I think it's important to distinguish between bike infrastructure on ROADS and bike infrastructure on STREETS. A cycle network that avoids roads is great because you are kept away from noisy, dangerous, high speed cars, but if it avoids streets it means your cycle network is no use for getting to useful destinations and is just for recreation.
Generally, I agree, and this is largely the Dutch model: keep bike paths separated from roads while streets are mixed use (walkers, bike riders, transit, etc). However, you should take a look at places like Oulu, Finland. They have off street cycle paths not unlike Boulder (though I'm not sure how the two compare when it comes to winter cycling and maintenance). But the paths have their own separate access points to places like schools. Seriously, take a look at the videos I linked below: BicycleDutch: th-cam.com/video/ppRQWxj6VDU/w-d-xo.html Not Just Bikes: th-cam.com/video/Uhx-26GfCBU/w-d-xo.html Pekka Tahkola: th-cam.com/video/ABV7WUJl6fU/w-d-xo.html Note: Pekka's was between him and Shifter in Calgary. If you want to see the two cities compared, start from the beginning. I have the link starting at Pekka's explainer for Oulu.
Underpasses also have a physics benefit. Going down hill first lets you speed up a little bit with no effort so when you have to rise up to ground level again, you have the kinetic energy to get up the ramp without too much effort. For an overpass, you have to go uphill starting at your normal travelling speed. You can pedal hard in advance of the bridge to carry some speed into it, and it is manageable, but it is certainly more effort than coasting through an underpass.
That's a good point! I generally prefer underpasses to overpasses for other reasons too. But there is one downside, that is albeit manageable, is that especially next to creeks and rivers, many bike path underpasses are designed to handle flooding, so they're often unusable during specific periods of winter and spring.
The height of an overpass will generally be greater too, as it has to accommodate big trucks or double decker busses passing under it, while the ceiling in an underpass only needs to be high enough for pedestrians and cyclists to get thorough.
I want to appreciate the physics side more...but as an Engineer I have to say that the predominant factor is that underpasses are significantly cheaper 😅
I disagree wtih two points in this video. While bike paths are definitely more enjoyable to ride on, they're useless if they don't get you to a destination you actually want to go to. That's why protected bike lanes are still really important since they connect you with homes and businesses unlike bike paths which are more or less isolated from other infrastructure. Bike paths are like roads or highways for cars, while protected bike lanes are more like streets. The second disagreement I have is with regards to busses vs trains. I disagree that busses are "worse versions" of trains. Busses and trains are tools, and like all tools its important that you select the right one for the job. Busses can help fill in gaps where ridership will never justify the cost of laying down and maintaining track, and it's worth noting that not all busses are created equal. Busses in the US tend to be way more uncomfortable to ride on and less reliable compared to busses in Europe. It all comes down to implementation. For example, when I visited the Netherlands last year, I took a bus from Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans. Zaanse Schans is a small rural town, so it makes very little sense to build a train line to there. Nonetheless, the bus was perfectly on time and about as smooth as any train I rode on during that trip. There was also excellent digital signage at each stop to indicate bus times. A stark contrast from my experiences riding busses in the US. If nothing else, the important takeaways should be: 1) Select the right tool for the job. Sometimes the right tool may not be obvious pick. 2) Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Protected bike lanes may not be the as comfortable to ride on compared to bike paths, but they're still an important step forward.
I agree bike lanes should be protected and buses can be a great mode! I think what you picked up on is my pessimism towards road oriented transit in North America. All too often city planners will make promises for road safety for cyclists but then not fully protect lanes or abruptly end them. In the case of buses, at least in the US, they are usually prone to getting stuck in traffic because we don't give them priority. Both protected bike lanes and buses can achieve amazing results if implemented correctly. That said, when budgets get tight, corners are cut and the end result is a system that doesn't move many people out of cars or worse gives people the perception that transit doesn't work.
I never even thought of digital signs to let you know the bus schedule 😂 in the US you have to just pray your bus shows up eventually if you don't have a working smartphone with wifi 😊
Yep, the first point you made is something I see a LOT in my city. While being a car-dominated suburb, there's a relatively vast and useful network of multiuse pathways and underpasses. However, biking here still kind of sucks, because every time you get within a half mile of your destination, or you have to transfer from one path network to another, you have to cross huge, dangerous, high-speed streets and use painted gutters. it might be nicer for 70% of the journey, but if that last 30% is still dreadful then the whole journey will still be seen as a negative experience.
I agree with this. One thing that should be added, is that protected bike lanes (that are actually adequately protected) must be built hand in hand with protected intersections. When you get to an intersection, you're coming up to the most uncomfortable part of your journey. Protected intersections remove that discomfort and provide the safety you need to have to actually achieve a comprehensive safe bike network.
Have a look at Almere in the Netherlands if you want to get an actual idea of what both segregated bus and cycling lanes can really do. You guys in the US are limited only by your unwillingness to commit, honestly
@@Firguy_the_Foot_Fetishist that's such an exaggeration. the narration is a bit monotone/robotic but is not a limiting factor in any way, especially as everything else is superb
As a fellow Boulderite, I do love the multi-use paths, but this is definitely one of those "Both? Both." type of situations for me. Those multi-use paths are fantastic for longer trips, but they do take winding tracks and often don't drop you off right at your final destination. I hope the city will continue to expand both networks (physically separated bike lanes and multi-use paths) so we can have end-to-end bikeability. The two biggest pain points for me are getting between North Boulder and Downtown, and getting across 28th around Pearl Street. The former because the street grid is very disconnected and there's very little high-quality bike infrastructure of any kind, the latter because that intersection and all the ones nearby are stroad hell.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS I grew up i seattle before it became a great biking city and now I live in a small town that has very little bike infrastructure but has a beautiful 30 mile bike path, and while i do miss the infrastructure a bit, I get an incredible amount of mileage and use out of the greenway and I'm amazed at how much TIME I SAVE not having to wait at stoplights for traffic, as well as how much healthier i am breathing in fresh air from trees as opposed to biking next to cars.
