The Netherlands has been switching a lot of infrastructure to a 2-way bicycle lanes NEXT TO the road, basically treating it as a separate road that's just for bicycles. It's more common in suburban and rural areas though, because business access is indeed better with separated bike lanes.
I think that's really the way it should be, either both lanes on one side of the road between parking and the side walk, or instead of parking on one side of the street where there's adequate mass transit to permit it. It should be a pretty cheap thing to change as you mostly just have to paint lines and possible move the center-line. This is especially true around here where some of the hills are upwards of 18% in town and bikes just can't make a grade like that at a safe speed. I used to have to go up one of those hills to work and bikes can basically just do walking speed.
I have a feeling the shop owners will dislike the idea of losing that car/bike traffic to the other side of the street. But otherwise it's good. Do we have any before & after metrics on that layout for businesses?
Also incidents, injuries and fatalities are way higher with 2-way bicycle lanes, rather than separated one-way bike lanes, on streets with frequent intersections, so in an urban context (another reason why they are more common in suburban and rural areas).
What a coincidence! Yeah, I never have used lanes quite like these before, and they are a real hoot! I think in the right setting, they could work great. I reminded me of DDI interchanges where the sidewalk is in the middle. It looks really scary but works well when you actually use it. ua-cam.com/video/xlnz04EZpMQ/v-deo.html
@@RoadGuyRob How does it feel during hot days? My guess is it can feel uncomfortable especially with the lack of trees. Can trees in the middle help shade cyclist and also provide natural barriers?
@@theunknown4834 yes and no. If you put trees in the middle we need to think that bike lanes can be used for emergency services, so you have less space on a possible better solution, tree roots damage the road surface and so create more danger for cyclists. Look for example in Vercelli Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi (ex medieval hospital), Corso Mario Abbiate (near hospital) and Viale Rimembranza (near Fire Brigade station), they are great, but during emergency is difficult to make space sometimes. They need a very very very specific study, adjusting, rethinking and reorganising emergency vehicles and services
Another problem the merchants are having, which you almost talked abut, is that the rubber barriers prevent the bikes form stopping on a whim. They can't come inside and buy tings without jumping the curb and fighting traffic. I suspect the stores lost a lot of walk-in traffic because the bike people weren't stopping as much as before. Instead of a car sewer, it became a bike sewer, dedicated to evacuating potential customers as quickly as possible.
Bikes have easy access to the sidewalk at any intersection - they just move over to the right or left turn boxes painted on the street and wait for either a gap in traffic, or for the light to change.
yeah, the center lane would probably be better for businesses without the rubber barriers and only the flexible poles. That way a cyclist can leave the lane much more easily.
Yeah., I was wondering how much of an effect this is. But I suspect it's not actually _that_ hard to move right and stop when you need to. How much stopping is 'on a whim' vs an intended destination. Bikes are good for whims or course, so this probably is an effect, but I'd expect it to be quite small overall.
I actually think this is the primary reason! People on bikes will bring more business. But when theyre in the middle they can't access the businesses as easily
Daylighting should absolutely be the default everywhere in this country. I hate playing “guess if a pedestrian or another motorist is about to materialize out of nowhere” when I’m driving.
Yes. The lack of it is one of the reasons for the US's terrible pedestrian/cycle death/collision numbers relative to other countries. Cities that have done daylighting everywhere have _much_ better numbers.
I'm surprised that it wasn't already required. It's been the law here since before I learned out to drive nearly 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the city has largely stopped enforcing it, which has gotten extremely dangerous as cars have been getting bigger and bigger and parking closer and closer. The daylighting law is a bit of a stop gap though, the best thing is to just extend the curb near the intersection. It physically prevents people from parking too close and gives the pedestrians more visibility for when they do want to cross. It does cost some money, but it's a boost in safety without costing parking.
@ It's been the law here for quite a few decades, it's just not a law that the city has been enforcing which seems really odd to me as they're generally pretty quick to enact rules to get car drivers, and they literally already have it on the books that they can ticket those cars parked too close to the intersections.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I was about to say that too. I don't know the proper name for them, but those bulbous curbs at corners are really the best way to go.
@ The only issue I have with them is that they arguably shouldn't be necessary. But, I think they'll wind up helping a great deal, especially when paired with pedestrian activated yellow crossing lights. But, if I can just see oncoming traffic when driving, that would be a significant move in the right direction.
10:15 The fact that people have collectively agreed that parking in a bike lane is ok and not impeding any traffic even though it does (3500 bikers on this street) while parking in a car travel lane isn’t ok is peak absurdity and hypocrisy.
And no one is talking about how the parklet is giving public land to the restaurant owner just because, and then those same owners complain about lack of parking for their customers. Making the whole situation more complicated and ridiculous.
The business owners saying that not having double parking hurts the business. That makes sense. But double parking should never be allowed anywhere. If there is a need for quick stops, there should be a dedicated space. Put time limit of 5 minutes on some parking spots. It could be difficult to enforce, but double parking is just bandaid, not a good fix.
I'm not sure they said that, did they? Rob mentioned that problem for delivery drivers but the business owners mentioned that double-parking _was_ a problem because it blocked traffic for blocks since people couldn't pass the double-parked vehicles.
@@Croz89 Maybe that should be the default then :P As a business, consider the relative value of a drop-off space to longer-term parking. 1 car parked = 1 customer over their entire stay duration. If, on average, more than 1 customer uses the drop-off, then that would be more valuable.
The center bike lane is great for throughput, however the business owners are correct. It is a bike highway, meaning they are losing out on bike business too. Building proper bike lanes on the curb side with protections will keep bike through put traffic the same and also increase business. Treating bikes like cars and giving them expressway spacing in the middle of the road doesn’t really ever make sense, unless the neighborhood is like strictly industrial and bikes have no use of stopping there. They could’ve kept the center running bike lanes if they made middle of the block crossings with many more bike parking stalls in the middle of the road as well
I think it can be a good option in some situations, but I think that other options like protecting the bikes from traffic with the parking lane is probably a better default. Especially if you move the curb out closer to traffic at intersections and any driveway that has a parking restriction.
@ exactly. America is always so focused on *one solution fits all* and it really isn’t the case. The context matters. Bikes don’t really need expressways because they are frankly not being used to go vast distances or travel at super high speeds
@@Jay-nk6dm I think what's likely to become the case around here is people using their bikes as the last bit from the light rail to their destination. It makes it a lot easier to justify removing lanes of parking along those routes as those streets typically have bus service every 15 minutes feeding into a train that's running at least every 15 minutes through most of the day. So, there isn't as much loss for the drivers compared with the earlier bike lanes. It's not perfect, but if you lose a lane of parking, you can put in a bike lane in both directions, and if there is a business there, you can potentially give it a loading zone. It won't work for all sorts of businesses, but it would for some. It's definitely not perfect, but ebikes and escooters are allowed in the bike lanes, which means that even if there is a bit of a hill involved, a relatively inexpensive scooter or bike can get the job done without much trouble.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade IMO the best plan is the one they’re going with now. 1 way paths on each side, curb outs, parked lane buffer. As long as it’s not just a painted gutter I’m happy
@@Jay-nk6dm "Bikes don’t really need expressways because they are frankly not being used to go vast distances or travel at super high speeds" I would have to disagree with you on that. I commute 14 miles by bike every day. Speed and distance are definitely factors for me. A lot of people use their bike just like others use their car.
The people pushing for more car convenience really don't seem to have thought the removal of this through. After they change it back it'll be worse for cars due to less parking from the parklets, worse for bikes who need to avoid customers and staff going into/out of parklets, and worse for pedestrians who will need to watch out for bikes when using a parklet. As a side note, who even uses the street parking on major streets? There's tons of it but it's pretty much always full.
@ccash3290 In terms of space you could have 2-way car road with parking on both sides, and then add 2-way bike lane on one side, between the parked cars and the sidewalk. You'd get to keep the nice wide bike lane (a lot of the width comes from the ability to use the oncoming lane for overtaking), and you'd need one fewer buffer lane between cars and bikes. Intersections would be a little bit difficult, as you might need to ban turns (which wouldn't be too different from the current situation), or you'd need to sacrifice parking spaces for some right turn lanes and add a new step to the traffic lights, but I guess banning turns is much easier than removing parking spaces.
Yes this would probably be the most practical solution. But if you put the car road on the right side then the business is on the left will get angry and vice versa. So you can't win for losing in America someone's always going to get angry because we have so many f****** Karen's here.
There's a road near me that's kind of small, but they made it 1 way for cars and 2 way for bikes by making one side of the street a bike lane complete with a yellow center-line. It's not a solution for every situation, but it's a side street without much traffic, so making it one way probably doesn't inconvenience drivers much, but helps extend the bike lane network.
Some weird arguments from the merchants, like traffic being blocked by cars parallel parking. That will slow down through traffic, but how does car through traffic benefit these businesses? I'd also love to know what's really hurting business profits, since normally bike lanes bring more business than the parking they replace.
you missed the part where with the bike lane being a freeway through the middle, only cyclists who came with the intention of stopping will stop. the cyclists who might have stopped on an outside bike lane, now won't stop. basically, traffic studies factor the number of people going past the storefront - but rarely consider the percentage of those people who are likely to stop. and this configuration reduces the likelihood of both drivers and cyclists stopping. the center bike lane creates bicycle through traffic, and discourages bicycle shopping traffic.
@@kenbrown2808 If your business survives only from impulsive purchases, it will ALWAYS struggle during harder times which has been the case this last year... Those business owner suck at understanding basic causation vs correlation and I don't trust their math at all to say that the lane is the cause of their woes... ridiculous.
@@simonlynch4204 well, when you take it as given that a center bike lane is the perfect bike lane, and make all your other observations fit in to that model... then you also suck at causation vs. correlation. the fact of the matter is; it is another aspect of your holy induced demand phenomenon. by channeling the bicyclists into the center of a busy street, you have made it harder for them to stop at any businesses along that street, thus reducing the induced demand for bicyclists to patronize those businesses. kind of like you think that by punishing people for driving on a given route you will reduce the induced demand for people to drive. and if impulse purchases are not a significant part of a businesses income, why do all stores have impulse items at the checkstand?
The problem, for the businesses, with delivery and rideshare drivers not being able to parallel park for their brief stops without holding up traffic isn't that the traffic is held up. It's that the rideshare and especially delivery drivers are not as willing to work on that street _because_ they have to hold up traffic to do so. They will prefer other locations of the same businesses, or else most will just decline orders there and leave those deliveries to become late or cancelled, reducing commerce in that area.
This video left me with more unanswered questions than answers. How do we know that it was the bikelane that slowed down the economy of that street? It feels like all the arguments are vibes based with no concrete evidence. Also, does the street have other alternatives to cars other than bikes? The decisions feel incredibly shallow and based on incomplete at best analysis
Definitely felt like the initial growth the merchants were talking about was pent-up demain following COVID lockdowns, then it just petered out back to it's normal level.
It's also a short-sighted way to look at things. Because they only have a year of data. Don't you think that when news got out of an amazing bike lane to use in the middle of San Francisco on tik tok and Instagram that more people would be using it therefore more business. I don't think one year was a long enough trial period.
Yes, it's the changing bike lanes causing it. He had a bit where one of the business owners has multiple shops nearby. Valencia street was the only one that experienced a decline, and it coincided with the bike lane changes.
Data from the city showed that sales throughout the entire Mission District were dropping during the time period this bike lane was installed, and they actually dropped /less/ on Valencia Street. So if anything, it's likely the bike lane helped protect businesses on Valencia from the full brunt of the post-pandemic struggles in SF.
It is a process, so thanks for doing the experiment. I think bicycles should go on the outside like in the Netherlands, so bicyclists can visit the stores more easily. And get as much parking off the street as possible, it just takes up valuable space that could be actively used instead of being dead storage.
just get cars of that entire street... everybody gets parklets and bike lanes! don't they have more than enough roads for cars parallel to that street?
