If I could talk to those engineers or any proponents of bad design, I'd say something like, "would you let your 8-year old daughter ride her bike on here?" Specifically because it's a pretty common age for kids to walk/ride to school or down the street alone worldwide, and because parents are more protective of their daughters whereas they'd let their boys do more risky things. If it's not safe for the most vulnerable, then it's not safe enough.
@@veelastname part of it would be education. Here in the Netherlands these roads are very common, even on roads with speeds up to 60 kmp/h. Only works on roads with light traffic though. It’s part of our driving lessons to drive on these roads and learn to anticipate and let ongoing traffic through. These roads are great, but probably wont ever work in a country where they were never used because i would be confused as a driver as well if it were my first time.
@@J27093 to be honest i would not want my 6 year old driving on a suggestiestrook on a 60 kpu road. they are still dangerous, and alot of times theres a seperate bike road.
What they have forgot in there minds is that the car drivers in the Netherlands are also bikers!So they have far more interest in safe driving in such a street!They know how it is when a car is speeding next to you on the bike lane.Thats why it works in our country,but not in your country.Also they didnt put the poles in the middle lane,forcing cars to slow down.
you missed the part where it's not even working in the netherlands. it's better than the us (extremely low bar) but the dutch are still so unhappy with how this street is functioning that they are considering further design changes.
It also helps that every dutch citizen who is taught to drive a car, is told that the Law is made in such a way, that cyclists get to go free in case of a collision. It is automatically assumed that the driver of the car is guilty, no matter what the actual situation was at the time. Police don't even bother showing up. Your car insurance, which is mandatory in order to drive a car, just raises your insurance level and you end up paying more. Even if it wasn't your fault, and even if you could somehow prove it in court, then the law states that you still have to pay for 50% of the damages. In effect it means it's to much fuss and you just pay up the full 100%. It also means that cyclists don't really care what the rules are, because they go free anyways. And considering cyclists can come from all sides, car drivers are usually exceptionally aware of their surroundings, and everything becomes a lot safer.
There is an error in your sentence, this isn't a street, it's a road that is masquerading as a street, it's still too wide, there is no traffic calming, and there is no separate bicycle path for cyclists to safely ride their bikes.
one of those designs was used for a street nearby here in Helmond (Netherlands) and it works really well. But the reason it works well is becouse there is barely any traffic. That is perhaps the most important part of this design becouse if you increase the amount of car traffic it might still feel safe enough to cycle on but it isn't pleasant. Even if everone drives 30km/h.
I mean if you low traffic, it might have anything to do with road design. I mean I live a subdivision NA but don't have sidewalks, this means the street of neighborhood is multi use automatically. In it's 35+ years we only had person hit.
We have some streets that are multi-use and they're perfectly fine because they average 6 cars and 10 cargo vans per day (most of which are in the 22-07 time window)
Theres a busy street in my parents town in NL where they just removed the seperated bike lanes and made it a bike street similar to the one in this video, except without the markings. The street connecting to it is a 50 km/h street. Its also one of the main traffic arteries into and out of the town center. Just goes to show, we can fuck up too.
One of the things I always notice when visiting is that traffic signs in the USA are full of words and hard to quickly understand. Most countries have simple traffic signs with only one symbol. Traffic signs should not have words AT ALL. Only a number at best. If you need a whole book on a traffic sign, you have failed horribly elsewhere.
@@BHV_7 actually they are only ambiguous to those who haven’t learnt how to read the signs. Use both signs and text makes it even more confusing. The signs are being used worldwide, which also look similar, except for a few countries.
@@ar134_ How would both make signs more confusing? They provide redundancy; if one fails for some reason, the other is still there, guaranteeing that the driver doesn’t miss the message. Yes, symbols are easier to recognize, but sometimes they can have more than one possible interpretation (even if there is only one correct meaning). I can see a driver easily mixing up two symbol-only signs, so text in addition could clear this confusion.
Thanks for this video. As a San Diego area resident who's driven all over the county, Mira Mesa is the classic American suburb in the worst ways. People drive way too fast because they can, and non-motorists can't get anywhere directly because all their residential developments are walled off so they gotta snake around through these local streets just to go to the store or next neighborhood. The kind of people who live in those detached home areas often drive far to work and have little patience as it is with the snaking paths they gotta take so they drive as fast as the road design lets them, and pedestrians/cyclists have no choice but to travel the same paths where they have inevitable conflict points. We need more modal filtering and uncoupling of different modal routes as well as safer road design and maybe some street trees and other amenities to make walks/biking safer, and more comfortable.
Also in Mira Mesa's case, more human scale and mixed use development that doesn't put such a wide physical separation between residents and businesses. Almost all the commercial space in MM is along Mira Mesa Blvd, and even the drive through there is loud from car noises and hot in the summer so I can only imagine the walk! People shouldn't have to walk across 10 lanes of traffic just to get to Target or the grocery store, and we don't need gas stations or fast food drive thrus on literally every corner.
I've been to Mira Mesa while visiting family. Nice suburb, incredibly difficult to walk to any destination. There's plenty of space to make changes, but it won't be really pleasant without reworking the land use to give active modes some way to punch through cul-de-sacs. Really, it's another one I file under "please let robotaxis and ebikes take over so that there are fewer car owners to protest changes that impact parking".
@@veelastname The thing about Mira Mesa is that the amount of retail in the center far exceeds the number of residents nearby. Its a major shopping center that has more people from outside Mira Mesa shopping at than Mira Mesa residents, which is why it has to be so car based. If you want to have walkable neighborhoods you would have to scale down the amount of retail to an amount that is only necessary to the residents, and spread it out across the suburb. You cant have major shopping centers and a walkable suburb.
The entire concept of those cul-de-sack like American suburbs is horrible. Just like grids are horrible. There should at least be way more bike and pedestrian paths as shortcuts to get from A to B while avoiding cars. And for the cars, there should at least be 2 directions in which you can get out of the neighbourhood instead of just 1.
@@JH-pe3ro Robotaxis are a strictly inferior solution compared to existing public transport, bikes, and the option of having on-demand public transport that stops at your front door using an app. Call it a robo-bus, make it fit more than 4 people, and then we can talk.
they could put the street parking where the bike/suggestion lanes were, and then you'd have parking protected bike/walking lane. The street would be narrow so cars will naturally slow down but they can still pass through.
You could do that, but that also means that we’re agreeing to give 90 percent of all space to cars, which would keep it as a busy through road which may not be something that is wanted. It really comes down to deciding what we want from the space, then designing exactly for that purpose. When we just “react” to just the present conditions we get largely the same setup with only a few tweaks. Again, I wouldn’t say there’s anything “wrong” with your suggestion, if we want to keep Mira mesa as a faster car speed area with through traffic I would agree with you. Tell us what you want out of the travel surface then we can deliver the correct design
@@buildthelanes But BTL, it is really about what the people want. Count the number of people in cars and count the number of people riding bikes. Children ride bikes because they are not allowed to drive cars. When they are old enough and earn enough money to buy and drive cars, that is what they do. People will vote to fund mass transit because 1) busses carry those who cannot afford cars or do not always wish to find parking for them. and 2) to get those OTHER cars off the freeway so we can drive at speed limit! Cars are very useful for certain things: It is much easier to carry a week's worth of groceries home with even a Mini Cooper than it is to carry it on a bike. You can use the municipal bus service but only if it has a stop next to the grocery store and another stop next to your house or apartment. And then you can only carry so much necessitating additional trips to the store. And you can irritate the other bus passengers. We also know how Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, MS-13, and other fine upstanding citizens like to ride busses too! Cars are also useful for going anywhere more than 2 miles away. In the pouring rain. How is the bicycle in the rain? Even on sunny days, car is great for getting anywhere that is miles away from town and its bus system. If I want to go from Seattle to Ellensburg, I take the car. That is why people want cars and American cities are built for cars.
I think the idea here is that there isn't space for cars to pass each other without one of them going into the bike lane. So if the bike lanes were protected by parking, it wouldn't be possible to pass an oncoming car (the parked cars aren't moving). I agree that protected bike lanes are best and if there is room to pass with them, then I am mistaken.
@@RogerWKnight That is not really fair. You acknowledge yourself that American citites are designed for cars, of course people are going to use the car in such a case. If cities and suburbs would get designed with other modes of transportation in mind (say cycling but also walking or public-transport) then those *will* go up in popularity. Like you example is pretty much saying 'No one uses the train' when there isn't any rail for the train to go on. The same goes for your shopping example. You can absolutely do shopping with a bicycle. In the big citites you should be good with a bag and every day or two shopping. in the suburbs, because of car orientated design, the mall is probably going to be a bit further away. That is a shame but is also a problem caused the focus on cars. However even despite that you can always get a cargo-bike (or bakfiets), and use that for the once in a week shopping. The 2-mile limit you mention is not a thing, you can absolutely cycle more than that, in fact a 13 mile trip (two-way) should not be out of the question at all for the standard individual. One last thing I want to touch on is your thoughts on the public-transport (mainly busses). Busses do not just get used by 'people who can't afford cars'. In some places busses are just the superior (whether its because its quicker, more efficient or just way more relaxed) form of transportation, and they get used by everyone. Normal people like you and I. Putting a stigma on public transport is not a good look. Also funny side note, encouraging people to use other modes of transportation also reduces the amount of cars on the road. Which is great for car drivers, and yes I'll admit: cars have their place on the road, but so does everything else.
Don’t forget for this to work in the US some rules need to change. In the Netherlands when there’s a accident between a car and bike, the car is always at fault unless proven otherwise. And even if you can proof it’s not your fault as car driver it doesn’t mean you ain’t at fault. As car driver you are expected to know better and must be prepared to expect the unexpected. So if you see bikes on roads like these you will be careful and only pass if it’s safe to pass.
This would be considered inequity in America because bicyclists here are also as reckless as vehicular drivers. Disregarding very simple regulations, especially when they fail to yield to pedestrians.
@@traffic.engineer I get you but I promise you pedestrians and cyclists can be just as reckless here in europe (can speak for switzerland, idk about the netherlands). In our laws, the 'heavier' vehicule is always at fault because no matter what the weaker party does wrong it only turns into a more dangerous situation once a bigger/heavier one is involved. For example accident between bycicle and pedestrian => cyclists fault because they didn't pay attention enough and always have to prepared of the unexpected. Same then goes for the bigger vehicules.
@@traffic.engineerThe "inequity" we currently have is that cars end the lives of cyclists, but cyclists never end the life of cars. Funny how nobody cares about that.
@@vcaesium That would be a very cumbersome process for a not-at-fault driver that did everything by the book, including the additional maneuvering and insurance they took. And that is on top of the mental trauma the drivers will experience. Especially in America where a majority of avid bicyclists are rich and white, those who use cars/trucks for business (a large number who are non-white and/or middle-class) would only consider the system being rigged against them. Trucks may cause more damage than a car, but over two-thirds of car-truck crashes are fault of the car in America. Unless the truckers are paying the same rate of insurance as the car driver, such a system would only be double-jeopardy to the truck driver.
@@cebruthius And the drivers have to live with that mental trauma for the rest of their life, despite taking all measures to drive legally and safely. They already proving their innocence under extreme duress. What is the equity of punishing them more, legally and/or financially?
That kind of design is being used in some small village communities in Finland where it really works well imo since there are barely any traffic and the locals who have to get by walking/cycling on the side of the road have whole wider space for it
1:05 "That little rectangular sign we always see in North America when we drive, that white rectangular sign that says, "25 miles per hour..." There's only one country in North America with signs like the one pictured that says, "SPEED LIMIT 25." For example, English signs in Canada say, "MAXIMUM 50 km/h."
Thank you for the analysis. We need lots of education here in the US. The more you and those like you continue to shine a light on these problems, the sooner ‘we’ will embrace the solutions. As you know, we are decades behind in learning these very very simple lessons. Keep it up
Thanks for your perspective on this project failure. The Mira Mesa project had definite design failures - because it's so damn hard internally at a City to implement all the bells and whistles that Dutch Streets enjoy that create 8-80 bikeable streets. However, the LACK of OUTREACH was the true failure, because the City staff didn't effectively communicate how this street will work for daily users (mostly drivers). Your analysis would have been SICK if you had made a call to a planner there to understand how the public reacted, because we need more collective information for the public and professionals on the details for why we failed to implement better bike streets.
Definitely! My own expertise is in Dutch design so I try to heavily focus on that. I don’t know much I could add to the outreach part other then “they didn’t do enough outreach”. I think though if there’s a bad design all of the outreach in the world wouldn’t have helped. Maybe fewer people would have protested but it’s be just as dangerous and not move the needle on vision 0 I think. One things the Netherlands does really well is public outreach on projects and they’re redoing my street right now. I’m thinking of making a video on the process once it’s done
I have a hard time understanding the neighborhood backlash as being anything other than outreach failure and neighborhood misunderstanding. Despite what people think, we are all incredibly used to this layout: it's just how our neighborhood streets look normally, but with a bit more paint. If you took any scenario from an unpainted neighborhood and put it on the street, everyone would/should respond the same way. It LOOKS scary because it's so new and foreign, but the reality is that it is just a more delineated neighborhood street design. If I remember right, I think they ended up re-striping this street to have the center line again, but I would have been curious to have seen the neighborhood's response to NO striping.
Just looking at those signs, you know the design has failed. I notice this a lot in North America: Signs with a lot of words on them trying to compensate for failing design elsewhere. In general North American traffic signs are horrible. Lot's of hard to read words, where a single symbol would be much easier. Many cannot be read at the speeds being travelled.
