Slashdot Mirror
Munich Planning Highway System For Cyclists
An anonymous reader writes: The German city of Munich has been looking for solutions to its traffic problem. Rush hour traffic is a parking lot, and public transit is near capacity. They think their best bet is to encourage (and enable) more people to hop on their bikes. Munich is now planning a Radschnellverbindungen — a highway system just for cyclists. Long bike routes will connect the city with universities, employment centers, and other cities. The paths themselves would be as free from disruption as possible — avoiding intersections and traffic lights are key to a swift commute. They'll doubtless take lessons from Copenhagen's bike skyway: "Cykelslangen (pronounced soo-cool-klag-en) adds just 721 feet of length to the city's 220 miles of bicycle paths, but it relieves congestion by taking riders over instead of through a waterfront shopping area."
speckgürtel!
Bike rage...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
You are all cows. Cows say moo. MOOOOOOOOOO! MOOOOOOOOOO! Moo cows MOOOOOOOO! Moo say the cows. YOU COWS!!
Now there will be no excuse not to require cyclists to get a license, registration, and payment of that registration yearly to pay for the roads they want. As a highly-taxed driver (gas and registration), I'm getting rather tired of cyclists requesting more and more road upgrades despite them not paying even a small share of the costs for those upgrades.
Obviously bicycles do far less damage to the roads, and the requirements are much lower. So we can forgo trying to replace the gas taxes, and just stick to registration costs.
Oh, you don't like that? Quit being a leech, TYVM.
It gets more hippies and cyclist off our streets. And good ridden!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aRxAZLV6vgU
...even then it was pretty bike friendly. It's interesting that in the article about the Copenhagen skyway, they cite pedestrians slowing bike traffic on the ground as an impetus for building the skyway. And the photo accompanying the article shows...a couple pedestrians walking down the center of the skyway *sigh*.
Never let a lack of data get in the way of a good rant.
Munich is growing faster than any time in recent history. Yet, for the first time in 50 years, no subway is being built. Leaving aside the reasons for this (mainly the German obsession with public debt), this is simply wrong, the two parts don't fit. Bulding more subways would help traffic more than bike highways (as much as I like them) -- and it would do so even in bad weather.
What could be done? Well, one of the main problems is that the public transport infrastructure is organized in a way where basically every connection runs via the center. So even if your destination isn't on a straight line from where you're at towards the center, you will still have to go there, change trains and then move out on another radial line. Now, with the ever increasing numbers of passengers this leads to lots of congestion on the stations in the town center (anybody who has e.g. tried changing subway lines at Sendlinger Tor during the morning or evening rush hours can confirm this).
The logical conclusion is of course to build a loop subway. Reduce dependency on the center and increase priority. This should become a priority.
(It is perhaps noting that such a loop exists in the public transportation network, but it is a patchwork of tramways and busses. So the necessity was recognized already, only the implemented solution falls short.)
101F for the next 7 days at my location.
Keep your bikes.
Irony: Cyclists who ride down the middle of a road built for cars complaining about pedestrians walking down the middle of a path built for bikes.
When Fascism comes to America, it will call itself Anti-Fascism, and tell you to give up your guns.
How would this work with snow? Do bike lanes get plowed in winter? How does the elevated Copenhagen bike lane get cleared of snow, does it get pushed over the edge?
Actually from the OP and not just a stupid editor: "Cykelslangen (pronounced soo-cool-klag-en) " (fault of Wired.com)
Cykels Langen - there is precisely zero chance that's pronounced soo-cool-klag-en.
More likely, with a usually wierd euro-pronounciation of the "y" it's soocles-langen.
I'm American, and I'm honestly not sure why Americans are SO BAD at pronouncing foreign words. Do we just see an unfamiliar collection of letters and what, just give up?
-Styopa
How is that in any way ironic?
If there is no road sign that marks a road built especially for high speed motorized vehicles (like a freeway) then the road is built for general use, not just for cars.
"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
I just can't find any picture of the Cykelslangen with more than a few cyclist on it. For a route that relieves congestion in a busy area, you would expect it is full all the time, and that it looks busy on most pictures. But it doesn't. Strange.
