The United States isn’t Denmark or the Netherlands; we have been building bike unfriendly roads for a century, and it’s not going to be trivially undone by painting a white line on the side.
Or you do what I’ve seen some cities do and you close certain roads to car traffic entirely, and then send the bikes down there. Further increase the efficiency of both modes of traffic while eliminating collisions. Create walkable and bikeable sections of town that cars can travel between.
Of course you should ban cars from areas of the city, but bikes still need to travel between those islands. If your “pedestrian area” is an island everyone has to drive to get to, it will fail.
At that point, you can do things like pedestrian bridges, over/underpasses with roads and streets, or level crossings with signals. Instead of trying to mix traffic everywhere, have the two systems meet at certain well designed controlled spots. Instead of bikers being in a near constant state of “I am in traffic”, have certain points along their journey be “I am crossing a road.” These areas will almost certainly drive both cars and bikes to stop, and then one or the other gets to go at a time, rather than both are in motion failing to predict the other’s movements.
Bikes are a much denser form a transportation; you can have 100s of bikes cross an intersection in the time it takes 4 cars to cross. You don’t want a traffic system where both have to wait, you prioritize the more efficient form of transit.
The United States isn’t Denmark or the Netherlands; we have been building bike unfriendly roads for a century, and it’s not going to be trivially undone by painting a white line on the side.
They didn’t come out of nowhere in those countries. They were once as car centric as everywhere else.
‘if you build it, it will come’
Right, so you don’t stop at a white line, you lower speed limits+add speed bumps, or protect your bikelanes.
Or you do what I’ve seen some cities do and you close certain roads to car traffic entirely, and then send the bikes down there. Further increase the efficiency of both modes of traffic while eliminating collisions. Create walkable and bikeable sections of town that cars can travel between.
Of course you should ban cars from areas of the city, but bikes still need to travel between those islands. If your “pedestrian area” is an island everyone has to drive to get to, it will fail.
At that point, you can do things like pedestrian bridges, over/underpasses with roads and streets, or level crossings with signals. Instead of trying to mix traffic everywhere, have the two systems meet at certain well designed controlled spots. Instead of bikers being in a near constant state of “I am in traffic”, have certain points along their journey be “I am crossing a road.” These areas will almost certainly drive both cars and bikes to stop, and then one or the other gets to go at a time, rather than both are in motion failing to predict the other’s movements.
Bikes are a much denser form a transportation; you can have 100s of bikes cross an intersection in the time it takes 4 cars to cross. You don’t want a traffic system where both have to wait, you prioritize the more efficient form of transit.