I hate advisory lanes since it's just paint and depend on the people to decide if they're gonna yield or not, it's a very dangerous design and sadly still gets used in the Netherlands often cause there's no better alternative on some roads but at least it's better than nothing. I've had many close calls with drivers not yielding and a couple of them actually crashing into me which resulted in me now being very anxious when cycling.
Well I think with the faster bicycles like electric bikes it might actually be better to create more suggestions lanes and reduce the car speed to 30kph. So the faster cyclists will get more space in traffic and be able to use the center of the road when it is really crowded. In Rotterdam you see those streets more and more. For example Walenburg in Rotterdam. Or just extremely wide bicycle lanes like the Coolsingel.
@@sebastiaansiemensma that’s in the city, i’m talking about the advisory lanes in the buiten bebouwde kom that’re on roads with speeds up to 60 km/h but most people drive way faster than 60 which is very dangerous. There’ve been numerous times where i was almost hit.
@@scottmccullough8030 We have that problem in the Netherlands as well, believe it or not, we also have winter here and it does snow. Not as much as it used to because we are experiencing temperature increases due to climate change at about 3x the global average rate, but between december and march it can and does snow. For reference, were at about the same latitude as Toronto. Most busy roads are swept and salted, but you can run into a situation where the advisory lanes are covered in salty snowy mud. In that case the solution is to cycle in the middle of the road where it isnt slippery and flip off every driver that honks at you.
While I haven't been on the Dutch street shown on the video, I have been on countless Dutch streets that use the advisory bike lanes/edge lanes with great success and would love to see there adoption increased in the US. I agree that the US street needs more calming measures beyond the edge lane treatment to get the speeds lower. Public education is critical.
An advisory edge lane is completely different than a bike lane. The purpose of an edge lane is to reduce traffic speeds so the entire travel surface can be used by bikes. Only ETWs outside of the built up area may have actually bike lanes
@@angrydragonslayer Well not so much. Any improvement is good, but as the video stated, and it is clear to see if you look at the American road, you need to have a clear distinction between all parts. The Dutch road has 3 different colours. The US one is the same all across.
@@metalhead6604 we have black advisory lanes here in Germany (with a different concept), maybe they've mixed up both - but still all the dimensions are so completely wrong.
I'm pretty sure it is against the regulations for streets (for low speed access, as opposed to roads) in the Netherlands to have a bike lane. The whole street is the bike lane. Folks confusing advisory lane markings with bike lanes is an ongoing problem there (and everywhere else apparently).
I live in the Netherlands, and there are millions of streets like this, both in cities, suburbs, and in the countryside. Also in many other places in Europe. They work very well everywhere. But, having said that, people in Europe have real drivers licences, as opposed to the States where anyone who can show they know which end of the car is the front or back will get a drivers licence. So that, among other things like distances and the car culture, may make cycling in the US a lost cause. Another thing, if nobody walks in the US, why not widen the sidewalks to incorporate a bike path everywhere in the whole country so people will get used to it? This would make the street much narrower, reducing speeds and promoting smaller cars. Also cars turning right or left over the bike lane (that has priority) would cause drivers to wake up and slow and look before turning. Again, slowing traffic. Again, the Netherlands and many other European countries do all these things successfully. The solutions are already out there.
There are few ETW with official bicycle other on them because doing so is illegal. There are many streets with suggestion lanes which is not how Lange nieuwstraat is operating nor what is present in San Diego
@@seanthe100 Getting a drivers license in the netherlands usually costs a few thousand euros for driving lessons, those lessons usually take between a few months and a year to complete and then you need to take a written test where you need to score about a 90% on each test subject and an 35-minute long driving test in the city and highway where one error usually means you fail your test. That is what he means by a real drivers license.
"Freedom!" Don't take away our cars, or our guns for that matter. Maybe slightly unrelated, but it is a different mentality toward government imposing rules or limiting citizens, I feel.
The youtuber Road Guy Rob actually went into this is more detail but from a US traffic engineering perspective. Much of what actually caused the issue here was the high vehicle count on that particular road!
One of the worst things about these American culdesack suburbs is the parking. Why dont you just put a parking lot at the front of the culdesack and walk the last 50 yards? Cars should only be in the culdesacks for delivery and pickup of heavy goods.
The issue is that this is a two way road with three lanes and only one car lane and that lane is to narrow to pass so it would need to be wider, therefore i think either street parking should be removed from one side or maybe the street be narrowed by the 0.5 to 1 bike lanes, maybe they could only have a bike lane on one side. Either way it is to narrow for such a highly trafficked two car street.
These lanes are being used in quite a lot of areas in the Netherlands, especially on older roads that haven't yet been brought up to the latest code. There are several reasons why they work here, somewhat. 1) drivers are also cyclists 2) actual traffic calming 3) they are usually only used on calmer streets As a Dutchman, I don't love these kinds of streets, but they sorta work okay enough considering Dutch traffic culture and the whole picture. For the US, considering they haven't been "educated" on the existence of cyclists, you have to dumb it down. This kinda infrastructure relies on voluntary compliance, and really that's just not good enough considering the level of cyclist awareness of US drivers. Build infrastructure that doesn't rely on drivers behaving correctly, but that separates cyclists and drivers, and that forces drivers to slow down and pay attention in areas where conflict might be expected.
Purely in of themselves I don't have a huge problem with suggestie stroken. But what i tried to communicate is that they get used as a compensatory measure when its hard to get an older street to behave like a proper ETW. And then they get copied in North America who dont realize theyre copying the " its not great but we can sorta get away with it because its such a calmer and low intensity traffic environment" Then of course it falls flat on its face because its brought to a place like gold coast drive wither higher traffic speeds and intensities. Suggestie strooks truly arent meant to be real bike lanes (this is why they arent syupposed to put a bike symbol on it), I know many cities go ahead and make them look eactly like bike lanes anyway and I wouldnt blame anyone for mistaking them and using it as one. But CROW is also aware of it is actively discussing scrapping it since theres probably better ways.
A lot of US drivers are NOT cyclists. Cycling is more of a recreational hobby in the USA. Many of the US cities are not designed for cyclists, partially due to the layouts of the land. We don't have good public transit in many cities. In a lot of cities people need to use their cars due to the distances between homes, offices, shopping districts, and other attractions. I think until cities deploy good metro and light rail systems to ALL major residential and commercial areas of the cities, I don't think that drivers are going to give up their cars. Simply building bike lanes, removing for on-street parking, or getting landlords to charge for parking is not going to do much unless cities have reliable public transportation to most areas of town. Cities will have to stop segregating housing by residents income level if they want sustainable transportation, and instead do mixed income neighborhoods where rich and poor people live on the same streets in the same neighborhoods or apartment complexes.
From NL (me): Atleast san Diego did try to fix it. Thats still better than doing nothing and pointing to other governments and vice versa. Like our politicians.
I hate those roads in the Netherlands. You don't enjoy them as cyclist, as a motorcycle rider, nor as a car driver. The idea of putting "calming measures" that will result in a serious crash are so ridiculous, especially when you are in a motorcycle and you have to hope that vehicle riders respect you. Normally, when they narrow the street to let one vehicle pass, the bicycles can go straight ahead by the side and are protected by posts. But in some crappy towns (i am looking at you, Mariaheide), they make the cyclist ALSO GO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!! They are literally using cyclists as speed bumps. Unbelievable. I applaud the city planners for trying to adapt measures from other parts of the world. Unfortunately, they didn't do a thorough investigation, but i am happy that there is at least the thought of doing something
Honestly, Lange Nieuwstraat is a poor example of what it should be like, it is like comparing the Mira Mesa to Lange Nieuwstraat. A proper way would be to make a small paved curved gutter between the bike lanes and the center lane where the cars drive. It almost separates both lanes while still leaving cars the chance to go on the bike lanes IF necessary. It is not something simple paint can solve. When cars start going into the gutter, they start vibrating due to the paved gutter and also become slanted, thus they are forced to slow down. If they want to go faster, they have to stick to the center lane. Going into the bike lane thus slows down cars. You have occasional physical separators like bollards or berms, preventing cars from constantly driving in the bike lane. They don't need to be placed on both sides at the same time and cause a narrowing, you can alternate. This also slows cars down. Then you can put a few road narrowings here and there. And this is to be used on streets with low traffic, or at least be designed in a way to reduce traffic.
The safe road initiative in the Netherlands started in 1975. We've been at for quite some time and it still isn't perfect, but in general taking part in traffic here in the Netherlands is great experience no matter your choice of participation (walking, unmotorized vehicles, or motorized vehicles). The advisory lanes and bike lanes in the American examples are way too wide. You could fit a car on them with ease
notice the cars parked on the side walks in the san diego parts. this road wasn’t thought out. one thing i’ve noticed in many area with various redesigns is that not a lot of money is put into them. they temporary and ready to be put back to their previous design.
I think this project probably worked better than you think. The hint is in what drivers complained about...they said it was confusing and unsafe. This is in fact, exactly what drivers SHOULD think about traffic calmed streets. It is exactly the feeling that encourages someone to slow down and take more care. This is of course uncomfortable, and North American drivers are some of the most pampered people in the history of humanity, they aren't accustomed to discomfort of any kind (hell, have you heard how they believe rain is lethal?) so when they are made to feel uncomfortable at all, they think something is wrong as opposed to right. That being said, you're right that this design could have been better, but I don't necessarily think the problem is the use of no centre line + advisory lines to narrow the apparent width of the road. This is done on streets all over the Netherlands with...varying...degrees of success. FWIW, unless they are willing to make real concessions to traffic flow patterns (which may very well be impossible in that neighbourhood) you simply cannot have a safe residential street carrying that volume of traffic without making compromises.
Not that Australia is good at this, but what we'd do with this kind of road is put traffic calming devices every 50 metres or so (large speed bumps, angled diversions, etc.), fill the kerb in quite often so the side parking is actual real parking, add planted areas in those filled in parts, add small roundabouts at each intersection, paint speed limits on the road, and potentially even close it to through traffic. There's a lot you could do that works better and is safer than what they tried.
semi related question that I noticed- there's a few streets in Austin that have the bike lane inside of the parked cars, so it goes traffic->parked cars->bike lane->sidewalk. I notice that the parked cars ended up acting as traffic calming measures as well as protection from traffic for cyclist. why aren't all bike lines striped like this?
Hey Javier, So the main thing that stops the setup you’re talking about is a sight equation engineers use to calculate the perception of things coming from the left and the right and then braking appropriately. So basically the number of driveways along your typical residential road plus the fact someone can move pretty fast in a car during this transition prevents a lot of engineers from trying. This setup is normally great on a proper road, when you have higher speeds and not a lot of entrance and exits that overlap with the bike path. The thing is that on a lot of residential streets if you need a protected bike lane because there’s too much through traffic going very fast there’s a bigger problem. Since it’s a human habitat the last thing you want is lots of car traffic moving quickly through the area. Basically the street should be safe enough to begin with for all nodes to mingle.
We have this in Columbus on a southbound one way road that used to be 3 lanes traffic / 2 lanes parking (4 lanes traffic / 1 lane parking in rush hour) and it's terrible! Now it's 2 lanes traffic all the time on a major thoroughfare, 2 lanes parking, and one 2 way bike path that takes the west side of the street lane. So now traffic is always bad, it's incredibly hard to park in the parking lanes. Cars often sit on the bike lane. If you are crossing this street, you not only have to look in the car direction, but also try to get in a quick look the other way before you cross the bike lane, of which the view is often obscured by parked cars in the parking lane. Basically it's much more suckage for cars, and the bike lane is so dangerous that I'd never use it. Of yeah, and if you want to turn right off of this road at any light, you can't go when the light turns green. You have to wait for a green turn arrow. That a lot of people run, making it more dangerous for that bike lane. What they should have done is: take the 5 lanes and make it like this from west most lane to east: Lane 1 - Bike lane, proper barrier. Lane 2, 3, 4 - traffic. Lane 5 parking. It wouldn't be perfect as the crossing issues are still there for the bikes, but it gets rid of the visual impediments of the west parking lane making the lane safer. It also frees up the traffic some, which relieves some congestion, and may make it safer from a frustration POV. Also, with only one lane of parking, people parking will only congest 1 of 3 lanes as they park, instead of killing 1 of 2 lanes. Making the traffic lights "smart", aka detecting users of the bike lanes without them having to sit at the intersection would help a lot as the right turn lanes would get a green by default unless the bike lane was in use.
@@buildthelanes Having parked cars between the road and bikelane is the standard setup for streets and roads in Europe. I think sight engineers in the USA need new manuals. ;)
@@Robbedem yes i dont haev a problem with it but this is usually why they get rejected, however these european lanes typically dont haev as many driveways conflicting with the bike lanes too adn smaller cars
@@buildthelanes European houses are often build next to eachother without spacing (row housing). And those can all have a driveway. (per two driveways next to eachother and than a bit of space for one or two cars to park on the street). Municipalities/cities will restrict the height you are allowed to have something against the pavement to 1m, to allow vision of the road.
Variations in Boulder County, Colorado: a) Harvard Lane (parallel to/west of Broadway) between Dartmouth and Table Mesa b) Polk/Dahlia w/speed humps, crosswalks in Louisville. Crowdsourced Mapillary has bike-view images (not sure about KartaView, Mapilio)
I agree that it was suboptimal, but the other side of the coin is that it was in fact still an improvement over the status quo of the type of design that is normal here in America, especially SoCal.
