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According to this news article, our 'bike walhalla' called Holland still needs to be improved. The first graph shows the number of deaths in traffic per year. The top line is all deaths, while the bottom one is only cyclists and pedestrians. As you can see, while the total number is dropping, the number of cyclist deaths barely changes, implying that there's less car deaths. Some stats they name in the article:
Most fatal cyclist and pedestrian accidents happen between 3 and 4 pm on work days. Victims are mainly school-goers and elderly people. This can be easily explained: school-goers make the most bike-kilometers of any group in the country, which increases the chance (what it doesn't say is that these people aren't the most careful drivers either). Elderly people are, of course, more vulnerable than other groups. Additionally, the government is stimulating them to keep cycling, even at older ages. And finally, many of them have an electrically powered bicycle, which is harder to control than a normal bike. The Fietsersbond (a cyclist organisation) says that cyclists and cars should be even more separated on the road. They also recommend informing elderly people about the risks of riding an electric bicycle. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Nov 12, 2013 |
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Nov 12, 2013 08:12
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Wouldn't it be better in that pic to have the lane where bikes move towards the viewer on the other side? So: sidewalk - bike v - shelter - tram v - tram ^ - shelter - bike ^ - sidewalk. It feels more natural to me and you have the added advantage that pedestrians wanting to go to the tram shelter only need to watch out for bikes coming from one side.
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Nov 14, 2013 21:24
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I am Not A Traffic Engineer, but I can tell you making bike paths so small that it's impossible for faster bikers to pass causes rather dangerous situations. Yes, racing bikers can be annoying. But on the other hand, you have grandma cycling at nearly walking pace while others are going at a steady 15 km/h. If there's no place to pass, those faster cyclists will swerve onto the sidewalk, and if the bump doesn't make them fall, some pedestrians might have to jump out of the way. At busy intersections, racers drat, I keep typing racists can't really pass waiting cyclists, because everyone wants to be in the front, so they'll clog up the part just before the crossing completely. On a related note, in Holland, the law says that up to two cyclists are allowed to cycle next to each other, even on car roads. It might be more dangerous, but an advantage is that you can bike with a friend or colleague, making cycling even more favorable as a daily activity. Another advantage is that if an adult is cycling with a young child, the child can ride close to the sidewalk while the adult is on the 'car side', so car drivers can see the larger adult better and the adult can protect the child if necessary. It's considered good behaviour to move behind each other for a bit if a car is behind you and can't pass otherwise. However, many roads have been adapted so there's enough space for two cyclists next to each other while cars can still safely pass. On two-way bike roads, it's not uncommon to see two people riding together while a third, faster cyclist passes them on the left. 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 is a turning lane for cars. A bike lane with dashed lines means cars are allowed to drive there. So, cars turning right will be on the bike lane with their left half for a little while. They are moving slowly because they have to turn anyway, so it shouldn't cause any problems. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 22:50 on Nov 14, 2013 |
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Nov 14, 2013 22:47
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I've seen two approaches for left-turning with bikes from a bike lane. One, which is used in Holland, is that the cyclist will signal going left, then carefully move left onto the place cars wait until they can turn left, and then do a direct left turn from there. In some cases, there's a special left-turn bicycle lane between the left turn car lane and the lane for cars that go straight ahead. The other, which was implemented everywhere in Copenhagen, is that cyclists keep to the right of the road, go straight ahead, then just before the end of the intersection turn slighty right, make a hard left turn, and then stop and wait. This way they end up at the very front of the road coming from the right, and they just have to make another straight pass when their light turns green to complete their left turn. Of course, this is for bike lanes on a regular road. Separated bike paths usually have their own little intersections and you can just follow those to get where you want. In any case, as far as I've seen, both approaches work well, as long as both cyclists and car drivers are used to it and know what to expect. However, while I cycle at least three times per week in Holland I felt like a horrible amateur the day I went cycling in Copenhagen. It was so different to what I was used to, I had to be really careful to not make stupid mistakes. Added to that the fact that Copenhagen cyclists use an extra hand signal, hand straight up means "I'm gonna stop". This signal is not used in Holland at all, I guess we Dutch just figure that people can see you slowing down. I tried to use the go-right-to-go-left-turn and that stop signal, but it was really difficult for me. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 19:43 on Nov 15, 2013 |
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Nov 15, 2013 19:41
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Trams can easily be made longer, so you can get more passengers in one tram. In the Dutch city of Utrecht, during rush hour thousands of students are trying to get from the train station to the university campus or back. Right now, they use these bi-articulated buses:  There's a bus every 2 or 3 minutes. But it's not enough, it still feels like a cattle transport in there. So, currently they're building a new 'tram line' from the station to the campus, which will replace the buses and should make it easier to get all those people to where they need to be. They call it a 'sneltram' (fast tram), and it's actually more like a light rail thing with lots of level crossings. An interesting fact is that like half a century ago, there were tram lines everywhere in Holland. Many towns and villages were connected by tram. It's quite hard to believe now, but you can still see it by roads called 'Tram Rd' popping up in unexpected places. I think cars (and buses) were less common then, so it made sense. The city of Utrecht also had tram lines. They were all removed decades ago. Buses, car roads and bike lanes were the new way to go. And now they're building these light rail lines. It kinda feels like history repeating.