Finally someone that points out the benefits of a multi-use path network and doesn't just complain about "annoying" interactions with pedestrians. I have a similarish situation to Boulder in my rural college town area on the Idaho-Washington border (Moscow-Pullman). A couple multi-use paths that connect the cities and actually run by downtown, the colleges, and a decent number of shops along the trail. Very useful for most of my trips.
I think it's silly when people complain about pedestrians on bike paths. Just slow down and use your bell. Ding dong! My hometown of Chico has great bike paths in the city parks and alongside the highway that form good transport corridors. They're incomplete and they don't serve alone as a comprehensive bike network. We still need to build proper protected bike lanes with protected intersections to achieve that.
Eh. It depends on the use. For a mildly used path, multi use is fine; but once you get into a heavily used pedestrian way, then it is relatively unfunctional for people biking.
woah. definitely found a hidden gem of a channel with youtube recommendations. only one other subscriber?!! that’s crazy. i totally agree with the premise of your video though. i think another way to create these multi use paths is to repurpose rail right of ways. also we need to make sure these paths ACTUALLY HAVE CONNECTIONS to destinations. for example, my city, bakersfield, has a 30 mile long bike path running through the city, but it’s not really surrounded by actual places people would commute or visit to, so it’s mostly just there for recreation currently. anyways, keep up the good work, i’m excited to observe the future of your channel!
Sacramento is like this too with its riverside bike paths. They don't serve as very useful transport corridors. Chico has several bike paths that go through the heart of town, in the city parks and alongside the highway. They form part of a good transport corridor that actually gets people places they want to go in town. We still desperately need good protected bike lanes and protected intersections, as they don't really exist, and they would go a lot further in creating a comprehensive safe and accessible bike network.
As a fellow boulder resident, I couldn't agree more. I do think it's worth noting that boulder has lot's of corridors that make this possible that other cities might not have. Lot's of new suburbs are being built with multi use paths, but they could be more continuous, and they often don't connect to businesses. I wish boulder would be more proactive with path construction, especial in the osmp
Where I live, there's a ton of utility easements, mostly power line corridors and abandoned rail lines that would be perfect for a bike path system largely separated from the road network. But the problem is that under some areas it's fragmented by things like parking lots, tennis courts, and most commonly, long backyards that include parts of the easements. Not to mention gate controlled subdivisions that forces you to go around it when through it would be so much more convenient. It's frustrating but many suburban areas have huge potential to build networks due to a lot of land being between buildings that is currently being used very poorly. Luckily the various jurisdictions in my metro area is starting to step in the right direction with at least widening sidewalks, building trails on viable corridors, has built a few underpasses, and there's a "metro plan" that may one day connect all of the trails and paths built by the various city and county governments, and even the state DOT.
Great video! I'm glad TH-cam recommended it to me. An additional benefit of underpasses is you can wait underneath them for a rain shower to pass, or to get some shade depending on the weather!
There are other ways we should be able to get shade and shelter from weather in my opinion. A bike path underpass should be kept unobstructed to...well...facilitate bike traffic. We should have bus shelters, gazebos, sheltered park benches, and trees, in abundance. As well as businesses and public facilities that are accepting of people just visiting to spend time at such places, i.e. third places.
This is how the eastern side of my town is built - underpasses are used by the town as art spaces, local artists have painted the walls in many of them. The district is also designed so that retail zones, schools, and churches always back on to these pathways. Additionally, the district is designed in a way that the pathways take a direct route, but cars must take a somewhat circuitous route, I can walk to work in 10 minutes, or drive it in 7. As soon as electric scooters become legal here, I could do it in 4 or 5. From my house I can walk to work, to the local shops (about 3 minutes walk, same time as driving), and walk to large greenspace areas in less than 10 minutes (although the pathways are located between developments, so they're a greenspace of their own).
Great video showing off the city I've been living in and biking around for the past 33 years! I love the multi-use path network, and have witnessed many improvements over the decades. Paths following waterways are a great use of flood plains. The biggest limitation is that our streams all flow from west to east, so we have fewer multi-use paths in the north-south direction. That's a big reason why we need protected bike lanes along north-south arterials, such as 30th Street, and Folsom Street. Boulder is making plans now to start improvements of its Core Arterial Network, starting with Baseline, 30th, and Iris. I really hope they convert all of these 4-lane stroads to 3 lanes with a center left-turn lane, and protected bike paths on either side. There was vocal resistance when they tried this on Folsom a few years ago, but it's a much safer design for cars, bikes, and pedestrians and has been shown to be just as efficient for car traffic. Boulder certainly has a long way to go compared to Amsterdam, for example. The city is still full of many dangerous stroads and expansive free parking lots. Boulder still has mandatory parking minimums. City council should remove these immediately. They raise the price of everything except driving.
You should go to Milton Keynes or Stevenage in the UK to see that a complete separated bike infrastructure is not always the best solution. I love multi-use paths for biking, but I usually avoid them altogether when I'm commuting..
They are good elements to a comprehensive bike infrastructure network, especially when they're actually designed to get you places. Sacramento has a few separated bike paths, but they're not useful transport corridors because they just go along the rivers and along abandoned railroad right of way. In my hometown of Chico, there are several bike paths through the city park, adjacent to the highway, and some too along abandoned rail. These paths actually get you places in town. Still, they do not constitute a comprehensive bike network alone, and we need to build protected bike lanes, protected intersections, car traffic filtering, etc. throughout the city to achieve that.
There's a few in my hometown of Chico that unfortunately had to be designed with flood control in mind, as the Sacramento River Valley and its tributaries form a floodplain. The city has good riparian zones in the form of the city park along the creek, as well as a seasonal creek that is used as a flood channel. There is also an auxiliary flood channel north of the city. While the separated paths and underpasses are awesome to have, and they're one of my favorite parts of the city, we still need to build protected bike lanes and protected intersections for a truly comprehensive bike network. The reduction and slowing of car traffic, as well as through traffic through neighborhoods from cars, needs to be done as well so the city can become as pleasant and park-like as the parks all throughout.
