Surprising Result of NYC Bike Lanes: Faster Traffic for Cars

A report at vox.com says that the implementation of bike lanes in traffic-heavy New York City has one possibly non-intuitive result: car traffic was sped up as a result. The bike lanes have caused the lanes for cars to be narrowed, but as a result of the street redesign to accomodate bikes, one big change has especially helped to keep cars moving forward more steadily: Although narrower streets can slow traffic, that doesn't seem to have happened here — perhaps because traffic in this area was crawling at around 11 miles per hour to begin with. Instead, the narrower lanes were capable of handling just as much traffic, and one major improvement to intersection design helped them handle more, while also letting bikes travel more safely. This improvement was something called a pocket lane for left-hand turns: a devoted turning lane at most intersections that takes the place of the parking lane, which gets cars out of the way of moving traffic when they're making a left.

Comments

Re:Bikes lanes are nice

[nblender]

You forgot the part where they morph from 'car' to 'pedestrian' without warning... Riding on the road until something is blocking it, then zipping onto the sidewalk for a few hundred feet and then flying back out on the road without looking... Or coming up to a red light and then turning 90 degrees to cross the road, then going up on the sidewalk and back out on the road again having just successfully made a 'left turn' without waiting for the light...

But accidentally bump one of them and suddenly you're just 'some idiot driver who must have been texting instead of watching the road'...