6 ms·

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to

Would be nice to use the same skills to help reduce cars illegally parked in the bike lane. Identify areas which cyclists commonly complain about that (e.g., to the city) and encourage them to put up better signs?

jimmaswell 8y ago
Could also signal the area is starved for parking, so the lane should be removed and bicyclists should just ride in the road for those stretches. Small inconvenience to the bicyclists who still get to use the road, big win for the drivers.
- thatjsguy 8y ago
  Good lord, just park and walk. Or use that bike lane. Cities have an overabundance of expensive parking [1], which does nothing but waste space and act as giant thermal batteries. Everyone loves complaining about traffic, but we don’t seem to have the political will to do something about it (namely: reduce our dependence on cars). Cities should work to reduce their dependence on cars, not increase it at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians, who are actually the life blood of cities (think about how many pedestrians stop into small business compared to drivers speeding by at 35 mi/h). [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/more-evidence-that-we-have-too-much-parking https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/more-evidence-that-we-ha...
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    In my area, there are places you have to "park and walk" to and places you can just drive to. Second category are the only ones that get my business.
    - thatjsguy 8y ago
      Do you live in a city or a suburb?
      - jimmaswell 8y ago
        It's like a dense suburbish area. There are both plazas/malls/grocery stores with normal parking and areas set up like small imitation city blocks with parallel parking or no immediate parking. I don't like having to deal with street parking either unless it's a nice clear zone.
    - btrettel 8y ago
      How far a walk is too much for you?
      - jimmaswell 8y ago
        I avoid having to deal with crosswalks if I can. I also regularly make a 1/2 mile drive to a fast food restaurant.
  - mmirate 8y ago
    And how do you travel more than a couple miles and arrive on-time, during the summer, wearing businesslike attire, without smelling like a cyclist upon arrival?
    - pavel_lishin 8y ago
      Bus. Subway. Ride-share. Taxi.
      - mmirate 8y ago
        > Bus. Takes 90 minutes to do what my car can do in under 30, and I don't want to wake up yet another hour earlier. > Subway. Doesn't run to the area where I live; and would have to run even farther to reach the office. I suspect the NIMBYs want it like that. > Ride-share. I'm a miserly bachelor in an office full of respectable familypeople. None of them would dare to live within 2 zipcodes of where I live. > Taxi. Is shockingly expensive to use for daily commuting, moreso than financing, fueling and maintaining my own car. Plus, unless rush-hour lasts long enough, each cab will only get one commute ride per rush-hour, so there's no net decrease in traffic for commuting via cab.
        pavel_lishin 8y ago
        It definitely seems like your city is determined to sacrifice everything necessary to uphold their car culture.
        mmirate 8y ago
        Outside of the Pacific-assisted wonder-weather zone of California, summers tend to be hot and humid, and winters aren't particularly mild either. Any amount of travel without the aid of climate control is ... undesirable.
        pavel_lishin 8y ago
        Sure, but things like under- and above-ground rail exist, reasonable bus routes exist, good city planning exists. Punting everything to "well everyone har a car" is effectively giving up.
- brotherjerky 8y ago
  It's not a small inconvenience for cyclists, it's a large decrease in safety
  - jimmaswell 8y ago
    A road with street parking probably isn't faster than 30mph.
    - colejohnson66 8y ago
      The road behind my house has street parking and it’s a 45 mph zone.
- btrettel 8y ago
  In my experience (Austin, TX), drivers usually park in the bike lane for convenience, not because parking is unavailable. I talk to many drivers who park in the bike lane about why they didn't park 100 feet away not in the bike lane (which is available and free) and the typical answers are that they didn't know parking in the bike lane was illegal (despite the signs) or that they didn't want to walk (even though it's rarely a long walk to legal parking where I ride). I can recall a discussion with someone on here about how parking in the bike lane in San Francisco is usually caused by a lack of options. That might be true, but I think most US cities are a lot closer to Austin than SF.
- refoundglory 8y ago
  You must be joking, drivers hate having cyclists in the lane with them.
- megablast 8y ago
  Yes, small inconvenience. Just slightly less safe, right? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-12/new-york-truck-driver-charged-after-australian-cyclist-killed/10110982 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-12/new-york-truck-driver-...
chapium 8y ago
Bike Lane Uprising maintains data on this. Maybe it would be interesting to contact them for the dataset.
sirmarksalot 8y ago
When people routinely park in bike lanes, the problem is usually cultural, i.e. people know they're not supposed to do it, but they decide to do it anyway. Near where I work in Bellevue WA, they recently restriped the road to have a brightly painted bike lane, with double-white lines to make it abundantly clear that you were not supposed to drive in it. Bright red "no stopping" signs were placed on the curb. People still parked right in the bike lane. It wasn't until they added a concrete barrier that the lane cleared up enough that bikes could use it. And of course, right where the barrier ends, people start parking there instead. The West side seems to have less difficulty understanding this.
- jahabrewer 8y ago
  > The West side seems to have less difficulty understanding this. We still have the unmarked white vans over here. I think it's Amazon.
- Johnny555 8y ago
  I think I know where you're talking about and I bike through there and the biggest problem is that they took away the "3 minute passenger drop-off/pick-up" spot right next to the transit center without giving any other options for passenger loading/unloading.
  - s0rce 8y ago
    This is a big issue. I cycle to work everyday (Oakland) and there are at least a dozen people parked or stopped in the bike lanes. The big issue is that there is no where to stop. Parking is cheap/free and not time limited so most cars don't really move and the very few short term spots aren't ever enforced. You can drive around for 15 minutes looking for a spot or you end up in the bike lane. This isn't good but its at least somewhat understandable. This is the case around transit stations and busy restaurant/commercial streets.
jessaustin 8y ago
This problem would solve itself if vandalism laws were changed slightly.
- btrettel 8y ago
  On that note, watching videos from the Russian "Stop a Douchebag" movement can be cathartic, though even their mild form of vandalism is illegal. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/16564/would-stop-a-douchebag-be-legal-in-the-us-why-is-it-legal-in-russia https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/16564/would-stop-a-d...
  - ceautery 8y ago
    Man, Russian sidewalks are huge, I sort of understand thinking you could drive on them.
- masklinn 8y ago
  Wouldn't it be more sensible to deputise willing cyclists for a limited range of offenses?
  - btrettel 8y ago
    I think so, and apparently Austin did this at some point, but as far as I can tell the program is no longer active.
bpchaps 8y ago
If you're interested in bike lane parking tickets, you might want to check out this article, which was done using the same dataset: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/where-chicago-tickets-for-parking-in-bike-lanes/10921610-0c48-4301-8905-c5e6c191092d https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/where-chicago-tickets-f...