@@Croz89standard bike brain mentality. People don’t realize that cars aren’t just a noisy nuisance, but in fact a people carrier and if you get rid of the way people get to places, those places will just…close lol.
except those barriers will spill a biker if they don't' cross them, properly - I would put escape gaps angled so a reasonably competent cyclist could safely get out of the lane to clear it for an emergency vehicle. - and then you have the problem that with the lane divided from the street, drivers won't stop for the emergency vehicle. the bottom line is, life would work better if people weren't such jerks.
And where can riders ditch to? A heavily trafficked car lane? Sounds like there will be need for more emergency vehicles. At least with separated lanes often used in the Netherlands, riders can move off their lane to the sidewalk or the grassy median between the path and the car lanes to let emergency vehicles through. In the US, with parking or barrier protected bike lanes, riders can evacuate to the sidewalk, not into the car lanes.
@@kenbrown2808 well if an emergency vehicle coming all vehicles should stop. That would make is safer to walk your bike over to the side next to the cars.
4:44 would have loved a mention of how beat up those K71s look (and K71s are some of the more resilient soft-hit posts) - as much as the center bike lane "feels safe", its clear from the evidence that drivers keep illegally entering the lane, crushing those posts and driving head-on towards cyclists, who can't easily leave the lane because of the rubber curbs... (and those rubber curbs are too small to deter cars and trucks, so they really only serve to restrict bicyclists). Appreciate the coverage of this local bike lane! Oakland's Telegraph Ave would be an interesting comparison, since it already has the protected side-running configuration with floating parklets.
OK, so I wasn't the only one that noticed that. I don't live there, so I don't really know, but seeing those missing posts doesn't really fill me with confidence that it's working. I honestly think that if we're going to have bike lanes on busy streets, which we shouldn't if there's a viable side street option, it should be between the parked cars and sidewalk at sidewalk level. Or, with a short apron to help separate the pedestrians from the bike traffic.
If they were going to keep this long term, they would absolutely have to install solid posts that will ruin a car's bumper instead of that flexible crap. The goal of the posts is to protect cyclists from cars, that flexible crap fails miserably at this goal.
As a cyclist who rides through here daily on my commute, I don't think cars intruding in the bike lane has been a major issue. Usually it's just cars doing a bit of a wide radius turn near the intersections when no cyclists are around. I think the bigger issues are still turning off the bike lane and pedestrians crossing, so I'm not a huge fan of the parklet crossings in the new design, but I'm also ok with the trade offs
When I clicked on the video, I was worried it might not address the issues with center bike lanes. However, you did an excellent job covering all the possible solutions for implementing bike lanes. Here in Barcelona, center bike lanes are common on avenues, while curbside bike lanes are typically used on wide streets. That said, we’ve experienced many of the same challenges as those faced in San Francisco.
Interesting. You are right that that's the only other place I've seen quite a lot of this layout. Do you get the same issue that shop-owners find lowered footfall because the bikes can't stop and pop in so easily?
@@xxwookey No, the complaints from shop owners usually come during the construction phase of the avenue renovation. Once construction is finished, shop owners are generally happy because these renovations often include widening the sidewalks, which ends up bringing more customers. Bikes weren't present before, and cars can't stop on the avenues anyway, so there's no real difference. On the other hand, complaints also come from cyclists, who say that it's difficult to turn onto other streets, and from drivers, who lose one or two traffic lanes.
I was biking this weekly. Have mixed feelings--it seemed hard to get back to the sidewalk like you pointed out. Great video on complex topic. ... i was unpersuaded by business claims that this decreased their business versus people having just moved away or staying home.
Just get rid of the parklets. They're constructed as temporary structures anyway. If they want to be permanent structures then they should also be built to code
@@javiersayshi then get rid of on street parking. That is what causes most of the issues. Without it you can have larger sidewalks that can accommodate outdoor eating.
If the majority if your business traffic relies on double parked cars, which is illegal, then maybe the solution to your business isn't getting rid of the bike lanes, it's creating short term loading/unloading zones. You could have it be free for a short amount of time, maybe validate the parking if a person parks over that time to patronize your biness, and fine the hell out of any violators. Alternatively, just do what most cities do and put the food delivery people on bikes. In 1 car space you could fit 4 e-bikes. As always, it comes down to cars being a horribly inefficient use of public space and trying to accommodate them everywhere will only leave everyone else screwed. That being said, a center running bike lane with timed lights probably doesn't encourage stopping to visit the businesses on the side of the street. To do so, you would have to stop in an active bike lane, cross an active lane of traffic, squeeze between parked cars, and find somewhere to lock up the bike. There is a lot of friction there, almost as much friction as trying to find a place to park a car. The intent of putting it in the center seems good, but having parking protected bike lanes really seems like the best way to go here. The business owner's idea of putting the bike lane between parked cars and vehicle lanes is at his own detriment, as the parking crunch will still exist and all the cyclists who exist because of the center running bike lane will opt to drive because it's not as safe, thereby making the parking situation even worse. Again, it all comes down to how space inefficient parked vehicles are.
Well said about double parked cars. It’s always absurd how people are so happy to go back to the old way, which is explicitly illegal, just because they aren’t the ones harmed by it. Cities everywhere need to embody and enforce the concept that if you can’t park legally, you can’t park at all. Half the complaints about the center running bike lane was effectively that it prevented illegal parking. Isn’t that a good thing?
the biggest challenge to reducing car traffic is making a good way of transitioning out of town people out of their cars and onto more efficient urban transportation. case in point - I have to go 90 miles to an urban setting, today. my available option is to take my car from here to there. once there, I have to do something with the car - fortunately, there is a parking structure available where I need to be, and I think I can carry all I need to carry once I get there. but there isn't an alternative where I could leave the car at the edge of the urban space, and have quick efficient car free transit from there to my destination. some places have park and ride, which does that, but urbanists don't like it, despite the fact it does effectivly remove cars form the urban space to suburban or rural space. I think the root of the problem is that there is too much bias towards punishing use of cars, when it should be towards rewarding people for transitioning from their car to alternatives at the edge of the urban space.
The main purpose of parking meters is to limit the time a vehicle can be parked. In most places, it's a ticket to reload your meter when time runs out - you have to move your car somewhere else.
@@PsRohrbaugh that is regional - some metered parking has a maximum time limit, and other metered parking just has a charge for time. what is interesting is that some cities levy a fine for putting additional money in a stranger's meter.
Where I live the business owner has to "pay" for the loading zone. It takes a bit for the cops to come out to ticket and tow an illegally parked car. But they do come out.
You can always just put the double bike lane on one side of the street, thus avoiding problems with the parklets on the other side. edit: Rob says elsewhere there might have been some problems with the traffic light phases in such a configuration? I have no idea what problems tho, if for Rob it's second-hand information, for me it's third-hand.
Does seem to be the obvious solution. Two bike lanes in the middle is great for passing through but not so for local shops. Go to pedestrian... two bike lanes then parking then two car lanes then one parking then a pedestrian. Bikes can stop and shop. Cars can pass.
It sounds good, until you consider the businesses again. That would functionally act the same as the middle running bike lane for half of the shops, as only one side would have that access, and it would be equally difficult for the shops on the other side. I think what they ended up deciding makes the most sense for this road, but I think the middle run is a great idea that could work in other areas to improve safety.
@@nusbaumtanner you make it sound like crossing the street in the US is like playing frogger. Then again, seeing how car centered the US is, maybe it really is like that. High cyclist and ped traffic shouldn't be near cars. Turn the street into an outdoor mall so the restaurants can build terraces instead of those weird parklets.
Thank god we don't have any of these "bike lanes" that are between parked cars and a live car lane here in my country. That seems absolutely deadly, I bet that hundreds of bikers are hit due to this things.
Depends - with some very clear design and when that parking is mostly residential is works very well. But once there is a constant in and out of drivers in a hurry or no space for well designed buffers, you get a mess.
@@kailahmann1823 That's the important bit. A street where people living and no through traffic? No problem. There is only a car every few minutes getting in or out the parking spot. But a shopping street with high traffic? Deadly!
Yeah but US news never talks about how many people are killed by cars every day so the problem literally doesn't exist and we can just keep building freeways wheeeeeee.
It works if there's no middle lane markers for the cars and they only have 1.5 lanes total, which keeps drivers awake because they have to worry about oncoming traffic. It's a middle point between "no bike lanes necessary because things are so low traffic" and "we need completely separate lanes because there's too many cars". I would be worried about those things in the US though, drivers would think "well the road is narrow so I'm supposed to drive on the bicycle lane", not "Oh I'm supposed to keep out of the bicycle lane unless there's oncoming traffic at which point I might need to come to a full stop because there's cyclists in the lanes".
One the major hurdles of any kind of change to car culture is vested interest. People who drive always want more lanes, more parking and just more all for free. Then you have businesses, they'd rather have people die in unsafe bike lanes than miss a parking space for a customer. Plus this was basically a bike highway that would bypass their shops. So again the Business owners with the money to complain do so. Mean while the small minority of people who ride a bike have to fight against all that to get anything done. Bike lanes were built on the blood of dead cyclist, and look how little progress has been made towards their safety. It takes dozens of dead people to compete with a single angry driver.
Imagine.. groups people fighting so that 2 random individuals can temporarily leave their 60 sq foot sized personal property unattended for an unspecified duration. Well, I don't have to imagine it after watching this video. The cities catering to vehicles above all other forms of transportation has to stop. There are so many more efficient methods of getting around that are not dragging 2.5 tons of metal and plastic around that need to be stored somewhere.
The unspoken detail there, is that it's often business owners wanting the convenience of parking in front of their own store. I used to live on a strip like this, and it was always the same vehicles parked in front of the same shops. If they really cared about the customers they would make that spot available for them.
Excellent video. Has there been an idea to have a two way bike lane on one side of the street? Shop, sidewalk, bikelane, bikelane, sidewalk, parking, car lane, car lane, parking, sidewalk, shop
The challenge Paul told me is that the traffic signals would need to do phases that the controllers can't handle (because they are so old). And being a low-price "quick build" project, they don't have money to replace millions of dollars of controllers at all the stop lights. Someday, after San Francisco finds money to replace them, they would absolutely look into doing that.
@@RoadGuyRob So the problem isn't the bike lane then, the problem is that the city council of one of the wealthiest cities in the US is trying to do it cheap AF?
@@RoadGuyRob Here in Barcelona, we have all kinds of bike lanes, including the one this comment talking about. The problem with that type of bike lane is that drivers need to check both sides when turning to yield to bikes, which can be very challenging and dangerous. Drivers often have to turn their heads significantly to see both sides of the bike lane due to the limited visibility while turning. So the city doesn’t want to build more of them.
@@csam16 I think another challenge would be you'd need a lot of pedestrian crossings so delivery vans and people parking on the street will be able to access the businesses on the other side of the street without taking a long detour, otherwise cyclists will have to constantly be on the lookout for pedestrians and sack trucks crossing the bike lane all over the place.
Good to know that as cyclists we are solely responsible for making sure that you have "double-digit growth" for your businesses. Thanks Eileen and Tony.
Your not‐a‐sponsorship intermission was an instant follow. Also as a Dutchman it was really funny to see San Francisco copying our bike traffic light homework. It looks almost identical to ours, which I really didn’t expect to see.
It has to be adapted as unlike the Netherlands, San Francisco is famously very hilly. Some of it can be copied verbatim, but it doesn't always translate.