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Nov 16, 2013 22:49
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Well, the mayor of London got the solution. He said to the BBC he wishes he could make the use of headphones illegal for cyclists. In a way, he got a point. If cyclists can't hear cars and whatever around them, that can cause dangerous situations. But it's not like banning headphones suddenly makes the city safe for cycling.
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Nov 19, 2013 15:44
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They call that bunch of crap a cycle highway? This is what we would call a cycle highway: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwNqpE2VpYY
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Nov 19, 2013 19:02
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Cichlidae posted:That looks brilliant. The only problem I can see with it is how you get heavy vehicles around the corners. By tightening the intersection, you make things a lot tougher for them, especially with left turns. Usually, the intersections are still wide enough. Really really long vehicles sometimes go over the curb with one of their wheels, but that shouldn't normally be necessary.
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Nov 23, 2013 19:09
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Remember that on a mostly empty road, it's much more likely to see someone come the other direction than to see someone going your direction pass by. Even if people going your way go faster, it takes them a lot longer to catch up. If you can't see the other side, the road will suddenly seem way, way quieter.
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Dec 11, 2013 08:41
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I remember that vid being posted here half a year ago or so. The consensus was that this 'idea' won't help at all, but in a lot of cases it makes things worse because traffic gets horribly clogged behind you.
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Jan 8, 2014 22:04
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Okay, can someone explain this one to me? Last year, the government here in the Netherlands decided to completely switch off the street lights on a lot of empty stretches of highway. This saves €600 000 per year in electricity costs, although there is a slightly increased risk in road accidents. Makes sense, so far. Because of safety regulations, street lights have to be turned on whenever there are nightly road works and also near traffic accidents if they're blocking part of the road. Now, the national road maintenance agency has released a statement, saying that this costs a lot of money, because every time they need to hire a contractor who goes there and has to turn on the street lights manually. They estimate that the extra costs because of this are €2 MILLION per year. So, their conclusion is that turning the lights off costs way, way more than leaving them on all night, every night. But 2 million? That is quite an incredible number. For just turning a bunch of lights on. What the hell. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 11:45 on Jan 30, 2014 |
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Jan 30, 2014 11:43
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Koesj posted:You ought to have mentioned this yourself really, since it means that the policy change will have paid itself back in couple of years (wrt the road authority's budget at least). I'm sorry, I had another source which did say it is possible to automate the remaining switches but that would cost a huge amount of money. Guessing that was an exaggeration, then. --- One other complaint about the change I heard is that if you are driving along a road without street lights and you drive into a road work area, you're suddenly staring into bright lights and you're blinded for some seconds, which is dangerous. But honestly, on some of the newer roads we never even had street lights at all, and if you just drive into a town you run into the same problem. So it's not as if it's a new thing that was suddenly caused by this policy change.
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Jan 30, 2014 14:50
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The enormous amount of highway street lights were installed a few decades ago, when money was plenty and fuel for the power plants was cheap. I feel it was more a luxury thing than anything else. I mean, put down plenty of those reflector poles at the sides of the road and make sure everyone is sensible enough to use their headlights and you can drive fine in the dark.
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Jan 30, 2014 23:08
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Devor posted:They're not voodoo, you just follow the pavement markings/signs This one looks somewhat like a Turbo roundabout with the single lanes in some parts. Turbo roundabouts are good and easy, but multiple lane roundabouts without clear markings can be difficult. By the way, there's a difference between a roundabout (relatively small, cars on the circle have priority) and a traffic circle (often very big, can be used to connect a bunch of main roads, traffic is controlled by yield/stop signs or traffic lights (or in horrible cases, completely uncontrolled, see Place Charles de Gaulle in Paris. Those cases are just an accident waiting to happen and hopefully aren't built anymore.) There's often direction signage above the approaching roads so you can start out in the right lane, then you follow the arrows on the traffic lights and the pavement markings and you'll end up at the right exit. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 09:30 on Feb 23, 2014 |
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Feb 23, 2014 09:27
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I read your description and thought "that sounds a lot like Dutch design". Yep. I was right.
