spare_wheel

:drink:

spare_wheel

Heine in response to bekologist:

Bekologist

obviously, Jan too likes to fabricate strawmen positions of others, he then rallies against.

Paradoxically, Jan Henie endorses and is working at getting 'protected lanes' - cycle tracks - in spots around seattle.



like a fight of one in a wet paper bag! there's a nazi in this bag, see...

spare_wheel

:drink:

dynaryder

I'd don't know if I could quantify any improvement,but I read his original book(the Art of Urban Cycling) when I was just starting to commute by bike,and it def gave me some useful tips. I've ridden motorcycles my whole life,so the transition to bikes wasn't a huge deal as many traffic issues are shared by both. But Hurst's adaptive advice works better in DC than Forrester's VC;too many 'important' people around here who are intolerant of other road users in general,and don't believe bikes should even be on the road.

Example:Mass Ave going uphill from Little Falls Parkway to the Western Ave circle. It's fairly steep at one point,has two lanes,and a narrow sidewalk that follows it. Forrester would prolly suggest taking the right lane and mashing up the hill. But traffic rarely does the speed limit,the drivers are very aggressive,there's no shoulder,and the curb is high. So you get buzzed constantly,and unless you're a champion bunny-hopper,don't really have an escape if things get bad. Hurst would suggest what I did when I took this route;I'd run the sidewalk up the hill until the road flattened and traffic started to slow to approach the circle and where there were cars pulling out of side streets. The sidewalk was less than ideal,but I think I only ever encountered a ped like twice,so it was a completely safe way to get up the hill(and legal in this area).

spare_wheel

when the speed differential is higher taking the lane is less safe...so this sounds reasonable to me.

Zedoo

Quoted to make you drink.

I like separate paths, especially the shortcuts and detours through parks instead of next to roads, but that is extra infrastructure, especially at bridges. What we already have is underfunded, neglected, and crumbling.

spare_wheel

:drink:

Your point about neglect and poor maintenance is spot on.
Interestingly, poor maintenance was one of the reasons there was a rebellion against physically separated infrastructure in germany.

Bekologist

protected bike lanes offer vast safety advantage

"researchers found that in Vancouver and Toronto, protected green lanes reduce non-fatal road injuries by 90 percent.

That's a huge impact. When it comes to reducing major injuries, these findings suggest that converting a painted bike lane to a separated cycle track would be twice as effective as painting the bike lane was."

howsteepisit

What does the graphic propose to show? there is no scale on it, so its meaningless

Bekologist

hey! it was the first graphic introduced to the thread cut it some slack! it's meant to be representational.


If you look closely, you can see the circles, arrows and paragraph on the back of it explaining how it can be used against Jan Heinie's specious commentary about cycle tracks.

That old traffic adverse hypocrite! Endorsing some of the cycle track installations in Seattle, while at the same time posting contrived, strawman arguments against them, falsely framing bike safety basics and using skewed data not representative of North American cycle tracks.



Methinks Jans' just miffed. Despite his prowess as a randonneur, he considers the nearby Aurora ave shared lane bikeway unsafe. I'm presuming he's frustrated he doesn't ride the shared lane Aurora Ave bikeway with the actual traffic big dogs, considers it "unfit and unsafe for cycling".

To make himself feel better about his traffic trepidations he projects his anger stemming from the traffic onto sensible cycle track installations, which are remarkably similar to other cycle track installations he endorses around Seattle.


Is the criticism of cycle tracks the frustrated traffic musings of the proud yet traffic adverse (sic) 'effective' cyclists, convinced their riding skills are the metric for which cycle accommodation should be drawn? Only so much traffic, and then, like Jan Heinie said at his blog the other day, that full traffic separation is his "first choice always" if it can be done well.



Q: How does Jan Heine get to the Performance bike shop on the Eastside?
A: The roads that lead to it are unfit for cycling.

howsteepisit

I was referring to the just posted bike safety spectrum, its referenced to the American Journal of Public Health, but no journal I ever read would allow such a crappy, unlabeled unclear plot.

Bekologist

sorry you don't 'get' what the graphic represents.

did you read the article, since you cant grok the graphic?

Abstract:

"Of 14 route types, cycle tracks had the lowest risk (adjusted odds ratio [OR] = 0.11; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.02, 0.54), about one ninth the risk of the reference: major streets with parked cars and no bike infrastructure. Risks on major streets were lower without parked cars (adjusted OR = 0.63; 95% CI = 0.41, 0.96) and with bike lanes (adjusted OR = 0.54; 95% CI = 0.29, 1.01). Local streets also had lower risks (adjusted OR = 0.51; 95% CI = 0.31, 0.84). Other infrastructure characteristics were associated with increased risks: streetcar or train tracks (adjusted OR = 3.0; 95% CI = 1.8, 5.1), downhill grades (adjusted OR = 2.3; 95% CI = 1.7, 3.1), and construction (adjusted OR = 1.9; 95% CI = 1.3, 2.9).