While I think that a bike lane in the middle seems like a good idea it's not really a good fit for a commercial street, since if i was on my bike and i wanted to pull over to stop at a cafe or something i would have to cross a lane of traffic first. I would probably be in favour of just pedestrianising the street (or part of it) with only vehicle access for loading and unloading
Some stakeholders are getting injured or killed while biking. Other stakeholders are not seeing double-digit growth of their business. How do we possibly reconcile this.
@@bradk8590 U can't. Mutually exclusive n contradictory goals can never b reconcile. Loud n quiet can never co-exist peacefully at the same time. Either schedule the use of public goods or grade separation so bikes never interact w/ pedestrians n cars and cars never interact w/ bikes n pedestrians.
i am a bit suspicious of business owner doing their "I lost all of my customer because only SUV driving suburbanites eat here" dance every time a bike lane is added somewhere. could be other reasons for their failing businesses, just a thought
well in this case it makes a degree of sense, because it was the BIKE traffic they were losing - when i saw the middle lane, my first thought was "okay that looks safe enough.... but how do you get on or off that strip? how do you stop and go to a store on the side?"
Most businesses fail within the first three years. If they manage to make it past that period, they’re usually okay thereafter barring sudden catastrophic events like a massive disaster. I helped mark potential spots for bike racks once. One coffee shop owner asked what I was doing, and after I told him, he asked me to mark as many as would fit near his shop as he gets more customers arriving by foot or bike than car, and you can comfortably park 8 bikes in the space of a single car spot. I don’t know if the city ever did install them all, but he was eager to have as many as possible.
@@chow-chihuang4903 see this is a great point. And also most of the business owners are seeing this very short-sighted. Once news gets out on social media about a great bike lane to use in the middle of San Francisco Don't you think you would get more people using the bike lane therefore even if less people go off the bike lane there would still be the same if not more customers because there's just more people on the bike lane? I think that the study was too short-sighted.
The business owners with those "parklets" *WILL* be screaming about how "dangerous" it is for their customers to cross bike traffic very soon. Never mind if the reason has to do with the "parklet" thing having opaque walls that neither the biker nor the customer can see through to spot each other.
It's so unfortunate that this bike lane reduced street parking. If only there was some other way for people to easily get to these businesses without driving.... 🧐
I'm sorry, but bikes aren't viable for everybody, especially in places with significant hills. Bike lanes and path can reduce the barrier, but there's a bunch of people who have disabilities or are elderly that need something that doesn't require as much physically to get about.
I like the center bike lane/fire lane a lot! But I understand the business aspect and I want those businesses to do well. Sounds like they tried it, might use it on other streets...and for sure this could be used in other cities without issues for local businesses, because here in Texas, most of the "Valencia type" streets are not major through ways. Another great video Rob! Thanks for sharing this!!
sounds like a lot of lazy people complaining about not being able to drive and park absolutely everywhere they want with no inconvenience even if it risks pedestrians lives
I recently had a conversation where locals were complaining about getting towed from a private lot that they had chosen to use because the public lot was an entire block away from the coffee shop they were visiting. Yes, there are multiple signs telling them that they would get towed. They still complained, blamed the city, and were calling for others to complain to the tow company. Most folks trying to sympathize were saying to blame the owner of the private lot. I tell you, folks are lazy. Insanely lazy.
@@Outsideville in my state legally you can tow for 24hours if the parked car is not impeding business or an emergency. I think if you don't put up a barrier to prevent unauthorized cars from entering this law is a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately it is usually ignored.
I'm in the netherlands. I can't remember the last time i have seen anyone double park. Ever. Only for a passenger to get out. Never to get in or actually park.
Yeah, pretty much same in the UK, except maybe late evening in residential areas where all spaces are taken up by sleeping residents and a pizza delivery hatchback or something needs to stop somewhere and it's probably better than in the middle of the road, especially since there aren't really any cyclists around that time (Just outside of Greater London area, not sure how it's like within London)
Wow, see it constantly in LA. You have a choice -- 10, 20 or 30 minutes spent looking for parking or double-park for a few minutes. Folks are used to it and just go around.
@x--. there are virtually zero roads with 4 lanes with destinations on them, so for me to see it happen it would need to happen on a 2 lane road or residential. People just wait it out if something happens. (I guess some residential package deliveries double park, but also residential streets are basically empty)
i feel like a solution with a two-way bike lane on one side of the road could have been a good solution, since there's enough space for that *and* parking.
The problem with that is drivers turning across the bike lanes may not be accustomed to checking both ways for bikes. This will especially be an issue if left turns are allowed across the path.
@TrafficExplorerONI've seen this configuration in London, and I can confirm your concern. Ultimately, painting both lanes in the intersection can help, but cyclists and drivers will just have to be more careful through there.
I like the concept because you can see the bikes. I really don't like the bike lane in a gutter behind parked cars. Would be better to declare one side parking and one side bikes both ways behind a curb.
Only if you've got the mass transit to back it up. Which is often the problem. If you take the parking away before providing for a reasonable alternative, it just makes people angry and park in dangerous places. Around here the bus agency cut the route I used to take to college in anticipation of light rail opening up, but they did the cut years before the station opened. The result was that it went from being a pretty reasonable one bus trip with a bit of a walk at the end, to becoming either a much longer walk or a mandatory transfer. Eventually, the stations opened and it got to what it should be, but there was a period of literally years where it was a significant inconvenience for no particularly good reason.
reducing parking spaces is a long term benefit... because it means people are less likely to go there by car... it increases demand for other modes of transit to the area... reduces congestion... the same issue with the cyclists in the middle not really stopping to visit shops and food places along the road... you get with cars, because they definitely cant windowshop - so you want the comparatively slow bikes near the shops and public transit nearby
There are many failing businesses that were the loudest against the bike lane that were blaming the bike lane instead of their own business practices. The bike lane became the visible culprit.
True, the correlation is conspicuous, but on the other hand, if bicyclists are (on average) more likely to peruse local businesses than drivers, what good is it to _physically isolate_ bicyclists from accessing these local businesses, in the same way that a freeway physically separates cars from a street network?
It is suspiciously convenient reason. If they really had that many bicyclists patronizing their businesses that it impacted them, where is even one of them who put a bike rack in place in front of the store?
You could give the entire street over to the cars. You would still never make this a safe, efficient street. Give it over to the pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit connected to parking (for the drivers) and I guarantee you, this would become one of the most popular, productive streets in the city, if only for the novelty (in the US) alone.
really, i learned the bike lane can do in one lane worth of space what cars struggle to do with 5. truly incredible that as a society we picked the car
People defending double-parking though is crazy. That's illegal and bad for cyclists, even if you have your hazards on, unless it is some kind of emergency, well, it still is bad for bikes, even if it is.
In the middle is not the best place for a bike lane. You always have to cross. It has to be shops, pedestrians, cyclists, busses and then cars. No car parking in a bussy street when there are shops, that's the key to it all but Americans don't see that or don't want to see it. So, design EVERY big street like I described and your shops will florish, accidents are down, etc.
Colorado Springs has the best bike paths! They are completely separate from the roads, they go right under the major roads. I can get across the whole city without being within 100 feet of a car. Sometimes I can finish my ride without even seeing another car
The parking-protected lane where bikes are right up against the curb seems like the obvious winner overall. The real issue there isn't the lane configuration, it's those goofy "parklet" things. Seems like a no-brainer to me that _buildings do not belong in the street._ Having them up to help with social distancing four years ago was fine, but it seems like it's time to take them back down now.
It feels completely alien to me that people can't handle waiting 30-60 seconds for someone to parallel park, and then even more mind-boggling that merchants are blaming *that* for their decrease in footfall, AND that everyone is just okay with double-parking because the roads are so unbeliveably wide that you can double park AND trafic continues to flow ON BOTH SIDES!!!
i'm dutch and i have been to america several times the volume of cars is mind boggling. also in my opinion they should just offset the dual bike land and car lanes. get rid of all the parklets, get rid of all the street parking on that street and make it loading zones. and ad a nice grass median in between the dual bikelane and car lanes. that way you could also widen th sidewalk so you can have out door seating.
Amazing reporting, Rob! Extensive interviews with people on all sides, great visuals, and a “stand-up” on a moving bike? Bravo! Also, why allow parklets still? Is that property not city-owned rather than business-owned? Post-pandemic, no reason to keep them other than restaurants wanting extra tables. Not a good enough reason, imo.
I’m not a fan of center running bikeways but business surveys are a terrible way to collect sales data. Running a small business is inherently precarious so the owners tend to be biased against change. The city should collect its own sales and crash data (ideally categorizing crashes based on severity; many fenders benders are better than a few fatalities) and make a decision based on those numbers.
Another great video. I believe cities should be centered around people not cars, people walking, cycling and using mass transit, not cars. Car use should be the exception, not the rule, and public infrastructure should reflect that priority.
As a driver I hate roads that limit my freedom to take left turns and over take. As a bicyclist, I love biking on sidewalks... specially big sidewalks. Make the sidewalks bigger and paint a bike lane in the middle of the sidewalks... that way we can go full speed without conflict and without disturbing cars.
@javiersayshi bs. Bikes provide zero protection in an accident... It has the same danger level for the rider as it is to the pedestrians. There will be some bumps here and there, but nothing major.
One of the points of bike lanes is to get bikes away from pedestrians. If you've ever seen what pedestrians do to the boundaries on ped/bike shared paths (defined by paint), you'll understand why it's good to have physical separation between bike and peds.
@@TheCdubbleyoo I used to bike through massive crowds in college, every day for four years... Had one serious accident with a pedestrian... Injuries so minor we kept running to our clases. In places where people aren't used to bikes or have less predictable people like kids and elderly... I just have to slow down a lot and it's less comfortable... But I don't see a better fiscally responsible solution
We have this kind of bike lanes in Spain too, and they have the same problems: faster for bicyclists, but because they are faster, they don't stop at businesses. Also turning from a median running bike lane to a side street as a cyclist becomes difficult. Side bike lanes are the way to go!
Dont Build Parklets on the street, Lower speed limits, Rethink zoning laws in dense urban places that make business distructs walkable and do not prioritize car traffic. City will be safer and quieter. People will want to visit and spend more money and time in these places.
Terrible idea. You have to maneuver through traffic just to go to a local store. Go back to the bike lanes next to the sidewalks. Get rid of those shanties in the street.
As a Dutch person I hated being pushed into the middle of the street when I cycled in Paris, as when you want to leave the bike lane to get to the businesses on the side, you can't. Having them between the pavement and car parking definitely has my preference.
Just close the street off to (through) motor traffic? Doesn't seem like it's a massive major car route - and bikes don't need special treatment if there's no cars
In Cambridge, MA, some bike lanes are on the curb, part of the sidewalk. The best bike lane ever! Now every other kind of bike lanes don’t make sense to me
Ideally, they should have changed the car lanes to pedestrian lanes. If you have proper public transport, like SFO does, you don't really need car traffic in the city other than maybe deliveries at certain times.
The trouble is the businesses were seeing drops in sales along the corridor. And, in fairness, people aren't going to carry a major appliance home on BART. I do think there could be a fun configuration that could play with that pedestrianizes it a bit more (one proposal had one-way road with parking). I think that's what's kind of cool about using rubber blocks and barriers- they can keep adjusting it every five-ish years as the neighborhood's needs change.
@RoadGuyRob the thing is: it works in Europe. They have extensive pedestrian streets with large shops and businesses, like department stores, restaurants, cafés, etc. on them. Over there, pedestrian zones actually increase business growth on them as pedestrians are more likely to stop in and have a coffee, or shop. (They do ban bike traffic on many of those pedestrian streets though...) I'm not sure though if that is due to European culture, or an inherent benefit of pedestrian streets. But I know that the 16th street mall in Denver, CO, for example, is always busy... so the concept must work in the US as well...
@@sncy5303 The businesses that work on the 16th street mall and those that work on car corridor are going to be different. You'll have to be willing to accept the political fall-out of destroying those businesses. @Chris-pt6hh surely you mean his _hat_?
