, but the blithe way they often completely ignore the traffic laws pulls their own rug right out from under them.
    - CydeWeys 9y ago
      > As for getting doored, well, how are motor vehicles avoiding this? Oh, right, by WATCHING WHAT'S GOING ON. Motor vehicle drivers don't have to worry much about being doored, as they're way more visible and it isn't life-threatening for them if it does happen. The person opening the door is way more likely to be injured in such a scenario than the driver of the oncoming vehicle. Also, if we biked the same way we drove cars, that is, in the middle of a full lane, then we wouldn't be at risk of being doored either. I do that on occasion as necessary, but you would not believe how furious drivers get when they're stuck behind a cyclist going much slower than them that they cannot pass. How about this -- You can make it the cyclists' fault if and only if you can get all drivers to be OK with cyclists taking full lanes of traffic, away from all car doors. This will likely reduce the max speed of vehicle traffic to around 12 mph.
- wkearney99 9y ago
  Which COMPLETELY ignore the recklessness continuously perpetrated by the CYCLISTS. There's no endangering here, certainly not at the speeds the cyclists should be operating their bikes in a congested situation.
  - URSpider94 9y ago
    How fast do you really think they are going? 15 mph is a pretty good clip on a recreational (non-racing-style) bike. Most people I’ve run across are doing 12-15 tops. I don’t notice any complaint in your post about how cars are flying along recklessly at more than twice that speed.
    - isostatic 9y ago
      When I regularly rode in London I'd do 7.4 miles in 35 minutes on a Brompton, average of 12.5mph, but factor in red lights, hills etc and peak speed must have been 20.
      - URSpider94 9y ago
        Sure, on downhills I expect you’re getting up to 25 mph or more.
  - mikelward 9y ago
    Whataboutism. A wrong by one side does not excuse a wrong by the other.
- Retric 9y ago
  Roads are mostly 2D which prevents such simple rules from working. If nothing else people and cars need to pass bike lanes at intersections. On top of that almost every bike lane I have seen has had parking one side with the only way to park a car is for the car to also use the bike lane. EX: 3rd google image for bike lanes: https://bikesiliconvalley.org/wp-content/uploads/Veterans-Blvd.-buffered-bike-lane-20111.jpg https://bikesiliconvalley.org/wp-content/uploads/Veterans-Bl... Going 3d with dedicated bike skyways can solve this problem, but bikes are 3rd/4th class citizens in most places because they get a relatively small fraction of overall transportation. (Cars, walking, subways or other public transit, then biking.)
  - daveFNbuck 9y ago
    Crossing a bike lane isn't the same as stopping in it. You can check that there aren't any bikes in the bike lane before crossing it to park. You can't check that there won't be any bikes in the lane for the next 30 seconds before stopping to load some groceries.
    - Retric 9y ago
      Parallel parking takes most people a while. Bikers can easily show up in that timeframe.
      - daveFNbuck 9y ago
        Good point. I guess bicyclists just have to stop and wait like a driver would on a street without a bike lane. We accept that but not double-parking.
- anonu 9y ago
  > Bikelanes are for cyclists As a regular biker in NYC I would agree. But there is a cultural gap that we have not bridged yet. NYC was designed for cars (as were most cities in America). The biking ecosystem has made huge strides in NYC in the last decade - from CitiBikes, to dedicated bike lanes, to the massive increase in daily bikers.
  - andrewem 9y ago
    It's pretty difficult to argue that NYC was "designed for cars" in the same way as Houston when much of it was designed in the pre-car era. See for instance Manhattan's street grid designed in the 1800s, and large parts of the other boroughs. It's true that parts were REdesigned for cars to some extent, taking away street space, adding highways, etc. Source: researching my ancestors' addresses in NYC from 1880 onward and seeing how many of the streets from then still exist now. (Re biking in NYC, it's great to see the changes.)
- brudgers 9y ago
  The mayor's view is consistent the engineering rationals for bikelanes. Bikelanes are for cars. Not in the sense that cars are meant to drive in bikelanes. In the sense that bikelanes exist to relegate bicycles to second class road use for the sake avoiding inconvenience to motorists. Ticketing cars for standing in bikelanes would inconvenience motorists.
- andersnolsen 9y ago
  I believe the biggest problem is due to the design of bike lanes. They are often narrow and squeezed between car lanes and car parking. Due to this design bike lanes are also more often subject to being blocked by construction and forced to merge with car traffic. The visibility on bike lanes are way poorer than regular car lanes due to the above factors. In cities you also have to deal with the loading and unloading of goods. This means large, tall vehicles blocking the sight and often crates and people moving in your lane. How often do you experience your whole lane blocked by the content of a whole appartement? In Stockholm where I live snow, and ice make bike lanes hard to see and also makes them inaccessible. I really agree that you shouldn't keep a speed where you can't control your vehicle, but so common design flaw puts an unreasonable amount of responsibility on the biker compared to heavier vehicles misusing the bike lane.
pavel_lishin 9y ago
> I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. Piling more anecdata into the pile, I've got two things to offer: 1. I'm worried about both; I've been almost hit by both, my wife's been dinged a bit by a car while walking. 2. As a biker, I also worry about hitting pedestrians - because they're so often blundering out into the bike lane or the street without looking. Granted, a bike is more difficult to see than a car - partially because people aren't really used to looking for them - but still.
- tensor 9y ago