@@mrmaniac3 Sonoma County is like that, too. Most of our best paths are along creeks or flood-control channels. But they don't connect up very well. That's where the work is needed, and yeah, some use of the road network is going to be inevitable.
I couldn't agree more! Bike lanes are helpful for getting me around by bike, BUT! I actually enjoy the parts of my commute that take me through parks, around the reservoir, and through areas where people, nature, and activity come together without cars.
This really shows the importance of not just making bike lanes, but also getting your priorities in approaching road design straight. Basing improvements and redesigns on the frequency and severity of collisions is the cornerstone of sustainable safety. Boulder is already far ahead of most of the US, but with this attitude they might make it to Dutch standards some day because sustainable safety got the Dutch to Dutch standards. That design shown in 2:25 wouldn't be that out of place in the Netherlands. We have our own version of the raised intersection with level-ish underpasses here.
Multi-use paths are great for recreation and for a more comfortable and sometimes faster commute, but A) how are you going to make multi-use paths in a grid city that doesn't have streams or old rail lines? B) To reach a specific destination you'll still need cycle paths on car roads
One positive thing I observed about Colorado in general especially around Denver area is all waterways seem to have a some sort of a bike path next to them- even little ditches.
I lived in New York where there is a good network of on street bike lanes and I used my bike for commuting to work daily from Brooklyn into Midtown Manhattan and for trips to the museum, parks, grocery stores (the bigger ones further from home, not just the local bodegas). I moved to Austin, TX where there is a relatively decent-ish network of on street bike lanes and I used my bike a decent amount of time to bike across town to work and for leisure activities, like getting to bars, etc. I moved to Dallas which pretty much has zero dedicated bike ways on the street but a surprisingly extensive network of bike paths off the roadways, much like Boulder, through parks, and alleys, and along creeks and rivers, and I never used my 2 bikes for commuting or for leisure activity. It was purely for early morning and weekend time trial workouts. I say all that to say, having on-street bike infrastructure and a city where drivers recognize cyclist with high visibility is much more effective in building better cities for everyone.
2:24 Wow, that is a really nice protected intersection! Could the city inform Switzerland about this? Because we haven't figured them out yet, we're still stuck in the bike lane stage. Even the rare protected bike lanes end right before dangerous intersections, with left turn boxes in the best case scenario (and usually nothing)
Nice Job! An American city other American cities can look to. We need a lot more of this. Cars are not just polluting, land-hogging, money pits. They are becoming more and more expensive and out of reach to more and more people. It's gradually becoming a mode only for the wealthy.
I'm watching this before I begin my pleasant bike commute home. A pleasant commute made possible by several scenic multi-use paths.
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Congratulations on hitting the recommended feed my dude. Great video 🙂 With the first video no less! Multi use paths are great. They made getting around Odense, where I used to study, a breeze as well.
For a largely suburban city boulder has done a good job trying to retrofit its car infrastructure and making biking safe, at least better than most american cities. Id like to see more pedestrianization and improving public transit use/safety.
One problem with underpasses is they can get flooded really easily. We have one near where I live and with it getting increasingly wet more often it gets flooded a lot because it’s right next to a river. Have to wait a few days for it to subside and get forced back onto roads.
Sweet breakdown! The zoning also plays large a factor. The bike paths facilitate direct transit from housing to offices and industry. Housing in the west of the city, commerical in the middle and offices in the east (i.g.)
Busses aren't necessarily a worse version of cars, but if there's not enough of them and everyone still takes their cars so the busses get stuck as well, then they are (also helps to give buses their own lane, like any other mode of transit for that matter)
The overall traffic situation greatly improved here when they banned on street parking, and made the right hand lane of all roads dedicated to busses, taxis and bicycles. And introduced electric busses, with comforts like a/c, wifi, and usb charging.
I commute about 8 miles on a multi-use path with a few intersections with cars. It cuts right through town and feeds onto most of the stops I need to make. There's also 2 more pathways that do the same, fanning away from downtown. Quite nice, actually. Almost every intersection has a stop sign facing the pathway but also has a crosswalk. This confuses the heck out of me who learned that cars should stop for crosswalk users. Try this: rotate the stop sign 90 degrees. Beyond that, build an underpass. I'm sold. No intersection. Everyone would be happy. I completely agree that underpasses make sense here. The city I live in is about 88K in population and I can think of 3 underpasses in the high traffic areas. Maybe 5 more in the outskirts. Let's build more!
Great video! Though personally I've come to hate the multi use paths around Melbourne as I've become a more confident (and faster) rider, our multi use paths in parks tend to be absolutely full of dogs, kids and prams which personally stresses me out far more than the average unprotected quiet side street or parking separated bike lane, even in places with 4m wide paths it's just irresponsible to ride anything above about 10kph which sucks for getting places fast. I suppose it comes down to drawing a distinction between a path for recreation and a path for transit, the few multi use paths I do enjoy using tend to be the ones that are used for connecting destinations rather than enjoying the greenery. Keep up the great work! I'm interested to see more about how Boulder has built such a strong cycling population and see how those lessons could be exported abroad.
Better have a good job to pay those skyrocketing rents! But for real, every city that I have found quite nice and would consider relocating to is completely out of my budget unless I had multiple roommates. It's so frustrating
Does Boulder do any dedicated snow removal on the pathways and bike lanes? Seems like that would be a huge benefit and really promote four-season biking. My greater Denver neighborhood has unprotected bike lanes, but after a big snow, it can be two weeks before the compacted ice gets cleared from the bike lane parts of the street. The painted bike lanes are outside of the parking, and it's a wide street so even I catch myself breaking 30mph, because that's how the street is really designed, so wiping out because you hit an ice ridge would be super dangerous on that street. I'm not hard-core enough to bike in 10F weather, but three days after most snowstorms it gets up to 50 or even 60F with that blazing 5280' sun, and with minimal layering casual biking to a store or to work would be fine, if snow and ice are mitigated properly. But down here, it isn't.