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Feb 27, 2014 09:31
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All I know is that a few years ago the Belgian government was planning to do roadworks on both main north-south routes at the same time, blocking both of them off completely. It would become very hard to go to France, for instance. Luckily, they abandoned that idea when they realized how horrible it was.
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Mar 7, 2014 19:55
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One thing that might be confusing for people who aren't used to the situation are the right arrows on the incoming lanes. They indicate that you should take the inner roundabout lane when you want to go right. I can imagine people just taking a sharp right, going round the roundabout in the wrong direction and causing a heads-on.
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Mar 9, 2014 09:39
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Meh. Holland has a more effective rule. They implemented it a few times in the past when there where oil crises. They simply banned all vehicles with a combustion engine (except emergency vehicles) from all roads for a few Sundays. Because that doesn't make people angry at all.  It was called a car-free Sunday. Nowadays that name is often used for voluntary events to make people think about sustainability. But the government still has the power to use this law when a new oil crisis happens.
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Mar 21, 2014 19:13
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  They also have these things on local/rural roads. They go up during rush hour, and then go down once every half minute or so to let a single car through. They are built to prevent people taking the local road while the highway is jammed up. The locals don't want too much traffic on their roads I guess. --- Edit so I don't have to double post: Let's look at a road with some, uh, lovely views. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SywpGHTsg00 Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 11:53 on Mar 30, 2014 |
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Mar 30, 2014 08:41
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dupersaurus posted:Not that it makes much difference since the position of the sun at rise and set varies over the course of the year by quite a few degrees above and below directly E/W. Unless your grid is 45 degrees off, there's going to be two points in the year the sun's going to be going straight down it. In case of Manhattan, this event is rather famous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattanhenge 
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Apr 1, 2014 22:31
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Well, it's not quite the same, but over here, when there's an intersection with traffic lights right next to a railway crossing, it seems they somehow integrate the two. First of all, you're never allowed to stop on the crossing, so the traffic lights for the cars approaching the intersection through the crossing might be placed before the crossing. Secondly, when a train comes, there's the normal warning signals, but in addition to that, any traffic lights leading to the railroad crossing will stay red, while the lights for directions not through the crossing will stay green, preventing traffic jams as much as possible.
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Apr 29, 2014 21:43
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Some news in Dutch. So basically, some folks invented a thing called "glowing lines". Those are road markings that absorb the sun's UV light during the day and release it as visible light during the night. The inventors claim that they could replace street lights completely. It still needs some electricity, to keep the light intensity constant, independent of weather conditions. That means the lines can also be 'shut down'. There's been some international attention and both Beijing and Cape Town are thinking of getting these lines. So, the lines worked perfectly fine in the lab and were recently tested on a small stretch of road in Holland. After a month or so, they were shut down, because they were dying bit by bit. Apparently, the problem is that the 'pigments' can't tolerate much moisture. The inventors say they're working on "Glowing Lines 2.0". Whatever. If it works, I think it's a good idea. I just can't believe that they didn't think to test in the lab whether the stuff can stand moisture and rain.
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May 1, 2014 15:16
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Tech researcher says traffic control systems in major cities in the US, UK, France, China and other countries are really easy to hack.
Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 17:02 on May 1, 2014 |
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May 1, 2014 17:00
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In Holland something similar is used, but as far as I know it's not actually steam, just warm water (60 C, maybe a bit more), which would otherwise be waste cooling water from power plants. In cities it's used to heat buildings, in rural areas there's longer pipes and it's actually used to heat greenhouses.
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May 9, 2014 18:34
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Groda posted:Most places use hot water, NYC just happens to have a huge-rear end legacy steam system that is by coincidence one of the few in America that survived. Well, you need something to power all NYC's steampunk tech.
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May 10, 2014 17:08
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Reminds me a bit of a Dutch information campaign a while (decade?) ago about 'ritsen' (closing a zipper). The idea was that if lanes merge and there's a jam, each car lets exactly one car from the other lane merge in front of them. There were tv ads about how this is the fairest and fastest system and there were even official traffic signs (just a lane merge sign with another sign saying "ritsen"). By now, most of those ritsen signs are gone or have been replaced, and I guess most people forgot that that campaign ever was a thing.