@@sncy5303 Pedestrian streets are fine but they don't work for all kinds of stores. Large appliance retailers generally set up in retail parks which have car parking right outside.
Prohibit cars, excepting delivery, public transit, and emergency vehicles. Give the street back to the people and let them make it a comfortable place to walk, bike, and shop. Let the cars find another route through.
Great job Rob. As a fairly new bicyclist (coming on two years) I am just coming to comprehend the issues related in this piece. Most I had never realized were relevant when I was just in a car or even my motorcycle. The various factors at play are kind of mind boggling. Changing a roadway designed decades ago to maximize car travel is a lot harder than it looks.
Maybe they should try putting two lanes of car traffic on one side of the street and the two bike lanes on the other side of the street, that way the traffic can be together for both modes. I think that still leaves parking on one side of the street for cars. they could switch to diagonal parking to get back most of the spaces lost from the other side of the street. Perhaps diagonal parking around the corner on the first block of the cross street would help too.
I think the existence of parklets highlights that people enjoy street space not being dedicated car storage. And that Tony guy is just another old head. His "Staten Island" hat says all I need to know, that crowd hates bikes. He opened his business **after** this bike lane was already there.
I mean, if I was running a business, I'd also love to have the city pay for a couple hundred square feet of floor space for me. the existence of the parklets just highlights that everybody wants something for nothing. if the city started charging rent, for that space, at prevailing rates, and requiring them to meet building codes, it's likely 90% of them would disappear within a week.
OMG why is this always the way. The new guy who has only had his business there for a year is the most passionate about keeping the street the "way it was". How TF does he know that business is down 40-60% YOY when he only just opened? Good catch.
It doesn't matter what they want when the mass transit isn't there to allow people to get where they want in a reasonable time frame. The mass transit improvements have to come before you start removing lanes of traffic and parking otherwise you just get a bunch of backlash slowing the process.
The lack of left turns and making it more annoying for bikes to swing out of the lane to go to shops would definitely have an impact on businesses. Ultimately streets aren't made to support businesses, they are to move people. Doing so safely should be the priority and everything else should come after that.
When Rob calls it a "freeway for bicyclists" . . . that is true in the worst ways possible! Full disclosure, I am a cyclist myself. A dedicated two-way bicycle road looks beautiful to have (and generally safer than a single lane flanked against vehicle traffic), but physically isolating it from sidewalk businesses does feel like a net complaint (not just for businesses, but the cyclists too). It optimizes the bicycle lane for through traffic at the exclusion of (bicycle) parking / local business patronage, in the same way that US freeways did for cars. ...I also actually hate parking lots more than roads, because at least road traffic is _predictable!_
I mean the concrete pillars are a nice touch, but they are no wall. There are more than enough gaps to give cars the incentive to try and cross the bike lane. Never mind the bikes having to merge through traffic to exit the bike lane as well. I would also say the noise and pollution of driving between two lanes of cars isn't entirely healthy either. This is only a "good thing" because of the insanely low standards we have in America for bike lanes. If it's not a painted bike gutter it's "Good".
Sadly not even concrete - they're plastic K71 posts that are designed to be repeatedly run over and stay standing. Which is a bit odd when you think about it a bit more - we're "protecting" cyclists with things that are designed to be easy to run over... Only already-well-behaved drivers respect them, but the truck drivers know they can drive over them without even scratching their truck, so they drive accordingly.
@@scottbez1 Ah yes the "must protect stupid drivers" approach to road infrastructure. I remember seeing side walks that instead of a hard curb have a slope... so their easier to run over. Also why you don't see a lot of steel rails along things any more, they rather have a car go off road through some one's house than put up a barrier near a sharp corner. I remember a video of a guy complaining that over a dozen cars had driven through his house, so many that he couldn't get insurance any more. City still refused to do anything.
this problem of business is entirely due to cars in the first place by the way, if people could reliably get to businesses by public transit, they wouldnt need to park there, then there would be plenty of space for loading bays and good curb bike lanes
You greatly over estimate how much people want to be shoved into boxes, trapped like sardines with potentially dangerous strangers, forced to move on someone else's schedule and no actual freedom of movement.
the people who got to town in a car would still need someplace to put their car. by which I mean, urbanists should look at places for people to put their car and transition to carless, easily. here's an idea: make your parking fee for a perimeter parking garage double as a transit pass, while parked there.
As a driver I would appreciate these kinds of bike lanes because at least I know I'm not going to hit a cyclist while I'm driving through town. I feel like the business owners are the only ones complaining here. But as usual it's always about money in America. Never about the 99% of actual Americans who use the city.
Yep, I believe this makes the the road access still focus on cars, while bikes have to awkwardly cross the road to go to the destination business. This whole channel in my opinion feels like that, it shows great invention of US traffic engineers solving a problem only US has. in this case: bike lane between parking and driving lane is bad... so we put it in the middle rest of the world: how about we expand the sidewalk instead and give some of THAT space for bikes.
So the big issue with the center bike lane is it impedes drivers ability to break the law with illegal double parking and u-turns, and to allow fellow drivers to parallel park. By all metrics the bike lane made the street safer. So naturally the solution is to remove the bike lane.
Telegraph Ave in Oakland has bike lanes that are exactly like what the new plans for Valencia are. parklets in the parking, and raised platforms so that people in the parklers can walk safely from the parklet to the curb. they seem to work very well
Strange how, in a lot of places in Europe, you have a building, then you have a pedestrian sidewalk / path or whatever, then you have a possible bicycle path, then you go down to the lower level where you have 1-2 lanes of car traffic. Americans haven't figured out how to raise the bicycle path to the sidewalk level, for some reason.
I would never put a bike lane on the LEFT SIDE of parked cars, this increases the chance of ''dooring'' by about 90% compared to putting it to the passenger side of cars, because most cars only have one driver
Glad to see you're not accepting sponsorships from money Rob, another hit for the catalog. Editing this comment after finishing the video: I wonder why the drivers can't park somewhere else and walk though? Seems like a uniquely North American problem to be complaining about the inability to park directly outside of where you need to be. (And I spend most of my time in Somerville, MA where people double park the bus lane). _Personally_ I think a happy medium would be to bring the cars back together, but keep ALL of the cars in a single corridor. Remove one of those wide center medians separating the bicycles and shove the entire cycle thoroughfare to one side or the other. That'd give at least a few more feet of room to play with. Then you get businesses on the other side of the road who are impacted 😂 you can't win.
I'm really liking the diversity of viewpoints in these videos. It would be great to see your take on a couple of issues that I feel are overlooked in urban transport: Safety on public transport - I know people in cities with good PT who won't use it because of bad experiences with other riders. What can we do to make them feel safe enough to ride with peace of mind? Personal electric vehicles - Often capable of going faster than bikes, safer (to others) and more efficient than cars, should we treat them the same as bikes, or allow them to occupy some middle ground to utilise them more fully? What infrastructure changes could support them (e.g. public recharging points, "bike" lanes on steeper routes, safer storage)?
I feel like the businesses would be making more money in the long run because eventually enough people would fall in love with this style of bike lane that there would be more people on the road therefore they would still get more business in the end. I think that their fix is only short-sided because they won't wait for more people to use it.
Possibly, but this is where you have to have some sort of a plan to get us between what we have now and what we want later on. I like that we're getting better mass transit around here, but there were a bunch of changes to the routes and removal of parking before the expansions were completed in various areas. The result is a lot of traffic issues being made that impacted people that didn't even have the option of proper mass transit and for whom the previous routes had been removed. Most people do not have 2 hours to take a bus when it should be a 45minute tops commute via car. And the planners failing to understand that just causes anger and people fighting against the improvements that would lead to a system that might allow for a 30 minute commute via mass transit.
All this video told me is 2 things: Road vs streets matters and delivery services need way more accommodation. They effectively turned a bicycle street network to a road network and it did exactly what it was designed to do, which is move traffic effectively. But it is clear this area needs a street network so I'm really glad they're reverting it. Aside from losing customers from bicycle traffic, I can't imagine how much they lost in delivery services not wanting to deal with this area after the conversion. Whether I like it or not, delivery services have become a big business and I think it's time to rethink how much space we should give them.
that last suggestion (parklet in car parking spot, crossing the bike lane) is the most sound and acceptable to all parties involved, but as im not familiar with SF traffic or city design laws (or US for the matter) aren't there any bike-equivalent rumble strip to kinetically warn bikers of an approaching parklet ramp/crossing?
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #60 РОЖДЕНИЕ ЛОЛОЛОШКИ [Финал] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/YoR0pAV9FVQ/mqdefault.jpg)
The Netherlands has been switching a lot of infrastructure to a 2-way bicycle lanes NEXT TO the road, basically treating it as a separate road that's just for bicycles. It's more common in suburban and rural areas though, because business access is indeed better with separated bike lanes.
And Groningen has a green for all directions for cyclist and that would work here to.
Poland has this as well in some cities and it works fantastic. Zero interaction between cars and bikes
I think that's really the way it should be, either both lanes on one side of the road between parking and the side walk, or instead of parking on one side of the street where there's adequate mass transit to permit it. It should be a pretty cheap thing to change as you mostly just have to paint lines and possible move the center-line.
This is especially true around here where some of the hills are upwards of 18% in town and bikes just can't make a grade like that at a safe speed. I used to have to go up one of those hills to work and bikes can basically just do walking speed.
I have a feeling the shop owners will dislike the idea of losing that car/bike traffic to the other side of the street. But otherwise it's good. Do we have any before & after metrics on that layout for businesses?
Also incidents, injuries and fatalities are way higher with 2-way bicycle lanes, rather than separated one-way bike lanes, on streets with frequent intersections, so in an urban context (another reason why they are more common in suburban and rural areas).
I was literally just Googling this problem to figure out why bike lanes are not being down the median. Thanks Rob!
What a coincidence! Yeah, I never have used lanes quite like these before, and they are a real hoot! I think in the right setting, they could work great. I reminded me of DDI interchanges where the sidewalk is in the middle. It looks really scary but works well when you actually use it.
ua-cam.com/video/xlnz04EZpMQ/v-deo.html
Doesn't D.C. also have a bike lane in the center of the road?
@@RoadGuyRob How does it feel during hot days? My guess is it can feel uncomfortable especially with the lack of trees. Can trees in the middle help shade cyclist and also provide natural barriers?
It wasn't figuratively?
@@theunknown4834 yes and no. If you put trees in the middle we need to think that bike lanes can be used for emergency services, so you have less space on a possible better solution, tree roots damage the road surface and so create more danger for cyclists. Look for example in Vercelli Corso Giuseppe Garibaldi (ex medieval hospital), Corso Mario Abbiate (near hospital) and Viale Rimembranza (near Fire Brigade station), they are great, but during emergency is difficult to make space sometimes. They need a very very very specific study, adjusting, rethinking and reorganising emergency vehicles and services
Another problem the merchants are having, which you almost talked abut, is that the rubber barriers prevent the bikes form stopping on a whim. They can't come inside and buy tings without jumping the curb and fighting traffic.
I suspect the stores lost a lot of walk-in traffic because the bike people weren't stopping as much as before. Instead of a car sewer, it became a bike sewer, dedicated to evacuating potential customers as quickly as possible.
Bikes have easy access to the sidewalk at any intersection - they just move over to the right or left turn boxes painted on the street and wait for either a gap in traffic, or for the light to change.
yeah, the center lane would probably be better for businesses without the rubber barriers and only the flexible poles.
That way a cyclist can leave the lane much more easily.
Yeah., I was wondering how much of an effect this is. But I suspect it's not actually _that_ hard to move right and stop when you need to. How much stopping is 'on a whim' vs an intended destination. Bikes are good for whims or course, so this probably is an effect, but I'd expect it to be quite small overall.