  Just like cars, bikes have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians and other vehicles and avoid hitting them. At the end of the day, you can try to blame a pedestrian for "blundering out" but you will be the one getting the fine because as the vehicle you are the one posing the biggest threat. Also, as the op pointed out, bikers are largely ignorant or disrespectful of the law. If it's a red light and a bike blows through it, is it really the pedestrians that are the problem for not watching for illegal bikes? Similarly, for cars turning or other traffic backups, other cars have to deal with this all the time. You stop and don't hit them and wait for the road block to clear. Sometimes traffic jams happen. If you can't stop in time you are going too fast for your vehicle and conditions. Cars accept this, but I've seen dozens and dozens of bikers both not knowing the rules of the road and/or getting irate at regular traffic thinking that somehow they are more special and deserve everyone getting out of their way in a jam.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    > Just like cars, bikes have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians and other vehicles and avoid hitting them. If, as a pedestrian, you dart out in front of a car or a cyclist going at legal speeds, and there isn't room to swerve to avoid you, you're going to get hit. Period. Physics is inviolable on this count. Stopping distances are what they are. You could just set citywide speed limits of 5 mph to decrease stopping distances enough to allow vehicles to avoid darting pedestrians, or pedestrians could just not step out in front of vehicles that have the right of way. It's really not hard to, as a pedestrian, upon reaching a road or bikeway, look for oncoming traffic and yield to it if they have the right-of-way. If you insist on stepping in front of oncoming traffic and you get hit, that's on you.
zone411 9y ago
Many of these bikes are actually e-bikes. I think it would be a good improvement if taxis and ridesharing cars didn't care so much about dropping off people exactly at their destination but instead found a safe spot within half a block instead of blocking bike lanes and bus lanes.
- tomcam 9y ago
  This can pose a problem for visually impaired persons, other disabled persons, or people carrying ungainly packages in bad weather
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    Those cases are currently a vast minority of reasons why bike lanes are blocked. If those were the only times that bike lanes were blocked, at least 99% of existing blockages would be solved and everything would be vastly safer.
woolvalley 9y ago
The injury potential of a bike vs a car is a major reason why you should fear the car more.
ChristianGeek 9y ago
Can the code be modified to track the amount of time each infraction lasts, then graph that? It would be interesting to see what percentage take 30 seconds or less.
arctangos 9y ago
> Lastly, I'll add that as a walker in NYC (no car, no bike), I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. I rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all, and have frequently come 1-2 feed away from being side-swiped while a bicycle blows through a red light. Since you're so passionate about this I'm sure you follow traffic laws, but maybe you'll be inspired to take a look at bike behavior too! I strongly agree that more research is warranted. I bike and walk, live in an area where bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure varies greatly, and would like to add some insight into this issue. I have a strong preference for following traffic laws, but often don't. In areas where the bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure is well developed, I almost always obey traffic laws. In areas with less developed infrastructure, I break them. Anecdotally, I find this to also be true of other pedestrians and cyclists. I suspect that this is because the social contract for non-drivers is broken. That is, the implicit agreement that non-drivers will give away some of their individual freedoms for some benefits like convenience or state protection. When the infrastructure is bad, missing, or unenforced, following traffic laws makes me less safe, and it is certainly an inconvenience. The risk of being ticketed is low, so I see no reason not to break the law. For example, if I expect traffic to ignore crosswalks, there's not very much reason for me to walk across them. It's probably safer to cross whenever I am whenever I see a break in traffic. Likewise, I sometimes run red lights on my bike. I do this in situations where the cross traffic is clear, and there either isn't a bike lane, or when it's blocked. This allows me to avoid merging with traffic at an intersection, which is safer for me. Many people also break laws simply out of convenience. That makes sense. They're used to ignoring the law, and the people around them do it too. I want to follow the law. My experience is that non-car infrastructure allows me and others to do that safely. I'd really love to see whether this is backed up by data, or it's just my own experience.
- kaybe 9y ago
  It follows my observations. If you go to areas where the rules for cars etc make no sense either, you get a situation as seen on youtube when you search for traffic in India. Driving in those places is like riding a bike in more rule-abiding places.
- jmkb 9y ago
  As a walker in NYC I've been hit by cars twice and once by a bike. All three incidents happened while crossing legally, in a pedestrian crosswalk with a walk signal. The biggest difference is how the operators of the vehicles acted. The car drivers were worried, polite, stopped and got out to make sure I was okay. The cyclist (who was running a red light) cursed me and rode off with a raised middle finger. It's a small sample set, obviously. When I see cyclists approaching a red light, I generally assume they will run it. I'm not judging this one way or the other; it's just what I've come to expect by observation. Usually they're polite and attentive enough to aim behind crossing pedestrians, but it seems that many feel they have an overriding right-of-way regardless of signage or signals. The cyclists I've spoken to about this shrug it off as a necessary evil -- biking in NYC is difficult and dangerous, and meticulously following the traffic rules makes it more so not less so. And once you're accustomed to breaking the rules for safety's sake, you begin to do it for convenience's sake as well.
sagarm 9y ago
I fear being hit by cars as a pedestrian, not cyclists. The "thirty second dropoff" is going to block at least one travel lane regardless. Why not just stay in the vehicle lane? Do you think double parking for 30 seconds deserves a ticket? If you think the bike lane deserves to be blocked because you "rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all," surely the pervasive speeding, rolling stops, and failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks among drivers makes them even more deserving of having their travel lane blocked? Or is that not what you meant? If not, why bring up cyclists' supposed failure to follow traffic laws when we're discussing drivers blocking travel lanes?
- fancyfacebook 9y ago
  Come to Colorado, I've been run over by deranged cyclists four times, twice resulting in hospitalization and once I was able to sue the guy into bankruptcy. They seem to think sidewalks are for them, it's bizarre.
  - leesalminen 9y ago
    I’m in the car with my wife right now in Boulder. Whilst reading these comments I’ve seen 2 bikes on the sidewalk (bike lane available) and one just ran a red light (folsom/canyon).