I'm going to disagree with the premise of this video. I will not speak to Boulder specifically since I don't live there, but rather I will speak generally. In general protected bike lanes and associated infrastructure on streets is the gold standard for a good reason. Multi-use pathways are fine for what they are... which is both a strength but also a key problem. They're intended for recreation. This means they meander at lower speeds and 'take the scenic route'. That's fantastic for leisure, but it doesn't measure up for the people who use their bikes as a car replacement. Multi-use pathways take a long time to get from park to park, whereas proper on-street infrastructure takes a cyclist from where they are to the businesses they work or shop at. At the end of the day, I'm not trying to claim that multi-use pathways are bad. In fact we should definitely build more of them. I also enjoy riding them. But NOT as an excuse to skip the on road infrastructure.
Imho you are wrong. That the cities you know build them like that, Doesnt mean that they have to be like that. Here we have straight paths through a park in teh city, instead of a way around, I can tell you which one is faster. The they are intended for is only how the people that creates them look at it
I'm going to guess the big difference between overpasses and underpasses is the required vertical clearance? With an underpass, you only need enough vertical clearance for a tall person to ride a bike underneath, but with an overpass, you need space for trucks to go underneath, right?
That and when you are on a bicycle an underpass is easier, because you go down before you go up and need less effort to do so because of the momentum you gained compared to an overpass. Unless the intersection is raised and the bikepath stays on ground level That would be easiest of course.
I rode in Denver which had a similar system, was quite jarring that every underpass had people doing crack in broad daylight though. Wonder if Boulder is the same.
Yeah Phoenix has a long multi use path that follows the grand canal, it's very nice and let you go under street intersections. The problem is the homeless population seem to congregate on the pathway. Not idea to take your children under through an underpass with 20 people loitering under there.
Subscribed thank you for dedicating this channel to represent your hometown; i admit I'm a bit envious I'm finally able to call a place a Hometown - Cheyenne, Wy - I'll only do so once I move out. ....will edit soon brb
You may only have one video currently posted, but you're on a great path. We need non-vehicular traffic safety to be at the forefront of every community's Municipal government!
I love this video. I will say that as much as I love the paths I find near me in Utah, they are a bit too twisty and obviously "recreational" in design to be a viable options for longer journeys. A widespread network of these might be the best way forward for US cities and towns, since we typically have to deal with longer distances than European counterparts due to our suburban sprawl. However, those networks can't excuse cities from also protecting lanes on the roads. Often, those lanes serve as important connectors for commuters that would otherwise not have the access or speed needed to push them towards cycling as a truly viable alternative to cars.
Sacramento has such recreational paths along the riverways. They aren't really useful transport corridors, but they at least serve as a recreational path. Chico on the other hand has several good bike paths that go through the heart of town, in the parks and alongside the highway. They serve as good transport corridors. We absolutely need protected bike lanes and protected intersections all throughout town to make being on the streets genuinely safe and comfortable. Bike paths are important but are generally overvalued compared to building good bike lanes. The streets form the overwhelming majority of our transport corridors. We need to be able to get from home to work, school, groceries, the cafe, etc. Every element of how we achieve that is important.
I'd just like to add two things to this video, 1 no need to hate on buses, buses are great if don't right (again, the Netherlands is a great example of this.) 2. Multiuse paths are also great and in many ways preferred as they are more pleasant, but people need to pay attention to multiuse paths and when it's starts getting too busy, the two forms of transport need to be separated.
Nicely presented video. I watch a fair bit of content like this on you tube and I’m surprised Boulder has never been mentioned before. Seems the city is definitely going in the right direction.
Both following creeks, and underpasses, have worked well for Colorado Springs' multiuse network. The network goes to downtown, and to many businesses, as well as residential areas. I think that a completely separate (from car roads) multiuse pathway network is the way to go. Every mixing with cars is dangerous and unpleasant, except quiet residential roads. (And I've biked everything from pathways to streets to a packed dropoff zone of a major international airport. I also drive. And walk.)
I love in Denver, which also has a pretty robust trail system throughout much of the metropolitan area, and I probably wouldn’t even own a bike if it wasn’t for these trails
In places that have space multiuse pathways seem great! You can’t do this is dense cities or the sticks where I used to live but for places with that magic amount of density sounds amazing. Also underpasses 😍
As a Dutchie I’m quite impressed with Boulders approach to cycling, especially compared to other US cities. I only wonder if these bike paths lead to anywhere you want or need to go or if they are just there for leisurely riding?
Boulder's multi-use paths can get me pretty much anywhere I want to go. Sometimes it takes some creative detours, especially for north-south travel. But I do need to use the streets as well, a few of which have protected bike lanes, and many of which have painted bike gutters. It's often worth exploring "one street over" from the ones with lots of cars to find a better bike route.
My city has a ton of great multiuse paths that like this town follow a waterway or go through conservation areas. Most are a great shortcut and peaceful. Only problem is theyre not maintained in winter so cyclists are forced to smelly congested roads which are also narrow thanks to snowbanks and they still expect bikes and cars to share the same lane. Some winters the lane is to narrow for a car let alone a bike and a truck. We also have 0 protected bike lanes, just paint on the road and cars are allowed to park in them it seems. Commuting sucks here if you dont drive, old ladies have to hop 4 foot high snowbanks with a walker to either board a bus or cross the street......provided the sidewalk has evven been plowed. You'd swear Sudbury, Ontario was in a 3rd world country.
Bike paths are not always straight or direct. They generally take a longer distance to the same point. That's why sometimes when I'm walking on a path, I would diverge onto the grass (or dirt) to cut the distance to the nearest point if I'm running late. *Note: They are usually a design feature of the park layout, not for the convenience for bike transportation.* And there is no true bike path if pedestrians, skate boarders, roller bladers, skaters and joggers can share the path. And this can slow down a biker even further than if it was on a public street.
It's not just Boulder. I live near Golden and I can ride all the way to Denver on bike paths. Bike paths and bike lanes are everywhere in and around Denver, it's as if a cyclist actually sat on the city infrastructure design team.