This was not an improvement. The only thing that changed now is that car are going the same speed but they are entering the bike lane more frequently now.
They probably chose advisory lanes to preserve parking. I am sure there would be even more opposition from the community if they took away parking to build a protected bike lane. It might have worked better if they made the street width even narrower and used tiles in the middle section to slow cars down. Just poor execution.
For the us i really think completely separated bike lanes are possible for now, increase the amount of bike trips possible, have local destination development and get people comfortable with cycling. One of the main reasons it works so well in the netherlands is that everyone cycles and knows what it is like to cycle. That creates compassion instead of annoyance. Though some teens may still take up the whole road.
If they just made those lanes a bit less ridiculously wide theyd have plenty of space for dedicated bike lanes everywhere without an extra cm, i mean inch, of asphalt, i mean tarmac
Given how poor cycling infrastructure is in San Diego, it's shocking that San Diego's Trolley rivaled the Portland MAX in per mile and total ridership pre-COVID and has recovered from COVID faster than any other US LRT.
Advisory bikelanes in itself are not bad. However you must know when to use them and when not. Seeing the street in San Diego this was not a valid solution for that street with that amount of traffic going on. There is too much traffic to share spaces like this. I dear to believe that in the Netherlands this solution wouldn't be implemented for this specific street.
I dislike the term “advisory bike lane” because it communicates the wrong thing I think. An “advisory bike lane” suggests where it’s where cyclists should ride. What you see in the Netherlands are suggestion lane. But not lanes for bicycles. They’re markings to visually narrow the street so cars slow down enough so cyclists may safely use the entire travel surface width. In short a proper suggestion lane calms traffic enough for cyclists to use the entire width whereas a “bike advisory lane” uses cyclists themselves as a traffic calming measure to try to get cars to slow down in a game of chicken. There’s a huge difference and that’s exactly why Lange niuewestraat is so dangerous because they did something illegal but tweaked it enough in a way where it operates exactly in that dangerous manner but they can’t be sued for it.
I directly thought: in the Netherlands we have similar streets everywhere, with the suggestion lanes. But I suppose we have more slowing down methods, and we're more used to looking out for bikes. Now what would be the solution for subrubian streets? I mean, they already have a similar speed limit. Would it just be to narrow the streets, use bricks, mix the modes of transport and limit/break down the on-street parking? Because I'd still expect cars to handle that badly, since they're not used to taking other modes of transport into consideration.
Modern cars (and trucks) are generally very comfortable and are very capable of operating at significant speeds with little trouble. I personally think that contributes greatly to drivers driving them to fast for conditions on urban streets. They just don’t feel like they are going as fast as they are. One thing touched on here was the amount of noise allowed for traffic on the street. I think that requirement has a huge impact on the design of the street in order to get the sound levels down to required levels. And one of the biggest noise generators is the sounds a car makes as it travels down the street. The faster you go, the more noise it makes. And one of the biggest speed related noise producers is the noise tires make while they are rolling down the road. There are many reasons for it, but basically, the faster you go, the louder you are. So, to comply with the noise limit, the slower you must go. There are a number of effective traffic calming strategies that can or are utilized to slow down traffic. Speed humps are one of them. I am not talking about speed bumps, but speed humps. The good ones are shaped to where if they are traversed at the desired speeds, there is minimal impact to the vehicle and its passengers. But as speeds increase, the comfort level diminishes very rapidly as threshold speeds are exceeded. In a majority of cases, they slow down traffic quite well. Another calming effect is a reduction in extended length straight aways. Toss in some minor bends and curves. Another effective measure is to change the surface texture. Texture changes can also reduce speeds by changing the length of a texture used.
For me it looks like they have mixed up the Dutch and German concepts for advisory lanes - even the sign suggests this… In the German concept the middle section is wide enough, so passenger cars can stay between the lines in both directions. Only trucks and busses have to use both and thus need to yield to biks (or look for a gap in oncoming traffic). The advisory lanes here are black and the concept is supposed for 7-8 m from curb to curb. Here the idea is to have a bike lane despite the road being to narrow; basically only encouraging drivers not to hug the curb line. In the Dutch version (which can be build down to 5,25 m) the advisory lanes are red and cars are supposed to stay in the middle of the road. There they have so swipe over for oncoming traffic. There the idea is to make the road visually *very* narrow.
What we have here at first looks much wider, primarily because it's not a parking lane, but physically on-street-parking. In the first step you need to clearly separate that by replacing the white line with a (low) curb and pavement behind, similar color to the sidewalk) and even question, if you really need two parking lanes, when each household already has 4 to 6 parking spots. Also this section has to be wide enough to actually fit the cars and a buffer towards the moving traffic (dooring). Second you add two _narrow_ advisory lanes (these look like full 2 m). These are not made to have cyclists side by side or overtaking each other on the lane! Their color depends on how wide the remaining middle is: If two passenger cars car drive there, then leave them black (German concept). If not, make them red and tell drivers to only swipe over if there's oncoming traffic (Dutch concept).
The dutch did this for a while but moved away from it. my advice? cheaply put in mobile planters to narrow the street until it comes up for resurfacing when you can take off a strip of asphalt from both sides
I highly appreciate your content and insights into the challenges of bike infrastructure. If I may point out a tiny thing to improve upon: try to balance the audio level of video clips inserted to your voice -over level. I found myself turning up my volume for the newscast snippet in the beginning and had to turn it back down when you started to explain the issue at hand. All the best from Utrecht.
the overengineering needed to include private car storage never ceases to amaze me. they could easily add curb cuts to make that a protected bike lane. instead, drivers get the space, even in the netherlands. i was shocked to see official parking spaces even on the SIDEWALKS of amsterdam :(
"In theory, the idea might sound reasonable." -American Traffic Engineering In A Nutshell EDIT: Also, as an engineer, I must applaud your callout of engineers who blame the user as a scapegoat for their failure.
@@TheSuperappelflap In some cases, yes, but in others, it's absolutely the designer's fault for not understanding basic human psychology. You can't fix a fundamentally bad road design by putting up a little sign telling drivers to behave differently than the road design suggests. Have you ever heard of a "Norman door"? It's a door with a Pull handle that says "Push". Traffic engineers build a f***ton of Norman doors.
@@TheRealE.B. Ive never heard of that term but yeah i see a lot of those doors. In fact there are barely any doors in my country that dont have handles or doorknobs on both sides. Is that common in America?
something what can help is instead of making the road of asphalt, making the road of bricks so that when you drive really fast you hear are really loud noise too.
actually in this case asphalt is better. Asphalt is also better to cycle on and having one narrow street of asphalt in a neighborhood with klinkers is better for wayfinding and cyclist comfort i think
While these type of lane designs are common in Europe in places such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and London, they were not seen much in Southern California, or North America for that matter. I think that part of the reason it failed was the lack of driver training of how this design works in terms of the curriculum we have currently in California. Many US drivers are taught that there is a lane for each direction, and to stay between the lane lines, and not to go into bike lanes other than to park. In fact, the California Driver Handbook does not mention how Advisory Bike Lanes work or how to drive in them. In the future, when a unfamiliar lane design is deployed into a region that most drivers in the region have not seen before, there needs to be an education campaign for residents in educating drivers on how to use the new lane design and the rules of how it works.
Making the street 16 feet wide will work like traffic calming magic. Give it mountable kerbs so trucks can pass each other. You could make the street swerve left and right a bit as well.
in both examples, the parking lanes and cycling lanes need to switch to stop dooring danger and or getting run over or causing accident. the netherland example can be turned in one-way street and switch parking and cycling lane to hinder dooring and add another parking lange for residents.
first time i met this as a driver near roosendaal i got the idea immediately, its shouldnt be hard...altho those signs are horrible, and having them as bike lanes explicitly here is a stupid idea. the truth is that bikes are vehicles and wherever they can go, they are equal to cars. if you start from that, its obvious you need to yield, because its vehicle vs vehicle. the one further in the front has right of way! also i gotta say, i think they cheaped out. no bricks between the bike part and the driveable part for example
This exact same lane configuration is used in several US state with no issues. It’s only this one California city that through a fit over it that got news coverage. Dozens of other cities have almost no problems using this. It’s not “ideal,” because the road is too narrow, not because it doesn’t improve safety. This design is still better than the common lane striping used on residential roads in the USA. So saying it’s a bad design is flat out false. The city didn’t tell anyone about the change in road design before they did it, and caved to pressure from people complaining before they could even try it out long enough to get used to it. The biggest mistake is this was not a local access street, but a through street. They should have removed street parking to install separate bike lanes, and kept this road design for side streets.
I'm Dutch and implementing our road designs in America isn't going to work. We Dutch grow up with bicycles and all the infrastructures around them and most of us are of the opinion that kids need to learn to look for 'danger' themselves. So we're being told the 'ins' and 'outs' of things and from a young age (5 - 7) are send on our merry way with a bicycle. And everybody else has had the same experience , so we kind of look out for each other over here. In America that's a totally different story all together , your cities lay outs are so far of for bicycle traffic. And somehow Americans seem to think that everything is dangerous and that driving a car is the only save way of getting around. Another thing is that driving a car isolates people from their surroundings and makes them more agressive , because . . . well , you think you're untouchable . . . and so aggravating the whole situation. And Cyclists have no business on the centre of the street , that would be stupid because you're the slow moving traffic . . . everybody knows this !
best would be to make the road look so narrow, that people are scared to drive too fast. So put difference in hight and feeling of the road. Also put tree's between the parked cars, so it makes the streets greener and gives the feeling of an inclosed space and people automaticly slow down to calculate to get around eachother. Also try to put little curves in it to make them use their breaks more.
As a dutchman I did not find the layout in that US example confusing at all. But I would not feel safe cycling there either, because I know it's foreign to Americans and I am not convinced the driving standard taught in the US is anywhere near that of western Europe. One of the reasons it just works in the Netherlands is we are taught to _participate_ in traffic from a really young age and when we learn to drive, operating the vehicle is the easiest part and not at all enough to pass for a license. Most people fail both exams multiple times before they get it. Because the traffic laws and rules are not about when you are entitled to a right of way, it's about how to participate with safety of the vulnerable in mind. And engineering, if done correctly, can help us a great deal to keep the vulnerable safe when the drivers cannot (or want not).
why is it so hard to just have a protected bike lane on one side of the road next to the side walk, an area for street parking, 2 lanes of traffic, and then another area for street parking? Bike lanes dont need to be on the same side of the road as the direction of vehicle traffic. god
There is an equation that engineers use to calculate sight distance to your left and right and they conclude that there isn’t enough space between the driveway and protected bike lane to prevent collision. They don’t consider that the equation starts becoming less applicable when a car is crawling forward at 5 mph and simply brainlessly use the equation without thinking about what it represents. However. It also isn’t a Good idea to have a protected bike lanes intersect with lots of driveways and adjacent streets due to all the conflict. If they decide that the local and staying function is the priority on Mira mesa instead of through traffic. Then the entire street width of mira mesa should be made safe enough for mixing.
@@buildthelanes But the conflicts are still there when the bikelane is near the car lane. Unless people go from their driveway to park their car on the street and back again? ;) And it's worse, because now all the parked cars are a potential conflict as well.
The red asphalt isn't for nothing, it has a different colour on purpose. Its all psychological. It makes it obvious that it is a different space for different road users
I'm speculating that this was done because A) it was cheap, B) probably there were contracts in motion and timelines C) the powers that be didn't want to put any thinking or effort into it, D) it was meant as a concession to bike use, not as a distinct improvement especially with regards to safety, E) little actual regard to anyone on a bike. I've seen similar things done where I live, although not as ridicules. Cities feel compelled to make concessions, they just don't want to do things that are really big changes especially with coloring, separations, lane use for driving etc. Some of it might have to do with what's in the budget and property taxes. That would be more understandable. What's really ridicules is when there's lots of unused flat ground on the sides, and paving in an extra five feet on a new road would make for a minimum lined bike lane, yet even that isn't done.
Also when you compute 30 KPH to MPH it's 19 MPH. This whole design would be safer with that in force. Of course people would claim it's a ticket trap and in fact the cops would be operating as if it were. They'd also stick it to the cyclists if only for spite or laughs. Barneys will be Barneys. Also if the Dutch street was truly copied, it actually would of been an improvement, in spite of the imperfectness.
Looks fine to me. Drivers are supposed to hate it. The street did not suddenly become more dangerous, the dangers have just been made more apparent. I reckon drivers are upset not because the design is bad, or poorly implemented, but because the design implies that this street is not reserved exclusively for motor vehicles. A few tweaks are required though. Notice that on the Lange Nieuwstraat cars are parked right up to the suggestion lane, and the sidewalks are wide enough to walk two abreast. On Gold Cost Drive, half the sidewalk is gobbled up by the gutters, and cars pull way off the road and into the gutter, in some cases even straight across with two wheels on the sidewalk, in order to protect their precious parked vehicles from collisions. But you want those vehicles to make the road appear narrower, so you have to implement measures that will prevent parking vehicles from pulling way off the road. You want residents to view speeding as a problem, not accommodate it by parking (partially) on the sidewalk. So I would say they should have widened the sidewalk and put in less forgiving kerbs. Those straight, uninterrupted white lines separating the parking area from the road also encourage speeding. You want to interrupt those lines at EVERY driveway, and to put some obstacles on both sides of (pairs of) driveways. All in all, I would say this is a pretty good effort.