by apeace 9y ago

tucosan 9y ago

Bikelanes are for cyclists. Blocking them even for 30 seconds endangers the cyclists, how will have to merge into car traffic. That your mayor does not understand this, is testament to his ignorance of the issue.

nostromo 9y ago
It's not that simple. In most cities cars are supposed to merge into unprotected bike lanes when turning right. This is safer for everyone.
- StudentStuff 9y ago
  Not sure where your at, but this is generally considered poor road design, and even on 2 lane streets you'll add a bike box to keep drivers separated from bikes. Having 2 ton boxes of metal and glass interact with bikers unpredictably is risky!
  - nostromo 9y ago
    I'm only familiar with this on the west coast, but yes, you're usually required to merge into the bike lane to turn right. Here's an image: http://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Right-Turn.jpg http://www.sfbike.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Right-Turn.... From CA directly: https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/turns https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/dmv/detail/pubs/hdbk/turns > To make a right turn, drive close to the right edge of the road. If there is a bike lane, drive into the bike lane no more than 200 feet before the turn. This is also true in Washington State. Not sure about Oregon.
    - StudentStuff 9y ago
      Up here in Seattle, SDOT got rid of this style of bike lane over the past few years. Outlying suburbs keep the edge of the bike lane solid at turns (not like the dashing shown). Portland has gone the same direction, separating bicyclists from drivers as much as possible. Having spent some time in Cali, I very much appreciate our infrastructure up here. Lots of law and order type politics down there, but when it comes to actual issues like public health, its given nary a glance till upper middle class people are dying.
    - rootusrootus 9y ago
      In Oregon, moving into the bike lane to make a turn will get you a ticket. I see people do it pretty often however, and I have only ever known one person who got caught.
StudentStuff 9y ago
Blocking a bike lane is potentially causing severe injury to a bicyclist, as now your car is blocking their path and they could end up smashing into your illicitly parked vehicle. I've had friends end up going through the rear windshields of cars, getting doored, etc here in Seattle, so even though I don't bike, I make a point to go and harass people illegally parked in bike lanes (which is really common north of the ship canal). What if a bike can't stop in time coming down the hill? They're going to likely get horribly injured due to your illegal parking job. The bike lane is for bikes exclusively, even in the suburbs.
- wkearney99 9y ago
  If you can't control your vehicle (bicycle or otherwise) you have NO business being on a city street. Or are you ignoring the potential for all other manner of obstacles to be present in the roadway? Strollers, pedestrians, debris, etc. Can't stop for those either? As for getting doored, well, how are motor vehicles avoiding this? Oh, right, by WATCHING WHAT'S GOING ON. Noticing brake lights in parked vehicles, or someone seated in the vehicle. Can't see? GIVE ROOM. Honestly, I'm willing to give considerable support for cyclists, but the blithe way they often completely ignore the traffic laws pulls their own rug right out from under them.
  - CydeWeys 9y ago
    > As for getting doored, well, how are motor vehicles avoiding this? Oh, right, by WATCHING WHAT'S GOING ON. Motor vehicle drivers don't have to worry much about being doored, as they're way more visible and it isn't life-threatening for them if it does happen. The person opening the door is way more likely to be injured in such a scenario than the driver of the oncoming vehicle. Also, if we biked the same way we drove cars, that is, in the middle of a full lane, then we wouldn't be at risk of being doored either. I do that on occasion as necessary, but you would not believe how furious drivers get when they're stuck behind a cyclist going much slower than them that they cannot pass. How about this -- You can make it the cyclists' fault if and only if you can get all drivers to be OK with cyclists taking full lanes of traffic, away from all car doors. This will likely reduce the max speed of vehicle traffic to around 12 mph.
wkearney99 9y ago
