Musing on the Peak Oil business, it occurred to me that if the mix of traffic changed radically then you might have a completely different breakup of the wide multilane roads that we have in this city. Something like Geelong Road in Footscray or Dandenong Road in the eastern suburbs, could have public transport up the middle (as Dandenong Road does already for some of its lengh), then say two lanes instead of four for the motorised traffic, then a comfortable Copenhagen bike lane completely physically separated from the motorised traffic lanes.

http://www.commoncurrent.com/notes/2008/06/bike-share-the-future-of-carbo.html

As far as the percentage of trips that could be cycled, we could look at cities like Amderstam as a reasonable target: 33%.

As usually, it’s a lot easier and cheaper to incorporate something into the original design than to retrofit it. For those freeways that do include bike path designs, I don’t know offhand of any that put them in the median, but admittedly, if one wants to do a retrofit, that may be the only place.

Unfortunately, it’s unclear whether or not that’s cost-effective:

a) Even if every freeway had a bike path, cyclists still have to get to and from the freeway, i.e., one has to solve the end-to-end problem.

b) If you’re going to go a long distance on a freeway, at least some of that need is very well-met by putting more bike racks on busses. Practical use of freeways for shorter distances requires many entrance/exits, which is much easier along the side than in the median.

Here is a local transport authority’s bike policy and Caltrain’s.

This kind of thing can make a *big* difference. It is totally impractical to commute by bike from a place like Palo Alto into San Francisco (~30 miles), even if it were practical to put a bikeway along Route 101.
Riding a bike to PA trainstation, and either leaving it there or walking in SF, or taking the bike and riding in SF … is eminently practical and may even take less time than driving, depending on the traffic.

They are surely easy to sweep each day with a person on a ride on lawnmowery machine.

Relative velocity is an important issue on busy roads. When I was young, I could mix it with the traffic and keep up; these days I am riding on the pavement at particular black spots. It is all a matter of care + confidence.

With the mist rising on the river, whooshing along getting warmer as you go, it’s just wonderful. Perhaps I hear the frogs if there’s been rain, or notice a few birds and ducks.

I greet the same pedestrians on the path each morning.

I ride through the Collingwood children’s farm and see the animals.

When I get to work I have a shower – that first blast of hot water – woohoo.

Then I have a chat to the blokes in the shower.

I get to my desk and switch on the computer feeling great.

That’s a real commute!

Hopefully these things progress before we get to a critical mass of serious riders across Australia. My gut feeling is that cyclists demands for safer riding conditions will outpace the desired network which will be a great shame particularly when it is remembered that there are on average between 10 and 20* cyclist deaths annually. And we all know how/why most of these would occur.

* from memory

Exactly what percentage of trips are every going to be cycled? 2%? 5%? World wide it will be decreasing. Ride a bike if you like, lobby councils for more bike paths if you can gather the support, but don’t pretend you have the moral high ground and are going to save the world.

“Create many more separate cycle paths so people from every part of a city can cycle to work.” Unless a sufficient percentage of people are going to use them, this is a poor use of pubic money. True, cycling won’t become more popular until the infrastructure is built, so there is a Catch 22 – just as there is with public transport investment. But PT is surely a much more practical solution to transport that bicycles.

However that doesnt apply for dedicated well built, maintained and lit cycle paths separated from roads completely.

I think it’s going to take a lot more cycle commuters complaining before anything this expensive happens Ken – by which stage, the roads will be half overtaken with bicycles, tuk-tuks and possibly ponies. Magical ponies.

I’d seriously support any effort to make it happen though.

FDB wrote:

Am I rambling?

They show that Masters of the Universe on Pay TV now FDB – it’s just terrible, terrible, cheap garbage. The cartoon women are teh hotnessssssss though.

Sadly on the Island of Sodor, you only have the Fat Controller, who makes that lady on the front page of Club Troppo today look pretty damn smokin’

but if a car drove at that speed on the road, they would attract a similar amount of aggro to the bikes

Amusingly, at least in the Brisbane peak hour commutes, cars rarely exceed 40kph. I actually admire those who ride. No hold ups, save for the odd traffic light. Not a lot of showers at the other end though.

