A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
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In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
Wtf. Why are they not currently being fined?!?
It shouldn't be possible for cars to get into the bike lane in the first place. Car drivers will never obey the law of their own volition, you have to make them follow the law. The bike lane should be protected by heavy concrete bollards.
Some drivers will complain that heavy concrete bollards will lead to increased crashing. These are drivers who would have run over a cyclist if it weren't for the bollards. When a driver crashes into the bollards, the bollards are doing their job of keeping people safe.
The issue begins when you need places that are accessible by vehicles from the road. Turns, driveways, space for emergency services, space for garbage trucks. People will take these spots illegally, so that's where fines come in.
I'm totally on board with the bollards, they just can't 100% protect the bike lane
We have a bunch of stainless steel or aluminum bollards in San Diego that have a simple key and lock system. Disable the lock and the whole bollard slides down into the pavement and allows essential vehicles through. It takes all of about 30 seconds of planning to not even really slow down the vehicles, and have the bollard back in place as soon as they are through.
I have no clue what they cost though.
It should be legal to set fire to unoccupied cars parked in a bike lane.
I'd advise against it. Air pollution is bad enough. Just slash their tires and smash their windows.
or just smash the windows. Just for them to move the damn car
The mayor’s new plan is responsive to pressure from bike activists following the traffic death of Louisa Gag, a 36-year-old city transportation planner who was fatally struck by an 18-wheeler truck while riding her bicycle last month on Tremont Street in Mission Hill.
The only vehicles that I'm fine with blocking a bike line are firetrucks and ambulances
Too many first responders idling or parked in bike infrastructure while on break / off duty / non-emergency work for this to not be a caveat.
The only vehicles that I’m fine with ~~blocking a bike line~~ are firetrucks and ambulances
We at least need delivery vans/trucks for the stores and mail at least to a central city hub.
Unless we want to connect all these places by rail, might be a lot but I'm down
I'm sorry - what is the current penalty for blocking a bike lane?
Nothing. I've talked to police officers who had parked in the bike lane. They basically said "don't annoy me."
A very long key mark at minimum.
The second offense is a window smashed witha U-lock
In practice, it'd be doubtful you're ever penalized. I've seen it so much here (not Boston). I've seen some crazy shit and there never seemed to be the slightest will to enforce cars keeping out of the bike lane, other than sometimes the design of the bike lane itself.
They only last year started enforcement of bus lanes...
Yeah they said they did here too (after multiple years of there being a "penalty"). Although watching drivers you'd never know it. What seems to happen is people rack up tickets and never pay them and only ever get any penalty if they get pulled over for something else. And traffic enforcement here is abysmal so most of it is effectively almost not enforced. So enraging.
And I'm only partially guessing about people not paying tickets. I'm basing it on using this smartphone app that used to exist which allowed you to report bad drivers. It had access to the state database and would tell you how many unpaid tickets a license plate had associated with it. I reported one person for blocking a bike lane and they had 89 unpaid tickets. I reported several dozens more and it was common to see over 10 unpaid. All of this gives me a very gross feeling overall tbh. Drivers are the worst.
Good luck getting the police to efficiently enforce this.
Boston already has a very robust parking enforcement division that aggressively tickets things like expired meters, parking in resident-only areas without a current resident sticker, etc. They also regularly ticket & tow cars when street sweeping is scheduled. It would be trivial for them to add this to their enforcement activities.
Speed cameras just got passed by the MA Senate.
That isn't going to help bike lanes.
My city has Department of Finance* that issues straight up tickets for vehicles that are in error (no city sticker, illegally parked, or plate stickers or parking during city cleaning.
I wish my city would do this. There is so much reckless driving and auto theft here it's insane. You can't go a day driving without seeing at least one car without any plates. If the police could/would enforce the lower level stuff maybe criminals wouldn't think they could get away with everything. Granted part of the problem is that the very democratic city always asks the state for more police budget and the republican run state congress always denies the request so that they can run their campaigns on pointing to the "lawless" democratic city.
This seems like common sense to me, but I’d consider an opposing argument. IMHO, bike lanes are for bikes, not cars, but maybe I’m oversimplifying it.
Bike lanes are car infrastructure. Bike lanes exist to segregate cars and bikes, so that bikes are safer and cars can go faster. But the only reason bikes are unsafe on the streets, is because car drivers want to go fast and refuse to obey the law. So by transitive property, bike lanes exist so cars can go faster and so cars can go faster.
If you remove cars from the street, or force them to slow down, then bike lanes aren't needed. In the Netherlands, many streets with successful traffic calming are removing their bike lanes, because there are so few cars, going so slowly, even an 8 year old can safely cycle in the street.
This is what the world looks like when we don't let car drivers hoon through our neighbourhoods by threatening everyone else. We never needed bike lanes. It was always for the cars.
With existing infrastructure in much of the US it is currently better to do protected bike lanes and still keep car lanes at least on larger streets. The accident area has parking on both sides, bike lanes on both sides, then two lanes of auto traffic.
Remove the parking make it a protected bike lane and add some sidewalk and bushes.
Having recently driven in Boston, there is seriously lacking safety awareness or enforcement. Narrow winding streets with 20-25mph speed limits have cars careening around at 40+mph. Cars crossing double yellow lines frequently even near hospital areas. I have yet to see anyone pulled over other than on the highway. Ofc the cops drive crazy too...Just getting some speed cameras would probably result in a major improvement. And that is something that was just recently funded/passed very recently. Once they are set up things will at least improve.
Just park your bike next to the car in the car lane
I get it. Bike lanes are usually just a line of desultory paint sprayed on the pavement near the edge the street. The same edge of the street that—for almost as long as we've had wheeled things—had been the place to "pull over." Where else can drivers go? And this isn't the greatest idea, giving cops more reasons to detain and harass citizens, more opportunity for those interactions to go awry.
So, tell me more about this "pedestrian is king" thing! Let's design city streets so that most drivers feel safe going about 10MPH, max. Then, we can safely get rid of most of the bike lanes. We need separated bike lanes on high-speed streets, where nobody would pull over anyway. On most streets, they're not needed, it the real speed of cars is low enough.
Let's build a city for people first, not try to retrofit people into streets made for cars.
My experience is that cars pull over and still effectively block car traffic since the bike lane is only half of a car lane. They may as well just stop in the car lane.
Not at all defending it but drivers realize that if they stop in the car lane they have to open their door into oncoming traffic to get out. If they block the bike lane there's half a car lane to open their door. It's safer for them, fuck everybody else.
We have a ridiculous, 5-lane, one-way monstrosity cutting through the university campus here, with a single, counterflow bike lane. Luckily, it's blocked off by a raised curb, because when the food delivery drivers sometimes pull over in front of the apartment buildings, they just block a car lane. It's great!
Is this University Avenue in Madison?
That's the one.
Block the road. Fuck cars.
Good. The penalty should be enough that it's not something you can just shrug off. Scale it with wealth. Make repeat offenses lead to the license being revoked. Mandatory community service.
Many people are worse than toddlers and their moral framework doesn't go past "I shouldn't do that because I'll be punished"