I do love Boulder but it has the downside of being one of the most expensive cities in the entire US to live in. My home in Denver is half the price of an equivalent home in Boulder and 2 blocks from the Cherry Creek Trail, the flagship of Denver's multi-use path network. However Boulder absolutely does intersections much better with the on street bike lanes and has successfully converted a significant amount of crosswalks / bike crossing into raised crossings which drastically increase safety. I've literally biked from my house in Denver to Union Station, hopped on the bus with my bike as cargo (it's a commuter coach bus) and then biked to my companies HQ. It took about 30 minutes extra each way but for a once a week commute on a nice day I prefer it over rush hour traffic on i25 and US36. Especially since several times over the winter the 50 minute drive became nearly 2 hours due to road work and accidents.
If you're an American city/town and able to have a larger amount of bike commuters over Portland of all cities, then you're definitely doing something right
Those paths look very twisty to my European eyes. Especially 3:46 looks weird due to the way the path stays exactly the same width and then makes those wild bends. But I guess you gotta start somewhere and this is certainly better than what I've seen in most places in the US.
Buses are really good. Somehow with the same transit agency as Denver ( RTD regional transit ) the buses in Boulder seem to be better planned out and more on time than at least the routes I use in Denver. But maybe I could be biased because when I'm in Boulder in less of a hurry than when I'm getting around Denver.
Indianapolis Indiana when it was trying to reinvent itself to attract international business headquarters in the late 1980s came up with the idea of having 150 miles of exclusive speedy bicycle paths through the metropolitan area. Anyplace in the Indianapolis metro area was to be within 3 miles of a Greenway. The idea was to use speed to shrink distances of the low density topography of relatively flat Indianapolis to compensate for the higher densities typical of bicycle cities. The largest model of what this might be was the Monon rail-trail in Indianapolis. There aren't that many abandon or rail banked rail alignments available so the next alternative was to use the stream valleys. That seems incredibly difficult, but it turns out in Indiana and greatly around Indianapolis all the streams appear to have been dredged and canalized in the 1800s to allow them to be drains for farm land field drainage tile piping to gravity feed into the deepened streams. This was done by large steam dredges assembled at the headwaters of the stream and working their way down to the confluence with a river. Most of the area around the canalized stream was leveled. They are nearly railroad grade level. They need to have some berm under the path to keep from flooding. Underpasses for the stream and path under highways are likely not able to be build to keep from all flooding and would need an at-grade crossing option when flooded. The bike path network needs interchanges with the road system at these location as well. It was going to be called the Greenway network made up of exclusive bicycle paths. Each Greenway was going to have its own identity with its own logo. Just about every major stream would have had a Greenway retrofitted into it. Every stream would have needed some hydro studies and some changes to accommodate both the stream and the Greenway maybe miles of rebuild. The next alternative was utility line easements or right-of-ways. Those are less desirable because they lack the railroad like grades best for bicycle paths, but were included in studies. There were economic grades assigned to the various Greenway studies to depict what type of economic development might be expected by the implementation of an express bicycle path. Most of that economic development would come from providing the provision of a safe express bicycle path network that would attract higher income residents and businesses. Then the city gave the project to Indy Parks and Indy Parks like most park's department is anti-bicycle. Indy Parks had no intention of providing a welcoming express well integrated bicycle path network. The first thing Indy Parks did was to so call "super size" the Greenway network criteria making it open for pedestrians and them proceeded to do nothing to advance the knowledge of building a fast well integrated bicycle path system. Super size should mean increasing the width to 4-lanes or 20-feet. Such a never-before-developed-bicycle-system needed to be development by a research institution such a Perdue engineering. Looking at the basics, such as the average healthy bicyclists can generate 1/10th of HP for 10 minutes. A practiced cyclists does considerably better, but many casual cyclists are below that level. There is no guidance regarding the limited power budget of cyclists in the design of bicycle transpiration facilities at least not publicly. It's about the same as the minimal amount of power budget to start a freight train at 1 HP/ton. That's the math reason rail-trails are natural bike paths. This is also the reason that less elevation changing underpasses are much better for bicycles than high over passes where you are in effect having to carry you and your bicycle to the roof top of a second story house just to cross a road. There are many other specific bicycle criterial that have yet to be placed into engineering tables and charts. Freight railway criterial regarding grades and curvature work extremely well for bicycle paths. The maximum comfort turning G's of a bicycle is about 0.12Gs which is the same as that for passenger trains. If a cyclists hits fine gravel above 0.15Gs in curve they slide a bit. Maximum turning Gs for a normal road bicycle on asphalt above 10 mph is 0.30Gs. That falls to about 0.16Gs in the wet. On concrete there is not nearly the fall off in traction when wet. When seeing 30 mph bicycle design speeds those are based on dry asphalt when stating a 250-foot minimum radius; whereas, the minimum main line railroad curve is 10° per 100 feet or about 560-foot radius. Most bike paths use the secondary feeder path design speed curves of 20 mph or 95-foot radius on centerline. Highway designers typically think about how their creation is gong to behave in the dark and the wet. Park's department designers only think in terms of picnic weather i.e. no rain, no dark. After thirty years the Greenway network project with Indy Parks was quietly defunded or never given the funding go a head. There was a photo in the Indy Park's Greenway brochure of an Indy Park's built greenway path wondering along a strip of land with sitting benches off to the side and no users and in the peripheral can be seen cyclists riding on the parallel neighborhood street that is level, straight, obviously in greater comfort, speed and less near clutter than what was suppose to be a world class bicycle facility path meant to pull in high paying jobs from around the world. In the last few years the Monon rail-trail has been taken away from Indy Parks and placed with the Department of Public Works that doesn't know bicycling facilities, but at least they are not anti-bicycle.
As I understand it in the Netherlands on level ground the standard speed of a bicycle is considered to be 20 kph, ie 12.5 mph, which sounds about right, maybe even a little fast.
They follow the creeks and rivers as those create natural routes that bypass roads built for cars with bridges that go over those water features. A straight path would require interacting with car traffic or tunneling underneath roads to create the underpasses which would be more expensive and create a marginally faster route in a city that's 3 miles wide.