Nice video, while also showing the Netherlands's unwillingness to change till something bad happens. And like we did in the past, citizens protest against unsafe roads. This time in the form of home made 30kmh boards, where local government takes "action" on, somewhere in the future😅, hopefully.
I am surprized that the commenter does not mention parking space. Remove the on-street parking and there is enough space for two protected bike lanes on the side. Most people seem to have a driveway in that area anyway.
The parking area is wider than necessary. (you can easily see that none of the cars are even close to the white line). So if they'ld move the white lines 2 feet over, they would have enough room for a bikelane (maybe a bit narrower than in the current setup) plus a full lane in each direction. Why did they make it so difficult for themselves? (would be even better with the bike lanes between the houses and parked cars)
They should remove one row of parking spaces and use the space to make it a full (but quite narrow) two way road again. The cycle lanes should be a different color and marked by an uniterrupted line. The cars and bicycles are fully seperated that way and the cars wouldn't speed as much because of the narrower road. It will only cost a little bit of time and paint to realize that.
How many of us here thought a couple of speed bumps would've done the job? That and narrowing the street so that with parked cars on both sides, it's impossible for 2 cars to pass. What to do with the extra space? Look at those sidewalks! If you want to have a neighborhood, people need to walk. If you want people to walk, those narrow sidewalks won't do the job. You can turn them evenly, or wooden only one side to turn into a multi-use path good enough for bikes.
These types of streets can work really well. However, they will NEVER work on a street like this. The road is still wide and obstacle free. Send your engineers to the Netherlands and have them LEARN how to do it the right way and have THEM design the roads WITHOUT interference from politicians.
Год назад
1. Advisory lanes doesn't mean cyclists ought to cycle in the middle of driveway. All drivers are required to position themselves on the road as close to the rightmost edge of the driveway, when driving normally. Cyclists are "propelling themselves by the means of a mechanical or motorized vehicle", therefore they are drivers in Dutch law. 2. Lange Nieuwsstraat in Schiedam is too wide. Dutch roadway design correlates width with speed. This is why Lange Nieuwsstraat is "non-ideal" - as a driver trained in the Netherlands, to my eye, this road is for driving at 50km/h (30mph), because the width allows for it. I would like you to consider Maliesingel in Utrecht, a street recently rebuilt precisely the same way, but there's less space and visibility is obstructed a lot by sharp turns along the canal, therefore drivers are forced to go slower than 50.
The bike lane should be where the cars are parked. That's what is basically wrong in both the USA and Dutch streets used in this example. The full line is what be should be lifted say 10cm upwards, so cars cannot go there. Then you get the parked cars where the bike lane is as depicted. This means the street is narrower and the cars will drive slower. On occasion you will get an idiot opening the door which will get hit by a car, but over time, this won't be a problem. The bikes are super safe in this way.
this would have been far simpler if people were willing to give up one lane of street parking. So odd that we get to store cars for free on public land. If I stored my couch or firewood people would loose their minds.
Why? Can things go well in the Netherlands? The bike is the slower. On the road. And cars, give a little less space. For the feeling. Because the road remains just as wide. And that through a few lines! Awesome!!
Another reason why the FHWA never should have stopped experimentation with advisory bike lanes. It’s ridiculous that Mira Mesa failed so much, but there’s nothing wrong conceptually with a shared mode, thin two way street
If we can make a slow street where you can have safe mixing occur 100%. But a “bike advisory lane” is a fundamental misinterpretation of what the Dutch have. It doesn’t exist here
These complainants are the same ones who think parked cars are a hazard then claim the empty streets have traffic going to fast. What these people think will cause more crashes do not realize the goal is not to eliminate ALL crashes. It is to eliminate serious and injurious crashes. The encounter of head-on crashes SHOULD slow drivers down like a one-lane bridge, but now they will claim it dangerous because they have to slow down like a one-way bridge.
This would work much better to just not bother painting the road in the first place. The intended behavior is already how people drive on unpainted roads, and without adding to the confusion with unfamiliar road markings.
Some of the mindset in the US is, “well it’s European so it has to be a better idea.” They fail to take cultural differences and just plain human nature into consideration.
Probably a hot take for North America, but banning on-street parking would have probably done more to fix Mira Mesa than non-ideal bike lanes ever could.
They honestly might as well if not even had any painted lanes. Oh it's the worst of both worlds it has sidewalks, too so the assumption would be on the driver that cyclists would use it. I grew up/lived in a subdivision where the street is by default a "multi use" there are no sidewalks. So people walk, cycle, and drive on the same road. However it isn't as trafficed this neighborhood. Except maybe after 5 to 6ish. The only thing you can do is make it smaller, automatically, multi use. I tend to disagree with Urbanist on the issue "that every subdivision needs sidewalks" a subdivision neighborhood should be designed to feel safe a enough that don't need sidewalks. But that's just my opinion.
I interviewed 2 city reps involved with this project. Both agreed the reason this facility was removed is because the City omitted public outreach. The folks flipped when they saw an ELR for the 1st time. So they called their politicians and got it removed. Video is wrong.
I’m glad that you value the opinion of 2 officials who’ve never created a successful ETW before more than the design criteria of a country that’s been doing it for more than 30 years. Sounds about North American 😂. “The 2 officials of corrupt company A have determined in an interview that company A is not at fault for corruption”. You’re doing exactly what the video talks about. Blaming the public for YOUR crappy design because you never understood it from the country that you tried copying it from. But I’m glad you got some juicy contracts along the way from San Diego
Your comment is exactly right. And Mayor Todd Gloria was so embarrassed by the public outcry over this very modest Mira Mesa bike lane project that he immediately ordered the bike lanes removed. The real problem, though, is that despite all the hoopla about reducing carbon emissions by encouraging cycling, San Diego has done very little to add to cycling infrastructure. With a few exceptions, fragmented, disconnected paint-only bike lanes is all the city has managed to provide. Even those half-hearted measures provoke an outcry by a motoring public that doesn’t want to lose vehicle lanes or on-street parking.
This kind of systems also require car drivers to be used to cyclists, and a certain critical mass of cyclists. In this case it would make more sense to make the street one way do you can physically seperate the cycle path, or to create choke points forcars with planters.
Of course cyclists mostly stick to the right in the Lange Nieuwstraat. That's the rule in NL, even on highways for cars. You drive/ride on the right unless/until you want to overtake someone. Main problem there is speed. Main problem in SD is culture. A lack of freedom and therefor an inability or unwillingness to take responability and learn. Stop signs, speed signs and traffic lights govern pretty much everything in North America no need to make a decission. Drivers should drive right and stay behind cyclists until it is safe to overtake. But 'safe' requires a personal assessment ... freedom ... risk .... liabilty ... won't work.
Another issue is that advisory bike lanes were designed for *low* traffic roads, not high-speed high traffic suburbs. The main issue, of course, is high-speed high traffic suburbs. What a poopshow.
It's like they saw the dutch road design and tried to make up the traffic rules themselves. It's really not that complicated. Just drive on your side of the road and if there is a cyclist in front of you, you can overtake them when it is safe to do so. The whole thing of having to drive in the middle and swerving into the bikelane for oncoming traffic is just asking for collisions. Also, why would a cyclist want to drive in the middle of the road? That's just asking to be rear-ended by an unexpecting driver
To be honest the only problems that really stood out to me that is that the street is really really really wide. Like, we have actual highways that are that wide. That's kind of crazy for a neighbourhood collector road. That and the fact that they didn't use different colors for the bike "lanes", which would have made a bigger difference in the optical narrowing of the street. Well that and the cultural unfamiliarity. Also... Lange Nieuwstraat is definitely not a shared space and cyclists are not at all expected or encouraged to cycle in the center (then what is the purpose of those side lanes??). I don't even know where you got those ideas from. Try again.
Lange Nieuwstraat is a gray path. Meaning it is not either a GOW or an ETW. I said it is SUPPOSED to function like a shared space because it’s classified as an ETW. But it’s not and those red lanes are functioning exactly like official bike paths. This is exactly why Lange Nieuwstraten has so many problems.
And it is streets like Lange nieuwstraat that gives American designers the idea that official bike lanes on an access street are an appropriate solution to slow down traffic. I’m going to produce another video to explain edge striping more and why they do it in The Netherlands
This is a very common design in Germany when it is not possible to build a normal bike lane because the streets are to narrow. Still most people unterstand how to use it. it is quite simple you can use it as long as not cyclist is about but you have to pass carefully and yield to them when traffic doesn't allow to pass.
I dont see the need for parking spaces on both sides of the road, getting rid of one side with give them plenty of room for a protected two way bike lane. Never mind I forgot that lazy Americans will riot if they have to cross the street to go home after they park their cars
This video is completely misinformed. The primary problem with the Mira Mesa facilities is that the city did no public outreach whatsoever. This is according to the city of officials I interviewed there. And using one poor example from the Netherlands to decry an entire class of treatment is ridiculous. This treatment is used both in urban and rural settings. The Dutch have different design criteria for those settings. This video doesn't even look at rural applications. It also doesn't look at uses of this treatment in other countries. It fails to mention the safety benefits documented by peer-reviewed research in the United States. If you're going to do a video like this, please educate yourself first, then make the video.
Hey Michael. You seem to be under a false impression. The title of the video is “why this project failed”. Not “the different applications of ETWs inside and outside of the built up area in the Netherlands”. There IS a substantial difference between inside and outside of the built up area. Explaining this fully would require diving into “duurzamveilig” and the entire organization of Dutch traffic categories and would get way too far away from the original purpose of this video. Remember that there is a completely seperate engineering manual for BUBEKO vs BIBEKO. Plus Mira mesa only falls into the inside the built up category so I saw very little relevance to discuss outside of the built up area design. You can take issue with the choice of “Lange Nieuwstraat” but the truth is that there is no “good” example of a Dutch ETW with wide advisory lanes. There are no good examples because the presence of wide advisory lanes causes them to function as official cycle lanes, which violates duurzamveilig and causes streets like this to fall into the “grey path” category. It’s not that the application of the striping is bad, but rather the completely misunderstanding of what a “suggestiestrook” is and why it was out there to begin with. I’m not sure what “peer reviewed” research you are referring to but I value the opinion of CROW much more because it’s backed by 50 years of real life application. Why should I look into something that is trying to poorly reinvent the wheel when I have something that has been tried and tested in the real world for decades? Finally as to your hypothesis on this being a failure solely because of no public outreach. I agree that this definitely played a role but the good news is that your explanation can get tested soon in the real world as San Diego plans to deploy more of these. So you can see how that turns out. My own humble hypothesis: it’ll go around the same when the Dutch tried doing something similar 25 years ago or worse since American drivers are less trained and 25 mph is faster than 30 km/hr.
@@buildthelanes why this project failed? Did you interview any officials, residents, or engineers involved in the project? What data did you gather on the reasons for the removal of this facility?
@@michaelwilliams2827 it failed because it was removed almost immediately. Because it caught the community off guard and the community correctly deduced it was more dangerous. Because of how the edge lanes were repurposed as bike lanes. Because of a misinterpretation of a suggestion lane as an actual bike lane. Because of poor examples in the Netherlands where this has been done. If a city decides to do something crazy like allow lead to leak into a water supply system, I don’t need to interview every person responsible to show how it’s a bad idea. Simply explaining some of the technical aspect of how lead poisoning works will do.
If you are so called “edge lane” expert, you should understand that a suggestion lane is only meant to visually narrow a street enough to slow down car drivers so it’s safe enough for all modes to share the same travel surface. So it should be immediately be obvious to you that creating actual bike lanes is a bastardization of the concept and cause the design to fail. Which it did
When engineers in the US design these roads, they should think of whether or not they would want their children riding in those lanes 🤯
If I could talk to those engineers or any proponents of bad design, I'd say something like, "would you let your 8-year old daughter ride her bike on here?" Specifically because it's a pretty common age for kids to walk/ride to school or down the street alone worldwide, and because parents are more protective of their daughters whereas they'd let their boys do more risky things. If it's not safe for the most vulnerable, then it's not safe enough.
Or they themselves since they think non-children wont ever ride a bike in the US
Their children? Are you implying these people get laid?
@@veelastname part of it would be education. Here in the Netherlands these roads are very common, even on roads with speeds up to 60 kmp/h. Only works on roads with light traffic though. It’s part of our driving lessons to drive on these roads and learn to anticipate and let ongoing traffic through. These roads are great, but probably wont ever work in a country where they were never used because i would be confused as a driver as well if it were my first time.
@@J27093 to be honest i would not want my 6 year old driving on a suggestiestrook on a 60 kpu road. they are still dangerous, and alot of times theres a seperate bike road.
What they have forgot in there minds is that the car drivers in the Netherlands are also bikers!So they have far more interest in safe driving in such a street!They know how it is when a car is speeding next to you on the bike lane.Thats why it works in our country,but not in your country.Also they didnt put the poles in the middle lane,forcing cars to slow down.
You should have listened more
It's still so bad that they're considering changing it
you missed the part where it's not even working in the netherlands. it's better than the us (extremely low bar) but the dutch are still so unhappy with how this street is functioning that they are considering further design changes.
