vol

2nd Avenue in midtown Manhattan today, afternoon rush hour. Took me half hour for less than 40 blocks, including walking the bike, riding on sidewalks (quite a few of us did), standing to wait (enough time to take the pictures).

CliffordK

Not bike lanes, but good use of sharrows

Were the cars actually moving?

Technically you should be able to hang with the traffic in the sharrow lane, but it is easy to get bored when a long line of cars isn't moving, and thus the motivation to lane split and hop on sidewalks (hopefully without a lot of pedestrians).

I think it is time to start thinking about building 3-dimensional bike paths across the sky Apparently they've done that with some of the old elevated railways (not bike paths?), but the support structures for bike paths would not need to be nearly as sturdy as for trains or cars.

FBinNY 

Long before bike lanes, I actually liked traffic like that. I simply moved over, clear of parked and turning cars, and was able to split the lanes and ride as fast as I wished knowing that I was the faster vehicle and nobody could hit me from behind.

vol

The cars were moving when I was taking the pictures (here is the sequence of the pictures). The pictures are not showing the worst parts when there was absolutely no room for bikes. Earlier there were 3-4 big buses in a row that I had a hard time to get rid of while on the right side of the avenue.

Not for this occasion. It was very densely packed (not shown in the pictures). Some parts of the avenue were narrowed for construction. Several of us cyclists had to hop onto the sidewalks.

jon c. 

I wondered about that when the state, or perhaps the county, painted bike lane symbols on shoulders on a number of remote rural roads that see very few cyclists. And not many cars either. But the few cross roads are many miles apart, so by painting the symbol only near intersections the could add a large number of miles of "designated bike lanes" with very little work. There seemed little other reason for doing this. The shoulders were there anyway and the 'designation' is really of no benefit to anyone.

rydabent

I myself am not sure the "engineers" that design bike lanes or streets for that matter ever leave the seat behind their desk and see what the results of what they have done works in the real world.

rumrunn6

in Wash. D.C. I saw bike lanes separated from car lanes using stations. seemed really smart. they also weren't wide enough for cars

Skipjacks

Let me get this straight....

The OP is asking is a government agency used relevant knowledge and information to design a spending project?

I'm pretty sure that's never happened....ever. Regarding anything any government has ever been involved with.

wipekitty

I'll jump in here - as I live in the same place as the OP

Before the tl;dr portion, my point is that the Master Plan is good - but implementation and general follow-through is shoddy.

From what I understand, the bicycle/pedestrian Master Plan was/is developed in consultation with actual cyclists. There's the official city steering committee (though I don't know how that works - I think you need to be bros with the Mayor to get on it, and I don't recognize the names of any current members.) There's some other folks from the community who have been speaking with the City less formally but more actively, and I think they may actually have some impact.

The Master Plan would be great if it were implemented properly - or at all. As the OP observes, some of the "bike lanes" are put in the gutter. In the fall, on-street bike lanes often become repositories for piles of leaves. In the winter, even the well-designed on-street lanes hold snow plowed from traffic lanes. City ordinances regarding snow removal from residential properties are not well-enforced, leaving sidewalks a mess. There are some north-south crossings that become dangerous if not impossible - the choice becomes playing in high-speed traffic or trying to float over 4" of snow/ice on a sidewalk. People painting the lanes and doing other kinds of work around the city are not thinking about walking/biking.

My impression is that the Master Plan is meant to appease those concerned with cycling/walking, whereas the implementation is a compromise to those who are against bike and pedestrian accommodations. I've been to a few of the public forums, and there's generally a bunch of community members complaining about how it will impact traffic and parking (laughable, since there's barely any traffic and an absurd quantity of parking.)

That said, I've lived in a lot of cities and regions, and our city absolutely deserves the Silver rating: infrastructure is generally very good, despite a few major problems. The Master Plan would be amazing, but I do not see it being implemented until the "old guard" that is resistant to change begins to have less influence on city politics.

Digital_Cowboy

Jon C.,

The irony is that if what I was told by the local Bicycle & Pedestrian Safety Coordinator, the "bike lane" that is only about 10 blocks long isn't really a bike lane, because it doesn't have any pavement markers. Just the road signs, and that it is the pavement markers and not the road signs that are needed to designate a bike lane as a bike lane.

Digital_Cowboy

Yeah, I'd be surprise too if they ever do.

Some time ago when I inquired if two traffic lights that are within 5 blocks of each other could be timed so as to make it safer for pedestrians to cross the road. I was told that it would create too much of an inconvenience for motorists.

How sad is that? Motorist convenience is more important than the safety of pedestrians?