I bike everyday on the paths and would love to advocate for more tunnels (valmont and foothills) and the design of bike transportation infrastructure be done by civili engineers not landscape architects. Someday we will be able to bike to Erie on a rail trail….. someday.
I think the problem in america is that there are 6 lanes roads in the middle of a city. In Europe you will rarely see a 6 lanes road even on the biggest highways.
I've never understood the prevalence of overpasses for cyclists and pedestrians. Road vehicles are _substantially_ taller than bikes/people, which means the overpass must be raised many times higher above the roadway to provide clearance versus how far a road must be raised (or pathway lowered) to provide clearance for pedestrians passing underneath instead of above. This is putting aside the unfair energy economics of expecting the human-powered forms of locomotion to dramatically change their altitude up/down to go over the excessively tall overpass (often a substantial amount of effort), compared to asking the road vehicles with powerful engines and plenty of fuel/range to go over a slight bump while basically not changing speed at all.
Florida, if not the worst state in the union for bicycle, car hit and run, is in the top three. The bike lanes, if any, are only wide enough for one bike with only a white line separating it from cars. Littered with broken glass and trash every few feet. Most people call it a murder lane.
This is the sort of infrastructure that can turn car dependent smaller and medium cities back into lively urban areas. This works great in Boulder because it has a lot of natural areas like the creeks and river where it's a no brainer. It also works because the urban part of Boulder proper (the city not the county) can be biked across in about 15 minutes. It's literally 3 miles wide. NYC has its own "greenways" like Central Park or the Hudson River greenway. Both of which take up space but make the city a better place to live.
Multi Use Paths - especially grade separated like this - are basically bicycle freeways, which is great! A note about underpasses is overpasses are typically better for crime safety in all but the densest cities, and e bikes make climbing the steeper grades no big deal. Along the same lines, the higher speeds of bikes does somewhat reduce the risk of crime in tunnels.
We have to keep in mind that bike paths need to be able to take you from useful places to useful places to be an acceptable transport corridor. If it's like Sacramento, where they mostly just exist along the riverways, they're not as useful as they could be as useful transport corridors. Chico on the other hand, has bike paths through the heart of town, in the city park and alongside the highway. These paths are not at the periphery of the developed area, and they get you part way to a lot of places in town. Chico's bike paths are useful transport corridors. Also I think overpasses are generally less useful and practical than underpasses. Both are equally prone to being sketchy, and equally capable of being safe and useful. Chico's underpasses have a caveat in that most of them are designed to handle flooding. What we need desperately more than useful separated bike paths are actually protected bike lanes in town, with protected intersections. In addition, we need to reduce the width of car lanes and streets, slow down and reduce car usage, and reduce the permeability through the city that cars have access to while increasing permeability for bikes and pedestrians. Every element of bike infrastructure, from the separated bike path to the protected lane and intersection has its use and is integral to building a comprehensive network that is dafe and accessible. We need to recognize the importance of all of these elements.
Overpasses aren’t protected from the weather, and in a place like Boulder with real winter, you get ice on them. And most people don’t ride e-bikes. Overpasses are pretty ugly also in terms of the landscape of the city, whereas an underpass may not even be visible to most people.
The premise of this video (and broader anti-bike lane sentiments among cyclists) seems to ignore that origins and destinations are typically on roads and streets where cars are endemic and that bike lanes, even unprotected ones, create a safer and more welcoming cycling environment. Saying that a bike path is better than a bike lane is like saying a highway is better than a city street. Sure, highways are safer and move traffic faster, but without city streets supporting transportation from origins to destinations (the concept of "last mile" comes to mind) the highway has no function. The difference here is that bike paths can function as linear parks, which is lovely, but if we care about bikes and small e-vehicles being used as transportation, we need to rely on bike lanes to connect these paths to create a network to facilitate movement from origins to destinations.
Most bike lanes are not built for intra-block travel anyway, I would rather walk my bike backwards on the sidewalk than cross the street to use the reverse direction bike lane. There isn't any cost or land use reason we can't cover both our high rise cities and low density suburbs with grade separated bike paths with exits in every block. The opposition would mainly be aesthetic. The cyberpunk urban bicycle freeway future is here for us, should we choose to embrace it.
@@FullLengthInterstates Umm, actually there is every cost and land use reason we can't have grade separated bike paths everywhere. (Also suburbs very often do not have blocks.) I think a more desirable outcome would be to have an environment where traffic is slow and biking and walking humans are safe within cities and towns. Also not seeing the connection between the reverse bike lane conundrum and grade separated bike highways all over the place.
Most examples of "protected" bike lanes I see in the US are subpar at best. If they have any form of physical protection, it's usually in the form of small rubber or concrete mobile curbs that are not a barrier to intrusion from cars. Even more common, they are literally just delineated by flex posts, a small buffer zone, or both. Almost everywhere there are these so called, protected bike lanes, or even ones with proper curbs or elevation (like sidewalks), they still lack a crucial element, that being protected intersections. Without protected intersections, they're not protected bike lanes in my opinion. We absolutely need to have good low car traffic streets, actual protected bike lanes with protected intersections, car only roads and highways with bike routes insulated and grade separared from them, and completely separated paths through parks and next to waterways. All of these things are needed. We need to have access to businesses, daily necessities, and housing in town where a path along the creek can't give you direct access to such things, and it should be safe for the very young and old. We need to be able to cross roads, rails, rivers, and highways safely, whether attached next to car lanes or separate on a bike only or multi use path. It's important to recognize that Boulder's pathway network is really good, as is the pathway network of my hometown of Chico. But it's also important to recognize that these cities are failing to deliver by not building good bike lanes. Comprehensive bike infrastructure is cheap to build and brings value to the community, and there are no legitimate excuses to ignore the need for it.
And every example of "protected bike lanes" shown in this video using actual video footage, would not meet a reasonable definition for that term. It's a shame that you're shirking something that you don't have a good example of on hand. There is a shot of an intersection in a design illustration when you were talking about underpasses, where the currently existing intersection does not have progected lanes or actual protected intersection design. The illustration shows the underpass and the intersection above it with protected lanes and protected intersection design. Granted, there are some legitimate protected intersections, some examples in California, that are still unpleasant looking because the streets and car lanes are still wide as a highway, without median refuge, and with very few trees/vegetation or nice buildings around. Please don't say that protected bike lanes aren't great just because Boulder is incapable of producing them.