Or maybe because this infrastructure is stupid 😂
It also helps that every dutch citizen who is taught to drive a car, is told that the Law is made in such a way, that cyclists get to go free in case of a collision. It is automatically assumed that the driver of the car is guilty, no matter what the actual situation was at the time. Police don't even bother showing up. Your car insurance, which is mandatory in order to drive a car, just raises your insurance level and you end up paying more. Even if it wasn't your fault, and even if you could somehow prove it in court, then the law states that you still have to pay for 50% of the damages. In effect it means it's to much fuss and you just pay up the full 100%. It also means that cyclists don't really care what the rules are, because they go free anyways. And considering cyclists can come from all sides, car drivers are usually exceptionally aware of their surroundings, and everything becomes a lot safer.
There is an error in your sentence, this isn't a street, it's a road that is masquerading as a street, it's still too wide, there is no traffic calming, and there is no separate bicycle path for cyclists to safely ride their bikes.
one of those designs was used for a street nearby here in Helmond (Netherlands) and it works really well. But the reason it works well is becouse there is barely any traffic. That is perhaps the most important part of this design becouse if you increase the amount of car traffic it might still feel safe enough to cycle on but it isn't pleasant. Even if everone drives 30km/h.
I mean if you low traffic, it might have anything to do with road design. I mean I live a subdivision NA but don't have sidewalks, this means the street of neighborhood is multi use automatically. In it's 35+ years we only had person hit.
We have some streets that are multi-use and they're perfectly fine because they average 6 cars and 10 cargo vans per day (most of which are in the 22-07 time window)
Theres a busy street in my parents town in NL where they just removed the seperated bike lanes and made it a bike street similar to the one in this video, except without the markings. The street connecting to it is a 50 km/h street. Its also one of the main traffic arteries into and out of the town center.
Just goes to show, we can fuck up too.
@@TheSuperappelflap At least your country isn't just one gigantic fuck up like the US
One of the things I always notice when visiting is that traffic signs in the USA are full of words and hard to quickly understand.
Most countries have simple traffic signs with only one symbol.
Traffic signs should not have words AT ALL. Only a number at best.
If you need a whole book on a traffic sign, you have failed horribly elsewhere.
All the signs are shape and color coded so the words are redundant.
Better yet, include both. Symbols can sometimes be ambiguous, so including words to clear any confusion will allow for the best of both worlds.
There is 1 word that should be allowed on road signs: STOP
@@BHV_7 actually they are only ambiguous to those who haven’t learnt how to read the signs. Use both signs and text makes it even more confusing. The signs are being used worldwide, which also look similar, except for a few countries.
@@ar134_ How would both make signs more confusing? They provide redundancy; if one fails for some reason, the other is still there, guaranteeing that the driver doesn’t miss the message. Yes, symbols are easier to recognize, but sometimes they can have more than one possible interpretation (even if there is only one correct meaning). I can see a driver easily mixing up two symbol-only signs, so text in addition could clear this confusion.
Thanks for this video. As a San Diego area resident who's driven all over the county, Mira Mesa is the classic American suburb in the worst ways. People drive way too fast because they can, and non-motorists can't get anywhere directly because all their residential developments are walled off so they gotta snake around through these local streets just to go to the store or next neighborhood. The kind of people who live in those detached home areas often drive far to work and have little patience as it is with the snaking paths they gotta take so they drive as fast as the road design lets them, and pedestrians/cyclists have no choice but to travel the same paths where they have inevitable conflict points. We need more modal filtering and uncoupling of different modal routes as well as safer road design and maybe some street trees and other amenities to make walks/biking safer, and more comfortable.
Also in Mira Mesa's case, more human scale and mixed use development that doesn't put such a wide physical separation between residents and businesses. Almost all the commercial space in MM is along Mira Mesa Blvd, and even the drive through there is loud from car noises and hot in the summer so I can only imagine the walk! People shouldn't have to walk across 10 lanes of traffic just to get to Target or the grocery store, and we don't need gas stations or fast food drive thrus on literally every corner.
I've been to Mira Mesa while visiting family. Nice suburb, incredibly difficult to walk to any destination. There's plenty of space to make changes, but it won't be really pleasant without reworking the land use to give active modes some way to punch through cul-de-sacs.
Really, it's another one I file under "please let robotaxis and ebikes take over so that there are fewer car owners to protest changes that impact parking".
@@veelastname The thing about Mira Mesa is that the amount of retail in the center far exceeds the number of residents nearby. Its a major shopping center that has more people from outside Mira Mesa shopping at than Mira Mesa residents, which is why it has to be so car based. If you want to have walkable neighborhoods you would have to scale down the amount of retail to an amount that is only necessary to the residents, and spread it out across the suburb. You cant have major shopping centers and a walkable suburb.
The entire concept of those cul-de-sack like American suburbs is horrible. Just like grids are horrible. There should at least be way more bike and pedestrian paths as shortcuts to get from A to B while avoiding cars. And for the cars, there should at least be 2 directions in which you can get out of the neighbourhood instead of just 1.
@@JH-pe3ro Robotaxis are a strictly inferior solution compared to existing public transport, bikes, and the option of having on-demand public transport that stops at your front door using an app.
Call it a robo-bus, make it fit more than 4 people, and then we can talk.
they could put the street parking where the bike/suggestion lanes were, and then you'd have parking protected bike/walking lane. The street would be narrow so cars will naturally slow down but they can still pass through.
You could do that, but that also means that we’re agreeing to give 90 percent of all space to cars, which would keep it as a busy through road which may not be something that is wanted.
It really comes down to deciding what we want from the space, then designing exactly for that purpose. When we just “react” to just the present conditions we get largely the same setup with only a few tweaks.
Again, I wouldn’t say there’s anything “wrong” with your suggestion, if we want to keep Mira mesa as a faster car speed area with through traffic I would agree with you. Tell us what you want out of the travel surface then we can deliver the correct design
@@buildthelanes But BTL, it is really about what the people want. Count the number of people in cars and count the number of people riding bikes. Children ride bikes because they are not allowed to drive cars. When they are old enough and earn enough money to buy and drive cars, that is what they do. People will vote to fund mass transit because 1) busses carry those who cannot afford cars or do not always wish to find parking for them. and 2) to get those OTHER cars off the freeway so we can drive at speed limit!
Cars are very useful for certain things: It is much easier to carry a week's worth of groceries home with even a Mini Cooper than it is to carry it on a bike. You can use the municipal bus service but only if it has a stop next to the grocery store and another stop next to your house or apartment. And then you can only carry so much necessitating additional trips to the store. And you can irritate the other bus passengers. We also know how Crips, Bloods, Latin Kings, MS-13, and other fine upstanding citizens like to ride busses too!
Cars are also useful for going anywhere more than 2 miles away. In the pouring rain. How is the bicycle in the rain?
Even on sunny days, car is great for getting anywhere that is miles away from town and its bus system. If I want to go from Seattle to Ellensburg, I take the car.
That is why people want cars and American cities are built for cars.
I think the idea here is that there isn't space for cars to pass each other without one of them going into the bike lane. So if the bike lanes were protected by parking, it wouldn't be possible to pass an oncoming car (the parked cars aren't moving). I agree that protected bike lanes are best and if there is room to pass with them, then I am mistaken.
@@RogerWKnight That is not really fair. You acknowledge yourself that American citites are designed for cars, of course people are going to use the car in such a case. If cities and suburbs would get designed with other modes of transportation in mind (say cycling but also walking or public-transport) then those *will* go up in popularity. Like you example is pretty much saying 'No one uses the train' when there isn't any rail for the train to go on. The same goes for your shopping example. You can absolutely do shopping with a bicycle. In the big citites you should be good with a bag and every day or two shopping. in the suburbs, because of car orientated design, the mall is probably going to be a bit further away. That is a shame but is also a problem caused the focus on cars. However even despite that you can always get a cargo-bike (or bakfiets), and use that for the once in a week shopping. The 2-mile limit you mention is not a thing, you can absolutely cycle more than that, in fact a 13 mile trip (two-way) should not be out of the question at all for the standard individual.
One last thing I want to touch on is your thoughts on the public-transport (mainly busses). Busses do not just get used by 'people who can't afford cars'. In some places busses are just the superior (whether its because its quicker, more efficient or just way more relaxed) form of transportation, and they get used by everyone. Normal people like you and I. Putting a stigma on public transport is not a good look. Also funny side note, encouraging people to use other modes of transportation also reduces the amount of cars on the road. Which is great for car drivers, and yes I'll admit: cars have their place on the road, but so does everything else.
@@ehoops31 yup that is correct. Switching the bike lane and the parking places would not leave enough room for two cars to pass at the same time.
Don’t forget for this to work in the US some rules need to change. In the Netherlands when there’s a accident between a car and bike, the car is always at fault unless proven otherwise. And even if you can proof it’s not your fault as car driver it doesn’t mean you ain’t at fault. As car driver you are expected to know better and must be prepared to expect the unexpected. So if you see bikes on roads like these you will be careful and only pass if it’s safe to pass.
This would be considered inequity in America because bicyclists here are also as reckless as vehicular drivers. Disregarding very simple regulations, especially when they fail to yield to pedestrians.
@@traffic.engineer I get you but I promise you pedestrians and cyclists can be just as reckless here in europe (can speak for switzerland, idk about the netherlands).
In our laws, the 'heavier' vehicule is always at fault because no matter what the weaker party does wrong it only turns into a more dangerous situation once a bigger/heavier one is involved. For example accident between bycicle and pedestrian => cyclists fault because they didn't pay attention enough and always have to prepared of the unexpected. Same then goes for the bigger vehicules.
@@traffic.engineerThe "inequity" we currently have is that cars end the lives of cyclists, but cyclists never end the life of cars. Funny how nobody cares about that.
@@vcaesium That would be a very cumbersome process for a not-at-fault driver that did everything by the book, including the additional maneuvering and insurance they took. And that is on top of the mental trauma the drivers will experience. Especially in America where a majority of avid bicyclists are rich and white, those who use cars/trucks for business (a large number who are non-white and/or middle-class) would only consider the system being rigged against them.
Trucks may cause more damage than a car, but over two-thirds of car-truck crashes are fault of the car in America. Unless the truckers are paying the same rate of insurance as the car driver, such a system would only be double-jeopardy to the truck driver.
@@cebruthius And the drivers have to live with that mental trauma for the rest of their life, despite taking all measures to drive legally and safely. They already proving their innocence under extreme duress. What is the equity of punishing them more, legally and/or financially?
That kind of design is being used in some small village communities in Finland where it really works well imo since there are barely any traffic and the locals who have to get by walking/cycling on the side of the road have whole wider space for it
I've been told by people who live there that even seeing another car in a drive is a "busy road" in northern Finland!
1:05 "That little rectangular sign we always see in North America when we drive, that white rectangular sign that says, "25 miles per hour..."
There's only one country in North America with signs like the one pictured that says, "SPEED LIMIT 25."
For example, English signs in Canada say, "MAXIMUM 50 km/h."
Thank you for the analysis. We need lots of education here in the US. The more you and those like you continue to shine a light on these problems, the sooner ‘we’ will embrace the solutions. As you know, we are decades behind in learning these very very simple lessons. Keep it up
Thanks for your perspective on this project failure. The Mira Mesa project had definite design failures - because it's so damn hard internally at a City to implement all the bells and whistles that Dutch Streets enjoy that create 8-80 bikeable streets. However, the LACK of OUTREACH was the true failure, because the City staff didn't effectively communicate how this street will work for daily users (mostly drivers). Your analysis would have been SICK if you had made a call to a planner there to understand how the public reacted, because we need more collective information for the public and professionals on the details for why we failed to implement better bike streets.
Definitely! My own expertise is in Dutch design so I try to heavily focus on that. I don’t know much I could add to the outreach part other then “they didn’t do enough outreach”.
I think though if there’s a bad design all of the outreach in the world wouldn’t have helped. Maybe fewer people would have protested but it’s be just as dangerous and not move the needle on vision 0 I think.
One things the Netherlands does really well is public outreach on projects and they’re redoing my street right now. I’m thinking of making a video on the process once it’s done
I have a hard time understanding the neighborhood backlash as being anything other than outreach failure and neighborhood misunderstanding. Despite what people think, we are all incredibly used to this layout: it's just how our neighborhood streets look normally, but with a bit more paint. If you took any scenario from an unpainted neighborhood and put it on the street, everyone would/should respond the same way. It LOOKS scary because it's so new and foreign, but the reality is that it is just a more delineated neighborhood street design. If I remember right, I think they ended up re-striping this street to have the center line again, but I would have been curious to have seen the neighborhood's response to NO striping.
Just looking at those signs, you know the design has failed.
I notice this a lot in North America:
Signs with a lot of words on them trying to compensate for failing design elsewhere.
In general North American traffic signs are horrible. Lot's of hard to read words, where a single symbol would be much easier. Many cannot be read at the speeds being travelled.
@@buildthelanes You could have reached out to the city for comment but they would likely decline
I hate advisory lanes since it's just paint and depend on the people to decide if they're gonna yield or not, it's a very dangerous design and sadly still gets used in the Netherlands often cause there's no better alternative on some roads but at least it's better than nothing.
I've had many close calls with drivers not yielding and a couple of them actually crashing into me which resulted in me now being very anxious when cycling.
I have winter where I live and between snow and salt the paint becomes very hard to see.
@@scottmccullough8030 that’s true, that’s why advisory lanes suck
Well I think with the faster bicycles like electric bikes it might actually be better to create more suggestions lanes and reduce the car speed to 30kph. So the faster cyclists will get more space in traffic and be able to use the center of the road when it is really crowded. In Rotterdam you see those streets more and more. For example Walenburg in Rotterdam. Or just extremely wide bicycle lanes like the Coolsingel.