It's Cykelslangen and not Cykels Langen. Cykel is bike and Slange is snake so it's the Bicycle Snake (due to how the road wriggles around). Other than that you are dead on, the pronunciation from Wired.com is completely wrong.
I live in Denver, and just moved. My previous commute was about 3.9 miles via bicycle, with about 2.5 miles of it on bike lanes. My new commute is 4.5 miles, with about 3.5 miles of it on a dedicate recreational path (Denver's Cherry Creek Trail), and the other 1 mile almost all on bike lanes.
My new commute, while having a longer distance, takes me less time. In addition, it is a lot less stressful. The recreational path makes all the difference. It is limited access - there are ramps to the trail about every .2 miles - no motorized vehicles, and goes from my neighborhood (an urban residential-heavy area) to downtown.
I have commuted via bicycle in a wide variety of cities on the East Coast and can say that this new commute is about as ideal as it could be. I dread the days I have to drive into work. Even without traffic (which doubles the time needed), it takes me longer to drive.
A lot of US cities I have lived in see separated paths for recreational use only. They never seem to see that a trail going from residential areas to business areas can be a great encouragement for bicycle commuting.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
A cyclist highway in the states would start with an on-ramp where no one yields, 6 people fall over due to shoddily constructed wal-mart bikes, some guy on a strider bowls through a lane of recumbent elderly, and 2 kids on mountain bikes wobble aimlessly and perpendicularly across the darn thing. But every morning a quarter million dollars of race-grade peloton disciplined commuters would roar toward their respective office cubicles, leaving a wake of empty gel-protein wrappers in their path.
Good people go to bed earlier.
No it's not. Try it on Google Translate https://translate.google.co/ by selecting Danish and clicking on the speaker symbol. Danish pronunciation is sometimes a bit odd but not as crazy as your example.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
Guess we know where all of the Greek money went.
Slange is also a hose or tube, and "cykelslange" is the word for "innertube", so it's a pun as well.
I'm Norwegian, not Danish, but I'll take a stab at the pronunciation:
Cyglslangen (with cy as in cylinder, gl as in glue, and slang as in the word) shold be close enough.The g is softer though, and there's almost but not quite an e in the transition to the next letter.
they started to LIKE I SHOULD BE intentions and Survival prospects Eulogies to BSD's
Here in England, the only roads that were built for cars (motorways) don't allow cycles (or horses or pedestrians) on them. The other roads were built for general pedestrian (we don't have a jay-walking law) and vehicle use. The first "modern" roads were paid for by cyclists groups, so it's ignoring history to claim that the roads are built for cars.
Have a look at http://www.roadswerenotbuiltforcars.com/ for a really good examination of the early history of roads and cars. Most of the car pioneers were also cycle enthusiasts (the earliest cars were pretty much tricycles with a motor fitted).
You're a temporary arrangement of matter sliding towards oblivion in a cold, uncaring universe
The article doesn't say who is going to pay for it. But you can bet it won't be a use tax on the people that will be using it. Socialism doesn't work that way. Most likely it will come out of their usurious gas taxes.
I am not opposed to these projects in general and this project in particular. Bicycles have no business on the road with cars. I'd just like to see them stand on their own economic feet. If it can't pay its way (cough) wind power, then it shouldn't be built. When you steal money for politically motivated projects you hurt everyone because resources are finite. What is spent on unsustainable project A is then unavailable for sustainable project B.
Ugh. So wrong and such a lousy transliteration it made me shiver.
with all the electric bikes/scooters/... coming out right now. i've seen a lot of those things lately: http://monowheel.info/?gclid=C...
In Frankfurt you can ride bike with minimal interference from cars already for some time... Even long distance routes (100km+)
That's a paradox.
I am not Danish, but I visit often and I think it is pronounced "sooglslangeh".
Danish pronunciation is very soft on the consonants.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
Then there's the complete disregard for traffic lights (oh, the light's red? Well I'm a pedestrian now, so screw you and give way as I suddenly pull out of my lane and ride across the crosswalk without warning!)