Which COMPLETELY ignore the recklessness continuously perpetrated by the CYCLISTS. There's no endangering here, certainly not at the speeds the cyclists should be operating their bikes in a congested situation.
- URSpider94 9y ago
  How fast do you really think they are going? 15 mph is a pretty good clip on a recreational (non-racing-style) bike. Most people I’ve run across are doing 12-15 tops. I don’t notice any complaint in your post about how cars are flying along recklessly at more than twice that speed.
  - isostatic 9y ago
    When I regularly rode in London I'd do 7.4 miles in 35 minutes on a Brompton, average of 12.5mph, but factor in red lights, hills etc and peak speed must have been 20.
    - URSpider94 9y ago
      Sure, on downhills I expect you’re getting up to 25 mph or more.
- mikelward 9y ago
  Whataboutism. A wrong by one side does not excuse a wrong by the other.
Retric 9y ago
Roads are mostly 2D which prevents such simple rules from working. If nothing else people and cars need to pass bike lanes at intersections. On top of that almost every bike lane I have seen has had parking one side with the only way to park a car is for the car to also use the bike lane. EX: 3rd google image for bike lanes: https://bikesiliconvalley.org/wp-content/uploads/Veterans-Blvd.-buffered-bike-lane-20111.jpg https://bikesiliconvalley.org/wp-content/uploads/Veterans-Bl... Going 3d with dedicated bike skyways can solve this problem, but bikes are 3rd/4th class citizens in most places because they get a relatively small fraction of overall transportation. (Cars, walking, subways or other public transit, then biking.)
- daveFNbuck 9y ago
  Crossing a bike lane isn't the same as stopping in it. You can check that there aren't any bikes in the bike lane before crossing it to park. You can't check that there won't be any bikes in the lane for the next 30 seconds before stopping to load some groceries.
  - Retric 9y ago
    Parallel parking takes most people a while. Bikers can easily show up in that timeframe.
    - daveFNbuck 9y ago
      Good point. I guess bicyclists just have to stop and wait like a driver would on a street without a bike lane. We accept that but not double-parking.
anonu 9y ago
> Bikelanes are for cyclists As a regular biker in NYC I would agree. But there is a cultural gap that we have not bridged yet. NYC was designed for cars (as were most cities in America). The biking ecosystem has made huge strides in NYC in the last decade - from CitiBikes, to dedicated bike lanes, to the massive increase in daily bikers.
- andrewem 9y ago
  It's pretty difficult to argue that NYC was "designed for cars" in the same way as Houston when much of it was designed in the pre-car era. See for instance Manhattan's street grid designed in the 1800s, and large parts of the other boroughs. It's true that parts were REdesigned for cars to some extent, taking away street space, adding highways, etc. Source: researching my ancestors' addresses in NYC from 1880 onward and seeing how many of the streets from then still exist now. (Re biking in NYC, it's great to see the changes.)
brudgers 9y ago
The mayor's view is consistent the engineering rationals for bikelanes. Bikelanes are for cars. Not in the sense that cars are meant to drive in bikelanes. In the sense that bikelanes exist to relegate bicycles to second class road use for the sake avoiding inconvenience to motorists. Ticketing cars for standing in bikelanes would inconvenience motorists.
andersnolsen 9y ago
I believe the biggest problem is due to the design of bike lanes. They are often narrow and squeezed between car lanes and car parking. Due to this design bike lanes are also more often subject to being blocked by construction and forced to merge with car traffic. The visibility on bike lanes are way poorer than regular car lanes due to the above factors. In cities you also have to deal with the loading and unloading of goods. This means large, tall vehicles blocking the sight and often crates and people moving in your lane. How often do you experience your whole lane blocked by the content of a whole appartement? In Stockholm where I live snow, and ice make bike lanes hard to see and also makes them inaccessible. I really agree that you shouldn't keep a speed where you can't control your vehicle, but so common design flaw puts an unreasonable amount of responsibility on the biker compared to heavier vehicles misusing the bike lane.

