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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • Shared bike/pedestrian paths tend to be dangerous for both, because pedestrians tend to take up the whole width or jump right into the path of a bicycle or scooter.

    Anecdotally, yes, I’ve experienced that happening.

    Whether it’s statistically true that shared multi-use paths are more dangerous, I’m not sure. Data does suggest that wider is better.

    But in my experience, conflicts are common when you have narrow shared pathways, or have shared infrastructure in places where bike/pedestrian paths aren’t normalized.

    We have a section of trail along our waterfront that splits into a pedestrian and cycle path (dual lane) that’s separated by several meters of grass, bushes, and trees. This is well away from any roadways.

    While this might seem ideal, I can’t tell you how many times you get cyclists in the pedestrians on the wrong path, which creates even more conflicts because you’re expecting the separation.

    Granted, there are parts of the world that have different forms of cyclist/pedestrian separation that I don’t have here, so I can’t comment to how effective other forms of trail design are.

    Best practice around the world has been “make it as wide as you can”, and also having a centreline seems to reduce conflicts and speeds (interestingly enough!).

    When I have experienced conflicts with pedestrians (while I’m riding my bike or e-scooter), it’s almost always because they are distracted, don’t have control of their dog/child, or are walking in a group of more than 3 people and taking up both lanes of the pathway. I rarely, if ever, experience conflicts in sections where the path is wide.

    But perhaps the caveat of my experience is that I cycle defensively, always ring/call out when I pass, and never speed past pedestrians.



  • No, I’m saying I use a bike to go fast without a car.

    For sure, but bike lanes (of any width) aren’t really designed for fast bikes. Granted, wide bike lanes (like in some areas in Montreal) would accommodate fast cyclists because you have a ton of space to pass slow riders.

    Widening the lane and adding slow moving individuals increases the likely hood of an accident. Also makes the lane less usable by cyclists.

    But we currently have the same users on very narrow lanes… how would widening it make the problem worse?

    Yes, we would be inducing demand, but with wide lanes, this would be a non-issue.

    If you want better infrastructure for those with disabilities widen the sidewalk where they are already safe.

    In a perfect world, yes, I agree. Unfortuantely, you can’t have wide sidewalks and wide bike lanes and wide roads. There’s just not enough room or money for that.

    If you build a very wide “bike lane” that replaces a sidewalk and standard bike lane at the same time, you can build more of them, and they’d be safer than having a narrow bike lane and narrow sidewalk.

    The idea of bike lanes was to separate them from cars. How is making it a new sidewalk an improvement?

    You’re still separated by more space :)

    Ok, in this context, I don’t think that anyone is proposing simply building a wider bike lane next to cars. The ideal would be to do what other cities have done (Paris, Montreal, various cities in the Netherlands, etc.) and build “wide bike lanes” that are actually regular roads with no car access.

    If you frame it as a need for cyclists, you get very little support (in fact, you get push back from NIMBYs and carbrains). However, when framed as an accessibility right for people in wheelchairs and mobility scooters, then you have more legal obligations to build this infrastructure up, and cyclists win at the same time.





  • We would need to be careful how we push back so he doesn’t have an excuse to start an actual war.

    I don’t think a single unhinged lunatic in all of human history ever suddenly became reasonable because their victims began walking on eggshells. In fact, the opposite happens. Just ask his buddy, Putin.

    Trump will do what he wants, no matter what our response is. So, we can tell the world that we will not cave to this madman, and hope that our allies back us up.

    Either way, we lose hard by not doing anything or being too light in our response.

    And yes, a war is possible - no matter what we do - that’s the unfortunate reality of having a lunatic in charge. We have the support of NATO if it comes to that. Trump will need to decide whether he wants to be dragged around town like Mussolini, or not.









  • Oh wow, that opened up a can of worms!

    Yes, the user does seem to work for Lyft, and their profile has a few links. One leads to:

    "We have 3 kinds of data that owned by Lyft:

    “Lyft telemetry data" – Lyft drivers GPS tracks
    “Lyft-owned street-level imagery” - photos collected by cameras installed in our drivers' vehicles. This data is updated frequently. Photos are not older than a year, and sometimes even a month.
    "Lyft-owned aerial imagery" – As for now it is Nearmap imagery. They do allow us to use their imagery for OSM edits by license.
    

    "

    I guess that explains it! Thanks for putting me in the right direction. It’s a shame that they don’t share and grant an open license to that imagery. Seems more updated than Google Streetview, and since Lyft uses OSM data, it only seems right to share.