If a signal has remained red for five minutes despite my bike's front and rear wheels being directly over the crack in the street that indicates an induction loop sensor, what else am I supposed to do?
My point was that it's a compound word, and that can help parse out saying foreign words sometimes.
-Styopa
"[...]Lots of research ties increased cycling rates to social, economic, environmental, and health benefits. “We need a new form of infrastructure,” Kastrop says. "
no source? and the "tie" could as well be the other way around: societies/communities wealthy enough to buy bikes but not cars have passed the hunger stage and are not getting fat yet, so they live longer: alternatively, this "green fixation" positively correlates with income, so rich communities, with higher education and living standard, are more healthy, and buy and use bikes. But please, try to be rigorous about causation: this article was not. And the person involved is an "urban planner", a work description which would be rapidly out of a job without some mess. like making speed lanes for bikes, which are one of the riskier ways of moving around known to man.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
In the Bay Area we have lots of paved biked trails that go through our cities and connect to county parks. Many commuters are using these every day, while the system definitely needs some improvement, it has already become a network of small bike expressways. The main problem with the current system is a lack of planning, and this is reflected in that many of the official county trails have to merge into busy streets for short sections to reconnect to a nearby trail, rather than having a contiguous and protected path. There are a few bridges and tunnels now, which is helping.
(I speak mostly from the experiences in the South Bay / Santa Clara County, but the other parts of the Bay Area, especially on the Peninsula, are in a similar situation)
Well, from my personal experience (and I rarely get home without meeting at least a couple of bicycles) nope, it's quite an environmental hit, actually for two reasons:
1) I have to break and accelerate, which is apparent waste of resources (let alone my time)
2) My car (heh, old VW Golf) consumes about 6.5l per 100km on average, when I'm trailing bikes it's about 10l.
Most of the time I am not alone, it quickly grows to about 5-10 cars trying to outmaneuver the bike rider.
Anecdotal evidence aside, your statement about "driving slower is more effective" is plain wrong. Most motors have a sweet spot which normally is at 2000 rpm.
Slange is also a hose or tube, and "cykelslange" is the word for "innertube", so it's a pun as well.
I'm Norwegian, not Danish, but I'll take a stab at the pronunciation:
Cyglslangen (with cy as in cylinder, gl as in glue, and slang as in the word) shold be close enough.The g is softer though, and there's almost but not quite an e in the transition to the next letter.
The a sound in slang is different. The Danish 'a' is more like the 'a' as in Khan or aaahh.
Built for cars, don't you mean built for people on foot and then horses and then tarmac for.... Bicycles:
Roads Were Not Built for Cars: How Cyclists Were the First to Push for Good Roads & Became the Pioneers of Motoring: Amazon.co.uk: Carlton Reid: 9781610916899: Books
So, enough of this built for cars crap already, roads are built for people, all people.
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
Where I live there is a 32-mile long paved path that follows a river. While it's designated as multi-use, it's primarily for bicycles.. yet, as you observed, people on foot are continuously either walking right down the middle of it, or walking 2 or 3 abreast down the middle of it, or wandering out from the shoulder onto it without even so much as a thought to look both ways first. At least half the time when you make your presence known so they'll get out of the way, they get all bent out of shape like you're the one being rude and thoughtless, instead of them acting like it's their private hiking trail and they're the only ones on it. I think it's a universal problem.
They might also want to encourage shower and clothes-storage facilities at workplaces.... Just sayin'
Free, as in your money being freed from the confines of your account.
And sometimes you get law enforcement officers who appear to have forgotten the rules of the road. Today I was in the right half of the through lane of a city street without a bike lane, with a right-turn-only lane (we drive on the right in the United States) to my right. A cop in a cop car pulled up beside me at a red light and told me I shouldn't be on the road because I'm blocking traffic. When I asked for clarification, he told me I ought to be farther to the right or on the sidewalk, and then he drove off. As far as I can tell, the first is illegal because the lane to the right is a turn-only lane, and the second is dangerous because it might cause me to plow into a pedestrian. Was this an attempted entrapment or just what the French call les incompetents?