@@sebastiaansiemensma that’s in the city, i’m talking about the advisory lanes in the buiten bebouwde kom that’re on roads with speeds up to 60 km/h but most people drive way faster than 60 which is very dangerous.
There’ve been numerous times where i was almost hit.
@@scottmccullough8030 We have that problem in the Netherlands as well, believe it or not, we also have winter here and it does snow. Not as much as it used to because we are experiencing temperature increases due to climate change at about 3x the global average rate, but between december and march it can and does snow. For reference, were at about the same latitude as Toronto.
Most busy roads are swept and salted, but you can run into a situation where the advisory lanes are covered in salty snowy mud.
In that case the solution is to cycle in the middle of the road where it isnt slippery and flip off every driver that honks at you.
While I haven't been on the Dutch street shown on the video, I have been on countless Dutch streets that use the advisory bike lanes/edge lanes with great success and would love to see there adoption increased in the US. I agree that the US street needs more calming measures beyond the edge lane treatment to get the speeds lower. Public education is critical.
An advisory edge lane is completely different than a bike lane. The purpose of an edge lane is to reduce traffic speeds so the entire travel surface can be used by bikes. Only ETWs outside of the built up area may have actually bike lanes
@@steffenberr6760 they're a waste of time and an increase in risk
@@angrydragonslayer Well not so much. Any improvement is good, but as the video stated, and it is clear to see if you look at the American road, you need to have a clear distinction between all parts. The Dutch road has 3 different colours. The US one is the same all across.
@@metalhead6604 we have black advisory lanes here in Germany (with a different concept), maybe they've mixed up both - but still all the dimensions are so completely wrong.
I'm pretty sure it is against the regulations for streets (for low speed access, as opposed to roads) in the Netherlands to have a bike lane. The whole street is the bike lane. Folks confusing advisory lane markings with bike lanes is an ongoing problem there (and everywhere else apparently).
I live in the Netherlands, and there are millions of streets like this, both in cities, suburbs, and in the countryside.
Also in many other places in Europe.
They work very well everywhere.
But, having said that, people in Europe have real drivers licences, as opposed to the States where anyone who can show they know which end of the car is the front or back will get a drivers licence.
So that, among other things like distances and the car culture, may make cycling in the US a lost cause.
Another thing, if nobody walks in the US, why not widen the sidewalks to incorporate a bike path everywhere in the whole country so people will get used to it? This would make the street much narrower, reducing speeds and promoting smaller cars. Also cars turning right or left over the bike lane (that has priority) would cause drivers to wake up and slow and look before turning. Again, slowing traffic.
Again, the Netherlands and many other European countries do all these things successfully.
The solutions are already out there.
There are few ETW with official bicycle other on them because doing so is illegal. There are many streets with suggestion lanes which is not how Lange nieuwstraat is operating nor what is present in San Diego
"real" drivers licenses I have a hard time understanding why you're so obsessed with a country that's not yours
How can I live in the Netherlands? I wish my ancestors never left there :( Life is not great in the US if one cannot operate a car, as is my case.
@@seanthe100 Getting a drivers license in the netherlands usually costs a few thousand euros for driving lessons, those lessons usually take between a few months and a year to complete and then you need to take a written test where you need to score about a 90% on each test subject and an 35-minute long driving test in the city and highway where one error usually means you fail your test. That is what he means by a real drivers license.
"Freedom!" Don't take away our cars, or our guns for that matter.
Maybe slightly unrelated, but it is a different mentality toward government imposing rules or limiting citizens, I feel.
The youtuber Road Guy Rob actually went into this is more detail but from a US traffic engineering perspective. Much of what actually caused the issue here was the high vehicle count on that particular road!
One of the worst things about these American culdesack suburbs is the parking. Why dont you just put a parking lot at the front of the culdesack and walk the last 50 yards? Cars should only be in the culdesacks for delivery and pickup of heavy goods.
The issue is that this is a two way road with three lanes and only one car lane and that lane is to narrow to pass so it would need to be wider, therefore i think either street parking should be removed from one side or maybe the street be narrowed by the 0.5 to 1 bike lanes, maybe they could only have a bike lane on one side. Either way it is to narrow for such a highly trafficked two car street.
These lanes are being used in quite a lot of areas in the Netherlands, especially on older roads that haven't yet been brought up to the latest code. There are several reasons why they work here, somewhat.
1) drivers are also cyclists
2) actual traffic calming
3) they are usually only used on calmer streets
As a Dutchman, I don't love these kinds of streets, but they sorta work okay enough considering Dutch traffic culture and the whole picture.
For the US, considering they haven't been "educated" on the existence of cyclists, you have to dumb it down. This kinda infrastructure relies on voluntary compliance, and really that's just not good enough considering the level of cyclist awareness of US drivers.
Build infrastructure that doesn't rely on drivers behaving correctly, but that separates cyclists and drivers, and that forces drivers to slow down and pay attention in areas where conflict might be expected.
Purely in of themselves I don't have a huge problem with suggestie stroken. But what i tried to communicate is that they get used as a compensatory measure when its hard to get an older street to behave like a proper ETW. And then they get copied in North America who dont realize theyre copying the " its not great but we can sorta get away with it because its such a calmer and low intensity traffic environment" Then of course it falls flat on its face because its brought to a place like gold coast drive wither higher traffic speeds and intensities.
Suggestie strooks truly arent meant to be real bike lanes (this is why they arent syupposed to put a bike symbol on it), I know many cities go ahead and make them look eactly like bike lanes anyway and I wouldnt blame anyone for mistaking them and using it as one. But CROW is also aware of it is actively discussing scrapping it since theres probably better ways.
A lot of US drivers are NOT cyclists. Cycling is more of a recreational hobby in the USA. Many of the US cities are not designed for cyclists, partially due to the layouts of the land. We don't have good public transit in many cities. In a lot of cities people need to use their cars due to the distances between homes, offices, shopping districts, and other attractions. I think until cities deploy good metro and light rail systems to ALL major residential and commercial areas of the cities, I don't think that drivers are going to give up their cars. Simply building bike lanes, removing for on-street parking, or getting landlords to charge for parking is not going to do much unless cities have reliable public transportation to most areas of town. Cities will have to stop segregating housing by residents income level if they want sustainable transportation, and instead do mixed income neighborhoods where rich and poor people live on the same streets in the same neighborhoods or apartment complexes.
From NL (me): Atleast san Diego did try to fix it. Thats still better than doing nothing and pointing to other governments and vice versa. Like our politicians.
I hate those roads in the Netherlands. You don't enjoy them as cyclist, as a motorcycle rider, nor as a car driver. The idea of putting "calming measures" that will result in a serious crash are so ridiculous, especially when you are in a motorcycle and you have to hope that vehicle riders respect you.
Normally, when they narrow the street to let one vehicle pass, the bicycles can go straight ahead by the side and are protected by posts. But in some crappy towns (i am looking at you, Mariaheide), they make the cyclist ALSO GO IN THE MIDDLE OF THE STREET!! They are literally using cyclists as speed bumps. Unbelievable.
I applaud the city planners for trying to adapt measures from other parts of the world. Unfortunately, they didn't do a thorough investigation, but i am happy that there is at least the thought of doing something
Honestly, Lange Nieuwstraat is a poor example of what it should be like, it is like comparing the Mira Mesa to Lange Nieuwstraat.
A proper way would be to make a small paved curved gutter between the bike lanes and the center lane where the cars drive.
It almost separates both lanes while still leaving cars the chance to go on the bike lanes IF necessary.
It is not something simple paint can solve.
When cars start going into the gutter, they start vibrating due to the paved gutter and also become slanted, thus they are forced to slow down. If they want to go faster, they have to stick to the center lane. Going into the bike lane thus slows down cars. You have occasional physical separators like bollards or berms, preventing cars from constantly driving in the bike lane.
They don't need to be placed on both sides at the same time and cause a narrowing, you can alternate. This also slows cars down.
Then you can put a few road narrowings here and there.
And this is to be used on streets with low traffic, or at least be designed in a way to reduce traffic.
The safe road initiative in the Netherlands started in 1975. We've been at for quite some time and it still isn't perfect, but in general taking part in traffic here in the Netherlands is great experience no matter your choice of participation (walking, unmotorized vehicles, or motorized vehicles).
The advisory lanes and bike lanes in the American examples are way too wide. You could fit a car on them with ease
notice the cars parked on the side walks in the san diego parts. this road wasn’t thought out.
one thing i’ve noticed in many area with various redesigns is that not a lot of money is put into them. they temporary and ready to be put back to their previous design.
I think this project probably worked better than you think. The hint is in what drivers complained about...they said it was confusing and unsafe. This is in fact, exactly what drivers SHOULD think about traffic calmed streets. It is exactly the feeling that encourages someone to slow down and take more care.
This is of course uncomfortable, and North American drivers are some of the most pampered people in the history of humanity, they aren't accustomed to discomfort of any kind (hell, have you heard how they believe rain is lethal?) so when they are made to feel uncomfortable at all, they think something is wrong as opposed to right.
That being said, you're right that this design could have been better, but I don't necessarily think the problem is the use of no centre line + advisory lines to narrow the apparent width of the road. This is done on streets all over the Netherlands with...varying...degrees of success. FWIW, unless they are willing to make real concessions to traffic flow patterns (which may very well be impossible in that neighbourhood) you simply cannot have a safe residential street carrying that volume of traffic without making compromises.
to be fair, the acid rain caused by all their exhaust fumes IS lethal
This is very thorough and well-executed 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥
Agreed
Not that Australia is good at this, but what we'd do with this kind of road is put traffic calming devices every 50 metres or so (large speed bumps, angled diversions, etc.), fill the kerb in quite often so the side parking is actual real parking, add planted areas in those filled in parts, add small roundabouts at each intersection, paint speed limits on the road, and potentially even close it to through traffic. There's a lot you could do that works better and is safer than what they tried.
this is a design appropriate for rural roads with little traffic and slow streets within the city
semi related question that I noticed- there's a few streets in Austin that have the bike lane inside of the parked cars, so it goes traffic->parked cars->bike lane->sidewalk. I notice that the parked cars ended up acting as traffic calming measures as well as protection from traffic for cyclist. why aren't all bike lines striped like this?
Hey Javier,
So the main thing that stops the setup you’re talking about is a sight equation engineers use to calculate the perception of things coming from the left and the right and then braking appropriately. So basically the number of driveways along your typical residential road plus the fact someone can move pretty fast in a car during this transition prevents a lot of engineers from trying.
This setup is normally great on a proper road, when you have higher speeds and not a lot of entrance and exits that overlap with the bike path. The thing is that on a lot of residential streets if you need a protected bike lane because there’s too much through traffic going very fast there’s a bigger problem. Since it’s a human habitat the last thing you want is lots of car traffic moving quickly through the area. Basically the street should be safe enough to begin with for all nodes to mingle.
We have this in Columbus on a southbound one way road that used to be 3 lanes traffic / 2 lanes parking (4 lanes traffic / 1 lane parking in rush hour) and it's terrible! Now it's 2 lanes traffic all the time on a major thoroughfare, 2 lanes parking, and one 2 way bike path that takes the west side of the street lane. So now traffic is always bad, it's incredibly hard to park in the parking lanes. Cars often sit on the bike lane. If you are crossing this street, you not only have to look in the car direction, but also try to get in a quick look the other way before you cross the bike lane, of which the view is often obscured by parked cars in the parking lane. Basically it's much more suckage for cars, and the bike lane is so dangerous that I'd never use it. Of yeah, and if you want to turn right off of this road at any light, you can't go when the light turns green. You have to wait for a green turn arrow. That a lot of people run, making it more dangerous for that bike lane.
What they should have done is: take the 5 lanes and make it like this from west most lane to east: Lane 1 - Bike lane, proper barrier. Lane 2, 3, 4 - traffic. Lane 5 parking. It wouldn't be perfect as the crossing issues are still there for the bikes, but it gets rid of the visual impediments of the west parking lane making the lane safer. It also frees up the traffic some, which relieves some congestion, and may make it safer from a frustration POV. Also, with only one lane of parking, people parking will only congest 1 of 3 lanes as they park, instead of killing 1 of 2 lanes. Making the traffic lights "smart", aka detecting users of the bike lanes without them having to sit at the intersection would help a lot as the right turn lanes would get a green by default unless the bike lane was in use.
@@buildthelanes Having parked cars between the road and bikelane is the standard setup for streets and roads in Europe. I think sight engineers in the USA need new manuals. ;)
@@Robbedem yes i dont haev a problem with it but this is usually why they get rejected, however these european lanes typically dont haev as many driveways conflicting with the bike lanes too adn smaller cars
@@buildthelanes
European houses are often build next to eachother without spacing (row housing).
And those can all have a driveway. (per two driveways next to eachother and than a bit of space for one or two cars to park on the street).
Municipalities/cities will restrict the height you are allowed to have something against the pavement to 1m, to allow vision of the road.
Variations in Boulder County, Colorado: a) Harvard Lane (parallel to/west of Broadway) between Dartmouth and Table Mesa b) Polk/Dahlia w/speed humps, crosswalks in Louisville. Crowdsourced Mapillary has bike-view images (not sure about KartaView, Mapilio)
I agree that it was suboptimal, but the other side of the coin is that it was in fact still an improvement over the status quo of the type of design that is normal here in America, especially SoCal.