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May 21, 2014 20:56
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Remember that driving exams differ a whole lot between countries. For instance, here in Holland, most people take something between 20 - 50 hours of (expensive) practical lessons. They have a theoretical exam about the rules of the road. One of its parts is getting 10 seconds to look at a picture of a traffic situation and pressing the right multiple choice button. You'll fail if you get more than a few out of many questions wrong. Then there's the practical exam, which amounts to driving through some diverse traffic for an hour, and they can and often will fail you on any single mistake. We have wild stories about driving exams in third world countries such as the United States, where, apparently, someone just has to drive forward a bit, drive backwards a bit, drive around a corner, and stop their car, and they'll get their license.
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May 28, 2014 21:17
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GWBBQ posted:They're privatizing the entire state and selling it to Saudi Arabia, aren't they? Well Saudi Arabia is all desert, so it should be no problem to add extra lanes to all roads.
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Jun 8, 2014 08:46
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So, apparently, after years of talks, they decided to put a net under the Golden Gate Bridge to catch suicide jumpers. My source doesn't happen to link to an English language article, so just google it if you want. Some facts in the article: - Every year 30 people jump to their deaths there. - Every year an additional 70 people are prevented from jumping because officials can stop them in time. - 98% of people jumping off the bridge actually die. Reasons to not build the net are: - It costed 35 million 1930's dollars to build the bridge. It costs 76 million 2014's dollars to build the net. According to opponents, this makes the net 'more expensive' than the bridge itself. - The net would make the bridge look less pretty. - People would find another way to kill themselves. I think the reason to build it is rather obvious: no more Golden Gate Bridge suicides. Now, it's going to get built after all, with $20 million bridge toll money, $7 million from the State of California, and the rest coming from the federal government. The reason I bring this up is because, first of all, a bridge is important traffic infrastructure. Secondly, I wouldn't be surprised if these years of talks were the same kind of citizens vs. politicians vs. engineers discussions that cause so much crap for any public project in the United States (and to a lesser extent, elsewhere).
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Jun 28, 2014 06:19
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I know this thread has talked about the subject before, but I don't think anyone linked to this particular 10 minute documentary yet. It's about Amsterdam bicycle culture, from an US perspective. It's also about how a congested, polluted car-city in the 60s, because of the will of the people, transformed into a nice place where most people cycle daily. https://vimeo.com/77084110
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Jul 16, 2014 17:28
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Skeesix posted:I'm currently living in Copenhagen, which is almost as much of a bike city as Amsterdam, so I'm in favor of more bike culture coming to the US, but that documentary is some crunchy hippie bullshit. What good does it talk about intersections without signage and the "6th sense" that people develop about other cyclists when you're trying to introduce people to more cycling? I asked about this earlier in the thread, and the fact remains that if you want a biking culture you need to make it safe, which means making a major investment in infrastructure - curbed bike lanes and the like. There's also the fact that the US is much bigger and its climate much less moderate, so it may be that even if you make a really big investment you won't get anywhere near the level of adoption you do in Europe. I cycled in Copenhagen. As far as I could tell, Copenhagen's bike culture is very similar to the Dutch. There's only two significant differences I could see. The first is that they have a hand sign indicating "I'm gonna stop". In Holland, we only have 'left' and 'right' hand signs, and, actually, a lot of people only use them when it helps them getting right of way. The stop sign is useful, I guess, but it took quite some mental effort to start doing it myself. The second is the different way cyclists take left turns. I'll show some pictures. A Copenhagen left turn is like the green arrow here:  In the Netherlands (and Belgium, where the following pictures were taken), things are different:  In this image, people wanting to turn left stop at the left bike sign in that box, and wait for the light to turn green. Another example with a separately marked lane:  Of course, things are different if there's a separate bike path. In that case you follow the path and the situation is more often like it's in Copenhagen, except you'd stop behind a curb on the far right edge. If there's no bike paths or markings at all, if you want to turn left, when you approach the intersection, you make sure you end up just right of the road center line. Now, as far as I can tell, both approaches are about equally safe... if drivers know what to expect. In Copenhagen they except a Copenhagen left, and everything goes well. In Holland, they expect cyclists to get to the left while approaching the intersection, they'll leave room for that, and there's no problem either. Just a different way of doing things. Carbon dioxide fucked around with this message at 19:41 on Jul 17, 2014 |
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Jul 17, 2014 19:36
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Do you have to deal with court cases? Like, over here, if people think a new road might break environmental laws or something, they'll go to court over it, and while the judges are thinking about it, while the appeal is pending, and all that, construction work is stopped. This way, even if everything is in order, things might be delayed by a few years.
