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

Bikes lanes are nice

[PhrostyMcByte]

But it sounds like optimizing left turns is what actually improved traffic.

Re:Bikes lanes are nice

[aardvarkjoe]

Exactly. It looks like the change that actually helped was that, near to intersections, they replaced a lane used for parking with a left turn lane. I don't know why anyone would be surprised that adding a traffic lane would help improve traffic flow.

The only thing that the bike lanes apparently have to do with it is that adding bike lanes was the reason why they decided to change the lane layout.

Re:Bikes lanes are nice

[Anonymous Coward]

Why are so many people delusional about cycling speeds? Nobody does 30mph on a bicycle in a city, most certainly not weaving between anything. That would be suicidal and require fantastically exceptional fitness, not just "being in shape". Most people never do more than 25mph, don't do more than 20mph on a regular basis and do less than 15mph on average - and they're still faster than a car in a crowded city.

Re:Bikes lanes are nice

[kekx]

I have to disagree vehemently. It vastly depends on the speed that you are traveling with on your bike. As soon as you aproach the upper 20s (km/h, European here) it is way too dangerous to be traveling on the side walk. Here in Germany we have dedicated bike lanes which unfortunately mostly run on the side walk, meaning that pedestrians often do not look up to check if a bike is coming. More dangerously though are the cars taking right turns, because even if they bother to look you will be right in their blind spot. Add to this cars coming out of driveways or sidestreets, only bothering to stop and look once they reach the actual street and you get quite a dangerous mix. Whenever it is allowed thus, I always ride on the street and counting the number of close calls or accidents I had it is a lot safer. Basically the only danger when riding on the street are butthurt drivers who make it a point to overtake you with a 10cm gap even if the opposite lane has no traffic, because you are supposedly occupying 'their' street.

Re:Bikes lanes are nice

[FreeRadicalX]

NYC cyclist here. The parking lane is still there. They just narrowed the motor lanes a few feet, swapped the bike lane to be on the sidewalk-side of the parking lane ("Parking protected"), and put a left turn pocket at left turn intersections (Every other intersection, since our streets are one-way). The turning pocket only takes up 3 to 4 car lengths, the rest of the parking is still there. There's also parking on the other side of the street.

Re:Simple change. What about round abouts

[neo-mkrey]

Roundabouts work. A recent Mythbusters proved it: http://www.wimp.com/testrounda...