I actually think this is the primary reason!
People on bikes will bring more business. But when theyre in the middle they can't access the businesses as easily
that might be the only thing actually negetivly impacts them.
Daylighting should absolutely be the default everywhere in this country. I hate playing “guess if a pedestrian or another motorist is about to materialize out of nowhere” when I’m driving.
Yes. The lack of it is one of the reasons for the US's terrible pedestrian/cycle death/collision numbers relative to other countries. Cities that have done daylighting everywhere have _much_ better numbers.
I'm surprised that it wasn't already required. It's been the law here since before I learned out to drive nearly 30 years ago. Unfortunately, the city has largely stopped enforcing it, which has gotten extremely dangerous as cars have been getting bigger and bigger and parking closer and closer.
The daylighting law is a bit of a stop gap though, the best thing is to just extend the curb near the intersection. It physically prevents people from parking too close and gives the pedestrians more visibility for when they do want to cross. It does cost some money, but it's a boost in safety without costing parking.
@ It's been the law here for quite a few decades, it's just not a law that the city has been enforcing which seems really odd to me as they're generally pretty quick to enact rules to get car drivers, and they literally already have it on the books that they can ticket those cars parked too close to the intersections.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade I was about to say that too. I don't know the proper name for them, but those bulbous curbs at corners are really the best way to go.
@ The only issue I have with them is that they arguably shouldn't be necessary. But, I think they'll wind up helping a great deal, especially when paired with pedestrian activated yellow crossing lights. But, if I can just see oncoming traffic when driving, that would be a significant move in the right direction.
10:15 The fact that people have collectively agreed that parking in a bike lane is ok and not impeding any traffic even though it does (3500 bikers on this street) while parking in a car travel lane isn’t ok is peak absurdity and hypocrisy.
Bikes can ride in the street. Problem solved.
@@kenheise162in a high dense street? Yeah sure
And no one is talking about how the parklet is giving public land to the restaurant owner just because, and then those same owners complain about lack of parking for their customers. Making the whole situation more complicated and ridiculous.
@ exactly.
@ if you can’t handle riding on the street, then stay off of it. Simple.
The business owners saying that not having double parking hurts the business. That makes sense. But double parking should never be allowed anywhere. If there is a need for quick stops, there should be a dedicated space. Put time limit of 5 minutes on some parking spots. It could be difficult to enforce, but double parking is just bandaid, not a good fix.
Yea, it really sounds like a failure of public transit if everyone is relying on private vehicles to get around town.
I'm not sure they said that, did they? Rob mentioned that problem for delivery drivers but the business owners mentioned that double-parking _was_ a problem because it blocked traffic for blocks since people couldn't pass the double-parked vehicles.
The problem seems to be that there's so many rideshare and food delivery vehicles that the entire street would have to be nothing but drop off spaces.
@@Croz89 Maybe that should be the default then :P
As a business, consider the relative value of a drop-off space to longer-term parking. 1 car parked = 1 customer over their entire stay duration. If, on average, more than 1 customer uses the drop-off, then that would be more valuable.
@@bluerendar2194 Only if they compensate for the reduction in walk in customers.
The center bike lane is great for throughput, however the business owners are correct. It is a bike highway, meaning they are losing out on bike business too.
Building proper bike lanes on the curb side with protections will keep bike through put traffic the same and also increase business.
Treating bikes like cars and giving them expressway spacing in the middle of the road doesn’t really ever make sense, unless the neighborhood is like strictly industrial and bikes have no use of stopping there.
They could’ve kept the center running bike lanes if they made middle of the block crossings with many more bike parking stalls in the middle of the road as well
I think it can be a good option in some situations, but I think that other options like protecting the bikes from traffic with the parking lane is probably a better default. Especially if you move the curb out closer to traffic at intersections and any driveway that has a parking restriction.
@ exactly. America is always so focused on *one solution fits all* and it really isn’t the case. The context matters. Bikes don’t really need expressways because they are frankly not being used to go vast distances or travel at super high speeds
@@Jay-nk6dm I think what's likely to become the case around here is people using their bikes as the last bit from the light rail to their destination. It makes it a lot easier to justify removing lanes of parking along those routes as those streets typically have bus service every 15 minutes feeding into a train that's running at least every 15 minutes through most of the day. So, there isn't as much loss for the drivers compared with the earlier bike lanes. It's not perfect, but if you lose a lane of parking, you can put in a bike lane in both directions, and if there is a business there, you can potentially give it a loading zone. It won't work for all sorts of businesses, but it would for some.
It's definitely not perfect, but ebikes and escooters are allowed in the bike lanes, which means that even if there is a bit of a hill involved, a relatively inexpensive scooter or bike can get the job done without much trouble.
@@SmallSpoonBrigade IMO the best plan is the one they’re going with now. 1 way paths on each side, curb outs, parked lane buffer. As long as it’s not just a painted gutter I’m happy
@@Jay-nk6dm "Bikes don’t really need expressways because they are frankly not being used to go vast distances or travel at super high speeds"
I would have to disagree with you on that. I commute 14 miles by bike every day. Speed and distance are definitely factors for me. A lot of people use their bike just like others use their car.
Finally car driver are seeing just a little fraction of the annoyances of being pushed to the side of the road lol
Go move to fuckin Copenhagen if you want to ride a bike everywhere
The people pushing for more car convenience really don't seem to have thought the removal of this through. After they change it back it'll be worse for cars due to less parking from the parklets, worse for bikes who need to avoid customers and staff going into/out of parklets, and worse for pedestrians who will need to watch out for bikes when using a parklet.
As a side note, who even uses the street parking on major streets? There's tons of it but it's pretty much always full.
@@COASTER1921it’s full, because everyone is using it… using it because it’s convenient.
@@COASTER1921People are probably much less likely to mistakenly drive in side protected parking lanes, for example.
Seems odd that they didn't consider making an asymmetrical road with a two directional bike lane next to a two directional car lane.
They want cars to be able to park on both sides of the street
Probably cheaper to reuse the turning lane
@ccash3290 In terms of space you could have 2-way car road with parking on both sides, and then add 2-way bike lane on one side, between the parked cars and the sidewalk. You'd get to keep the nice wide bike lane (a lot of the width comes from the ability to use the oncoming lane for overtaking), and you'd need one fewer buffer lane between cars and bikes. Intersections would be a little bit difficult, as you might need to ban turns (which wouldn't be too different from the current situation), or you'd need to sacrifice parking spaces for some right turn lanes and add a new step to the traffic lights, but I guess banning turns is much easier than removing parking spaces.
Yes this would probably be the most practical solution. But if you put the car road on the right side then the business is on the left will get angry and vice versa. So you can't win for losing in America someone's always going to get angry because we have so many f****** Karen's here.
There's a road near me that's kind of small, but they made it 1 way for cars and 2 way for bikes by making one side of the street a bike lane complete with a yellow center-line. It's not a solution for every situation, but it's a side street without much traffic, so making it one way probably doesn't inconvenience drivers much, but helps extend the bike lane network.
Some weird arguments from the merchants, like traffic being blocked by cars parallel parking. That will slow down through traffic, but how does car through traffic benefit these businesses? I'd also love to know what's really hurting business profits, since normally bike lanes bring more business than the parking they replace.
you missed the part where with the bike lane being a freeway through the middle, only cyclists who came with the intention of stopping will stop. the cyclists who might have stopped on an outside bike lane, now won't stop. basically, traffic studies factor the number of people going past the storefront - but rarely consider the percentage of those people who are likely to stop. and this configuration reduces the likelihood of both drivers and cyclists stopping. the center bike lane creates bicycle through traffic, and discourages bicycle shopping traffic.
@@kenbrown2808 If your business survives only from impulsive purchases, it will ALWAYS struggle during harder times which has been the case this last year... Those business owner suck at understanding basic causation vs correlation and I don't trust their math at all to say that the lane is the cause of their woes... ridiculous.
@@simonlynch4204 well, when you take it as given that a center bike lane is the perfect bike lane, and make all your other observations fit in to that model... then you also suck at causation vs. correlation.
the fact of the matter is; it is another aspect of your holy induced demand phenomenon. by channeling the bicyclists into the center of a busy street, you have made it harder for them to stop at any businesses along that street, thus reducing the induced demand for bicyclists to patronize those businesses. kind of like you think that by punishing people for driving on a given route you will reduce the induced demand for people to drive. and if impulse purchases are not a significant part of a businesses income, why do all stores have impulse items at the checkstand?
the 13 mph light timing is the killer. Whether I'm biking or driving, give me timed lights, and I have a new game: To catch them all.
The problem, for the businesses, with delivery and rideshare drivers not being able to parallel park for their brief stops without holding up traffic isn't that the traffic is held up. It's that the rideshare and especially delivery drivers are not as willing to work on that street _because_ they have to hold up traffic to do so. They will prefer other locations of the same businesses, or else most will just decline orders there and leave those deliveries to become late or cancelled, reducing commerce in that area.
This video left me with more unanswered questions than answers. How do we know that it was the bikelane that slowed down the economy of that street? It feels like all the arguments are vibes based with no concrete evidence. Also, does the street have other alternatives to cars other than bikes? The decisions feel incredibly shallow and based on incomplete at best analysis
Definitely felt like the initial growth the merchants were talking about was pent-up demain following COVID lockdowns, then it just petered out back to it's normal level.
It's also a short-sighted way to look at things. Because they only have a year of data. Don't you think that when news got out of an amazing bike lane to use in the middle of San Francisco on tik tok and Instagram that more people would be using it therefore more business. I don't think one year was a long enough trial period.
Yes, it's the changing bike lanes causing it. He had a bit where one of the business owners has multiple shops nearby. Valencia street was the only one that experienced a decline, and it coincided with the bike lane changes.
Data from the city showed that sales throughout the entire Mission District were dropping during the time period this bike lane was installed, and they actually dropped /less/ on Valencia Street. So if anything, it's likely the bike lane helped protect businesses on Valencia from the full brunt of the post-pandemic struggles in SF.
@@bvoyelr Correlation doesn't imply causation though.
It is a process, so thanks for doing the experiment.
I think bicycles should go on the outside like in the Netherlands, so bicyclists can visit the stores more easily. And get as much parking off the street as possible, it just takes up valuable space that could be actively used instead of being dead storage.
just get cars of that entire street... everybody gets parklets and bike lanes! don't they have more than enough roads for cars parallel to that street?
@@alveolate The problem is the cars will probably just frequent the businesses of *those* streets instead.
@@Croz89standard bike brain mentality. People don’t realize that cars aren’t just a noisy nuisance, but in fact a people carrier and if you get rid of the way people get to places, those places will just…close lol.
There is a difference between chancing where you have to leave your car and "getting rid of them" @@D.Ambrose
@@JeffBilkins the pavement will fill with parked bikes making it worse
Love that it’s also an emergency lane. Bikes can get out of the way faster and easier then a car. Are Trikes acceptable?
yea recently a lot of e trikes have come onto the market, I see them sometimes in bike lanes. shouldn't be a problem at all
except those barriers will spill a biker if they don't' cross them, properly - I would put escape gaps angled so a reasonably competent cyclist could safely get out of the lane to clear it for an emergency vehicle. - and then you have the problem that with the lane divided from the street, drivers won't stop for the emergency vehicle. the bottom line is, life would work better if people weren't such jerks.
And where can riders ditch to? A heavily trafficked car lane? Sounds like there will be need for more emergency vehicles.
At least with separated lanes often used in the Netherlands, riders can move off their lane to the sidewalk or the grassy median between the path and the car lanes to let emergency vehicles through.
In the US, with parking or barrier protected bike lanes, riders can evacuate to the sidewalk, not into the car lanes.
