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‘Bike culture’ enjoys limited receptivity among Canadians

Ottawa keeps expanding it's bike lanes, which creates more traffic problems/congestion, so that the mostly mostly upper-middle class office drones can get to work in spandex faster. Nothing says "I'm saving the environment" quite like making cars sit idling at traffic lights.
This seems logical but it’s actually not true. Here’s an article
Numerous studies over several decades have shown that expanding roads draws more traffic and that replacing roads with bike lanes actually decreases traffic. It’s counter-intuitive.
 
I’m not sure I understand why we are discussing spandex. I see a lot of bicycle commuters and most are not in spandex. Maybe a plurality, but there are also a lot who are out there in the same clothes they will be wearing all day at their desks.

I also have not seen where bicycle lanes cause slower traffic, but I have seen where traffic is slowed by the absence of dedicated lanes resulting in bicycles in traffic lanes. Where does the existence of bicycle lanes cause congestion of traffic lanes? Is this a problem found in a downtown core of a city?
 
They’re doing that because otherwise drivers will try to squeeze by when there isn’t really enough room. If they take the lane then the car has to wait until there’s no oncoming traffic.

They already have a lane, a bike lane which is safe and clear to travel. There is no squeezing by, there is plenty of space as if they are in the bike lane and you are in the single lane, there is ample room on all sides to safely drive. By riding two abreast taking up the bike lane and the single lane all they are doing is making your average commuter want to get rid of their bike lanes as clearly they can't use them responsibly. And yes I do cycle sometimes so I understand the danger aspect of biking.
 
Meanwhile, in Victoria:

BC Human Rights Tribunal upholds complaint that Victoria bike lanes discriminate against the blind​

The BC Human Rights Tribunal says a complaint filed against the City of Victoria arguing that bike lanes that separate sidewalks from "floating bus stops" create unsafe conditions for blind pedestrians is justified.

The dispute began in 2018, after the Canadian Federation of the Blind (CFB) submitted a complaint centred around the perceived dangers of crossing the bike lanes to access floating bus stops along Pandora Street, between Cook Street and Store Street, and on Wharf Street.

The CFB said that blind people felt unsafe crossing the marked crosswalk along the bike lane to access the transit stops because they were unable to hear approaching bicycles, which sometimes would not stop for pedestrians.

The federation argued that this safety concern prevented blind people from accessing transit services in the area, and filed a complaint with the BC Human Rights Tribunal against the municipality and BC Transit.


 
They already have a lane, a bike lane which is safe and clear to travel. There is no squeezing by, there is plenty of space as if they are in the bike lane and you are in the single lane, there is ample room on all sides to safely drive. By riding two abreast taking up the bike lane and the single lane all they are doing is making your average commuter want to get rid of their bike lanes as clearly they can't use them responsibly. And yes I do cycle sometimes so I understand the danger aspect of biking.
I missed that part, I was envisioning a single lane road
 
This seems logical but it’s actually not true. Here’s an article
Numerous studies over several decades have shown that expanding roads draws more traffic and that replacing roads with bike lanes actually decreases traffic. It’s counter-intuitive.
The study linked in the article is specifically about ways to reduce congestion in London. Building bike lanes makes congestion worse, which combined with increased public transit, reducing parking spaces, increasing parking charges, and charging tolls for congestion areas forces people to switch how they get around. The bike lanes alone simply make traffic worse.

We lack the transit systems necessary to make getting to/around most of our cities practical without a car, until that changes adding bike lanes just makes traffic worse.
 
The study linked in the article is specifically about ways to reduce congestion in London. Building bike lanes makes congestion worse, which combined with increased public transit, reducing parking spaces, increasing parking charges, and charging tolls for congestion areas forces people to switch how they get around. The bike lanes alone simply make traffic worse.

We lack the transit systems necessary to make getting to/around most of our cities practical without a car, until that changes adding bike lanes just makes traffic worse.
This is a widely known phenomenon. Texas same problem they’re up to 12 lanes and it doesn’t change anything.
Wikipedia article on induced demand
Bike lanes reduce traffic study
Adding a bike lane reduced traffic
 
I’m not sure I understand why we are discussing spandex. I see a lot of bicycle commuters and most are not in spandex. Maybe a plurality, but there are also a lot who are out there in the same clothes they will be wearing all day at their desks.

I also have not seen where bicycle lanes cause slower traffic, but I have seen where traffic is slowed by the absence of dedicated lanes resulting in bicycles in traffic lanes. Where does the existence of bicycle lanes cause congestion of traffic lanes? Is this a problem found in a downtown core of a city?
You have limited space to build bike lanes, so they take up a lane, toss in "road calming", bus lanes and you have decreased road space for the same number of cars. Many of the planners are actively hostile to personal car use and their goal is to make driving so miserable that people will opt to their options regardless of the inconvenience or impracticability of them. We had a transit strike in Vancouver, it actually lessened my commute as the buses were no longer clogging the lanes. Some bright spark in Translink thought it would be a good idea to build bus stops that don't have the bus pull out of traffic to load and unload, but instead to block the lane every few blocks while they load and unload.
 
So you as a car driver are entitled to uninterrupted access and speed, but other modal users should have to defer to you and have their travel times increased.
 
So you as a car driver are entitled to uninterrupted access and speed, but other modal users should have to defer to you and have their travel times increased.
No.

But we do have city councils deliberately enacting road designs that deliberately make things miserable for automobiles, in favour of buses and bicycles, vice enacting solutions that make traffic overall safer and better for all users.

