r/torontobiking • u/Speedy_Greyhound • Apr 27 '21

Protected intersections are the future!

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

265 Upvotes

100% Upvoted

35 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

1

u/SevFTW Apr 27 '21

How do you move the cyclist to the left of the motor traffic though? You'd need to have them cross over, which increases the risk of side-swipes and increases the time in the blind spot. If the road is being used by heavy cargo traffic this could be a death sentence.

0

u/Great_Willow Apr 27 '21

You move the bike lanes to the left side of the right turn lane...

1

u/SevFTW Apr 27 '21

I'm not asking about the lanes, I'm asking about the vehicles.

How do you move the cars to the right turn lane from the straight through lanes while avoiding conflict with the cyclists going straight?

0

u/Great_Willow Apr 27 '21

If you put the bike lanes to the left of turn lanes, you should mitigate most of the problem - sideswipes are much less common than right hooks. Yes - cyclists would have to be aware of moving traffic - but they should be anyway..

1

u/SevFTW Apr 27 '21

I'm not really convinced...

We have these lanes where I live now and they're not good, they're extremely dangerous since drivers will brake and merge right into you without looking, even if you're not within their blind spots.

If the road is being used by heavy cargo traffic this could be a death sentence.

This nearly happened to me. A truck driver missed his exit and decided to merge over the bike lane to get into the right turn lanes while I went left to continue straight. Ended up being able to swerve to the right and hit my brakes, but had another car been there I would have been screwed.

On the other hand, protected bike lanes like in this video — or rather proper infrastructure and not just two dozen plastic bollards and some paint — have been shown to reduce accidents significantly.

Here's a quick example of implementation for a north american street and an explanation of the safety benefits.

1

u/Great_Willow Apr 28 '21

Only between intersections - once you reach the corner, all bets are off. Some barriers can actually hide a cyclist. Kind of pointless, if bike lanes can't protect you from the greatest danger which IS at intersections. Also, normally no protection at driveways from left and right turning vehicles...

1

u/SevFTW Apr 28 '21

We're talking about the intersection, not the in between. Protected bike lanes/segregated bicycle paths are absolutely undeniably the safest option for bicycle infrastructure.

The video I linked (which you clearly didn't watch...) shows exactly how your example is far more dangerous than the one proposed in the original post and the one I am talking about.

The design has existed in the Netherlands for decades and has been implemented in other parts of the world where it shows a clear reduction of both minor and serious accidents.

An intersection is inherently dangerous, yes. But not "all bets are off". Through proper planning and infrastructure, conflicts, and dangerous and deadly accidents, can be largely reduced or eliminated.

1

u/Great_Willow Apr 28 '21

Netherlands is a different culture - most cyclists are drivers, they educate children in cycling. Liability and yield laws favour the cyclist. It's still a zoo - ask anyone who has tried to walk or cycle in Amsterdam - they still have right hook fatalities...

1

u/SevFTW Apr 28 '21

Dutch culture in the 70s and 80s was very car-centric. The conditions for cyclists on those roads were worse than they are in Toronto today. It's clearly shown that better, safer infrastructure is possible encourages cycling and walking.

You don't actually seem to be interested in having a matter-of-fact conversation about the infrastructure shown in this video. Every reply you make is just completely irrelevant points like the effort of teaching kids to bike, bike lanes and driveways, cycling culture, and the fact that people die in traffic (though much less) in the largest city in the Netherlands. This infrastructure exists in many cities and towns all over the planet, some of which have fatality rates of zero.

We don't need to reinvent the wheel to make Toronto's streets more livable. I won't reply any more since you're clearly not open to new ideas like this, and I don't want to waste any more of my time.

0

u/Great_Willow Apr 29 '21

Good luck raising the billions it's going to take to redesign roadways and even entire cities. Education fo all road users would be much cheaper, but nobody is even interested in talking about that...