@@kenbrown2808 there were escape gaps, you can see them at 17:29 at the bottom of the screen.
@@kenbrown2808 well if an emergency vehicle coming all vehicles should stop. That would make is safer to walk your bike over to the side next to the cars.
4:44 would have loved a mention of how beat up those K71s look (and K71s are some of the more resilient soft-hit posts) - as much as the center bike lane "feels safe", its clear from the evidence that drivers keep illegally entering the lane, crushing those posts and driving head-on towards cyclists, who can't easily leave the lane because of the rubber curbs... (and those rubber curbs are too small to deter cars and trucks, so they really only serve to restrict bicyclists).
Appreciate the coverage of this local bike lane! Oakland's Telegraph Ave would be an interesting comparison, since it already has the protected side-running configuration with floating parklets.
OK, so I wasn't the only one that noticed that. I don't live there, so I don't really know, but seeing those missing posts doesn't really fill me with confidence that it's working. I honestly think that if we're going to have bike lanes on busy streets, which we shouldn't if there's a viable side street option, it should be between the parked cars and sidewalk at sidewalk level. Or, with a short apron to help separate the pedestrians from the bike traffic.
If they were going to keep this long term, they would absolutely have to install solid posts that will ruin a car's bumper instead of that flexible crap. The goal of the posts is to protect cyclists from cars, that flexible crap fails miserably at this goal.
As a cyclist who rides through here daily on my commute, I don't think cars intruding in the bike lane has been a major issue. Usually it's just cars doing a bit of a wide radius turn near the intersections when no cyclists are around.
I think the bigger issues are still turning off the bike lane and pedestrians crossing, so I'm not a huge fan of the parklet crossings in the new design, but I'm also ok with the trade offs
When I clicked on the video, I was worried it might not address the issues with center bike lanes. However, you did an excellent job covering all the possible solutions for implementing bike lanes. Here in Barcelona, center bike lanes are common on avenues, while curbside bike lanes are typically used on wide streets. That said, we’ve experienced many of the same challenges as those faced in San Francisco.
Interesting. You are right that that's the only other place I've seen quite a lot of this layout. Do you get the same issue that shop-owners find lowered footfall because the bikes can't stop and pop in so easily?
@@xxwookey No, the complaints from shop owners usually come during the construction phase of the avenue renovation. Once construction is finished, shop owners are generally happy because these renovations often include widening the sidewalks, which ends up bringing more customers. Bikes weren't present before, and cars can't stop on the avenues anyway, so there's no real difference. On the other hand, complaints also come from cyclists, who say that it's difficult to turn onto other streets, and from drivers, who lose one or two traffic lanes.
I was biking this weekly. Have mixed feelings--it seemed hard to get back to the sidewalk like you pointed out. Great video on complex topic. ... i was unpersuaded by business claims that this decreased their business versus people having just moved away or staying home.
Just get rid of the parklets. They're constructed as temporary structures anyway. If they want to be permanent structures then they should also be built to code
Bike lanes are more important than Car lanes.
Car lanes matter too 🏴@KoopaRipper-dk8sz
the problem is that people like the parklets and fight for them.
@@javiersayshi then get rid of on street parking. That is what causes most of the issues. Without it you can have larger sidewalks that can accommodate outdoor eating.
If the majority if your business traffic relies on double parked cars, which is illegal, then maybe the solution to your business isn't getting rid of the bike lanes, it's creating short term loading/unloading zones. You could have it be free for a short amount of time, maybe validate the parking if a person parks over that time to patronize your biness, and fine the hell out of any violators. Alternatively, just do what most cities do and put the food delivery people on bikes. In 1 car space you could fit 4 e-bikes. As always, it comes down to cars being a horribly inefficient use of public space and trying to accommodate them everywhere will only leave everyone else screwed.
That being said, a center running bike lane with timed lights probably doesn't encourage stopping to visit the businesses on the side of the street. To do so, you would have to stop in an active bike lane, cross an active lane of traffic, squeeze between parked cars, and find somewhere to lock up the bike. There is a lot of friction there, almost as much friction as trying to find a place to park a car. The intent of putting it in the center seems good, but having parking protected bike lanes really seems like the best way to go here.
The business owner's idea of putting the bike lane between parked cars and vehicle lanes is at his own detriment, as the parking crunch will still exist and all the cyclists who exist because of the center running bike lane will opt to drive because it's not as safe, thereby making the parking situation even worse. Again, it all comes down to how space inefficient parked vehicles are.
Well said about double parked cars. It’s always absurd how people are so happy to go back to the old way, which is explicitly illegal, just because they aren’t the ones harmed by it.
Cities everywhere need to embody and enforce the concept that if you can’t park legally, you can’t park at all. Half the complaints about the center running bike lane was effectively that it prevented illegal parking. Isn’t that a good thing?
the biggest challenge to reducing car traffic is making a good way of transitioning out of town people out of their cars and onto more efficient urban transportation. case in point - I have to go 90 miles to an urban setting, today. my available option is to take my car from here to there. once there, I have to do something with the car - fortunately, there is a parking structure available where I need to be, and I think I can carry all I need to carry once I get there. but there isn't an alternative where I could leave the car at the edge of the urban space, and have quick efficient car free transit from there to my destination. some places have park and ride, which does that, but urbanists don't like it, despite the fact it does effectivly remove cars form the urban space to suburban or rural space. I think the root of the problem is that there is too much bias towards punishing use of cars, when it should be towards rewarding people for transitioning from their car to alternatives at the edge of the urban space.
The main purpose of parking meters is to limit the time a vehicle can be parked. In most places, it's a ticket to reload your meter when time runs out - you have to move your car somewhere else.
@@PsRohrbaugh that is regional - some metered parking has a maximum time limit, and other metered parking just has a charge for time. what is interesting is that some cities levy a fine for putting additional money in a stranger's meter.
Where I live the business owner has to "pay" for the loading zone. It takes a bit for the cops to come out to ticket and tow an illegally parked car. But they do come out.
You can always just put the double bike lane on one side of the street, thus avoiding problems with the parklets on the other side.
edit: Rob says elsewhere there might have been some problems with the traffic light phases in such a configuration? I have no idea what problems tho, if for Rob it's second-hand information, for me it's third-hand.
Does seem to be the obvious solution. Two bike lanes in the middle is great for passing through but not so for local shops. Go to pedestrian... two bike lanes then parking then two car lanes then one parking then a pedestrian. Bikes can stop and shop. Cars can pass.
I wondered about this too.
It sounds good, until you consider the businesses again. That would functionally act the same as the middle running bike lane for half of the shops, as only one side would have that access, and it would be equally difficult for the shops on the other side. I think what they ended up deciding makes the most sense for this road, but I think the middle run is a great idea that could work in other areas to improve safety.
@@nusbaumtanner you make it sound like crossing the street in the US is like playing frogger.
Then again, seeing how car centered the US is, maybe it really is like that.
High cyclist and ped traffic shouldn't be near cars. Turn the street into an outdoor mall so the restaurants can build terraces instead of those weird parklets.
That works if you only have parklets on one side. But businesses on the other side wouldn't be happy. Not that they're happy with anything.
Making everyone happy is impossible
Thank you! Great comment. Should have 3k likes and be at the top.
Making everyone safer however, is possible.
Thank god we don't have any of these "bike lanes" that are between parked cars and a live car lane here in my country. That seems absolutely deadly, I bet that hundreds of bikers are hit due to this things.
It is scary as heck but unfortunately, it's also the default choice in most places that would like to pretend they are bike/eco-friendly.
Depends - with some very clear design and when that parking is mostly residential is works very well. But once there is a constant in and out of drivers in a hurry or no space for well designed buffers, you get a mess.
@@kailahmann1823 That's the important bit. A street where people living and no through traffic? No problem. There is only a car every few minutes getting in or out the parking spot. But a shopping street with high traffic? Deadly!
Yeah but US news never talks about how many people are killed by cars every day so the problem literally doesn't exist and we can just keep building freeways wheeeeeee.
It works if there's no middle lane markers for the cars and they only have 1.5 lanes total, which keeps drivers awake because they have to worry about oncoming traffic. It's a middle point between "no bike lanes necessary because things are so low traffic" and "we need completely separate lanes because there's too many cars".
I would be worried about those things in the US though, drivers would think "well the road is narrow so I'm supposed to drive on the bicycle lane", not "Oh I'm supposed to keep out of the bicycle lane unless there's oncoming traffic at which point I might need to come to a full stop because there's cyclists in the lanes".
funny dig at honey love the vids rob
Watch within a few years this bike lane is converted to a two bike lanes on the side of the road. That's the more common practice in Europe.
One the major hurdles of any kind of change to car culture is vested interest. People who drive always want more lanes, more parking and just more all for free. Then you have businesses, they'd rather have people die in unsafe bike lanes than miss a parking space for a customer. Plus this was basically a bike highway that would bypass their shops. So again the Business owners with the money to complain do so.
Mean while the small minority of people who ride a bike have to fight against all that to get anything done. Bike lanes were built on the blood of dead cyclist, and look how little progress has been made towards their safety. It takes dozens of dead people to compete with a single angry driver.
Imagine.. groups people fighting so that 2 random individuals can temporarily leave their 60 sq foot sized personal property unattended for an unspecified duration. Well, I don't have to imagine it after watching this video.
The cities catering to vehicles above all other forms of transportation has to stop. There are so many more efficient methods of getting around that are not dragging 2.5 tons of metal and plastic around that need to be stored somewhere.
The unspoken detail there, is that it's often business owners wanting the convenience of parking in front of their own store. I used to live on a strip like this, and it was always the same vehicles parked in front of the same shops. If they really cared about the customers they would make that spot available for them.
5 tons 4 bigger trucks. Bigger is not better. Neither is faster or louder.
Excellent video.
Has there been an idea to have a two way bike lane on one side of the street?
Shop, sidewalk, bikelane, bikelane, sidewalk, parking, car lane, car lane, parking, sidewalk, shop
The challenge Paul told me is that the traffic signals would need to do phases that the controllers can't handle (because they are so old). And being a low-price "quick build" project, they don't have money to replace millions of dollars of controllers at all the stop lights. Someday, after San Francisco finds money to replace them, they would absolutely look into doing that.
@RoadGuyRob ah, OK. Thank you for the explanation.
@@RoadGuyRob So the problem isn't the bike lane then, the problem is that the city council of one of the wealthiest cities in the US is trying to do it cheap AF?
@@RoadGuyRob Here in Barcelona, we have all kinds of bike lanes, including the one this comment talking about. The problem with that type of bike lane is that drivers need to check both sides when turning to yield to bikes, which can be very challenging and dangerous. Drivers often have to turn their heads significantly to see both sides of the bike lane due to the limited visibility while turning. So the city doesn’t want to build more of them.
@@csam16 I think another challenge would be you'd need a lot of pedestrian crossings so delivery vans and people parking on the street will be able to access the businesses on the other side of the street without taking a long detour, otherwise cyclists will have to constantly be on the lookout for pedestrians and sack trucks crossing the bike lane all over the place.
Good to know that as cyclists we are solely responsible for making sure that you have "double-digit growth" for your businesses. Thanks Eileen and Tony.
Ride sharing got big(ger) when the city made it impossible to park cars.
Your not‐a‐sponsorship intermission was an instant follow.
Also as a Dutchman it was really funny to see San Francisco copying our bike traffic light homework. It looks almost identical to ours, which I really didn’t expect to see.
and just like every good idea in the US, idiots ruin it and try to cling on to the past...
It has to be adapted as unlike the Netherlands, San Francisco is famously very hilly. Some of it can be copied verbatim, but it doesn't always translate.
