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Comment by choeger | Hacker News Reader

Is there any sound comparison of protected bike lanes vs., for instance, 30kp/h zones with mixed bike/car traffic and sensible spacing? When cycling I find the cramped and the fast streets the most dangerous. And the pedestrians that cross into bikelanes. And slippery surfaces.

So from my very private pov (I go around 25 to 30kph) there are much cheaper methods that I would want to give a try firat.

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Mixing zones I'm sure are fine in some areas, but a lot of potential cyclists (like the very old and very young) are going to be intimidated by being with cars, period. Unless you heavily road diet the place with speed humps and other traffic calming measures, to the point where it's super obnoxious to drive in, at which point what is the point of still having cars there?

The Netherlands is probably Example #1, and IIRC they commonly have mixing zones for streets right in the city center that are rather pedestrianized, outside of that you'll mostly see separates bike lanes/paths.

American drivers (especially in places like New York) generally just ignore 20MPH speed limits (~=30km/h).

This is solvable by narrowing the lanes. Wide, comfortable lanes invite speed.

In my experience, cars actually go pretty slow in NY (Manhattan at least), even when there’s not a lot of traffic. I’m usually able to easily keep up with traffic on my bike.

This is definitely not true on the multi-lane avenues. You're thinking of the single-lane streets.

One good solution for the avenues would be to time their rolling green waves for an average of 15 mph. They just recently started doing this in Brooklyn on a particularly dangerous road.

I’m referring to 5th and 6th ave near the village which I commute on every day. Some aves are worse.

So you're referring to a few particular avenues in one neighborhood during rush hour.

I'm just pointing out that that's hardly indicative of the overall speed of traffic across Manhattan at all times. Vehicles go fast on the avenues when they can, definitely faster than you would want to try to keep up with on a bike.

Solved by making really thin streets and blind corners where cars have to slow right now to avoid hitting things on the edge.

Right. Low speed limits themselves are insufficient. You need to design or modify the road such that it actually feels like you have to go that slowly.

I find that HGVs and busses are the main danger, they have huge blind spots right where cyclists are. Traffic in cities usually isn't fast enough for a big speed differential.

My experience is similar. The speed differential is terrifying when you must leave a protected bike lane (which, in practice, is often).

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