jimmaswell 8y ago

Could also signal the area is starved for parking, so the lane should be removed and bicyclists should just ride in the road for those stretches. Small inconvenience to the bicyclists who still get to use the road, big win for the drivers.

thatjsguy 8y ago
Good lord, just park and walk. Or use that bike lane. Cities have an overabundance of expensive parking [1], which does nothing but waste space and act as giant thermal batteries. Everyone loves complaining about traffic, but we don’t seem to have the political will to do something about it (namely: reduce our dependence on cars). Cities should work to reduce their dependence on cars, not increase it at the expense of cyclists and pedestrians, who are actually the life blood of cities (think about how many pedestrians stop into small business compared to drivers speeding by at 35 mi/h). [1] https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/more-evidence-that-we-have-too-much-parking https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/more-evidence-that-we-ha...
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  In my area, there are places you have to "park and walk" to and places you can just drive to. Second category are the only ones that get my business.
  - thatjsguy 8y ago
    Do you live in a city or a suburb?
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      It's like a dense suburbish area. There are both plazas/malls/grocery stores with normal parking and areas set up like small imitation city blocks with parallel parking or no immediate parking. I don't like having to deal with street parking either unless it's a nice clear zone.
  - btrettel 8y ago
    How far a walk is too much for you?
    - jimmaswell 8y ago
      I avoid having to deal with crosswalks if I can. I also regularly make a 1/2 mile drive to a fast food restaurant.
- mmirate 8y ago
  And how do you travel more than a couple miles and arrive on-time, during the summer, wearing businesslike attire, without smelling like a cyclist upon arrival?
  - pavel_lishin 8y ago
    Bus. Subway. Ride-share. Taxi.
    - mmirate 8y ago
      > Bus. Takes 90 minutes to do what my car can do in under 30, and I don't want to wake up yet another hour earlier. > Subway. Doesn't run to the area where I live; and would have to run even farther to reach the office. I suspect the NIMBYs want it like that. > Ride-share. I'm a miserly bachelor in an office full of respectable familypeople. None of them would dare to live within 2 zipcodes of where I live. > Taxi. Is shockingly expensive to use for daily commuting, moreso than financing, fueling and maintaining my own car. Plus, unless rush-hour lasts long enough, each cab will only get one commute ride per rush-hour, so there's no net decrease in traffic for commuting via cab.
      - pavel_lishin 8y ago
        It definitely seems like your city is determined to sacrifice everything necessary to uphold their car culture.
        mmirate 8y ago
        Outside of the Pacific-assisted wonder-weather zone of California, summers tend to be hot and humid, and winters aren't particularly mild either. Any amount of travel without the aid of climate control is ... undesirable.
        pavel_lishin 8y ago
        Sure, but things like under- and above-ground rail exist, reasonable bus routes exist, good city planning exists. Punting everything to "well everyone har a car" is effectively giving up.
brotherjerky 8y ago
It's not a small inconvenience for cyclists, it's a large decrease in safety
- jimmaswell 8y ago
  A road with street parking probably isn't faster than 30mph.
  - colejohnson66 8y ago
    The road behind my house has street parking and it’s a 45 mph zone.
btrettel 8y ago
In my experience (Austin, TX), drivers usually park in the bike lane for convenience, not because parking is unavailable. I talk to many drivers who park in the bike lane about why they didn't park 100 feet away not in the bike lane (which is available and free) and the typical answers are that they didn't know parking in the bike lane was illegal (despite the signs) or that they didn't want to walk (even though it's rarely a long walk to legal parking where I ride). I can recall a discussion with someone on here about how parking in the bike lane in San Francisco is usually caused by a lack of options. That might be true, but I think most US cities are a lot closer to Austin than SF.
refoundglory 8y ago
You must be joking, drivers hate having cyclists in the lane with them.
megablast 8y ago
Yes, small inconvenience. Just slightly less safe, right? http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-12/new-york-truck-driver-charged-after-australian-cyclist-killed/10110982 http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-08-12/new-york-truck-driver-...

