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Comment by zevyoura | Hacker News Reader

As an LA motorcyclist, I can tell you that almost no one would want to bike 10-15 ft. from the edge of the freeway. It's extremely loud and unpleasant, and there's a significant amount of debris that would need frequent removal.

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The 237 bikeway in the South Bay runs on either side of a 6 lane freeway. Sometimes it's right up next to it (on the other side of a metal fence) and other times it's a few dozen feet away. It can be a little intimidating. I try not to think of those NASCAR crash videos where the cars go right through the (far stronger) fences and just pedal on.

Most of the good bikeways around here are their own routes which exist on their own merits and don't sync up with the roadways. The few which manage to parallel a highway and are still enjoyable have a decent separation.

Such a bike lane would be loud and unpleasant, but if separated from the road it would be similar in loudness and unpleasantness to the Williamsburg, Queensboro and Manhattan bridge bike lanes, which are widely used.

That said, it would likely not work because the distances are much further in LA, and following the path of the freeway is not going to be the most direct route on a bicycle.

>would be similar in loudness and unpleasantness to the Williamsburg, Queensboro and Manhattan bridge bike lanes

Lol nope. You clearly haven't been on a Californian freeway.

--- has ridden a motorcycle in NYC, CA, Detroit, etc...

On the Manhattan Bridge bike lane, my current daily bike commute, you ride within a couple feet of incredibly loud subway trains. It's definitely louder than the segment of my old daily bike commute when I rode on Interstate 5.

No. The cars and semis will be going 55-70 mph, typically 5 lanes each way. It is incredibly loud. The bridges you mention don't have traffic like this.

No they don't but they do have subway trains rolling on an all metal bridge which make them unpleasant.

Why not just build a wall as a sound barrier to push the noise upward and over the bike lane?

The air quality is still going to be incredibly bad.

Listing all the problems with any idea of a bike lane along a freeway will tire me out (starting with: there's no space, high barriers are regarded as ugly, there's no way to make the interchanges work, the freeway under road overpasses will permit larger road widths only with enormous expense, we can't even build carpool lanes and light rail, people won't stand for the construction delays). Let's not do this.

Agreed mturmon; an open-air LA-freeway-adjacent bike path poses many technical, aesthetic, scale-of-access, cost and possible health issues.

I do not think a freeway-adjacent bikeway would be popular with cyclists if open-air. LA has a freeway-adjacent bus rapid transit line (the "Sliver Line") which isn't very popular at 12K avg boardings in March 2013, compared to the far more successful rail-route-replacing "Orange Line" at 30K+ avg weekday boardings for the same month.

The Orange Line has a parallel bike lane which is popular with cyclists and pedestrians, even into the evening as it's well-lit and well-landscaped.

Edit: Reference for LA Metro system boardings: http://www.metro.net/news/ridership-statistics/

The barriers might be there anyways because of nearby housing. I'm not sure how it works in the LA area, but along 101 in the bay area had plenty of biking options (I used them personally), and it seemed to work out. However, although I could deal with it for commuting, its not something I would do for pleasure.

The L.A. River bicycle path is at times right in between I-5 and the river. I'm sure there are other paths adjacent to a freeway.

Yes. That's the best example in LA that I know of, of a bike path right adjacent to a freeway. Here's the rose-colored glasses description:

http://thelariver.com/guide/biking/glendale-narrows-elysian-...

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