While I think that a bike lane in the middle seems like a good idea it's not really a good fit for a commercial street, since if i was on my bike and i wanted to pull over to stop at a cafe or something i would have to cross a lane of traffic first. I would probably be in favour of just pedestrianising the street (or part of it) with only vehicle access for loading and unloading
Whenever you hear the word "stakeholders" used in reference to public works, expect years of turmoil and uncertainty.
Some stakeholders are getting injured or killed while biking. Other stakeholders are not seeing double-digit growth of their business. How do we possibly reconcile this.
@@bradk8590 U can't. Mutually exclusive n contradictory goals can never b reconcile. Loud n quiet can never co-exist peacefully at the same time. Either schedule the use of public goods or grade separation so bikes never interact w/ pedestrians n cars and cars never interact w/ bikes n pedestrians.
i am a bit suspicious of business owner doing their "I lost all of my customer because only SUV driving suburbanites eat here" dance every time a bike lane is added somewhere. could be other reasons for their failing businesses, just a thought
well in this case it makes a degree of sense, because it was the BIKE traffic they were losing - when i saw the middle lane, my first thought was "okay that looks safe enough.... but how do you get on or off that strip? how do you stop and go to a store on the side?"
Could be the hammer (lack of sickle), and red star coffee mug..... but hey, its San Fran
@@johnnyOV that is a tilted mug.
Most businesses fail within the first three years. If they manage to make it past that period, they’re usually okay thereafter barring sudden catastrophic events like a massive disaster.
I helped mark potential spots for bike racks once. One coffee shop owner asked what I was doing, and after I told him, he asked me to mark as many as would fit near his shop as he gets more customers arriving by foot or bike than car, and you can comfortably park 8 bikes in the space of a single car spot. I don’t know if the city ever did install them all, but he was eager to have as many as possible.
@@chow-chihuang4903 see this is a great point. And also most of the business owners are seeing this very short-sighted. Once news gets out on social media about a great bike lane to use in the middle of San Francisco Don't you think you would get more people using the bike lane therefore even if less people go off the bike lane there would still be the same if not more customers because there's just more people on the bike lane? I think that the study was too short-sighted.
The business owners with those "parklets" *WILL* be screaming about how "dangerous" it is for their customers to cross bike traffic very soon. Never mind if the reason has to do with the "parklet" thing having opaque walls that neither the biker nor the customer can see through to spot each other.
Wow, the production quality has improved a lot with recent videos, including this one! Good job
It's so unfortunate that this bike lane reduced street parking. If only there was some other way for people to easily get to these businesses without driving.... 🧐
I'm sorry, but bikes aren't viable for everybody, especially in places with significant hills. Bike lanes and path can reduce the barrier, but there's a bunch of people who have disabilities or are elderly that need something that doesn't require as much physically to get about.
I like the center bike lane/fire lane a lot! But I understand the business aspect and I want those businesses to do well. Sounds like they tried it, might use it on other streets...and for sure this could be used in other cities without issues for local businesses, because here in Texas, most of the "Valencia type" streets are not major through ways. Another great video Rob! Thanks for sharing this!!
sounds like a lot of lazy people complaining about not being able to drive and park absolutely everywhere they want with no inconvenience even if it risks pedestrians lives
I recently had a conversation where locals were complaining about getting towed from a private lot that they had chosen to use because the public lot was an entire block away from the coffee shop they were visiting. Yes, there are multiple signs telling them that they would get towed. They still complained, blamed the city, and were calling for others to complain to the tow company. Most folks trying to sympathize were saying to blame the owner of the private lot. I tell you, folks are lazy. Insanely lazy.
@@Outsideville in my state legally you can tow for 24hours if the parked car is not impeding business or an emergency. I think if you don't put up a barrier to prevent unauthorized cars from entering this law is a reasonable compromise. Unfortunately it is usually ignored.
I LOVE WHEN ROB THE ROAD GUY UPLOADS
I'm in the netherlands.
I can't remember the last time i have seen anyone double park. Ever.
Only for a passenger to get out. Never to get in or actually park.
Yeah, pretty much same in the UK, except maybe late evening in residential areas where all spaces are taken up by sleeping residents and a pizza delivery hatchback or something needs to stop somewhere and it's probably better than in the middle of the road, especially since there aren't really any cyclists around that time
(Just outside of Greater London area, not sure how it's like within London)
Wow, see it constantly in LA. You have a choice -- 10, 20 or 30 minutes spent looking for parking or double-park for a few minutes. Folks are used to it and just go around.
@x--. there are virtually zero roads with 4 lanes with destinations on them, so for me to see it happen it would need to happen on a 2 lane road or residential.
People just wait it out if something happens.
(I guess some residential package deliveries double park, but also residential streets are basically empty)
i feel like a solution with a two-way bike lane on one side of the road could have been a good solution, since there's enough space for that *and* parking.
The problem with that is drivers turning across the bike lanes may not be accustomed to checking both ways for bikes. This will especially be an issue if left turns are allowed across the path.
@TrafficExplorerONI've seen this configuration in London, and I can confirm your concern. Ultimately, painting both lanes in the intersection can help, but cyclists and drivers will just have to be more careful through there.
I like the concept because you can see the bikes. I really don't like the bike lane in a gutter behind parked cars. Would be better to declare one side parking and one side bikes both ways behind a curb.
3500 bikes per day. On a road that once likely had 35,000 plus cars on it. Stupid! Now the road is convenient for 1/10 the amount of people
Somehow I feel that less parking spaces might actually be a good thing.
Only if you've got the mass transit to back it up. Which is often the problem. If you take the parking away before providing for a reasonable alternative, it just makes people angry and park in dangerous places. Around here the bus agency cut the route I used to take to college in anticipation of light rail opening up, but they did the cut years before the station opened. The result was that it went from being a pretty reasonable one bus trip with a bit of a walk at the end, to becoming either a much longer walk or a mandatory transfer. Eventually, the stations opened and it got to what it should be, but there was a period of literally years where it was a significant inconvenience for no particularly good reason.
reducing parking spaces is a long term benefit... because it means people are less likely to go there by car... it increases demand for other modes of transit to the area... reduces congestion...
the same issue with the cyclists in the middle not really stopping to visit shops and food places along the road... you get with cars, because they definitely cant windowshop - so you want the comparatively slow bikes near the shops and public transit nearby
There are many failing businesses that were the loudest against the bike lane that were blaming the bike lane instead of their own business practices.
The bike lane became the visible culprit.
True, the correlation is conspicuous, but on the other hand, if bicyclists are (on average) more likely to peruse local businesses than drivers, what good is it to _physically isolate_ bicyclists from accessing these local businesses, in the same way that a freeway physically separates cars from a street network?
It is suspiciously convenient reason. If they really had that many bicyclists patronizing their businesses that it impacted them, where is even one of them who put a bike rack in place in front of the store?
@ there was even a bike store in the area that was blaming the lanes.
You could give the entire street over to the cars. You would still never make this a safe, efficient street. Give it over to the pedestrians, cyclists, and mass transit connected to parking (for the drivers) and I guarantee you, this would become one of the most popular, productive streets in the city, if only for the novelty (in the US) alone.
really, i learned the bike lane can do in one lane worth of space what cars struggle to do with 5. truly incredible that as a society we picked the car
Bicycles are just as individually autonomous as cars are, albeit with a shorter travel range.
The issue here is parking,
parkign must be made more expensive for just standing there, needs to be opened up for people who wants to buy shit.
People defending double-parking though is crazy. That's illegal and bad for cyclists, even if you have your hazards on, unless it is some kind of emergency, well, it still is bad for bikes, even if it is.
In the middle is not the best place for a bike lane. You always have to cross. It has to be shops, pedestrians, cyclists, busses and then cars. No car parking in a bussy street when there are shops, that's the key to it all but Americans don't see that or don't want to see it.
So, design EVERY big street like I described and your shops will florish, accidents are down, etc.
We have those center bike lanes in DC, but it’s on roads that are already quite wide and few businesses along the street.
Colorado Springs has the best bike paths! They are completely separate from the roads, they go right under the major roads. I can get across the whole city without being within 100 feet of a car. Sometimes I can finish my ride without even seeing another car
The parking-protected lane where bikes are right up against the curb seems like the obvious winner overall. The real issue there isn't the lane configuration, it's those goofy "parklet" things. Seems like a no-brainer to me that _buildings do not belong in the street._ Having them up to help with social distancing four years ago was fine, but it seems like it's time to take them back down now.
It feels completely alien to me that people can't handle waiting 30-60 seconds for someone to parallel park, and then even more mind-boggling that merchants are blaming *that* for their decrease in footfall, AND that everyone is just okay with double-parking because the roads are so unbeliveably wide that you can double park AND trafic continues to flow ON BOTH SIDES!!!
i'm dutch and i have been to america several times the volume of cars is mind boggling. also in my opinion they should just offset the dual bike land and car lanes. get rid of all the parklets, get rid of all the street parking on that street and make it loading zones. and ad a nice grass median in between the dual bikelane and car lanes. that way you could also widen th sidewalk so you can have out door seating.
It's not just someone waiting, it's 20+ people waiting. Most likely more.
60 seconds you could have up to 30 cars drive through in that time.
Amazing reporting, Rob! Extensive interviews with people on all sides, great visuals, and a “stand-up” on a moving bike? Bravo!
Also, why allow parklets still? Is that property not city-owned rather than business-owned? Post-pandemic, no reason to keep them other than restaurants wanting extra tables. Not a good enough reason, imo.
I wonder why they don’t pick one side of the street to put the two way lane. It used the same amount of space as it currently does.
I’m not a fan of center running bikeways but business surveys are a terrible way to collect sales data. Running a small business is inherently precarious so the owners tend to be biased against change. The city should collect its own sales and crash data (ideally categorizing crashes based on severity; many fenders benders are better than a few fatalities) and make a decision based on those numbers.
Another great video. I believe cities should be centered around people not cars, people walking, cycling and using mass transit, not cars. Car use should be the exception, not the rule, and public infrastructure should reflect that priority.
Absolutely. Deleting people and prioritizing cars is how cities die.
As a driver I hate roads that limit my freedom to take left turns and over take. As a bicyclist, I love biking on sidewalks... specially big sidewalks. Make the sidewalks bigger and paint a bike lane in the middle of the sidewalks... that way we can go full speed without conflict and without disturbing cars.
you can't full speed. because then the sidewalk becomes a hazard for pedestrians.
@javiersayshi bs. Bikes provide zero protection in an accident... It has the same danger level for the rider as it is to the pedestrians. There will be some bumps here and there, but nothing major.
One of the points of bike lanes is to get bikes away from pedestrians. If you've ever seen what pedestrians do to the boundaries on ped/bike shared paths (defined by paint), you'll understand why it's good to have physical separation between bike and peds.
@@TheCdubbleyoo I used to bike through massive crowds in college, every day for four years... Had one serious accident with a pedestrian... Injuries so minor we kept running to our clases.
In places where people aren't used to bikes or have less predictable people like kids and elderly... I just have to slow down a lot and it's less comfortable... But I don't see a better fiscally responsible solution
@ clearly you haven't seen a cyclist hit a pedestrian going 13mph. its not just about you.
We have this kind of bike lanes in Spain too, and they have the same problems: faster for bicyclists, but because they are faster, they don't stop at businesses. Also turning from a median running bike lane to a side street as a cyclist becomes difficult. Side bike lanes are the way to go!
Dont Build Parklets on the street, Lower speed limits, Rethink zoning laws in dense urban places that make business distructs walkable and do not prioritize car traffic. City will be safer and quieter. People will want to visit and spend more money and time in these places.
I love this comments section because it is validating the point that this is a polarizing issue.
Terrible idea. You have to maneuver through traffic just to go to a local store. Go back to the bike lanes next to the sidewalks. Get rid of those shanties in the street.