chapium 8y ago

Bike Lane Uprising maintains data on this. Maybe it would be interesting to contact them for the dataset.

sirmarksalot 8y ago

When people routinely park in bike lanes, the problem is usually cultural, i.e. people know they're not supposed to do it, but they decide to do it anyway. Near where I work in Bellevue WA, they recently restriped the road to have a brightly painted bike lane, with double-white lines to make it abundantly clear that you were not supposed to drive in it. Bright red "no stopping" signs were placed on the curb. People still parked right in the bike lane. It wasn't until they added a concrete barrier that the lane cleared up enough that bikes could use it. And of course, right where the barrier ends, people start parking there instead. The West side seems to have less difficulty understanding this.

jahabrewer 8y ago
> The West side seems to have less difficulty understanding this. We still have the unmarked white vans over here. I think it's Amazon.
Johnny555 8y ago
I think I know where you're talking about and I bike through there and the biggest problem is that they took away the "3 minute passenger drop-off/pick-up" spot right next to the transit center without giving any other options for passenger loading/unloading.
- s0rce 8y ago
  This is a big issue. I cycle to work everyday (Oakland) and there are at least a dozen people parked or stopped in the bike lanes. The big issue is that there is no where to stop. Parking is cheap/free and not time limited so most cars don't really move and the very few short term spots aren't ever enforced. You can drive around for 15 minutes looking for a spot or you end up in the bike lane. This isn't good but its at least somewhat understandable. This is the case around transit stations and busy restaurant/commercial streets.

jessaustin 8y ago

This problem would solve itself if vandalism laws were changed slightly.

btrettel 8y ago
On that note, watching videos from the Russian "Stop a Douchebag" movement can be cathartic, though even their mild form of vandalism is illegal. https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/16564/would-stop-a-douchebag-be-legal-in-the-us-why-is-it-legal-in-russia https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/16564/would-stop-a-d...
- ceautery 8y ago
  Man, Russian sidewalks are huge, I sort of understand thinking you could drive on them.
masklinn 8y ago
Wouldn't it be more sensible to deputise willing cyclists for a limited range of offenses?
- btrettel 8y ago
  I think so, and apparently Austin did this at some point, but as far as I can tell the program is no longer active.

bpchaps 8y ago

If you're interested in bike lane parking tickets, you might want to check out this article, which was done using the same dataset: https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/where-chicago-tickets-for-parking-in-bike-lanes/10921610-0c48-4301-8905-c5e6c191092d https://www.wbez.org/shows/wbez-news/where-chicago-tickets-f...