This was not an improvement. The only thing that changed now is that car are going the same speed but they are entering the bike lane more frequently now.
Very well put. If I was engineering that section of road, The first thing I would do is get rid of the on street parking.
They probably chose advisory lanes to preserve parking. I am sure there would be even more opposition from the community if they took away parking to build a protected bike lane. It might have worked better if they made the street width even narrower and used tiles in the middle section to slow cars down. Just poor execution.
The old setup had bike lanes and parking
For the us i really think completely separated bike lanes are possible for now, increase the amount of bike trips possible, have local destination development and get people comfortable with cycling. One of the main reasons it works so well in the netherlands is that everyone cycles and knows what it is like to cycle. That creates compassion instead of annoyance. Though some teens may still take up the whole road.
If they just made those lanes a bit less ridiculously wide theyd have plenty of space for dedicated bike lanes everywhere without an extra cm, i mean inch, of asphalt, i mean tarmac
Given how poor cycling infrastructure is in San Diego, it's shocking that San Diego's Trolley rivaled the Portland MAX in per mile and total ridership pre-COVID and has recovered from COVID faster than any other US LRT.
Advisory bikelanes in itself are not bad. However you must know when to use them and when not. Seeing the street in San Diego this was not a valid solution for that street with that amount of traffic going on. There is too much traffic to share spaces like this.
I dear to believe that in the Netherlands this solution wouldn't be implemented for this specific street.
I dislike the term “advisory bike lane” because it communicates the wrong thing I think. An “advisory bike lane” suggests where it’s where cyclists should ride.
What you see in the Netherlands are suggestion lane. But not lanes for bicycles. They’re markings to visually narrow the street so cars slow down enough so cyclists may safely use the entire travel surface width. In short a proper suggestion lane calms traffic enough for cyclists to use the entire width whereas a “bike advisory lane” uses cyclists themselves as a traffic calming measure to try to get cars to slow down in a game of chicken. There’s a huge difference and that’s exactly why Lange niuewestraat is so dangerous because they did something illegal but tweaked it enough in a way where it operates exactly in that dangerous manner but they can’t be sued for it.
I directly thought: in the Netherlands we have similar streets everywhere, with the suggestion lanes. But I suppose we have more slowing down methods, and we're more used to looking out for bikes. Now what would be the solution for subrubian streets? I mean, they already have a similar speed limit. Would it just be to narrow the streets, use bricks, mix the modes of transport and limit/break down the on-street parking? Because I'd still expect cars to handle that badly, since they're not used to taking other modes of transport into consideration.
Modern cars (and trucks) are generally very comfortable and are very capable of operating at significant speeds with little trouble. I personally think that contributes greatly to drivers driving them to fast for conditions on urban streets. They just don’t feel like they are going as fast as they are. One thing touched on here was the amount of noise allowed for traffic on the street. I think that requirement has a huge impact on the design of the street in order to get the sound levels down to required levels. And one of the biggest noise generators is the sounds a car makes as it travels down the street. The faster you go, the more noise it makes. And one of the biggest speed related noise producers is the noise tires make while they are rolling down the road. There are many reasons for it, but basically, the faster you go, the louder you are. So, to comply with the noise limit, the slower you must go.
There are a number of effective traffic calming strategies that can or are utilized to slow down traffic. Speed humps are one of them. I am not talking about speed bumps, but speed humps. The good ones are shaped to where if they are traversed at the desired speeds, there is minimal impact to the vehicle and its passengers. But as speeds increase, the comfort level diminishes very rapidly as threshold speeds are exceeded. In a majority of cases, they slow down traffic quite well. Another calming effect is a reduction in extended length straight aways. Toss in some minor bends and curves. Another effective measure is to change the surface texture. Texture changes can also reduce speeds by changing the length of a texture used.
For me it looks like they have mixed up the Dutch and German concepts for advisory lanes - even the sign suggests this…
In the German concept the middle section is wide enough, so passenger cars can stay between the lines in both directions. Only trucks and busses have to use both and thus need to yield to biks (or look for a gap in oncoming traffic). The advisory lanes here are black and the concept is supposed for 7-8 m from curb to curb. Here the idea is to have a bike lane despite the road being to narrow; basically only encouraging drivers not to hug the curb line.
In the Dutch version (which can be build down to 5,25 m) the advisory lanes are red and cars are supposed to stay in the middle of the road. There they have so swipe over for oncoming traffic. There the idea is to make the road visually *very* narrow.
What we have here at first looks much wider, primarily because it's not a parking lane, but physically on-street-parking. In the first step you need to clearly separate that by replacing the white line with a (low) curb and pavement behind, similar color to the sidewalk) and even question, if you really need two parking lanes, when each household already has 4 to 6 parking spots. Also this section has to be wide enough to actually fit the cars and a buffer towards the moving traffic (dooring).
Second you add two _narrow_ advisory lanes (these look like full 2 m). These are not made to have cyclists side by side or overtaking each other on the lane! Their color depends on how wide the remaining middle is: If two passenger cars car drive there, then leave them black (German concept). If not, make them red and tell drivers to only swipe over if there's oncoming traffic (Dutch concept).
Jo actually THANKS man for these really detailed an educational videos you make!!!!
its cool that you filmed in schiedam. did you see all the windmills and the langehaven?
yes a friend of mine lives there
The dutch did this for a while but moved away from it. my advice? cheaply put in mobile planters to narrow the street until it comes up for resurfacing when you can take off a strip of asphalt from both sides
I highly appreciate your content and insights into the challenges of bike infrastructure. If I may point out a tiny thing to improve upon: try to balance the audio level of video clips inserted to your voice -over level. I found myself turning up my volume for the newscast snippet in the beginning and had to turn it back down when you started to explain the issue at hand. All the best from Utrecht.
the overengineering needed to include private car storage never ceases to amaze me. they could easily add curb cuts to make that a protected bike lane. instead, drivers get the space, even in the netherlands. i was shocked to see official parking spaces even on the SIDEWALKS of amsterdam :(
"In theory, the idea might sound reasonable."
-American Traffic Engineering In A Nutshell
EDIT: Also, as an engineer, I must applaud your callout of engineers who blame the user as a scapegoat for their failure.
As an engineer, you always have to keep in mind users are absolute idiots and anything that a chimpanzee cant use is too complex.
@@TheSuperappelflap In some cases, yes, but in others, it's absolutely the designer's fault for not understanding basic human psychology. You can't fix a fundamentally bad road design by putting up a little sign telling drivers to behave differently than the road design suggests.
Have you ever heard of a "Norman door"? It's a door with a Pull handle that says "Push". Traffic engineers build a f***ton of Norman doors.
@@TheRealE.B. Ive never heard of that term but yeah i see a lot of those doors. In fact there are barely any doors in my country that dont have handles or doorknobs on both sides. Is that common in America?
They could just raise up bike lanes to make this US street safer
something what can help is instead of making the road of asphalt, making the road of bricks so that when you drive really fast you hear are really loud noise too.
actually in this case asphalt is better. Asphalt is also better to cycle on and having one narrow street of asphalt in a neighborhood with klinkers is better for wayfinding and cyclist comfort i think
While these type of lane designs are common in Europe in places such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and London, they were not seen much in Southern California, or North America for that matter. I think that part of the reason it failed was the lack of driver training of how this design works in terms of the curriculum we have currently in California. Many US drivers are taught that there is a lane for each direction, and to stay between the lane lines, and not to go into bike lanes other than to park. In fact, the California Driver Handbook does not mention how Advisory Bike Lanes work or how to drive in them.
In the future, when a unfamiliar lane design is deployed into a region that most drivers in the region have not seen before, there needs to be an education campaign for residents in educating drivers on how to use the new lane design and the rules of how it works.
Making the street 16 feet wide will work like traffic calming magic. Give it mountable kerbs so trucks can pass each other. You could make the street swerve left and right a bit as well.
We also have these in France. Usualy it's a low buget compromise untill the road is rebuit later on with real separated bike lanes.
Does the US-street really need so much parking? Doesn't every home has like 3 parking spaces anyway?
in both examples, the parking lanes and cycling lanes need to switch to stop dooring danger and or getting run over or causing accident. the netherland example can be turned in one-way street and switch parking and cycling lane to hinder dooring and add another parking lange for residents.
0:48 Just the fact it say _vehicles_ share the center lane. So bikes are not vehicles?
first time i met this as a driver near roosendaal i got the idea immediately, its shouldnt be hard...altho those signs are horrible, and having them as bike lanes explicitly here is a stupid idea. the truth is that bikes are vehicles and wherever they can go, they are equal to cars. if you start from that, its obvious you need to yield, because its vehicle vs vehicle. the one further in the front has right of way! also i gotta say, i think they cheaped out. no bricks between the bike part and the driveable part for example
This exact same lane configuration is used in several US state with no issues. It’s only this one California city that through a fit over it that got news coverage. Dozens of other cities have almost no problems using this.
It’s not “ideal,” because the road is too narrow, not because it doesn’t improve safety. This design is still better than the common lane striping used on residential roads in the USA. So saying it’s a bad design is flat out false.
The city didn’t tell anyone about the change in road design before they did it, and caved to pressure from people complaining before they could even try it out long enough to get used to it.
The biggest mistake is this was not a local access street, but a through street. They should have removed street parking to install separate bike lanes, and kept this road design for side streets.
I'm Dutch and implementing our road designs in America isn't going to work.
We Dutch grow up with bicycles and all the infrastructures around them and most of us are of the opinion that kids need to learn to look for 'danger' themselves.
So we're being told the 'ins' and 'outs' of things and from a young age (5 - 7) are send on our merry way with a bicycle.
And everybody else has had the same experience , so we kind of look out for each other over here.
In America that's a totally different story all together , your cities lay outs are so far of for bicycle traffic.
And somehow Americans seem to think that everything is dangerous and that driving a car is the only save way of getting around.
Another thing is that driving a car isolates people from their surroundings and makes them more agressive , because . . . well , you think you're untouchable . . . and so aggravating the whole situation.
And Cyclists have no business on the centre of the street , that would be stupid because you're the slow moving traffic . . . everybody knows this !
best would be to make the road look so narrow, that people are scared to drive too fast. So put difference in hight and feeling of the road. Also put tree's between the parked cars, so it makes the streets greener and gives the feeling of an inclosed space and people automaticly slow down to calculate to get around eachother. Also try to put little curves in it to make them use their breaks more.
As a dutchman I did not find the layout in that US example confusing at all. But I would not feel safe cycling there either, because I know it's foreign to Americans and I am not convinced the driving standard taught in the US is anywhere near that of western Europe.
One of the reasons it just works in the Netherlands is we are taught to _participate_ in traffic from a really young age and when we learn to drive, operating the vehicle is the easiest part and not at all enough to pass for a license. Most people fail both exams multiple times before they get it. Because the traffic laws and rules are not about when you are entitled to a right of way, it's about how to participate with safety of the vulnerable in mind.
And engineering, if done correctly, can help us a great deal to keep the vulnerable safe when the drivers cannot (or want not).
Similar streets are common in my country - it takes getting used to - but it works. Most likely only because its a common thing.
The concept works with a slightly wider road or if parking was limited to one side of the road.
why is it so hard to just have a protected bike lane on one side of the road next to the side walk, an area for street parking, 2 lanes of traffic, and then another area for street parking? Bike lanes dont need to be on the same side of the road as the direction of vehicle traffic. god
There is an equation that engineers use to calculate sight distance to your left and right and they conclude that there isn’t enough space between the driveway and protected bike lane to prevent collision. They don’t consider that the equation starts becoming less applicable when a car is crawling forward at 5 mph and simply brainlessly use the equation without thinking about what it represents.
However. It also isn’t a Good idea to have a protected bike lanes intersect with lots of driveways and adjacent streets due to all the conflict. If they decide that the local and staying function is the priority on Mira mesa instead of through traffic. Then the entire street width of mira mesa should be made safe enough for mixing.
@@buildthelanes But the conflicts are still there when the bikelane is near the car lane.
Unless people go from their driveway to park their car on the street and back again? ;)
And it's worse, because now all the parked cars are a potential conflict as well.
The red asphalt isn't for nothing, it has a different colour on purpose. Its all psychological. It makes it obvious that it is a different space for different road users
I'm speculating that this was done because A) it was cheap, B) probably there were contracts in motion and timelines C) the powers that be didn't want to put any thinking or effort into it, D) it was meant as a concession to bike use, not as a distinct improvement especially with regards to safety, E) little actual regard to anyone on a bike. I've seen similar things done where I live, although not as ridicules. Cities feel compelled to make concessions, they just don't want to do things that are really big changes especially with coloring, separations, lane use for driving etc. Some of it might have to do with what's in the budget and property taxes. That would be more understandable. What's really ridicules is when there's lots of unused flat ground on the sides, and paving in an extra five feet on a new road would make for a minimum lined bike lane, yet even that isn't done.
Also when you compute 30 KPH to MPH it's 19 MPH. This whole design would be safer with that in force. Of course people would claim it's a ticket trap and in fact the cops would be operating as if it were. They'd also stick it to the cyclists if only for spite or laughs. Barneys will be Barneys. Also if the Dutch street was truly copied, it actually would of been an improvement, in spite of the imperfectness.
Perhaps the traffic in Mira Mesa would slow down if alternating intersections were roundabouts.
Looks fine to me. Drivers are supposed to hate it. The street did not suddenly become more dangerous, the dangers have just been made more apparent. I reckon drivers are upset not because the design is bad, or poorly implemented, but because the design implies that this street is not reserved exclusively for motor vehicles.
