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Bucky Fullminster
Apr 13, 2007

Vavrek posted:

As someone who isn't a traffic engineer at all, but who likes words and etymology:

That's good to know, thanks heaps. Haven't really encountered this before so hopefully it's more of an American thing, cos I do still like it.


Carbon dioxide posted:

There's a big discussion here in the Netherlands about bicycles with electric assistance as well as e-bikes that can go even faster and can go without pedalling.
- Should they be required to wear helmets or not?
- If they go very fast, they cause dangerous situations on bicycle paths. Does that mean that instead we should push them into car traffic? Make a whole separate network for them?
It's somewhat of an unsolved question, but the general rule is if they go up to 25 km/h, they count as a bicycle and get to use bicycle lanes. If they go faster, they're in the category of moped-likes, meaning they need insurance, the driver needs a moped driver's license and a helmet. Inside town limits, when a bicycle path is next to a road, the moped-likes have to use the car road. On 80 km/h roads outside of town limits they get to use the bicycle paths.

Love diving into some unsolved questions.

I think if bikes can do it, then e-bikes should be able to do it. A cruising speed of 30 km/h is largely achievable, and some people can get up to 35 km/h. So that's what people on these paths already know what to expect, and that's what we have to build them for. And if that's what we have to build our paths for, and that's what people already expect, then that's what we should allow there. Assistance up to 35 km/hr. Now pretty much everyone can go some pretty significant distances in some pretty good time.

If you want a bike that goes faster than that, the roads are still there and you're still free to use them, and hopefully they'll be a lot emptier for you anyway. And the proposed network does have some duplication along some routes, and room for more if we want, so there is the option to separate commercial cargo delivery bikes from the pleasure riders.

Here in New Holland helmets are legally required regardless, so hopefully we get to have that debate at some point too.

quote:

In the Netherlands we do have the term "cycle highway" but we use it for an uninterrupted cycle route BETWEEN two major cities (often connecting commuter towns along the way). It is not used for routes within cities.

Cycle Routes BETWEEN major cities? Yeah, right. Hah, seriously that's wonderful for you guys, but yeah I think the Dutch situation is so different that the nomenclature doesn't seem applicable. Unless we think of Sydney as being a series of smaller cities, which in many ways it kind of is.


Entropist posted:

The point is that any implication of a norm of cycling fast will scare away casual cyclists, which should be the main target audience as that's most people.

Ah ok, that makes sense.

Lobsterpillar posted:

Excellent when you can get it, but retrofitting in underpasses and overpasses is expensive.

This is probably a good place to get some data on this if anyone has it. I made some estimates in the proposal but would be interested to know how close they are. How much do short tunnels and lightweight overpasses typically cost?

e - the estimates:


Bucky Fullminster fucked around with this message at 07:06 on Mar 20, 2024

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Lobsterpillar
Feb 4, 2014
A road overpass might come in at $20-30 million, maybe more with inflation. Should be less for a lightweight pedestrian and cycle structure, but probably has a very big building footprint which might mean land acquisition which can be expensive, political, and get tied up in legal matters (which means more expensive).

If you're Australian based you should have a look around what Austroads has got, if you haven't already. They used to have restrictive access but these days their publications etc are available to anybody (you just have to sign up first).

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

Bucky Fullminster posted:

I think if bikes can do it, then e-bikes should be able to do it. A cruising speed of 30 km/h is largely achievable, and some people can get up to 35 km/h. So that's what people on these paths already know what to expect, and that's what we have to build them for. And if that's what we have to build our paths for, and that's what people already expect, then that's what we should allow there. Assistance up to 35 km/hr. Now pretty much everyone can go some pretty significant distances in some pretty good time.

Most people in the Netherlands cycle around 15 km/h.

Unreal_One
Aug 18, 2010

Now you know how I don't like to use the sit-down gun, but this morning we just don't have time for mucking about.

Bucky Fullminster posted:

Cycle Routes BETWEEN major cities? Yeah, right. Hah, seriously that's wonderful for you guys, but yeah I think the Dutch situation is so different that the nomenclature doesn't seem applicable. Unless we think of Sydney as being a series of smaller cities, which in many ways it kind of is.

Yeah, Groningen to Breda is roughly the distance from Sydney to Canberra, but in the Netherlands that's as long a trip as you can make. The entire Netherlands as a country has about the same population density as just Sydney.

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

Bucky Fullminster posted:

Cycle Routes BETWEEN major cities? Yeah, right. Hah, seriously that's wonderful for you guys, but yeah I think the Dutch situation is so different that the nomenclature doesn't seem applicable. Unless we think of Sydney as being a series of smaller cities, which in many ways it kind of is.

For reference, the dutchlands are a teeny tiny place, so a lot of their idea of "between cities" is the equivalent of getting from one end of a big city to the other. Often less.

SlothfulCobra posted:




Which I guess is also an exercise in "what the hell do the colors on these maps actually denote", since a few city shapes I tried weren't really that apparent, and the map sure didn't show off Cairo's bullshit sprawl.

Dang, you called it.

This is also why they can lay claim to a lot of fancy transit, they already live pretty densely, and when they really get the mind to build a big new transit connection, there's a lot less distance to build across.

Vavrek
Mar 2, 2013

I like your style hombre, but this is no laughing matter. Assault on a police officer. Theft of police property. Illegal possession of a firearm. FIVE counts of attempted murder. That comes to... 29 dollars and 40 cents. Cash, cheque, or credit card?

Bucky Fullminster posted:

That's good to know, thanks heaps. Haven't really encountered this before so hopefully it's more of an American thing, cos I do still like it.
After reflecting on it some more, I'm not sure I've actually ever heard "superhighway" used except in the phrase "information superhighway", talking about the internet. This is probably why it doesn't mean "elevated highway" (or really anything in particular) to me. The super = above stuff is all just pure Latin, though, and it's something I picked up from being a fan of etymology and ancient history.


SlothfulCobra posted:

For reference, the dutchlands are a teeny tiny place, so a lot of their idea of "between cities" is the equivalent of getting from one end of a big city to the other. Often less.

This is also why they can lay claim to a lot of fancy transit, they already live pretty densely, and when they really get the mind to build a big new transit connection, there's a lot less distance to build across.
I'm reminded of when I visited friends in the San Francisco Bay Area and realized: Oh, the San Francisco Bay is enormous. When I ask a friend to drive me from point A to point B, that's eighty miles. (Going between south-of-bay and north-of-bay communities.) I think I pictured the whole thing as a collection of neighboring local communities.

Carbon dioxide
Oct 9, 2012

vanity slug posted:

Most people in the Netherlands cycle around 15 km/h.

Yes, this is important. That means allowing 35 km/h on bicycle paths means you're allowing a 20 km/h speed difference, maybe more in some cases. Which is quite dangerous, and would scare away casual cyclists, kids going to school, people going about their business, in favour of race cyclists.

TooMuchAbstraction
Oct 14, 2012

I spent four years making
Waves of Steel
Hell yes I'm going to turn my avatar into an ad for it.
Fun Shoe

Carbon dioxide posted:

Yes, this is important. That means allowing 35 km/h on bicycle paths means you're allowing a 20 km/h speed difference, maybe more in some cases. Which is quite dangerous, and would scare away casual cyclists, kids going to school, people going about their business, in favour of race cyclists.

I'm reminded of discussion around a change in the rules for escalators in some subway system somewhere (maybe New York City). Basically the rules changed from "stand on the right, walk on the left" to "just stand". People in a hurry were pissed off, of course, but it turned out that "just stand" increases the carrying capacity of the escalator (because people can pack in more densely), which improves overall throughput.

In other words, optimizing for the people who want to go fastest can reduce the utility of your system.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

Carbon dioxide posted:

Yes, this is important. That means allowing 35 km/h on bicycle paths means you're allowing a 20 km/h speed difference, maybe more in some cases. Which is quite dangerous, and would scare away casual cyclists, kids going to school, people going about their business, in favour of race cyclists.

I would like to see an actual problem with bike speed differentials before I start planning infrastructure around that problem. I.e. build these cycle paths first. Then, if you really get a lot of accidents with speeding cyclists vs normal commuters, start taking some action. Because I think it's a mostly hypothetical problem. At least, quite unlikely to be bad enough to stop regular people from using these new cycle superhighways.

(Anecdote time: I live in a Scandinavian city with somewhat decent amounts of segregated cycling paths, and I've never seen this problem surface, even with mopeds doing 30 km/h. Riders adjust their speeds when overtaking.

A mitigating effort might be to disallow E-bikes and mopeds from going faster than 25-30 km/h, because I honestly think that's in the neighborhood of where bike helmets stop being sufficient protection for the rider, and you should start requiring motorbike-like safety standards. Probably, the EU's requirement, where a bike cannot provide assist past 25, and no assist unless pedalling, is a good idea. Whether Australian law would allow a local authority to limit speeds on bike paths, I don't know, so probably this would have to be solved on a national level. But my point is, you can pass that hurdle when you get to it.

Hippie Hedgehog fucked around with this message at 23:21 on Mar 20, 2024

Lobsterpillar
Feb 4, 2014
Locally there have been some pneumatic tube counts down of cyclist speeds and volumes. The average speed was usually in the 15-20km/h range with 85th percentile speeds generally 25-30.
This is on very flat terrain - you might get higher speeds on steeper downhill terrain.


I recall in a safe systems workshop, the example being given that the human body typically can withstand the speeds that it can generate itself. For example, if you run at full speed into a wall, you'll injure yourself, possibly quite badly, but probably not die. Whereas if you could do that at 30, 40, 50km/h then your chances of survival diminish (but if you're in a car, you get all the kinetic energy absorbed by the car structure). On an ebike, you still have all that kinetic energy but less of the protection of a car. You do, however, potentially have a shorter stopping distance than a heavier car - so can mitigate higher speeds with alertness. But might also be more susceptible to losing control at such speeds if you lose traction.

Lobsterpillar fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Mar 21, 2024

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
My objection to bike speed limits is that bikes don't generally come with speedometers. Requiring additional equipment (and cost) just to access the bike trail will ALSO drive away casual users without filtering out the guys with $4000 e-bikes.

Even assuming that problem were solved, if you're talking about connecting bike paths between cities, exactly nobody wants to be stuck farting along at 10 kph over that amount of distance. Commuting by bike already sucks for a bunch of other reasons, making it shittier over theoretical problems just creates new reasons for people to stay driving and, again, insures only the guys that just want to gently caress around on their $4,000 e-bikes are using the trails.

Now, if you only require a speedometer and enforce a reasonable limit on the people with motorized bikes... The guys that can set a cruise control are far less burdened by having to manage their speed then the people pedaling normal bicycles. Forcing them to limit themselves to the 85th percentile is entirely reasonable. Leave the rest of us alone.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Yeah, the level of pearl clutching directed to just about any form of transport other than cars is so inverse to the level of risk. A single rental scooter knocking down an old lady and breaking her arm will see cities try to outright ban them in a media frenzy about their danger, while totally ignoring the few dozen people killed and hundreds injured by cars in the same city every year. Some too-narrow shared-use path will have some conflict between "aggressive too fast cyclists!" and walkers, and instead of just making the path wider we pit people outside of cars against each other with both sides trying to ban or restrict the other, specially those drat dangerous entitled cyclists.

My e-bike is limited to 30kph, but every random SUV driven by a harried mom on her way to pick up her kids while arguing on the phone with her dog's chiropractor over a billing issue isn't limited in any way.

When cars constantly crash in a single spot due to 100% unsafe driving and a driving culture where paying attention is optional, authorities will spend millions doing "safety upgrades" to make the road wider and gentler and a softer clear zone. When some shared trail sees minor conflict between users because it's way too narrow, the solution is always to call for strict new laws and enforcement crackdowns.

Lets regulate drivers down to the point where they're injuring as many people as cyclists and then we can start worrying about bike speed limits. Until then, our safety dollars and enforcement time needs to be laser focused on the lowest hanging fruit.

vanity slug
Jul 20, 2010

yes, cars are bad, thanks for letting us know

Hippie Hedgehog posted:

I would like to see an actual problem with bike speed differentials before I start planning infrastructure around that problem. I.e. build these cycle paths first. Then, if you really get a lot of accidents with speeding cyclists vs normal commuters, start taking some action. Because I think it's a mostly hypothetical problem. At least, quite unlikely to be bad enough to stop regular people from using these new cycle superhighways.

(Anecdote time: I live in a Scandinavian city with somewhat decent amounts of segregated cycling paths, and I've never seen this problem surface, even with mopeds doing 30 km/h. Riders adjust their speeds when overtaking.

A mitigating effort might be to disallow E-bikes and mopeds from going faster than 25-30 km/h, because I honestly think that's in the neighborhood of where bike helmets stop being sufficient protection for the rider, and you should start requiring motorbike-like safety standards. Probably, the EU's requirement, where a bike cannot provide assist past 25, and no assist unless pedalling, is a good idea. Whether Australian law would allow a local authority to limit speeds on bike paths, I don't know, so probably this would have to be solved on a national level. But my point is, you can pass that hurdle when you get to it.

amsterdam moved mopeds off their cycling paths in 2019 and it significantly reduced the number of injury causing accidents. they're now arguing that the maximum speed for electric bicycles should be 20 km/h (most of amsterdam's maximum speed for any vehicle is already 30 km/h)

there's some interesting stuff being done to influence the speed of bicycles remotely: https://www.townmaking.com/search/cls-adaptive-speed-governance-demo

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
Based on my limited experience on the local (terrible) bike trails, people hooning fast on e-bikes are far, far less of a problem than morons treating the path like a park and obstructing it instead of traveling along it as intended

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Javid posted:

Based on my limited experience on the local (terrible) bike trails, people hooning fast on e-bikes are far, far less of a problem than morons treating the path like a park and obstructing it instead of traveling along it as intended

I swear "shared use" trails are a plot by the auto industry to pit anyone outside of a car against each other. But yeah I see so many people walking 4 abreast along with their unleashed dogs on a trail that's basically the region's bike highway for commuters. And if anyone passes them a little too close or dings their bell they get extremely upset and defensive and run to reddit to complain. Paths should be wide enough for everyone, and segregated so there's minimal conflict.

Hippie Hedgehog
Feb 19, 2007

Ever cuddled a hedgehog?

vanity slug posted:

yes, cars are bad, thanks for letting us know

amsterdam moved mopeds off their cycling paths in 2019 and it significantly reduced the number of injury causing accidents. they're now arguing that the maximum speed for electric bicycles should be 20 km/h (most of amsterdam's maximum speed for any vehicle is already 30 km/h)

there's some interesting stuff being done to influence the speed of bicycles remotely: https://www.townmaking.com/search/cls-adaptive-speed-governance-demo

Yeah I don’t doubt that that’s a good measure for Amsterdam to take. I don’t think the same is true everywhere; notably, my city. Sidney doesn’t even (yet) have the bike paths to have a problem on. It’s not a given that their cycling superhighways will attract a problematic amount of mopedists.

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.
I feel like we should eventually get multi lane bike paths. So that the fast riders can easily overtake the normals. And maybe even an unusually slow lane for those 6km/h mobility scooters and stuff.
Maybe even a shared fast bikes and small motorcycles lane for the 45km/h crew.

Has there been any place experimenting with those?

Also, in my experience you only get bad interactions between bike racers and normal cyclists in car cursed environments. If the racers notice that the bike path has lots of normal people cycling along a 10km/h, they switch to the street if they can safely. Only, place I have seen with bad racer/normie interaction was mostly because the car street next to it was ultra deadly, even for cars, and the racers truely needed to share the lane with large amounts of foot traffic.

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
I reject the notion that "fast" is an abnormal method of operating a bicycle. Transit infrastructure should be designed so a range of speeds can coexist. Separating peds into their own protected path would make sense, but a 10 lane bike path with 5-10-15-20-25 kph each way would absolutely fucktuple what it costs to build + be the worst possible solution to "sometimes slow people have to move over even if they think they're going fast enough"

SlothfulCobra
Mar 27, 2011

If you want your motor vehicle to go fast, at some point you need to be forced onto the big roads designed for that.

Bucky Fullminster
Apr 13, 2007

Ok so just to note there are technically a few different topics here. Mainly,

What speed should the assistance cut-out on pedal-assist e-bikes
And what should the thinking around speed be on a potential cycle superhighway

(Also, what speed should throttle-bikes be allowed to go up to, What should the rules around speed be on normal bike paths,
to what extent can we separate all the above components, to what extent should we separate all the above components, etc)

And I suspect different cities are going to have different answer to most of those questions too.

vanity slug posted:

Most people in the Netherlands cycle around 15 km/h.

Well actually yeah, I think maybe the "superhighway" name is supposed to have connotations of "speed" then. 15 km/h would probably be the average speed in most places, especially if it's dealing with intersections and passing in front of shops and what not. A superhighway is somewhere you can get a good pace going, if you've got to get from one part of the city to another in a reasonable time. This is what we need to make that happen.

Important to note, the superhighway is still only a fraction of the cycle network. Plenty of other routes for people who wanna be chill. But truthfully, I think the people who do wanna be chill will still be fine on here.


Carbon dioxide posted:

Yes, this is important. That means allowing 35 km/h on bicycle paths means you're allowing a 20 km/h speed difference, maybe more in some cases. Which is quite dangerous, and would scare away casual cyclists, kids going to school, people going about their business, in favour of race cyclists.

The challenge for me here is comparing what the M7 cycleway traffic is like now, with what it would be once the superhighway is established. Cos there's no problem at all with the speed difference at at the moment. I get up to 50 km/h on a downhill and pass pedestrians with no problem. But yeah once it gets busier we'd expect it to be a different story. As other posters have said though, once that happens, people just adjust their speed accordingly.

Here's the route in all its glory for reference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrCsKf1k9T4

Mopeds are unthinkable. Active Transport only. Although there are some cheeky teenagers on dirt-bikes from time to time. And cops with their goddamn making GBS threads horses

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.
I don't think the main problem is normal people getting intimidated by fast bikers e-bikers or even fast E-"bikes".
There are just too few of them in most places, they have to slow down to match traffic more often then people have to jump out of their way. And the ones who dare, take to the streets instead.

And the other problem is the growing choices intermediate vehicles, that are too fast or large to comfortably ride on a bike path and are too slow and fragile to comfortably drive on a street.

Now, technically enforcing safety regulations to such an extend that a race biker or delivery trike can ride 45km/h on the street without fearing for their lives would solve that.
But building some "high speed" bike path "highways" feels much more realistic.

Javid
Oct 21, 2004

:jpmf:
You raise a very good point! having enumerated speed limits on bike paths can attract unsavory elements, like police officers, and horses. a spectacular reason to avoid enshittifying bike paths with laws requiring active enforcement.

I wish ours had horses. They'll just drive a gigantic blacked out SUV down the loving greenway when they want to toss a homeless camp.

Bucky Fullminster
Apr 13, 2007

I didn't mean to sound rude to the horses sorry. They count as active transport and are welcome on the path. It's more just funny that we haven't figured out a way to solve the problem of just dropping their poo poo in the middle of the road, but I guess maybe cos they're herbivores it's not actually too obnoxious so we tolerate it?


