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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.
Welcome to 1950, NYC! You finally made it! (Not surprising since you were crawling along at 11 mph.)
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
If you decrease the cross-section area while maintaining volume flow, the velocity has to increase.
This has been another installment of Physics Applied Badly.
Bicycles honestly do belong on the road. Where else are you going to put them, on the sidewalk?
They belong under my wheels. Keep your toys off my infrastructure. You will join the other pit slaves on Paving Day, doomed to a life of cleaning public toilets while I cruise the paved world in my hypersonic atomic car, under the light of the chromed moon.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
And then, children, they say he dipped so far into trolldom that he emerged through the other side, enlightenment radiating off of his shiny bumper.