To hell with it, lets just ban cars
Submitted by carolyn on Fri, 11/21/2008 - 00:36.
Just kidding, kind of.
The City Room covered a new study released by Hunter College, looking at how cyclists are perceived at not "following" traffic laws.
Study Finds Cyclists Disobey Traffic Laws
From what I've seen covered on this, a lot of pro-bike people are commenting that bikes are treated more as an inconvenience by pedestrians and especially automobiles (no surprise here). However, the study did find the more cities did to accommodate people on bikes, the happier everyone was all around.
A few people dug out an old post on www.streetblog.org:
This is What a Bike-Friendly City Looks Like
If you check out the blog post, they look at different bike lane setups in international cities, including Montreal, Berlin and New York. It was a little amusing, living here in Albany, with zero bike lanes, to here people complain about one type of bike lane over another. Bike lanes period sound great.
I think all of us who spend any time riding on the street have stories about confrontations with cars and pedestrians. I had a CDTA bus snag my rear wheel once and if my friend hadn't have grabbed me in time it could have gotten really ugly. Lets hope our cities start to seek enlightenment.
Poking around to see what else people were saying let me to stumble upon a new bike share program they are piloting in Montreal that looked pretty cool. It almost might be to cool to work, but I'm going to keep my fingers crosses. If you have a chance, follow the link to the U-Tube video.