A few tweaks are required though. Notice that on the Lange Nieuwstraat cars are parked right up to the suggestion lane, and the sidewalks are wide enough to walk two abreast. On Gold Cost Drive, half the sidewalk is gobbled up by the gutters, and cars pull way off the road and into the gutter, in some cases even straight across with two wheels on the sidewalk, in order to protect their precious parked vehicles from collisions. But you want those vehicles to make the road appear narrower, so you have to implement measures that will prevent parking vehicles from pulling way off the road. You want residents to view speeding as a problem, not accommodate it by parking (partially) on the sidewalk. So I would say they should have widened the sidewalk and put in less forgiving kerbs. Those straight, uninterrupted white lines separating the parking area from the road also encourage speeding. You want to interrupt those lines at EVERY driveway, and to put some obstacles on both sides of (pairs of) driveways.
All in all, I would say this is a pretty good effort.
We have this in Melbourne Australia too
Nice video, while also showing the Netherlands's unwillingness to change till something bad happens.
And like we did in the past, citizens protest against unsafe roads.
This time in the form of home made 30kmh boards, where local government takes "action" on, somewhere in the future😅, hopefully.
I am surprized that the commenter does not mention parking space. Remove the on-street parking and there is enough space for two protected bike lanes on the side. Most people seem to have a driveway in that area anyway.
The parking area is wider than necessary. (you can easily see that none of the cars are even close to the white line).
So if they'ld move the white lines 2 feet over, they would have enough room for a bikelane (maybe a bit narrower than in the current setup) plus a full lane in each direction. Why did they make it so difficult for themselves?
(would be even better with the bike lanes between the houses and parked cars)
yes, the original setup had the classic bike lanes along the car travel lane
They should remove one row of parking spaces and use the space to make it a full (but quite narrow) two way road again. The cycle lanes should be a different color and marked by an uniterrupted line. The cars and bicycles are fully seperated that way and the cars wouldn't speed as much because of the narrower road. It will only cost a little bit of time and paint to realize that.
How many of us here thought a couple of speed bumps would've done the job?
That and narrowing the street so that with parked cars on both sides, it's impossible for 2 cars to pass.
What to do with the extra space? Look at those sidewalks! If you want to have a neighborhood, people need to walk. If you want people to walk, those narrow sidewalks won't do the job. You can turn them evenly, or wooden only one side to turn into a multi-use path good enough for bikes.
These types of streets can work really well.
However, they will NEVER work on a street like this.
The road is still wide and obstacle free.
Send your engineers to the Netherlands and have them LEARN how to do it the right way and have THEM design the roads WITHOUT interference from politicians.
1. Advisory lanes doesn't mean cyclists ought to cycle in the middle of driveway. All drivers are required to position themselves on the road as close to the rightmost edge of the driveway, when driving normally. Cyclists are "propelling themselves by the means of a mechanical or motorized vehicle", therefore they are drivers in Dutch law.
2. Lange Nieuwsstraat in Schiedam is too wide. Dutch roadway design correlates width with speed. This is why Lange Nieuwsstraat is "non-ideal" - as a driver trained in the Netherlands, to my eye, this road is for driving at 50km/h (30mph), because the width allows for it.
I would like you to consider Maliesingel in Utrecht, a street recently rebuilt precisely the same way, but there's less space and visibility is obstructed a lot by sharp turns along the canal, therefore drivers are forced to go slower than 50.
It's almost like there are powerful people who want bike infrastructure to fail...
damn, those bike lanes at San Diego are too fuckn wide, shrink it a feet or three
One of the better tactics would probably be just removing the asfalt, and building brick roads instead.
The bike lane should be where the cars are parked. That's what is basically wrong in both the USA and Dutch streets used in this example. The full line is what be should be lifted say 10cm upwards, so cars cannot go there. Then you get the parked cars where the bike lane is as depicted. This means the street is narrower and the cars will drive slower. On occasion you will get an idiot opening the door which will get hit by a car, but over time, this won't be a problem. The bikes are super safe in this way.
They have alot of those types of roads in the Netherlands though
this would have been far simpler if people were willing to give up one lane of street parking. So odd that we get to store cars for free on public land. If I stored my couch or firewood people would loose their minds.
Why? Can things go well in the Netherlands? The bike is the slower. On the road. And cars, give a little less space. For the feeling. Because the road remains just as wide. And that through a few lines! Awesome!!
What I learned from this video is bikers are allowed on the street when the cars are allowed on my red asphalt. Neat
Another reason why the FHWA never should have stopped experimentation with advisory bike lanes. It’s ridiculous that Mira Mesa failed so much, but there’s nothing wrong conceptually with a shared mode, thin two way street
If we can make a slow street where you can have safe mixing occur 100%. But a “bike advisory lane” is a fundamental misinterpretation of what the Dutch have. It doesn’t exist here
These complainants are the same ones who think parked cars are a hazard then claim the empty streets have traffic going to fast. What these people think will cause more crashes do not realize the goal is not to eliminate ALL crashes. It is to eliminate serious and injurious crashes. The encounter of head-on crashes SHOULD slow drivers down like a one-lane bridge, but now they will claim it dangerous because they have to slow down like a one-way bridge.
This would work much better to just not bother painting the road in the first place. The intended behavior is already how people drive on unpainted roads, and without adding to the confusion with unfamiliar road markings.
Some of the mindset in the US is, “well it’s European so it has to be a better idea.” They fail to take cultural differences and just plain human nature into consideration.
Probably a hot take for North America, but banning on-street parking would have probably done more to fix Mira Mesa than non-ideal bike lanes ever could.
They honestly might as well if not even had any painted lanes. Oh it's the worst of both worlds it has sidewalks, too so the assumption would be on the driver that cyclists would use it.
I grew up/lived in a subdivision where the street is by default a "multi use" there are no sidewalks. So people walk, cycle, and drive on the same road. However it isn't as trafficed this neighborhood. Except maybe after 5 to 6ish.
The only thing you can do is make it smaller, automatically, multi use. I tend to disagree with Urbanist on the issue "that every subdivision needs sidewalks" a subdivision neighborhood should be designed to feel safe a enough that don't need sidewalks. But that's just my opinion.
Basically it’s a decent design, implemented in an environment with a terrible driving mentality.
Americas first wobbly steps towards traffic calming
This should definitely be a one way road.
I interviewed 2 city reps involved with this project. Both agreed the reason this facility was removed is because the City omitted public outreach. The folks flipped when they saw an ELR for the 1st time. So they called their politicians and got it removed. Video is wrong.
I’m glad that you value the opinion of 2 officials who’ve never created a successful ETW before more than the design criteria of a country that’s been doing it for more than 30 years. Sounds about North American 😂.
“The 2 officials of corrupt company A have determined in an interview that company A is not at fault for corruption”. You’re doing exactly what the video talks about. Blaming the public for YOUR crappy design because you never understood it from the country that you tried copying it from. But I’m glad you got some juicy contracts along the way from San Diego
Your comment is exactly right. And Mayor Todd Gloria was so embarrassed by the public outcry over this very modest Mira Mesa bike lane project that he immediately ordered the bike lanes removed. The real problem, though, is that despite all the hoopla about reducing carbon emissions by encouraging cycling, San Diego has done very little to add to cycling infrastructure. With a few exceptions, fragmented, disconnected paint-only bike lanes is all the city has managed to provide. Even those half-hearted measures provoke an outcry by a motoring public that doesn’t want to lose vehicle lanes or on-street parking.
This kind of systems also require car drivers to be used to cyclists, and a certain critical mass of cyclists.
In this case it would make more sense to make the street one way do you can physically seperate the cycle path, or to create choke points forcars with planters.
Of course cyclists mostly stick to the right in the Lange Nieuwstraat. That's the rule in NL, even on highways for cars. You drive/ride on the right unless/until you want to overtake someone. Main problem there is speed. Main problem in SD is culture. A lack of freedom and therefor an inability or unwillingness to take responability and learn. Stop signs, speed signs and traffic lights govern pretty much everything in North America no need to make a decission.
Drivers should drive right and stay behind cyclists until it is safe to overtake. But 'safe' requires a personal assessment ... freedom ... risk .... liabilty ... won't work.
Another issue is that advisory bike lanes were designed for *low* traffic roads, not high-speed high traffic suburbs. The main issue, of course, is high-speed high traffic suburbs. What a poopshow.
And then the locals get called NIMBYS and used as a reason why designers and politicians should have to listen LESS to the community in the future.
Paint doesn’t do anything even really really super dope paint
It's like they saw the dutch road design and tried to make up the traffic rules themselves. It's really not that complicated. Just drive on your side of the road and if there is a cyclist in front of you, you can overtake them when it is safe to do so. The whole thing of having to drive in the middle and swerving into the bikelane for oncoming traffic is just asking for collisions. Also, why would a cyclist want to drive in the middle of the road? That's just asking to be rear-ended by an unexpecting driver
To be honest the only problems that really stood out to me that is that the street is really really really wide. Like, we have actual highways that are that wide. That's kind of crazy for a neighbourhood collector road. That and the fact that they didn't use different colors for the bike "lanes", which would have made a bigger difference in the optical narrowing of the street. Well that and the cultural unfamiliarity.
Also... Lange Nieuwstraat is definitely not a shared space and cyclists are not at all expected or encouraged to cycle in the center (then what is the purpose of those side lanes??). I don't even know where you got those ideas from. Try again.
Lange Nieuwstraat is a gray path. Meaning it is not either a GOW or an ETW. I said it is SUPPOSED to function like a shared space because it’s classified as an ETW. But it’s not and those red lanes are functioning exactly like official bike paths. This is exactly why Lange Nieuwstraten has so many problems.
And it is streets like Lange nieuwstraat that gives American designers the idea that official bike lanes on an access street are an appropriate solution to slow down traffic. I’m going to produce another video to explain edge striping more and why they do it in The Netherlands
May if the Police did their job and gave out tickets.....
This is a very common design in Germany when it is not possible to build a normal bike lane because the streets are to narrow.
Still most people unterstand how to use it.
it is quite simple you can use it as long as not cyclist is about but you have to pass carefully and yield to them when traffic doesn't allow to pass.
I dont see the need for parking spaces on both sides of the road, getting rid of one side with give them plenty of room for a protected two way bike lane. Never mind I forgot that lazy Americans will riot if they have to cross the street to go home after they park their cars
You missed the point tho...
This video is completely misinformed. The primary problem with the Mira Mesa facilities is that the city did no public outreach whatsoever. This is according to the city of officials I interviewed there. And using one poor example from the Netherlands to decry an entire class of treatment is ridiculous. This treatment is used both in urban and rural settings. The Dutch have different design criteria for those settings. This video doesn't even look at rural applications. It also doesn't look at uses of this treatment in other countries. It fails to mention the safety benefits documented by peer-reviewed research in the United States.
If you're going to do a video like this, please educate yourself first, then make the video.
Hey Michael.
You seem to be under a false impression. The title of the video is “why this project failed”. Not “the different applications of ETWs inside and outside of the built up area in the Netherlands”.
There IS a substantial difference between inside and outside of the built up area. Explaining this fully would require diving into “duurzamveilig” and the entire organization of Dutch traffic categories and would get way too far away from the original purpose of this video. Remember that there is a completely seperate engineering manual for BUBEKO vs BIBEKO. Plus Mira mesa only falls into the inside the built up category so I saw very little relevance to discuss outside of the built up area design.
You can take issue with the choice of “Lange Nieuwstraat” but the truth is that there is no “good” example of a Dutch ETW with wide advisory lanes. There are no good examples because the presence of wide advisory lanes causes them to function as official cycle lanes, which violates duurzamveilig and causes streets like this to fall into the “grey path” category. It’s not that the application of the striping is bad, but rather the completely misunderstanding of what a “suggestiestrook” is and why it was out there to begin with.
I’m not sure what “peer reviewed” research you are referring to but I value the opinion of CROW much more because it’s backed by 50 years of real life application. Why should I look into something that is trying to poorly reinvent the wheel when I have something that has been tried and tested in the real world for decades?
Finally as to your hypothesis on this being a failure solely because of no public outreach. I agree that this definitely played a role but the good news is that your explanation can get tested soon in the real world as San Diego plans to deploy more of these. So you can see how that turns out. My own humble hypothesis: it’ll go around the same when the Dutch tried doing something similar 25 years ago or worse since American drivers are less trained and 25 mph is faster than 30 km/hr.
@@buildthelanes why this project failed? Did you interview any officials, residents, or engineers involved in the project? What data did you gather on the reasons for the removal of this facility?
@@michaelwilliams2827 it failed because it was removed almost immediately. Because it caught the community off guard and the community correctly deduced it was more dangerous. Because of how the edge lanes were repurposed as bike lanes. Because of a misinterpretation of a suggestion lane as an actual bike lane. Because of poor examples in the Netherlands where this has been done.
If a city decides to do something crazy like allow lead to leak into a water supply system, I don’t need to interview every person responsible to show how it’s a bad idea. Simply explaining some of the technical aspect of how lead poisoning works will do.
If you are so called “edge lane” expert, you should understand that a suggestion lane is only meant to visually narrow a street enough to slow down car drivers so it’s safe enough for all modes to share the same travel surface. So it should be immediately be obvious to you that creating actual bike lanes is a bastardization of the concept and cause the design to fail. Which it did