Conclusions. The lower risks on quiet streets and with bike-specific infrastructure along busy streets support the route-design approach used in many northern European countries. Transportation infrastructure with lower bicycling injury risks merits public health support to reduce injuries and promote cycling."




Read More: https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi...PH.2012.300762

howsteepisit

I just went to the blog that the figure was taken from. I think that I should not have go to a third reference to understand what a poster was trying to demonstrate. The graphic remains very uninformative and unprofessional. The abstract states much more clearly the point to be made. Thanks

Bekologist

in a thread about copenhagenistas in the woodpile, and criticisms by traffic timid randonneurs using fallacious arguments against cycle tracks, which the timid randonneur paradoxically supports elsewhere in his city, sorry you expected APA references to scholarly data.

Q: How does Jan Heine ride his bike to the Denny's on Aurora?
A: The road that leads to it he considers unfit for cycling.

howsteepisit

No, I expect that in a discussion that items posted in support of a position be understandable, and if they are deficient then an explanation should be included. You think not thats fine, but to me then it becomes a insiders club game, good enough for you I guess.

B. Carfree

I wish this were a true statement. However, in the course of working with a city traffic planner and the city traffic engineer here in the southern end of the Pacific Northwest, I received some rather angry emails from the president of the local bike club because, as head of the neighborhood association of one of the neighborhoods a project was slated for, I was pushing rather energetically for bike lanes (free of the door zone) rather than cycletracks. As I said in another thread, this project has 366-foot long blocks with many driveways in each block serving multi-unit housing. I considered this to be an inappropriate place for segregation, but some of our most vocal cycling advocates hereabouts don't think there is a road that should not have cycletracks.

The same thing is happening on a different five-block road rebuild here. The surviving three plans are to leave this commercial/commuter road as a two lane each way road, road diet to bike lanes each way with a two-way left turn lane between one travel lane each way, or do the two-way left turn lane with a travel lane each way and put the bikes on the sidewalk. Again, this is a commercial strip with lots of driveways and complicated/busy intersections at each end. The sidewalk-rider option wouldn't have made the final cut if Bek's statement were true.

Another drink, Spare_Wheel.

I-Like-To-Bike

Isn't this whole thread an insider's game about street treatments in Seattle or Portland or in some blogger's mind about those two specific cities?

The thread belongs in the regional discussion group appropriate for those two specific cities.

B. Carfree

I disagree. My city traffic planners look to what Portland and Seattle are doing and attempt to copy it. I suspect this happens all over the country. I have sat in webinars at my city's engineering office and observed presentations on these types of facilities. Questions come in from many regions of the country. Perhaps your little hamlet doesn't participate, but that doesn't mean that this is only relevant to a couple of cities.

I-Like-To-Bike

IMO, all the references to specific streets of those two cities makes this a Pacific NW insiders' squabble.

Bekologist

What hyperbole. NO ONE IN CYCLING ADVOCACY thinks every road in eugene -or anywhere - merits a cycletrack.

These are quixotic and fabricated demons, the phantom 'copenhagenistas' at the street corner.

In Eugene, there's probably some select routes the planning commission is trying to beef up and separate from car traffic. I'm not a fan of poorly designed bike infrastructure, but i strongly suspect a lot of what's being critized by the critics isn't as kryptonic to safe riding as they suggest.

that sounds like the cycletrack Jan Heine endorses in Ballard! The one he doesn't mind crossing two fred meyer driveways, cement factory, restaurant, cold storage, boat yards and commercial buildings.

But i agree with Jan, given the appropriate intersection treatments, even busy shopping centers and cement plants can co-exist with cycletracks.

Bekologist

I think the squabble is more this fantasy there's a smackdown between two styles of bicycle accommodation.

Maybe the 'squabble' is over Jan Heine being hypocritical? Doesn't like the cycletrack, won't ride the main roads nearby

Q:How does Jan get to the Kmart on Aurora?
A: He doesn't; Jan considers the street, even with a shared lane bikeway, 'unfit for cycling.'

spare_wheel

Michael Andersen is full of ****. First of all, that graphic does not appear in the cited publication. It is something that Michael Andersen concocted based on ignorance of basic statistics. Attributing that graphic to the manuscript in question is unethical.

The simple regression analysis conducted by Teschke et al did not compare bike lanes to cycle tracks. It compared cycle tracks to a reference sample. There is absolutely no evidence in that manuscript that cycle tracks are statistically safer than bike lanes. Moreover, the fully separated MUP category was nominally more dangerous than bike lanes. This is, of course, just as meaningless statistically as the comparison Andersen ignorantly tried to make. I should also point out that the "n" for cycle tracks was "10" and that intersections were not properly considered in that study.

If you do not believe me here is the manuscript source:
https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi...PH.2012.300762


Jan Heine is correct when he stated that the bulk of studies in Europe (with "n"s far larger than 10) suggest that cycle tracks are less safe than on street paths due to increased risk at intersections.

Quotes from his blog posting with links to PDFs of published manuscripts:

spare_wheel

I was not aware that Berlin, Munich, and Copenhagen were in the pacific northwest.

spare_wheel

:drink: