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Baronjutter posted:http://goo.gl/maps/i0d92 I've been there too, quite a few times! And from personal experience I know that it's not too bike/pedestrian friendly over there...
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Apr 2, 2013 23:55
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That flywheel technology was even used in Formula 1: http://www.williamsf1.com/Advanced-Engineering/Media/Videos/Williams-Hybrid-Power-Flywheel---How-it-Works/ There must be something to it.
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May 30, 2013 22:54
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Cichlidae posted:green is already common in continental Europe, where we get most of our new traffic ideas. It's red wherever I've been! Certainly in the Netherlands it's the standard, but I even saw it in Bulgaria (though what passed for a bike lane there involved extensive curb hopping).
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Aug 24, 2013 00:03
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Jeoh posted:I don't think they're prohibited, there are a lot of roundabouts where the centre is raised to the point where you can't see the other side. Or poo poo like this. Yeah, this used to be quite common: http://goo.gl/maps/Y3TF2 where the center is raised enough that you can't look across unless you're the Google Street view camera. I haven't seen newer ones designed in that way though, they still have hills but lower ones that you can see over. This one has been there since the 90s.
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Sep 28, 2013 01:39
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Well, we do have these everywhere, or more basic forms of it, but it looks like they overdid it a bit in your case! Or maybe they just haven't placed the new signs yet... The ones we have seem to work well, a roundabout helps to slow drivers down and make them realize it's not a highway any more, and you rarely need to wait. Entropist fucked around with this message at 20:10 on Oct 4, 2013 |
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Oct 4, 2013 20:07
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Is that really a source of conflict? Cyclists are flexible, when you see that a car has their right turning signal on, you can go wait on the left side instead to avoid getting in the way. That's how people do it in the Netherlands anyway. It seems like blocking the way for motorists going in any other direction is creating a bigger problem than it solves...
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Oct 29, 2013 23:33
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In the Netherlands, bikes are like other vehicles (except that they can't go on controlled access roads), though with special facilities where they exist. And if there is such a bike path, you are required to use it and get out of the car lane. It's also illegal to bike on a sidewalk or walking path. Coming from that system, everything else just seems impractical! Basically there is this hierarchy car > bike > pedestrian, and you can move up in it if there are no other options (walk on the road or bike path) but not down (drive on the sidewalk)
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Nov 4, 2013 23:16
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Baronjutter posted:So imagine you were designing a city where there were no private vehicles allowed in the city centre. What would the streets look like? Obviously emergency and service/delivery vehicles still need access, but what would the streets look like? I'm guessing more "shared" spaces with more fuzzy delineations between sidewalk and roadway? How would say a tram line be integrated into a street like that? Tram in a pedestrian zone? No problem, works fine here: http://goo.gl/maps/DmPq4 less than three posted:http://goo.gl/maps/fr9SS Aww, that looks almost familiar! Except there would be bike lanes behind the trees.
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Nov 8, 2013 14:09
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Some newer areas in the southeast of Amsterdam have everything separated - a grid of car roads up on earth dams, with a separate and more dense grid of bike paths and pedestrian paths under it, that tunnel under the roads when crossing them. It is the most annoying thing, because you orient yourself based on either one of the grids, and if you're going to a place on some street, it's extremely confusing to find it walking or by bike since you can't actually go on that street. Same if you're looking for a place that's only on a ped path, you'd have to know where in the area you can put your car and walk up to it, otherwise, good luck. They'll also have a ped entrance on one side and a bike entrance on the other... It's completely unintuitive, and impossible to navigate based on general directions, you have to know where you're going exactly. In practise, people just end up walking across everything and have worn dirt paths into the grass next to the roads. If you just have to cross, it's too much effort to go down the stairs, go under the road through the ped tunnel on the official path, and walk up again. e: Had this area in mind: http://goo.gl/maps/3A82S Baronjutter posted:But man in that video the sidewalks the tram is running by are just choked full of locked up bikes but I'm not seeing much or anything in the terms of bike lanes or bike infrastructure. And drat does tram-track-in-grass look hot as hell. You can't really see them very well, but on the bigger streets that have tram tracks in the middle and road lanes on the sides, the bike lanes are on the other side of those roads, separated behind the parked cars (if there is parking), with sidewalks on the far outside. In a few spots they're not separated, there you just get a dashed line between the road and the parking spots or sidewalk which delineates a small bike lane, though cars may cross the dashed line. On the smaller streets there's no need for separate bike lanes since there is not much traffic, and it's slow. Entropist fucked around with this message at 01:50 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 01:41
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Koesj posted:That's not what he meant, it's pedestrian access everywhere in that vid, with either bikes, cars, or trams added. The non-separation is between cars and bikes, because some roads just aren't that busy and Dutch drivers tend to handle sharing streets well. I think that was referring to my description of the Bijlmer. No pedestrian access on those street. You can see the 'customization' that this leads to here: http://goo.gl/maps/yVi4Z That's where people illegally cross the street and walk along the side street. The 'official' way would be to stay on the right, walk down some stairs, go through a bike/ped tunnel on the far side of the crossing, walk about 300m along the street, and take another tunnel under the side street, to get to that side of the road... Entropist fucked around with this message at 03:27 on Nov 9, 2013 |
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Nov 9, 2013 03:25
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Lead out in cuffs posted:I mean stuff like this: http://goo.gl/maps/x6eek They've tried to put it some bike boxes, and a weird kind bike lane in one spot, and there were really a lot of cyclists using this street, but there also absolutely isn't room for a car to pass a bicycle safely, nor is there room on such a narrow street to create that. My first thought was that this doesn't look narrow at all! I guess you just have to be used to it. If cars are parked at the traffic light, you don't need much space to squeeze past them and get into the bike box. And in normal traffic, they can use a bit of the other lane to get around you.
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Nov 10, 2013 23:52
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Here's an Amsterdam equivalent of what you're designing: http://goo.gl/maps/8GpgW The main road to the station from the center. There's one car lane, only in the direction of the station, though it's not that heavily used by cars as far as I know (driving in the center of Amsterdam is a bad idea). Trams are in the middle, with narrow platforms, but guardrails prevent people from crossing away from the crosswalks. Everyone ignores them but it makes people look at least. One bike lane is separated but the other is not (probably due to space constraints, the sidewalk is small too). Bikes ride next to the sidewalk, except for the turning lane, which is good because the drivers have to pay attention twice. Once to cross the bike land when entering the turning lane, giving them plenty of time to look for bikes, and then again to make the actual turn, where they don't need to worry about bikes any more. It seems to work pretty well, though I've never biked this in the direction of the non-separated lane for some reason. Normally it is crowded as hell there with bikes, peds and trams, but I guess this was taken on an early Monday morning. Install Windows posted:The thing is that by having a robust bike and pedestrian infrastructure you kind of negate the need for very frequent (5 minute headway each direction) surface tram service there. Especially since that would cause issues for pedestrians trying to cross the street, or indeed bicyclists. If it needs to provide service that frequent because it later branches off to multiple other routes a ways away or because high ridership, then it should either be replaced by a buried or simply sunken below grade tram line or buried full-on rapid transit subway that can lessen the need for very very frequent service by running more cars together. You would perhaps supplement that service with a surface-level tramway that runs at a lower frequency. That seems quite silly. There are good reasons for using either of the tree options (walk/bike/tram) and burying the tram is prohibitively expensive. In Amsterdam we have all three of those, with a buried metro line going under it too, and they all serve their purpose.
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Nov 14, 2013 22:28
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Baronjutter posted:What's up with that turn lane? Is that a turn lane for bikes?? But it only leads to a parking ramp for cars. Everything there looks good but I can't figure out that bike-lane sized turning lane. It's for cars, I guess they just didn't have space to make it bigger. Normally it would be the same size as the car lane. Install Windows posted:Since burying the metro line was already done there, you can't say having a buried tram line there would cost too much. It's very difficult to dig in Amsterdam, at least. There was only one metro tunnel under the city for a long time, now they've been building a second one this decade, but it's been a financial and PR disaster. Gonna get finished in 2017 though, supposedly. Entropist fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 22:47
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Baronjutter posted:I can't imagine being in a wheelchair in Europe, or really anywhere outside of North America. As an able-bodied person I loving love europe, everything is compact and pedestrian, but also for the most part totally impossible to make wheelchair friendly. Like in those Dutch or Czech examples how is a disabled person suposed to get on a tram when all you have is a narrow 1m platform that's no higher than a sidewalk, has no curb cuts, and even if the tram is low-flow (which it probably won't be) you've still got a pretty big step from the curb to the tram, plus no room for a ramp to fold out because 1m platform. I've seen this, the controller on the tram grabs a ramp that's situated near the door manually and puts it there. All the buses and most of the trams (except for some older ones) are low flow. Not in Prague though, they had a lot of older trams there. In general, quite an effort is made here to make things more easy for the disabled --- ped signals with sounds, and those ribbed pathways on the sidewalks for the blind to follow, for example. But sometimes the system is a bit primitive due to other constraints, I guess. At least in the area where I grew up, they made all the bus stops wheelchair-accessible and level with the bus doors. Not sure how that is in Amsterdam. At least with the trams they haven't been able to do it everywhere, and use the manual ramps.
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Nov 14, 2013 23:36
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Baronjutter posted:Yeah I plan on having the side walk and the bike lanes almost at grade, just a slight mountable dip and change in material to mark the bike lane, not like a full big 90 degree curb or anything. Basically going to do it just like in that Dutch example Entropist posted. Wrong way biking is also an art. If you are doing it, you have to know that you're an unwanted guest and be extra careful. You can expect to be shouted at or rammed off the road if you don't yield. It happens a lot a few streets over, where there is strangely only a (separated) bike path one way, but other than that it's not so common, and people only do it for short distances or when it's quiet. You also see it more on separated bike paths (like that person is doing) than on bike lanes, where you'd also have to deal with cars coming the other way which is much more dangerous. Baronjutter posted:Also how did those service vehicles get on the sidewalk? Just drove on the bike lane and parked there? This is another thing I love about transport in Europe, there's a lot more of these blurred lines and shared spaces, they just make do with the space they have and it works, some how so much better. Baronjutter posted:Maybe this is a problem? Or maybe people only do it when the lanes are clear. There's so much more wiggle room with bikes and peds! A bike going a few blocks down a wrong-way bike lane at 7am only passing a couple other bikes isn't a problem, while someone driving their car on the wrong side of a freeway at 7am, even if they only have to pass a few other cars, is a major problem. The slower and more maneuverable the mode of transport the lower the need for strict rules. When you get all the way down to the pedestrian, they can basically go where the gently caress they want and will heed no rules. Entropist fucked around with this message at 01:34 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 01:30
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Both of those approaches are also used in the Netherlands, depending on how many bikes vs cars pass the intersection I guess. We don't generally have special facilities for crossing tram tracks by bike, people know to be careful and you're not going to get stuck in it unless you drive almost directly parallel to the tracks, which you usually wouldn't have reason to do.Baronjutter posted:How do I make this work? Here is such an intersection with tram tracks turning off the main route (and the next intersection too): http://goo.gl/maps/fU5yB Also featuring cobblestone, bike lanes and bikes from each direction (the smaller road crossing this street doesn't have bike lanes and is mainly used by bikes anyway).
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Nov 15, 2013 20:17
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Hahaha oh man, they're seriously advocating bike helmets! I think we Dutch people should just roll our eyes and stay out of the discussion because this never goes anywhere.
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Nov 20, 2013 13:57
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Gonna need more than a bandaid (or a helmet) when you get crushed by a truck because you were in its blind spot.
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Nov 20, 2013 14:06
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I see.them around in Amsterdam quite a lot, here's one: http://goo.gl/maps/wIfqE I think they recently reworked that one to make the protected bits bigger.
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Nov 23, 2013 14:41
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They seemed to work allright in Oslo, Norway, a city not particularly known for its warm winters: http://goo.gl/maps/TwW8d Though that road is basically uncrossable on foot, and they had space for ramps onto the bridges so you don't really have to climb stairs if you're going straight across.
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Dec 18, 2013 15:39
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Nice Davis posted:Are there any state DOTs (or even local public works departments) that place the pedestrian signal near the lights the drivers actually look at, instead of simply across from the crosswalk? I am the project manager for my community's pedestrian plan, and this is one of the things I'd like to fix. Drivers do such a poor job of noticing pedestrians anyway that it makes sense to at least stick the signal right in front of them. But I'm guessing that our public works department will be more willing to change standards if they see another community is doing the same thing. In Germany, when there is a conflict like this I've seen an extra yellow flashing light mounted next to the rightmost signal or right-turning signal, which only flashes when both peds and turning cars have a green light. I seem to remember that the peds also get a warning, but I'm not sure about that any more. In the Netherlands there's no special indication for it, they just try to avoid such conflicts and I've only seen them on tight city streets where you'd be watching for cyclists anyway.