The net effect is that in certain downtowns, it is having a traffic calming effect- in that businesses are closing/moving to the suburbs, because no one goes to those downtown cores anymore…so mission accomplished?
 
But we do have city councils deliberately enacting road designs that deliberately make things miserable for automobiles, in favour of buses and bicycles, vice enacting solutions that make traffic overall safer and better for all users.
Now if city councils tried to actually improve the situation with a variety of traffic delivery modes, rather than, for example, creating a virtuously positive system that because of the ridiculous contract tendering nature of an overly complex and needlessly anonymized procurement prices that resulted in a technically not compliant bidder being granted the total project because they were marginally cheaper than a fully-compliant bidder…until, of course, they were forced to comply with the technical requirements, thus raising their price to be significantly higher than the originally compliant bidder, then the system of transportation faced numerous regular technical issue, up to and including jettisoning major vehicle components at random times and having the control system that the bidder originally forgot to include in their bid then slap-dashed it on even before it was tested for reliable operation, resulting in a practically flawed system…oh, and get rid of your original transportation means based on the promise that the new system would work perfectly, so like explorer Hernán Cortés, who burned his ships in 1519 when he arrived in the New World so that everyone was commuted to the new way, the city’s commuters are fated to the travails of Sisyphus pushing a commuting rock up a never ending hill of commuter hell.

You mean that kind of city council tomfoolery? 😉
 

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Now if city councils tried to actually improve the situation with a variety of traffic delivery modes, rather than, for example, creating a virtuously positive system that because of the ridiculous contract tendering nature of an overly complex and needlessly anonymized procurement prices that resulted in a technically not compliant bidder being granted the total project because they were marginally cheaper than a fully-compliant bidder…until, of course, they were forced to comply with the technical requirements, thus raising their price to be significantly higher than the originally compliant bidder, then the system of transportation faced numerous regular technical issue, up to and including jettisoning major vehicle components at random times and having the control system that the bidder originally forgot to include in their bid then slap-dashed it on even before it was tested for reliable operation, resulting in a practically flawed system…oh, and get rid of your original transportation means based on the promise that the new system would work perfectly, so like explorer Hernán Cortés, who burned his ships in 1519 when he arrived in the New World so that everyone was commuted to the new way, the city’s commuters are fated to the travails of Sisyphus pushing a commuting rock up a never ending hill of commuter hell.

You mean that kind of city council tomfoolery? 😉
Well, that is certainly a “next level” kind of city council tomfoolery…
 
No.

But we do have city councils deliberately enacting road designs that deliberately make things miserable for automobiles, in favour of buses and bicycles, vice enacting solutions that make traffic overall safer and better for all users.

The net effect is that in certain downtowns, it is having a traffic calming effect- in that businesses are closing/moving to the suburbs, because no one goes to those downtown cores anymore…so mission accomplished?

If I didn't k ow better I guess you were talking about the Halifax city county lol
 
Now if city councils tried to actually improve the situation with a variety of traffic delivery modes, rather than, for example, creating a virtuously positive system that because of the ridiculous contract tendering nature of an overly complex and needlessly anonymized procurement prices that resulted in a technically not compliant bidder being granted the total project because they were marginally cheaper than a fully-compliant bidder…until, of course, they were forced to comply with the technical requirements, thus raising their price to be significantly higher than the originally compliant bidder, then the system of transportation faced numerous regular technical issue, up to and including jettisoning major vehicle components at random times and having the control system that the bidder originally forgot to include in their bid then slap-dashed it on even before it was tested for reliable operation, resulting in a practically flawed system…oh, and get rid of your original transportation means based on the promise that the new system would work perfectly, so like explorer Hernán Cortés, who burned his ships in 1519 when he arrived in the New World so that everyone was commuted to the new way, the city’s commuters are fated to the travails of Sisyphus pushing a commuting rock up a never ending hill of commuter hell.

You mean that kind of city council tomfoolery?
That is, quite possibly, the longest run on sentence in the history of English. Not disagreeing with your content, but astonished by how you constructed it. Well done you. 👍
 
That is, quite possibly, the longest run on sentence in the history of English. Not disagreeing with your content, but astonished by how you constructed it. Well done you. 👍
I put an inverse effort into it that the city council did in procuring the system. 😉
 
The study linked in the article is specifically about ways to reduce congestion in London. Building bike lanes makes congestion worse, which combined with increased public transit, reducing parking spaces, increasing parking charges, and charging tolls for congestion areas forces people to switch how they get around. The bike lanes alone simply make traffic worse.

We lack the transit systems necessary to make getting to/around most of our cities practical without a car, until that changes adding bike lanes just makes traffic worse.
I like what they do over there for congestion. If you are not from London, they charge you through hoop to bring your car into the city proper.
 
That is, quite possibly, the longest run on sentence in the history of English. Not disagreeing with your content, but astonished by how you constructed it. Well done you. 👍

Those chopper guys think different ;)

robert duvall GIF
 
I like what they do over there for congestion. If you are not from London, they charge you through hoop to bring your car into the city proper.
They also have the transit systems to make not taking your car into the city practical, and efficient. I suspect only Montreal, and Toronto have transit systems that even come close to what London has.

In Canada we have gone about things backward, we impose restriction on cars, but offer nothing else that is practical for many commuters. If politicians were serious about breaking Canada's "car culture" they would bring in efficient transit systems, and then make using your car harder. Instead they want the "cheap" option, so just make using a car harder, while offering no real alternative.
 
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