Interesting Links for 23-06-2014

[andrewducker]

• Labour needs to be candid about the painful cuts it will have to make
  (tags: politics economics UK Labour )
• Women impressed by men who condemn their taste in music
  (tags: funny music relationships viajohnbobshaun )
• RunPee - Because movie theaters don't have pause buttons.
  (tags: movies urination )
• Eigenmorality
  (tags: morality philosophy google )

Comments

[steer]

Worth pointing out that the bike lane design is interesting and looks like it would be safer (of course that is the sort of thing that you really do need to test -- for example does the additional street furniture make the bikes harder to see). However, the significant downside is that it has taken out an entire lane of car traffic. That is going to take around about 1000 vehicles per hour reduced capacity for each arm of the junction. At that point you're going to have hugely increased congestion (and hence pollution) at every junction where you implement it

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. Much more suitable for nice, new, wide roads. Not so suitable for winding backstreets.

[steer]

Yes... if you're designing from scratch, you have a fairly clean slate and relatively wide streets but you need to have cars and bikes intermixed then this looks a very good choice. (Caveats about proper testing of course).

[fanf]

It's worth looking at David Hembrow's discussion of cycle-friendly junction design in the Netherlands, which covers this particular design: http://www.aviewfromthecyclepath.com/2014/02/the-myth-of-standard-dutch-junction.html

Another good article by Mark Wagenbuur http://bicycledutch.wordpress.com/2014/02/23/junction-design-in-the-netherlands/ explains that the islands are not an important design feature: they are a consequence of having set-back cycle and pedestrian crossings with space for a car between the crossings and the main part of the junction, putting the advance stop line for cyclists past this set-back, and providing space between the cycle lane and the road for wheelchairs or pushchairs to wait.

[steer]

Thanks. Those are very good clarifications. (I'm not an expert in junction design, I've been involved in the computer modelling of it in the past but only very tangentially.)

[momentsmusicaux]

> Some junctions in the UK do have the "sort of" equivalent of this by including a cycle lane to "cut" the pavement (so the pavement itself takes the role of the safety island -- however I understand they're not widely liked by cyclists

Possibly also because they're often really crappy half-arsed implementations. Some things I've seen include on-pavement bit starting with a kerb that's not fully dropped, the on-pavement bit ending in the middle of the pavement with no warning, and all that sort of thing.

[steer]

Yes, I've seen some really embarrassingly poor bike lane designs and I really wonder about them because my experience of working with council planning departments has shown me that they make a real lot of attention to detail, genuinely care and think hard about getting it right. But then I see some pieces of design that I really can't think how they slipped through and got implemented (or perhaps something else in the design changed after they committed to include a cycle lane but before it was on road -- I can only speculate). Perhaps I was just lucky to work with good professional people.