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Feb 25, 2014 16:03
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I'm always surprised how much people complain about actuated signals in this thread. It IS possible to do them right! In the Netherlands we have actuated signals everywhere and waiting needlessly at a red light is just not a thing. Except maybe if they leave it in rush-hour (timed) mode when it's quiet. Generally there's a loop at the light where the first car would be, a loop further back to check for approaching traffic, and if needed a small loop for bikes on the right side. This avoids both the problem of 1 car holding everything up, and the problem of small vehicles not triggering a change. Somewhere near here is an intersection where 3 main (though two-lane) roads come together, and the direction I generally use gets red by default when it's quiet. But the first detection loop is far enough back that you can trigger it while still driving 50 km/h and the light will go green. If not, because there's traffic coming from the other side too, there's still enough time to stop before it.
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Feb 26, 2014 12:55
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Around here, they turn perfectly fine intersections into 'wrong' ones as a traffic calming measure in towns. The main road then has to yield to some small branch, even though it was obviously a later modification. This sometimes has you turning 'left' or 'right' many times even though you're just following one road, which can be confusing. For example: http://goo.gl/maps/oqeQb The main road through the town is a left turn here. The 'straight' route, actually bending to the right, goes nowhere important. This is evidenced by all the signs pointing left... Also, you can still see the original path of the road before they modified it, a smooth left turn marked by the hedge. The former main road, now a left branch, is controlled by yield signs. http://goo.gl/maps/jIjBJ Here's another one, where they built some industry off to the left of this old road (the one going straight). They rebuilt the intersection for the main road to go off into this industrial area, making it easier for trucks and such to get in there. It also creates a safer crossing for the bike path, as anyone going straight following the original main road at least has to be careful. These are all over the place now, I could go on. There are cases where they did it just by restriping with yield markings too, instead of actually changing the shape of the road, but I can't think of any now. Entropist fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Feb 27, 2014 |
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Feb 27, 2014 02:20
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I don't know what the roads around Amsterdam are like, why would you take a car there 
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Feb 27, 2014 13:33
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Koesj posted:Those spots you picked are not that far from where I live That's the only tram you can bring bikes on, though! But yeah, it seems quite convenient. I guess in other parts of the city you can just use the metro to get your bike to the center. Do they also charge extra for it on the tram? I'd use the P&R, but I live just a quick walk away from it these days so there's no point
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Feb 27, 2014 23:32
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Dancer posted:I've been lurking this thread pretty much since its inception and I don't recall this being mentioned, but obviously I could be wrong. It's a rather bad-rear end map of certain transit systems, with individual vehicles' scheduled behaviour on it. It can also work with real time data but in Europe that's only available for the Netherlands. That's cool as hell. Even the local buses in the countryside can be followed live in the Netherlands, and it has all the stop times.
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May 9, 2014 20:58
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Varance posted:Licensing for commercial drivers in the US is like what you described, so we at least make sure people who drive a bus full of passengers and the heavy industrial stuff aren't terrible. Some of it is also just as strict: screw up a CDL pretrip, especially the brake check, and your test is immediately over. gently caress up an alley dock test by leaving the back end of the box ("hitting the dock") and you're pretty much done. Failing to stop properly at a railroad crossing with hazmat/passenger is another instant fail. Running a red is a fail (even a rolling stop on a right turn). Rollbacks are an instant fail. Curbing the vehicle is an instant fail.
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May 29, 2014 02:24
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Hedera Helix posted:Does the video mention the risk of being doored, at all? Of the close calls that I've had, the majority were of people getting out of the driver's side without looking. I've never been doored in the Netherlands, only one close call because I was looking at my phone. Usually parking is located right next to the road and the bike path is separate, so that parking cars never need to cross the bike path and there's no risk of dooring. When that is not the case, it's either a local road where you can just use the whole road because traffic is slow, or it is a narrow street where they could fit in neither a separate bike path, nor parking spaces. In most streets, on-street parking isn't allowed anyway. I mostly just see it in residential areas where the risk of a car door opening is quite low. Also, Dutch people are trained to look in their mirror before opening the door. I guess that's the main factor... I also have the suspicion that people park differently here than in the US, for longer periods of time, because if it was a quick thing they'd take the bike, and if they had multiple stops they'd find a central parking location or you'd have to pay a bunch of money for each time you stop somewhere.
