Originally Posted by
SteveG23
"Counterintuitive" is an understatement. The bike lanes should be adjacent to vehicle traffic, not between parked cars and the curb. This way, people have to exit cars and walk across the lane where bicycles are whizzing by, to get to the curb. I expect lawsuits arising from the big safety risk to children and to elderly and disabled passengers.
no.
cycle tracks / bike lanes are safer when buffered from traffic, preferably by an island but parking also works, provided adequate clearances. bike lanes between parking and traffic are crossed by everyone who needs to park, and routinely double parked in for motorists convenience. much, much harder to do when the bike lane is inboard of the parking. finally, depending on the destination, either the majority or vast majority of cars only have a driver, not a driver and a passenger, reducing the bike-lane-side conflict measurably. the problems with the dayton design are in the details, not the concept.
obviously, a street with no parking and fully separated bike and vehicular lanes would be preferable in some ways - but the traffic calming effects of parking and loading should also be considered.
a lot of american cities have these bike lanes, which are a bit of a compromise but a big jump in safety from sharrows or a bike line with driver-side-doors on one side and moving traffic on the other. they work pretty well, even in this example with standard parking meters rather than kiosks. the parking zone also makes a nice space for bike share infrastructure out of the way of the sidewalk.