pavel_lishin 9y ago

> I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. Piling more anecdata into the pile, I've got two things to offer: 1. I'm worried about both; I've been almost hit by both, my wife's been dinged a bit by a car while walking. 2. As a biker, I also worry about hitting pedestrians - because they're so often blundering out into the bike lane or the street without looking. Granted, a bike is more difficult to see than a car - partially because people aren't really used to looking for them - but still.

tensor 9y ago
Just like cars, bikes have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians and other vehicles and avoid hitting them. At the end of the day, you can try to blame a pedestrian for "blundering out" but you will be the one getting the fine because as the vehicle you are the one posing the biggest threat. Also, as the op pointed out, bikers are largely ignorant or disrespectful of the law. If it's a red light and a bike blows through it, is it really the pedestrians that are the problem for not watching for illegal bikes? Similarly, for cars turning or other traffic backups, other cars have to deal with this all the time. You stop and don't hit them and wait for the road block to clear. Sometimes traffic jams happen. If you can't stop in time you are going too fast for your vehicle and conditions. Cars accept this, but I've seen dozens and dozens of bikers both not knowing the rules of the road and/or getting irate at regular traffic thinking that somehow they are more special and deserve everyone getting out of their way in a jam.
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  > Just like cars, bikes have a responsibility to look out for pedestrians and other vehicles and avoid hitting them. If, as a pedestrian, you dart out in front of a car or a cyclist going at legal speeds, and there isn't room to swerve to avoid you, you're going to get hit. Period. Physics is inviolable on this count. Stopping distances are what they are. You could just set citywide speed limits of 5 mph to decrease stopping distances enough to allow vehicles to avoid darting pedestrians, or pedestrians could just not step out in front of vehicles that have the right of way. It's really not hard to, as a pedestrian, upon reaching a road or bikeway, look for oncoming traffic and yield to it if they have the right-of-way. If you insist on stepping in front of oncoming traffic and you get hit, that's on you.

zone411 9y ago

Many of these bikes are actually e-bikes. I think it would be a good improvement if taxis and ridesharing cars didn't care so much about dropping off people exactly at their destination but instead found a safe spot within half a block instead of blocking bike lanes and bus lanes.

tomcam 9y ago
This can pose a problem for visually impaired persons, other disabled persons, or people carrying ungainly packages in bad weather
- CydeWeys 9y ago
  Those cases are currently a vast minority of reasons why bike lanes are blocked. If those were the only times that bike lanes were blocked, at least 99% of existing blockages would be solved and everything would be vastly safer.

woolvalley 9y ago

The injury potential of a bike vs a car is a major reason why you should fear the car more.