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Jul 18, 2014 23:15
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They could for example add car lanes to the bridge, and build a separate lightweight bike and ped bridge next to it if they want to increase capacity.
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Jul 28, 2014 19:07
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I guess there's two situations where you mainly see them in the Netherlands. Firstly, when there's a canal on the other side with no space there to add a bike path, as in your second and third picture. And secondly, when it's a rural road where you don't really need frequent access to both sides of the road, and it is cheaper to just build a path on one side. Actually in your first picture there is a bike lane on the other side for local access, as well as the bike path. This might be done as an upgrade for a road which used to have only bike lanes, but there's no space to build separated bike paths on each side.
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Jul 28, 2014 22:06
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Some free market roadwork in the UK: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EETUV6x1bJ4 Never heard of that before!
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Oct 9, 2014 01:33
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Hah, that's clever. I have one area like that in my commute, where I choose which way to go based on the current state of the intersection's traffic light... There's also an area in Amsterdam where there are two ped/bike ferry stations to cross the river, separated by a canal. Near the last bridge that crosses the canal there is a sign saying which ferry will come first, so that you can make sure you are on the correct side of the canal to catch the earliest one. Quite convenient!
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Oct 9, 2014 23:27
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lavaca posted:The thing that impressed me most about the bicycle infrastructure in The Netherlands is that there are so many streets that actually have room for four lanes for cars (or some combination of cars, trams and on-street parking), two lanes for bicycles and relatively wide sidewalks. Were the streets always this wide or does the creation of bicycle infrastructure involve a lot of eminent domain/buying out landowners? If it was in the city, those are often canals that were paved over. Or in some cities, in areas bombed/cleared after WW2.
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Oct 10, 2014 07:27
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My neighbours use it more as a road block We live on a cul-de-sac and they put it out when their kids are playing there. It seems pretty effective, though I always have to repress the impulse to buzz it on my bike.
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Nov 6, 2014 19:22
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At some point in the 90s we got a 25 cent increase on the gas tax, but because there was no inflation indexing during this time, inflation caught up after about 3-4 years. Now, like 25 years later, people are still complaining that they want the 25 cents back...
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Nov 19, 2014 02:36
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Fangz posted:Nobody is going to cycle in the snow. I have lived in a village of 800 people in the Netherlands, and when it snowed, the muncipality would clear the bike paths before they would clear the main roads, at 6AM in the morning. This way, all the kids could still get to school safely and in time, because they'd have to bike to other towns for that. They had small snowplows for that which could cover about 2/3rd of a two-way bike path in one go, with salt being sprayed from the back to melt the remaining snow, or any new snowfall. Entropist fucked around with this message at 02:28 on Nov 27, 2014 |
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Nov 27, 2014 02:25
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That's just silly, you can't use a bike path snow plow to clear a road anyway, so it's not like it would help to not do it  The residential streets usually didn't get cleared until maybe two or three days later if the snow remained, or not at all, but that wasn't really a problem since it was only the first bit of the journey and after a few cars passed through you could bike on the compacted snow.
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Nov 27, 2014 02:48
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 https://goo.gl/maps/IqfG9 I always liked these layered coloured ones we have, these have been there for as long as I can remember. This one is also notable: https://goo.gl/maps/jFmgX They made half a tunnel out of it, and the only purpose is to block sound, it's not like there's a hill up there. Entropist fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Dec 7, 2014 |
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Dec 7, 2014 03:00
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Ahh, I see... Well they didn't do that in Groningen when I lived in a high-rise building right next to the ring road 
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Dec 7, 2014 20:15
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We also have this thing built across the A4: https://goo.gl/maps/7NDuf According to Wikipedia there's also a hotel there, but not in the overpass bit, I think that's just a bunch of highway restaurants. Probably better that way. It's in the middle of nowhere, so it's not like they needed the space. I think the idea is that people can walk across and be able to reach all of the restaurants on both sides of the highway.
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Dec 8, 2014 00:36
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