And yeah – the commonsense thing would be to use your voice, but then you get abused for not using your bell as the law requires. And anyway it doesnt solve the iPod problem.

A technology is successful if it succeeds in the market. Hybrid petrol + NiMH technology clearly has (I’m pretty certain it’s the auto technology with the fastest growth in sales in the U.S.), so I don’t see how you can classify it has anything but successful. If anything should have been still-born, it’s the traditional ICE engine, that wastes 70% of the energy available from the fuel it burns as heat and noise.

Do the calcs on a modern turbo diesel

However that doesn’t apply for dedicated well built, maintained and lit cycle paths separated from roads completely. As John Mashey points out, there may well be lots of densely populated areas where that just isn’t possible. However, as Patrick (I think) suggested earlier, cycle paths could fairly easily and cheaply be constructed alongside railway lines, as well as along rivers and streams (as John mentions). Another possibility is freeways/expressways. They almost always have quite wide median strips dividing traffic going in opposite directions. Why not use them for dedicated cycleways, with flyover bridges at intervals to allow cyclists to access them without having to cross multiple lanes of fast-moving traffic?

There are numerous possibilities, what’s needed is the will on the part of governments, which in turn requires understanding of the potential payoff in all sorts of ways.

Am I rambling?

Waiter, more champale!

Even when local governments are *really* keen for it:

a) In most existing densely-built areas, it is almost impossible to create useful separate bike paths, except where there are already parks, or sometimes along streams/rivers, if the paths aren’t already there.

b) Bike lanes are feasible in more places, but even they are essentially impossible in many dense places.

c) Which means that practical use of bikes in many places requires at least some riding on the streets.

The good news is:

While there are always dangerous drivers, when an area acquires enough cyclists, and invests at least a little in cycle infrastructure, and cyclists, drivers and pedestrians get more accustomed to each other, the frequencies of dumb actions goes way down. I.e., there seems to be some sort of tipping point, although I don’t know the specific level required…

at least here, and the SF Bay Area isn’t that different from metropolitan OZ in love of cars.

WTF?

Is that in Eternia?

Patrick, I don’t doubt that a few people buy Priuses out of pretentiousness, but there are plenty who do buy current hybrid technology vehicles (which I believe are all petrol+NiMH) because it does make sense for their driving needs. My company’s accountant (based in New Hampshire) bought a Honda Civic hybrid after calculating that even at the gas price 2 year ago it would pay for itself in 3 years, and at current prices would do so in well under 2.

Its also fair to say a lot more cyclists have been killed by motorists than pedestrians by cyclists.

And I totally agree that Australian paths indeed need more pedestrians, not fewer!

I cycle to work daily in Brisbane 15km each way on busy and narrow roads with few bike paths. Its a white-knuckle ride that usually leaves me with my heart pumping rapidly by the time I get to my destination. Barely a day goes by that I’m not involved in some altercation with a motorist or truckie after yet another 60kph near miss. One of these days the miss won’t be near, and I’ll end up in hospital (if I’m lucky).

To most drivers, bikes are just annoying slow-moving vehicles that prevent motorists from driving at their desired speed (an attitude that conveniently overlooks the fact that traffic jams are created by cars not bikes). As a result, they cut in, harry or overtake unsafely and don’t feel the need to indicate their intentions. Despite knowing all that, I have no intention of being terrorised out of my daily ride any time soon. Australian roads need more cyclists, not fewer.

Its clear to me that not only is the infrastructure poor, attitudes towards bikes and cyclists are still mired in the car-glory era of the 50s and 60s.

Until that changes, the war on the road between drivers and cyclists on Australian roads will continue.

David,

My kids are not going near any bike-path on a road – the paths in question have to be off-road entirely, in which case even the bumpiest crap (and there are some near us) is vastly preferable to anything near a road, including the footpath.

Next to my current house they are rebuilding a road, and building a new bike path next to it but on the other side of a nature strip. I think this is the ideal situation.

NPOV

Just because the only advantage it confers is pretentiousness is by no means meant to suggest it won’t sell well. That doesn’t need much justification! I only meant that it was technologically still-born in the sense of being a second- (or worse) best outcome from the start.