ChristianGeek 9y ago

Can the code be modified to track the amount of time each infraction lasts, then graph that? It would be interesting to see what percentage take 30 seconds or less.

arctangos 9y ago

> Lastly, I'll add that as a walker in NYC (no car, no bike), I have no fear of being struck by cars. I fear bikes. I rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all, and have frequently come 1-2 feed away from being side-swiped while a bicycle blows through a red light. Since you're so passionate about this I'm sure you follow traffic laws, but maybe you'll be inspired to take a look at bike behavior too! I strongly agree that more research is warranted. I bike and walk, live in an area where bicycle and pedestrian infrastructure varies greatly, and would like to add some insight into this issue. I have a strong preference for following traffic laws, but often don't. In areas where the bicycling and pedestrian infrastructure is well developed, I almost always obey traffic laws. In areas with less developed infrastructure, I break them. Anecdotally, I find this to also be true of other pedestrians and cyclists. I suspect that this is because the social contract for non-drivers is broken. That is, the implicit agreement that non-drivers will give away some of their individual freedoms for some benefits like convenience or state protection. When the infrastructure is bad, missing, or unenforced, following traffic laws makes me less safe, and it is certainly an inconvenience. The risk of being ticketed is low, so I see no reason not to break the law. For example, if I expect traffic to ignore crosswalks, there's not very much reason for me to walk across them. It's probably safer to cross whenever I am whenever I see a break in traffic. Likewise, I sometimes run red lights on my bike. I do this in situations where the cross traffic is clear, and there either isn't a bike lane, or when it's blocked. This allows me to avoid merging with traffic at an intersection, which is safer for me. Many people also break laws simply out of convenience. That makes sense. They're used to ignoring the law, and the people around them do it too. I want to follow the law. My experience is that non-car infrastructure allows me and others to do that safely. I'd really love to see whether this is backed up by data, or it's just my own experience.

kaybe 9y ago
It follows my observations. If you go to areas where the rules for cars etc make no sense either, you get a situation as seen on youtube when you search for traffic in India. Driving in those places is like riding a bike in more rule-abiding places.
jmkb 9y ago
As a walker in NYC I've been hit by cars twice and once by a bike. All three incidents happened while crossing legally, in a pedestrian crosswalk with a walk signal. The biggest difference is how the operators of the vehicles acted. The car drivers were worried, polite, stopped and got out to make sure I was okay. The cyclist (who was running a red light) cursed me and rode off with a raised middle finger. It's a small sample set, obviously. When I see cyclists approaching a red light, I generally assume they will run it. I'm not judging this one way or the other; it's just what I've come to expect by observation. Usually they're polite and attentive enough to aim behind crossing pedestrians, but it seems that many feel they have an overriding right-of-way regardless of signage or signals. The cyclists I've spoken to about this shrug it off as a necessary evil -- biking in NYC is difficult and dangerous, and meticulously following the traffic rules makes it more so not less so. And once you're accustomed to breaking the rules for safety's sake, you begin to do it for convenience's sake as well.

sagarm 9y ago

I fear being hit by cars as a pedestrian, not cyclists. The "thirty second dropoff" is going to block at least one travel lane regardless. Why not just stay in the vehicle lane? Do you think double parking for 30 seconds deserves a ticket? If you think the bike lane deserves to be blocked because you "rarely see bikes obey traffic laws at all," surely the pervasive speeding, rolling stops, and failure to yield to pedestrians in crosswalks among drivers makes them even more deserving of having their travel lane blocked? Or is that not what you meant? If not, why bring up cyclists' supposed failure to follow traffic laws when we're discussing drivers blocking travel lanes?

fancyfacebook 9y ago
Come to Colorado, I've been run over by deranged cyclists four times, twice resulting in hospitalization and once I was able to sue the guy into bankruptcy. They seem to think sidewalks are for them, it's bizarre.
- leesalminen 9y ago
  I’m in the car with my wife right now in Boulder. Whilst reading these comments I’ve seen 2 bikes on the sidewalk (bike lane available) and one just ran a red light (folsom/canyon).