Many places in UK have put a lot of effort into providing cycle lanes, prioritising cyclists over cars and pedestrians to do so. It has not worked. They built it and no one came. Its pretty clear that the solution here is more and cheaper public transport. I think fixed price tickets giving you unlimited usage, better bus services to rail stations, etc. are the right approach.
I hate driving, but there are some places that it is impractical to go to without a car, and times when public transport is not available. These should be minimised.
I do not believe you. Provide concrete examples of what steps were taken and where.
London alone is an extreme counterexample:
- "Cycling levels continued to increase where we invested in new infrastructure, such as Cycleways."
- "13% increase in cycling between 2019 and 2022, or 155 per cent since 2000"
- "[In the 20 years before the pandemic] Among sustainable modes, cycling grew the fastest, with 126 per cent more daily cycling journeys, compared to a 68 per cent increase in public transport and a 15 per cent decrease in car journeys."
"Concerns over road danger and fear of collisions is the most common barrier to cycling, with 82 per cent of non-cyclists citing it as a deterrent. This is despite cycling becoming significantly safer in the last two decades. These concerns are common across all demographic groups, regardless of gender, age, ethnicity, or disability. However, women, children and older Londoners are more likely to be put off cycling by road danger and have a stronger preference for protection from motor traffic."
"[...] the number of collisions resulting in death or serious injuries for people cycling is higher for cars than any other vehicle types. Between 2017 and 2021, cars, private hire vehicles and taxis were involved in collisions resulting in 2,770 serious injuries and 12 fatalities, 65 per cent of all people killed or seriously injured while cycling. This reflects the fact that cars make up most of London’s motorised traffic."
I am a staunch supporter of bicycle infrastructure and a daily bicycle commuter, but I remain unconvinced by percentage-growth figures like this. In many large cities (especially LA, where I live), bicycles represent a vanishing minority of road traffic; an extra 155% of almost nothing is still almost nothing.
I don’t have data on hand, but just a casual glance on an average day suggests that fewer than 1% of road users in my neighborhood are on bicycles—and that’s in Downtown Culver City, a mixed-use/pedestrian-friendly urbanist oasis. I’m sad to say that Culver City recently decided to dismantle its dedicated bike lanes, despite reported figures of >50% increases in bicycle traffic.[0]
I want more bicycle infrastructure, but I do not feel well-equipped to argue my case when even with the bike lanes in place, I’ve never seen two bicycles waiting at the same red light—all while car traffic is piled up as far as the eye can see.
Right, so the whole "just add bike lanes" thing is said to get the general idea across, it's not an A to Z solution.
First off, the starting point matters. As you show with your example, trying these ideas in US cities is... hard to say the least. There is way too much cultural momentum behind car infrastructure.
As for the low bike lane usage you noticed, a lot of factors are involved.
1. You say "bike lane", is that a lane on the road, in effect shared with cars? Forget about high usage. The key is to get as much physical separation from traffic as possible. An easy rule of thumb is: would you let your 12-yo kid travel on said lanes on their own? If not, there's your answer. The paths must feel safe to people other than 20-40 y/o able-bodied males.
2. Once your paths are nice and separated, consider that the number of paths, how connected they are, and where they lead to all matter. A single path from nowhere to nowhere will not be used. 200 miles of paths can mean a strong network or 200 1 mile long disjoint paths.
3. You need the law to prioritize cyclists (and pedestrians for that matter). See another user's post on how the law is in the Netherlands: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29878551. The bare minimum would be giving cyclists on cycling paths the right of way at intersections.
4. The rest of infrastructure, especially intersections, must be built with cyclists in mind. The Netherlands is again king at this, e.g. https://youtu.be/g0F_hTGYa0Y?t=712. The difference between the thought Dutch traffic engineers put into designing for cyclists and the US engineers should be evident. At the very least, the bike path asphalt should be colored differently at intersections.
5. It takes time, especially somewhere as car-centric as the US. You can't expect people to switch to biking overnight.
6. Car-centric design stretches cities out, lowering density. Cycling and walking have limited range, so the average US city is going to inherently get lower cycling uptake.
Part of the reason maybe that many of these cycle lanes are not fit for purpose. There are places in the UK where cycling became popular for the simple reason that the layout was already bike friendly.
This craze of adding a bike lane, regardless of local conditions has, indeed, been a total failure.
One thing I see is that once a lane is added and immediately not a hit, it's deemed a failure.
But if that lane is only a small stretch of someone's commute, they won't suddenly start cycling because one of many stretches got a cycle lane. Or change which road they use if they already cycle.
But that lane is a start. When the next street and the next street and the next street all get lanes, you suddenly have not only lanes but a connected network. Only then do you get new cyclists or change of behavior.
There is in general a lack of understanding that bad cycling infrastructure can be significantly worse then no cycling infrastructure as it often create more dangers, here the better solution would be to design for lower speeds and shared road usage.
I'd love to see a concrete example if you have one. I've seen a fair number of people make this claim about bicycle infrastructure and without a fault there's an obvious-to-a-bicyclist reason it doesn't get used. Of the pictures of recently built UK bicycle infrastructure I've seen most of them don't look particularly good.
It might be true, but it might not be.
Many places in UK have put a lot of effort into providing cycle lanes, prioritising cyclists over cars and pedestrians to do so. It has not worked. They built it and no one came. Its pretty clear that the solution here is more and cheaper public transport. I think fixed price tickets giving you unlimited usage, better bus services to rail stations, etc. are the right approach.
I hate driving, but there are some places that it is impractical to go to without a car, and times when public transport is not available. These should be minimised.