> Bike paths make infinitely more sense (especially since they dont have to follow roads and can take more direct paths), but cities seem loathe to adopt them vs just painting some lines on a current street.
They can make more sense in certain circumstances for long trips between population centers, but as an alternative to bike lanes within cities… not really. The problem with only having bike paths is that they usually don’t take you all the way to where you need to go! If you’re trying to get to a particular business and they’re not directly on the bike path (which they probably aren’t), you need to leave the bike path at some point. And that’s when it’s helpful to have a protected bike lane!
> None of this isnt to say we should not build more bike paths/trains/subways/busses, but I dont think its a one solution fits all sort of thing.
Correct, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation. Including roads for cars, but they’re currently treated that way in North America.
> Correct, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation. Including roads for cars, but they’re currently treated that way in North America.
I've lived in Chicago for almost a decade, and I initially did all of my transportation by public transit. That said, I'm really surprised at how well driving works in Chicago, the 3rd largest city in the US and one of the most dense major cities, and one which has far fewer highways than even smaller cities: Chicago has only a few major thoroughfares for getting across town quickly by car, and even still traveling by car is almost always 2-3X faster than taking the El which is faster than the bus and so on.
Of course, this isn't an argument for investing more in cars and less in other forms of transit--if the folks who rely on cycling and public transit instead decided to drive, then congestion would be unbearable.
At least in Chicago, I think we could make a lot of progress in making all commuters safer by enforcing basic traffic laws. Chicago has some of the worst drivers I've ever seen--people routinely running solid red lights, weaving through traffic, generally not paying attention, passing on shoulders (on highways), parking in the middle of the street or in a bike lane, and generally just not paying attention to pedestrians and cyclists. Similarly, it seems like most cyclists just fly through stop signs and red lights with no sense of self-preservation--I'm a very careful driver, but a lot of intersections have low visibility and I've had a lot of near-misses with reckless cyclists. Also, public transit could be a lot safer and more comfortable if we would enforce such laws as "no smoking, urinating, panhandling, fighting, stabbing, robbing etc on buses and trains". Unfortunately, we're in the process of driving the police out of the city (we are hemorrhaging police officers) while also making sure offenders are minimally penalized (our district attorney prefers to let violent offenders out on low bail, lenient parole conditions, short sentences, etc if her office is even willing to prosecute in the first place).
They can make more sense in certain circumstances for long trips between population centers, but as an alternative to bike lanes within cities… not really. The problem with only having bike paths is that they usually don’t take you all the way to where you need to go! If you’re trying to get to a particular business and they’re not directly on the bike path (which they probably aren’t), you need to leave the bike path at some point. And that’s when it’s helpful to have a protected bike lane!
> None of this isnt to say we should not build more bike paths/trains/subways/busses, but I dont think its a one solution fits all sort of thing.
Correct, there is no one-size-fits-all solution for transportation. Including roads for cars, but they’re currently treated that way in North America.