But bollards on bike paths can be deadly to cyclist. My area used to place them at path-street crossings, to keep cars from turning onto the bike path, but after a few cyclists clipped them and died, the bollards were removed. The incidence of cars turning onto the bike path is low enough they weren’t worth the risk to non-cars.
The primary bike path that I use for commuting is the Hudson River Bike Path in Lower Manhattan, and there are bollards there at every intersection as a reaction to this terrorist attack: https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/sayfullo-saipov-be-sent....
I sometimes find the bollards annoying, but I can't disagree with the city for placing them after that...
Still, I guess they’re better than the concrete jersey barriers they installed initially, and still have in some places along that route.
The amount of stupid cycling infrastructure I see is pretty mind-blowing. It’s very obvious traffic engineers have zero interest in actually building multi-model infrastructure, instead just doing a box-checking exercise to get those federal road dollars.
That doesn't make sense to me. The entire reason the bollard exists is to stop cars from turning into the bike path.
It has nothing to do with non-thinking engineers. It has nothing to do with saving money.
It's because if there's space for a car to fit between them, then the bollards will not fulfill their one and only purpose.
EDIT: Note that I'm not saying that it's a good design. But I am saying it didn't come about for the reasons you're saying.
- Let's put bollards on the bike path to prevent car entry
- Ok, lets put them on the sides, out of the way.
- Oh no, that won't work, the trail is 10' wide, so cars can fit through
- Ok, lets put one in the middle, that'll keep cars out.
- Thought process ends here, no thought given to other users of the infrastructure.
Still, it happens, and the designer of the infrastructure must be aware of that.
To take the devil's advocate role, people will keep traveling long after they exhausted their ability to pay attention, and/or keep reasonable distance from the next one in the front.
While this is true, we haven’t stopped selling knives because a few people use them irresponsibly. By the same token, we shouldn’t discount infrastructure because a few people drive when they shouldn’t.
You can also twist the bollard when you are bored. The downside is that it probably doesn't stop a car with enough speed.