As a Dutch person I hated being pushed into the middle of the street when I cycled in Paris, as when you want to leave the bike lane to get to the businesses on the side, you can't. Having them between the pavement and car parking definitely has my preference.
Here in Australia there are a couple of spaces I've seen where the bike lane is in the middle of the road but this is never in urban centres
Just close the street off to (through) motor traffic? Doesn't seem like it's a massive major car route - and bikes don't need special treatment if there's no cars
Valencia isn't a major car route? Are we looking at the same San Francisco?
@@Sam-w5vit didn’t used to be until cars arrived. This is a manufactured problem.
In Cambridge, MA, some bike lanes are on the curb, part of the sidewalk. The best bike lane ever! Now every other kind of bike lanes don’t make sense to me
Washington, DC has a bike lane right down the middle on Constitution and Pennsylvania Avenues.
"What kind of kid eats salad?"
Ha! That one got me good Rob. Great video as always.
I did.
How about making it a one-way street?
Very cute! "There has been a lot of vitriol regarding it..." and then a shot of Cesar Chavez street sign.
You are the best!
Ideally, they should have changed the car lanes to pedestrian lanes. If you have proper public transport, like SFO does, you don't really need car traffic in the city other than maybe deliveries at certain times.
The trouble is the businesses were seeing drops in sales along the corridor. And, in fairness, people aren't going to carry a major appliance home on BART. I do think there could be a fun configuration that could play with that pedestrianizes it a bit more (one proposal had one-way road with parking). I think that's what's kind of cool about using rubber blocks and barriers- they can keep adjusting it every five-ish years as the neighborhood's needs change.
@RoadGuyRob the thing is: it works in Europe. They have extensive pedestrian streets with large shops and businesses, like department stores, restaurants, cafés, etc. on them. Over there, pedestrian zones actually increase business growth on them as pedestrians are more likely to stop in and have a coffee, or shop. (They do ban bike traffic on many of those pedestrian streets though...)
I'm not sure though if that is due to European culture, or an inherent benefit of pedestrian streets. But I know that the 16th street mall in Denver, CO, for example, is always busy... so the concept must work in the US as well...
Staten Island Tony would lose his shit if you took away his precious cars
@@sncy5303 The businesses that work on the 16th street mall and those that work on car corridor are going to be different. You'll have to be willing to accept the political fall-out of destroying those businesses.
@Chris-pt6hh surely you mean his _hat_?
@@sncy5303 Pedestrian streets are fine but they don't work for all kinds of stores. Large appliance retailers generally set up in retail parks which have car parking right outside.
If your business was good a road won’t be needed to funnel people to it.
Who is biking 40mph down the bikelane @14:50? Hyperbole much?
Prohibit cars, excepting delivery, public transit, and emergency vehicles. Give the street back to the people and let them make it a comfortable place to walk, bike, and shop. Let the cars find another route through.
Great job Rob. As a fairly new bicyclist (coming on two years) I am just coming to comprehend the issues related in this piece. Most I had never realized were relevant when I was just in a car or even my motorcycle. The various factors at play are kind of mind boggling. Changing a roadway designed decades ago to maximize car travel is a lot harder than it looks.
Maybe they should try putting two lanes of car traffic on one side of the street and the two bike lanes on the other side of the street, that way the traffic can be together for both modes. I think that still leaves parking on one side of the street for cars. they could switch to diagonal parking to get back most of the spaces lost from the other side of the street. Perhaps diagonal parking around the corner on the first block of the cross street would help too.
I think the existence of parklets highlights that people enjoy street space not being dedicated car storage. And that Tony guy is just another old head. His "Staten Island" hat says all I need to know, that crowd hates bikes. He opened his business **after** this bike lane was already there.
I mean, if I was running a business, I'd also love to have the city pay for a couple hundred square feet of floor space for me. the existence of the parklets just highlights that everybody wants something for nothing. if the city started charging rent, for that space, at prevailing rates, and requiring them to meet building codes, it's likely 90% of them would disappear within a week.
OMG why is this always the way. The new guy who has only had his business there for a year is the most passionate about keeping the street the "way it was". How TF does he know that business is down 40-60% YOY when he only just opened? Good catch.
@@kenbrown2808 they do have to pay for them. He mentioned that during the video and it's an easy google to verify.
@@kenbrown2808 you do have to pay for them. Rob mentioned that and it's an easy google away.
It doesn't matter what they want when the mass transit isn't there to allow people to get where they want in a reasonable time frame. The mass transit improvements have to come before you start removing lanes of traffic and parking otherwise you just get a bunch of backlash slowing the process.
Get that business owner out of here! Parking's the problem not the solution.
The lack of left turns and making it more annoying for bikes to swing out of the lane to go to shops would definitely have an impact on businesses.
Ultimately streets aren't made to support businesses, they are to move people. Doing so safely should be the priority and everything else should come after that.
When Rob calls it a "freeway for bicyclists" . . . that is true in the worst ways possible!
Full disclosure, I am a cyclist myself. A dedicated two-way bicycle road looks beautiful to have (and generally safer than a single lane flanked against vehicle traffic), but physically isolating it from sidewalk businesses does feel like a net complaint (not just for businesses, but the cyclists too). It optimizes the bicycle lane for through traffic at the exclusion of (bicycle) parking / local business patronage, in the same way that US freeways did for cars.
...I also actually hate parking lots more than roads, because at least road traffic is _predictable!_
I mean the concrete pillars are a nice touch, but they are no wall. There are more than enough gaps to give cars the incentive to try and cross the bike lane. Never mind the bikes having to merge through traffic to exit the bike lane as well. I would also say the noise and pollution of driving between two lanes of cars isn't entirely healthy either.
This is only a "good thing" because of the insanely low standards we have in America for bike lanes. If it's not a painted bike gutter it's "Good".
Sadly not even concrete - they're plastic K71 posts that are designed to be repeatedly run over and stay standing. Which is a bit odd when you think about it a bit more - we're "protecting" cyclists with things that are designed to be easy to run over...
Only already-well-behaved drivers respect them, but the truck drivers know they can drive over them without even scratching their truck, so they drive accordingly.
@@scottbez1 Ah yes the "must protect stupid drivers" approach to road infrastructure. I remember seeing side walks that instead of a hard curb have a slope... so their easier to run over.
Also why you don't see a lot of steel rails along things any more, they rather have a car go off road through some one's house than put up a barrier near a sharp corner. I remember a video of a guy complaining that over a dozen cars had driven through his house, so many that he couldn't get insurance any more. City still refused to do anything.
this problem of business is entirely due to cars in the first place by the way, if people could reliably get to businesses by public transit, they wouldnt need to park there, then there would be plenty of space for loading bays and good curb bike lanes
You greatly over estimate how much people want to be shoved into boxes, trapped like sardines with potentially dangerous strangers, forced to move on someone else's schedule and no actual freedom of movement.
@@hsngm33 people don't want to want for public transportation. Just get in the car and go
the people who got to town in a car would still need someplace to put their car. by which I mean, urbanists should look at places for people to put their car and transition to carless, easily. here's an idea: make your parking fee for a perimeter parking garage double as a transit pass, while parked there.
@@kenbrown2808 That's called a "Park & Ride," which is actually a better idea than having significant parking in large cities.
@galaxyanimal and yet so.e urbanists decry park & ride.
And Rob drops a new video! My day is already better!
As a driver I would appreciate these kinds of bike lanes because at least I know I'm not going to hit a cyclist while I'm driving through town. I feel like the business owners are the only ones complaining here. But as usual it's always about money in America. Never about the 99% of actual Americans who use the city.
Have they considered trying to make the street one way ?
This is a great watch - glad you got to ride it before it's gone!
This setup might work for a place, where cars often stop, but cyclists usually just go through. But that's a rare situation.
Yep, I believe this makes the the road access still focus on cars, while bikes have to awkwardly cross the road to go to the destination business.
This whole channel in my opinion feels like that, it shows great invention of US traffic engineers solving a problem only US has.
in this case: bike lane between parking and driving lane is bad... so we put it in the middle
rest of the world: how about we expand the sidewalk instead and give some of THAT space for bikes.
Man if you arent the bright face we all enjoy to see like the morning sun haha I for real appreciate so much when people genuinely smile.
So the big issue with the center bike lane is it impedes drivers ability to break the law with illegal double parking and u-turns, and to allow fellow drivers to parallel park. By all metrics the bike lane made the street safer. So naturally the solution is to remove the bike lane.
Do we need parking in the most walkable place on the west coast?
Telegraph Ave in Oakland has bike lanes that are exactly like what the new plans for Valencia are. parklets in the parking, and raised platforms so that people in the parklers can walk safely from the parklet to the curb. they seem to work very well
Strange how, in a lot of places in Europe, you have a building, then you have a pedestrian sidewalk / path or whatever, then you have a possible bicycle path, then you go down to the lower level where you have 1-2 lanes of car traffic. Americans haven't figured out how to raise the bicycle path to the sidewalk level, for some reason.
This is so well told and edited and shot. Very fascinating.
I would never put a bike lane on the LEFT SIDE of parked cars, this increases the chance of ''dooring'' by about 90% compared to putting it to the passenger side of cars, because most cars only have one driver
Glad to see you're not accepting sponsorships from money Rob, another hit for the catalog.
Editing this comment after finishing the video: I wonder why the drivers can't park somewhere else and walk though? Seems like a uniquely North American problem to be complaining about the inability to park directly outside of where you need to be. (And I spend most of my time in Somerville, MA where people double park the bus lane). _Personally_ I think a happy medium would be to bring the cars back together, but keep ALL of the cars in a single corridor. Remove one of those wide center medians separating the bicycles and shove the entire cycle thoroughfare to one side or the other. That'd give at least a few more feet of room to play with. Then you get businesses on the other side of the road who are impacted 😂 you can't win.
I'm really liking the diversity of viewpoints in these videos. It would be great to see your take on a couple of issues that I feel are overlooked in urban transport:
Safety on public transport - I know people in cities with good PT who won't use it because of bad experiences with other riders. What can we do to make them feel safe enough to ride with peace of mind?
Personal electric vehicles - Often capable of going faster than bikes, safer (to others) and more efficient than cars, should we treat them the same as bikes, or allow them to occupy some middle ground to utilise them more fully? What infrastructure changes could support them (e.g. public recharging points, "bike" lanes on steeper routes, safer storage)?
I feel like the businesses would be making more money in the long run because eventually enough people would fall in love with this style of bike lane that there would be more people on the road therefore they would still get more business in the end. I think that their fix is only short-sided because they won't wait for more people to use it.
Possibly, but this is where you have to have some sort of a plan to get us between what we have now and what we want later on. I like that we're getting better mass transit around here, but there were a bunch of changes to the routes and removal of parking before the expansions were completed in various areas. The result is a lot of traffic issues being made that impacted people that didn't even have the option of proper mass transit and for whom the previous routes had been removed. Most people do not have 2 hours to take a bus when it should be a 45minute tops commute via car. And the planners failing to understand that just causes anger and people fighting against the improvements that would lead to a system that might allow for a 30 minute commute via mass transit.
All this video told me is 2 things: Road vs streets matters and delivery services need way more accommodation.
They effectively turned a bicycle street network to a road network and it did exactly what it was designed to do, which is move traffic effectively. But it is clear this area needs a street network so I'm really glad they're reverting it.
Aside from losing customers from bicycle traffic, I can't imagine how much they lost in delivery services not wanting to deal with this area after the conversion. Whether I like it or not, delivery services have become a big business and I think it's time to rethink how much space we should give them.
that last suggestion (parklet in car parking spot, crossing the bike lane) is the most sound and acceptable to all parties involved, but as im not familiar with SF traffic or city design laws (or US for the matter) aren't there any bike-equivalent rumble strip to kinetically warn bikers of an approaching parklet ramp/crossing?