My current pet peeve is people complaining about the ‘cost’ of protected bike lanes because “people on bikes don’t pay their way”.
Beyond even the data showing just how much private car ownership is already subsidized, can we just take a moment and acknowledge: We wouldn’t need protected lanes at all if cars were not killing and injuring so many people.
It’s like the owner of an animal bemoaning the cost of an enclosure for their animal, which keeps killing and maiming members of the public as they pass by.
It’s not the victim’s fault the enclosure is needed, and it’s not the fault of someone riding a bike they need protection in a public space.
As someone living in Copenhagen, a city built for biking around, I find this take kind of weird. Bike lanes just make sense to separate car and bike traffic. Nobody wants that traffic mixed, not drivers or cyclists.
There are smaller streets in Copenhagen where there are no bike lanes, but that’s because the traffic volume in those streets is so small that a car and a bike are unlikely to even use the road at the same time.
I think that’s the point. If everyone was in the same road, car drivers would get frustrated to be going so slow. Therefore, it’s in the drivers’ best interest to have a separate bike lane so cars can go faster.
That doesn’t really make much sense when you look at Copenhagen. It is frequently faster to get somewhere by bike than it is to go by car because bikes don’t block each other in traffic as much as cars do. If cars were on the same road as bikes, it would be bikes that would be going slower, not cars.
I am not going to agree or disagree, I was just trying to explain what the person you were replying to meant :)
In Japan, most non arterial roads don’t even have footpaths, and are all shared with pedestrians, bikes, and motor traffic.
Granted, Japan’s arterial roads themselves are really hostile to pedestrians and need a lot of rework.
Lessons from the Streets of Tokyo - https://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2019/10/1/lessons-from-the-streets-of-tokyo
Urban kchoze: Are sidewalks even necessary? - http://urbankchoze.blogspot.com/2014/03/are-sidewalks-even-necessary.html?m=1
Why not both? Protected bike lanes as much as possible, but have a city wide 30 kmph limit which will make driving itself less dangerous and people can cycle relatively safely on streets while the bike lane infrastructure is being built out.
Sure, both is nice. We already have the bike lane infrastructure in Denmark but I can definitely see why you’d want slower speeds if you have no bike lanes. I do think some road in cities in Denmark are being reduced to 40 km/h.