VictualSquid posted:

the other problem is the growing choices intermediate vehicles, that are too fast or large to comfortably ride on a bike path and are too slow and fragile to comfortably drive on a street.

Now, technically enforcing safety regulations to such an extend that a race biker or delivery trike can ride 45km/h on the street without fearing for their lives would solve that.
But building some "high speed" bike path "highways" feels much more realistic.

And building the high-speed bike-path highways helps make the streets safer (by moving a non-trival number of trips from 4 wheels to 2), to such an extent that a race biker or delivery trike can ride 45km/h on the street without fearing for their lives.

Entropist
Dec 1, 2007
I'm very stupid.
In the Netherlands there are no speed limits for cyclists, only for electric bikes and mopeds. It seems to work fine. I would not worry about speed limits in that scenario. It just needs to be safe enough for slow casual users e.g. by being wide enough.

In the Netherlands I've never heard of multi lane bike paths. They only make them wider as things get busier, so that you can easily have 3 people passing each other while people are also passing in the opposite direction.

Lobsterpillar
Feb 4, 2014

VictualSquid posted:

I feel like we should eventually get multi lane bike paths. So that the fast riders can easily overtake the normals. And maybe even an unusually slow lane for those 6km/h mobility scooters and stuff.
Maybe even a shared fast bikes and small motorcycles lane for the 45km/h crew.

Has there been any place experimenting with those?

Also, in my experience you only get bad interactions between bike racers and normal cyclists in car cursed environments. If the racers notice that the bike path has lots of normal people cycling along a 10km/h, they switch to the street if they can safely. Only, place I have seen with bad racer/normie interaction was mostly because the car street next to it was ultra deadly, even for cars, and the racers truely needed to share the lane with large amounts of foot traffic.
I think that's just a wider path eg instead of 3-4m, more like 6m. With sufficient width it will self regulate as slower cyclists keep to one side.

Baronjutter
Dec 31, 2007

"Tiny Trains"

Amsterdam really sucks for bike infra. Way too much of their city center still has vehicle access, which takes up tons of space and the scraps are then given over to everyone else. So you have these very cramped narrow cycle paths and sidewalks. Add in the mass tourism and drunks and its a recipe for a lot of conflict.

But outside of Amsterdam, dutch cycling infra is generally super good. They try to always build single-direction lanes to be 2-bikes wide, this is massively important! It lets people ride side by side and carry on a conversation, just like talking to the person next to you in the car. But most importantly it allows different speeds to pass each other, it allows old people on slow little mobility scooter chair things to use the bike lane going like 8kph while someone on a bike passes them at 25kph and there's no stress or conflict.

Another massive thing with wider cycle paths is that once you make them as wide as a car lane, it means vehicles can use them. Paris for instance purposefully has been designing a lot of their new bike lanes to be wide enough for ambulances. Bikes can get out of the way of emergency vehicles way better than cars and it's led to huge improvements to emergency response times!

VictualSquid
Feb 29, 2012

Gently enveloping the target with indiscriminate love.

Lobsterpillar posted:

I think that's just a wider path eg instead of 3-4m, more like 6m. With sufficient width it will self regulate as slower cyclists keep to one side.

Yeah, a wide enough cycling path will probably self regulate to do 90% of what I want. And sufficiently traffic calmed streets would deliver 90% of the rest.
But, I still feel that a dedicated lane for the intermediate vehicles and going fast would make a lot of things easier. Even just by reminding them that they shouldn't be on the bikepath if there isn't a designated sub-lane.

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Lead out in cuffs
Sep 18, 2012

"That's right. We've evolved."

"I can see that. Cool mutations."




Yeah the Dutch design standard is bike lanes that are wide enough to pass in. You could call that "multilane", but it's not like they stripe within that. This should really be the standard everywhere.

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