Riding on the shoulder of Valmont Street from 61st to and from the South Boulder Creek path was the worst. Got my daily dosage of benzene. Also whoever designed the multi-use path on 28th street that is intersected by way too many curb cuts for parking lots needs to go into a new line of work.
2:15 Underpasses under intersections do not save lives, but what do are: safety islands; inability to do a right turn while going straight traffic light is red; automated bicycle/pedestrian detection and giving them a priority in crossing the street. All underpasses are, a super expensive infrastructure project that cost a lot to maintain, plus it’s a potential “housing for the homeless”…great for them, not so much for the local residents. Author of this video should travel to Nordic countries to get a right prospective on urbanism/city planning instead of planning a guess game. =)
We bike a lot, but biking to work depends on the distance of the commute, the weather and type of work. Most people use their car or public transport to get to work. The bike is mostly used for shorter trips (on average up to 5-8 miles), like doing daily groceries, going to the train station, visiting nearby friends, going downtown for a drink, getting to school, visit the doctor/dentist, getting to your sport club and so on.
Underpasses sound good to have, but too expensive to get built in places where few people bike. Protected bike lanes on streets seem as though they would be a better use of money, where we can't have both.
@@PRH123 Right, I should have said places where few people would bike even if the underpasses were built. The demand that's latent will be induced, but you can't get more people to bike than are in biking distance of their destinations.
Well I was going to add Boulder to my short list of North American backup plans, but then I saw the home values on Zillow. Just wish the best cities in the US for biking were actually affordable. But, see, that's the thing. We've heard city planners, traffic engineers, developer lobbies, and franchise auto dealer lobbies say for years that people "want" to live in car dependent suburbs. But, if that were really true, wouldn't car dependent suburbs be the most expensive places to live? Instead, places like Boulder that have great cycle paths, or walkable neighborhoods, or are what they used to call "streetcar suburbs" are the most expensive places. Really kind of blows apart the whole "but people want to live in car dependency" argument those lobbyists make. Yet they win, every time.
![Stroads are Ugly, Expensive, and Dangerous (and they're everywhere) [ST05]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/ORzNZUeUHAM/mqdefault.jpg)
I think it's important to distinguish between bike infrastructure on ROADS and bike infrastructure on STREETS. A cycle network that avoids roads is great because you are kept away from noisy, dangerous, high speed cars, but if it avoids streets it means your cycle network is no use for getting to useful destinations and is just for recreation.
Maybe there are spurs that come off the cycle net work to use for destinations. ??
Generally, I agree, and this is largely the Dutch model: keep bike paths separated from roads while streets are mixed use (walkers, bike riders, transit, etc). However, you should take a look at places like Oulu, Finland. They have off street cycle paths not unlike Boulder (though I'm not sure how the two compare when it comes to winter cycling and maintenance). But the paths have their own separate access points to places like schools. Seriously, take a look at the videos I linked below:
BicycleDutch: th-cam.com/video/ppRQWxj6VDU/w-d-xo.html
Not Just Bikes: th-cam.com/video/Uhx-26GfCBU/w-d-xo.html
Pekka Tahkola: th-cam.com/video/ABV7WUJl6fU/w-d-xo.html
Note: Pekka's was between him and Shifter in Calgary. If you want to see the two cities compared, start from the beginning. I have the link starting at Pekka's explainer for Oulu.
Cars are better
@@MikehMike01 who asked
@@MikehMike01 ... for developing type 2 diabetes
Underpasses also have a physics benefit. Going down hill first lets you speed up a little bit with no effort so when you have to rise up to ground level again, you have the kinetic energy to get up the ramp without too much effort. For an overpass, you have to go uphill starting at your normal travelling speed. You can pedal hard in advance of the bridge to carry some speed into it, and it is manageable, but it is certainly more effort than coasting through an underpass.
And then right after you go down an overpass you get a red light so you can't even use that energy that you gained.
That's a good point! I generally prefer underpasses to overpasses for other reasons too. But there is one downside, that is albeit manageable, is that especially next to creeks and rivers, many bike path underpasses are designed to handle flooding, so they're often unusable during specific periods of winter and spring.
The height of an overpass will generally be greater too, as it has to accommodate big trucks or double decker busses passing under it, while the ceiling in an underpass only needs to be high enough for pedestrians and cyclists to get thorough.
I want to appreciate the physics side more...but as an Engineer I have to say that the predominant factor is that underpasses are significantly cheaper 😅
True. Many of the underpasses along the Rideau River in Ottawa are flooded now.
I disagree wtih two points in this video. While bike paths are definitely more enjoyable to ride on, they're useless if they don't get you to a destination you actually want to go to. That's why protected bike lanes are still really important since they connect you with homes and businesses unlike bike paths which are more or less isolated from other infrastructure. Bike paths are like roads or highways for cars, while protected bike lanes are more like streets.
The second disagreement I have is with regards to busses vs trains. I disagree that busses are "worse versions" of trains. Busses and trains are tools, and like all tools its important that you select the right one for the job. Busses can help fill in gaps where ridership will never justify the cost of laying down and maintaining track, and it's worth noting that not all busses are created equal. Busses in the US tend to be way more uncomfortable to ride on and less reliable compared to busses in Europe. It all comes down to implementation. For example, when I visited the Netherlands last year, I took a bus from Amsterdam to Zaanse Schans. Zaanse Schans is a small rural town, so it makes very little sense to build a train line to there. Nonetheless, the bus was perfectly on time and about as smooth as any train I rode on during that trip. There was also excellent digital signage at each stop to indicate bus times. A stark contrast from my experiences riding busses in the US.
If nothing else, the important takeaways should be:
1) Select the right tool for the job. Sometimes the right tool may not be obvious pick.
2) Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Protected bike lanes may not be the as comfortable to ride on compared to bike paths, but they're still an important step forward.