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Jul 21, 2014 08:34
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A similar thing happens with cars vs bicycles here in Holland. The straight-ahead bicycle path gets green at the same time the car road does. However, this is resolved well. Any time this is the case, there's a sign under the traffic light indicating the possibility of meeting cyclists when turning right. Also, the curb between the road and the cycle path goes a little beyond the car traffic light, so that any waiting cyclists are already ahead of the cars, easily visible by drivers. Concerning stopping for crosswalks (those without lights), I find it depends on the place. Most places I know, cars stop as soon as you attempt to cross. But in certain big cities such as The Hague, cars don't tend to stop until you're actually on the road itself. It's quite dangerous, you have to wait for a gap between cars, quickly jump onto the road, and hope the next driver is awake enough to brake in time.
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Aug 12, 2014 22:15
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A Dutch town official sent a wrong paint colour code to the paint company. As a result, some traffic islands in town have now been painted pink instead of white:  The town government's first reaction was "We're gonna get them changed to the normal colour within a few days". But today, a town official said that he got a whole lot of positive reactions to the change, so he's gonna find out whether it's possible to keep them this way. === In other news, need to get some potholes fixed? These Russians found a way to get them fixed real fast
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Sep 3, 2014 13:58
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John Dough posted:That was the municipality's initial reaction, but now they have received so many positive comments that they are keeping them, and have hired a local artist to spruce it up some more I haven't heard about the artist part yet, do you have a source? (Dutch is fine)
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Sep 4, 2014 00:14
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Baronjutter posted:http://www.citylab.com/design/2014/09/so-what-exactly-is-a-road-diet/379975/ Okay, so a road diet is turning a four-lane road into a three lane one. In principle, three lanes are a good idea. As they say, there's less conflicts where collisions can happen and more room for cyclists. Fantastic. However, the article doesn't say how the middle lane is managed. If there's clear markings or even better, barriers that show where what side can use the middle lane, it's a fantastic idea. Any left-turn lanes fit in there, and when there aren't left turns for a while it can be used for short stretches where people can pass slow-moving vehicles at each side. That's how it's usually set up in West-European countries now. Some examples: In the Netherlands: A fast road with no intersections, so they placed this huge barrier. Of course you won't see this within cities.  In Germany: The most common system: the middle lane switching sides using clear road markings:  But if it's like the old Belgian/French three-lane system, I don't think it's such a good idea, and I'd prefer keeping the four lanes. In those roads, the middle lane wouldn't have markings or barriers at all except a left turn arrow every now and then. That means that at places without intersections, cars from BOTH SIDES could use the middle road at the same time to pass slow vehicles. This, of course, creates a whole new problem: a rather large chance for full-speed head-on collisions, which can cause much worse injuries than some of the accidents listed in the statistics in that article. Example: An old road in France. This type of road is not allowed at all in the Netherlands. 
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Sep 14, 2014 09:02
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I looked it up on Wikipedia and apparently the USA used to have the French type. It was officially known as a 'suicide lane'.
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Sep 14, 2014 18:41
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nielsm posted:If the bike lane is separated from the road with more than just a curb for a longer stretch, perhaps a crossing bikes sign along with an advisory arrow. I.e. reminding the motor vehicles that if they turn right there might be bikes. It'd seem like the driveway is rather small so the owner/users would presumably already be aware of the bike lane and not need to be warned of it. Motor vehicles turning left into the driveway also seem they should see approaching bikes without additional signage. In the Netherlands in some places you can see this sign:  'Let op' just means 'watch out'.
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Sep 19, 2014 22:31
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A map of all traffic accidents in the Netherlands in 2013. Red = deadly Pink = Wounded, victim(s) brought to hospital Blue = Wounded, emergency services required Yellow = Other
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Sep 19, 2014 22:52
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 20:04 |
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Well that's easy to solve. If you pass a car like that with your bike just give the car door a hard push so it falls into the lock and hopefully the force either breaks the lock or breaks the leg of someone who's halfway out of the car.
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Sep 25, 2014 07:59
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