How many bikes can be bought for one-half million bucks?

Buses don’t come close especially, when people get used to much better ways to travel.

As I see it, the UWS resident survey showed dedicated bus lanes almost as high a priority as bike lanes. The plan also proposes that Amsterdam Avenue be a “transit corridor” but when you look at the plan for Amsterdam, what do you see?….bike lanes!

Does anyone have a photo or diagram of how these work? I’m blanking. But I think they must have a lane for the bicycle to be passed (that is opposite the side the bus stops on) or they would be no better than a regular traffic lane. If it does have a lane, I guess they can at least save space by skipping the buffer. But in this city taxis would clog the lane for busses because they are so cheap and plentiful compared to western european cities. We would have to raise taxi fares and reduce placards (and use the money to replace the fleet with nicer, smaller, fuel efficient cars!) for it to work. Which would be a good thing to do to reduce emissions, but only as part of a trade for congestion pricing on private cars of course.

I rushed through the document last night however my comments still stand about this proposal and the bike lane engineering DoT has already installed.

The NY Post obscured the difference in its article earlier this week and the intro above on this page isn’t really crystal clear either.

I also doubt Gehl had specific design input here, as some comments also imply.

Should not be a big deal for a cyclist to cross at the corner.

It also makes a statement about the importance of cycling.

I know the reasoning behind why the Broadway Blvd was design with the lanes along the median (eliminates dooring, right hook hazards, etc) but I feel this design way too beyond the norm of what and where a bicycle lane is expected to be. I personally know of no other place in the world that has built such a design.

First off, cyclists have no dedicated access to the shops and residences along Broadway with this configuration. The lane is protected with bollards (which are possibly connected by chains). Cyclists would have to cross the two lanes of Broadway to get to the curb. Doable for most and maybe not a real hazard except for the real potential of riding into a bollard (it happens in Paris all the time where they love using bollards).

Also, I ask if the bollards actually provide any real protection to cyclists from speeding cars. I don’t think so. And while the left side (median in this case) bike lanes do eliminate conflicts with buses, some dooring issues and right hooks (not left hooks in many places), placement of the lane on the left does leave cyclists exposed to faster moving cars. I think this is a major hazard not ever talked about on this blog.

While riding up 8th Ave the other week I noticed that the faster traffic was in the left lane directly next to the bike lane. This is common motoring practice with slower traffic on the right. I know I’m stating the obvious but the cars in the right were often moving at a crawl while the cars in the left just several feet from my right shoulder were aggressively moving their way through traffic well above the posted limit.

Speed doesn’t kill. It’s the difference in speed that kills. I’d rather ride my bike on the right side of the road with the cars going around my 10 to 15 mph then be only a few feet away from cars going 35 to 50.

Also this is the third, maybe forth different bike lane placement I’ve seen NYCDoT do. I’ve got around 60,000 miles of riding experience which was done mostly in Jersey but some in 8 countries on two continents and in at least 7 other states and I’m always confused as to where I should be on the road when I ride in NYC. This is what goes through my mind as I ride in NYC:

There’s no bike lane on this one way street. Should I stay to the right? Oh wait there’s a bike lane on the left! Oh its gone. Should I them merge back over to the right? Oh the street goes from one way to two! Damn! I’m on the left! I got to get over right. Hey now there is a lane on the right side of the road (since its a two way).

I’m sorry, you New Yorker’s can defend this left side bike lane all you want but I still think it’s just too damned confusing and its got some real safety issues since it exposes riders to faster moving traffic.

I ride where I can, but the Bike Lanes and Bikeways need to be interconnected. Last time I was in Manhattan, I had people asking if I was a Cop, because my bike has so many lights, it looks like a Police Bike. I can put lights on and stop traffic, but the average bicycle rider doesn’t have this many lights.
http://i134.photobucket.com/albums/q119/hotbike/photo_0023-1.jpg

I like the way the Bus Lane on 34th street is painted red. I guess it is some kind of epoxy? The green bike lanes will use the same kind of material, I assume?

Cap’n Transit’s suggestion of a Paris-style wide bus/bike/taxi lane would certainly be a more efficient use of space on this heavily used throughfare and could significantly increase transit options. Just imagine busses as a viable alternative to the long overcrowded #1 train.

I’m particularly happy to see the use of angle parking alternating mid-block so as to function as a traffic calming chicane (see p.32). Despite the fact that this arrangement can be parking-neutral (no loss of spaces), it’s interaction with street cleaning will raise vociferous opposition from motorists who are accustomed to double-park their vehicles during alternate side parking: this won’t be possible with angle parking. The report does not give any indication of what might be done to make this arrangement more palatable on that front, such as reducing the frequency of street cleaning perhaps.

“The driver went into a panic,” she recalls. “Everybody was blowing horns. He couldn’t figure out which way to turn.”

WTF? Bad cabbie! No tip for you!

Oh, and Steve Cuozzo is clearly an asshole who has no interest in civil discourse. In other words, a typical Post columnist.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/11132008/news/columnists/idiotic_dot_takes_a_walk_on_the_wild_sid_138505.htm