Commuting - Bike / Bus / no through traffice road?

Bikeforums.net is a forum about nothing but bikes. Our community can help you find information about hard-to-find and localized information like bicycle tours, specialties like where in your area to have your recumbent bike serviced, or what are the best bicycle tires and seats for the activities you use your bike for.



PDA
ironhorse3
06-15-08, 06:09 AM
I would like to know if it is practical to propose a road that would not allow automobile through traffic, but allow on-street parking and bus traffic as well as bicycles. This would reduce traffic risks for cyclists but still allow residents somewhere to park and, if necessary, allow mass transportation. Then cyclists could ride at their own pace in the center of the lane away from car doors and passing vehicles would be nearly completely eliminated.

politicalgeek
06-15-08, 06:33 AM
Bicycle Boulevards are the closest thing to that.

Check around here, there have been a few posts about a road way for bike/bus only with a drop down bollard for the bus to get through.
ironhorse3
06-15-08, 02:08 PM
I did find a thread on the advocacy forum but it was a lot of arguing back and forth without getting anywhere by 2 members. This must be more of a local interest sort of topic, so I'll check with our local bicycle advocacy group.

Michel Gagnon
06-15-08, 09:09 PM
I'm not sure how it can work in practise, unless it's in an environment that's conducive either for technology or enforcement.

But one easy way to approach this is to have alternating one ways.
In a nutshell, let's suppose it is a North-South street. There would be bike and bus lanes in both directions, and for other vehicles, the driving lane(s) and parking lanes would be northbound for 5-6 blocks, then southbound for 5-6 blocks. That way, the only motor vehicles that would use the street would be those who have some business to do there. The trick is often used in Montréal to keep people on arterial streets.

Now nothing is perfect, and there are still a few problems with the concept:

1. Traffic needs some place to go, so if technical or legal measures prevent them from using street A, they will use street B instead. Great if street B is truly an arterial, but often, calming measures are applied on streets with more affluent homes so traffic is diverted to less affluent streets, streets with apartment blocks, etc.

2. Unless there is real bus traffic, these "bike streets" end up having tricky intersections.