I agree bike lanes should be protected and buses can be a great mode! I think what you picked up on is my pessimism towards road oriented transit in North America. All too often city planners will make promises for road safety for cyclists but then not fully protect lanes or abruptly end them. In the case of buses, at least in the US, they are usually prone to getting stuck in traffic because we don't give them priority. Both protected bike lanes and buses can achieve amazing results if implemented correctly. That said, when budgets get tight, corners are cut and the end result is a system that doesn't move many people out of cars or worse gives people the perception that transit doesn't work.
I never even thought of digital signs to let you know the bus schedule 😂 in the US you have to just pray your bus shows up eventually if you don't have a working smartphone with wifi 😊
Yep, the first point you made is something I see a LOT in my city. While being a car-dominated suburb, there's a relatively vast and useful network of multiuse pathways and underpasses. However, biking here still kind of sucks, because every time you get within a half mile of your destination, or you have to transfer from one path network to another, you have to cross huge, dangerous, high-speed streets and use painted gutters. it might be nicer for 70% of the journey, but if that last 30% is still dreadful then the whole journey will still be seen as a negative experience.
I agree with this. One thing that should be added, is that protected bike lanes (that are actually adequately protected) must be built hand in hand with protected intersections. When you get to an intersection, you're coming up to the most uncomfortable part of your journey. Protected intersections remove that discomfort and provide the safety you need to have to actually achieve a comprehensive safe bike network.
Have a look at Almere in the Netherlands if you want to get an actual idea of what both segregated bus and cycling lanes can really do.
You guys in the US are limited only by your unwillingness to commit, honestly
I'm impressed by the quality of the bike network and quality of the video production.
Not so much by the quality of the narration.
What's wrong with the narration . clear ,concise and a pleasant speaking voice .
@@siriosstar4789 He sounds like a whiny 3rd grader giving his presentation on Flat Stanley in front of his class.
@@Firguy_the_Foot_Fetishist We found the car simp
@@Firguy_the_Foot_Fetishist that's such an exaggeration. the narration is a bit monotone/robotic but is not a limiting factor in any way, especially as everything else is superb
I hope Not Just Bikes sees this and heavily promotes your channel! Soo true and based.
I always read based as biased first. I think it is a confusing neologism.
As a fellow Boulderite, I do love the multi-use paths, but this is definitely one of those "Both? Both." type of situations for me. Those multi-use paths are fantastic for longer trips, but they do take winding tracks and often don't drop you off right at your final destination. I hope the city will continue to expand both networks (physically separated bike lanes and multi-use paths) so we can have end-to-end bikeability. The two biggest pain points for me are getting between North Boulder and Downtown, and getting across 28th around Pearl Street. The former because the street grid is very disconnected and there's very little high-quality bike infrastructure of any kind, the latter because that intersection and all the ones nearby are stroad hell.
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR THIS
I grew up i seattle before it became a great biking city and now I live in a small town that has very little bike infrastructure but has a beautiful 30 mile bike path, and while i do miss the infrastructure a bit, I get an incredible amount of mileage and use out of the greenway and I'm amazed at how much TIME I SAVE not having to wait at stoplights for traffic, as well as how much healthier i am breathing in fresh air from trees as opposed to biking next to cars.
What other US cities have a greenway network as extensive as boulder?
Finally someone that points out the benefits of a multi-use path network and doesn't just complain about "annoying" interactions with pedestrians. I have a similarish situation to Boulder in my rural college town area on the Idaho-Washington border (Moscow-Pullman). A couple multi-use paths that connect the cities and actually run by downtown, the colleges, and a decent number of shops along the trail. Very useful for most of my trips.
I think it's silly when people complain about pedestrians on bike paths. Just slow down and use your bell. Ding dong! My hometown of Chico has great bike paths in the city parks and alongside the highway that form good transport corridors. They're incomplete and they don't serve alone as a comprehensive bike network. We still need to build proper protected bike lanes with protected intersections to achieve that.
Eh. It depends on the use. For a mildly used path, multi use is fine; but once you get into a heavily used pedestrian way, then it is relatively unfunctional for people biking.
woah. definitely found a hidden gem of a channel with youtube recommendations. only one other subscriber?!! that’s crazy. i totally agree with the premise of your video though. i think another way to create these multi use paths is to repurpose rail right of ways. also we need to make sure these paths ACTUALLY HAVE CONNECTIONS to destinations. for example, my city, bakersfield, has a 30 mile long bike path running through the city, but it’s not really surrounded by actual places people would commute or visit to, so it’s mostly just there for recreation currently. anyways, keep up the good work, i’m excited to observe the future of your channel!
Sacramento is like this too with its riverside bike paths. They don't serve as very useful transport corridors. Chico has several bike paths that go through the heart of town, in the city parks and alongside the highway. They form part of a good transport corridor that actually gets people places they want to go in town. We still desperately need good protected bike lanes and protected intersections, as they don't really exist, and they would go a lot further in creating a comprehensive safe and accessible bike network.
As a fellow boulder resident, I couldn't agree more. I do think it's worth noting that boulder has lot's of corridors that make this possible that other cities might not have. Lot's of new suburbs are being built with multi use paths, but they could be more continuous, and they often don't connect to businesses. I wish boulder would be more proactive with path construction, especial in the osmp
Where I live, there's a ton of utility easements, mostly power line corridors and abandoned rail lines that would be perfect for a bike path system largely separated from the road network. But the problem is that under some areas it's fragmented by things like parking lots, tennis courts, and most commonly, long backyards that include parts of the easements. Not to mention gate controlled subdivisions that forces you to go around it when through it would be so much more convenient. It's frustrating but many suburban areas have huge potential to build networks due to a lot of land being between buildings that is currently being used very poorly. Luckily the various jurisdictions in my metro area is starting to step in the right direction with at least widening sidewalks, building trails on viable corridors, has built a few underpasses, and there's a "metro plan" that may one day connect all of the trails and paths built by the various city and county governments, and even the state DOT.
Boulder resident here. This feels like one of the few places outside of NYC where I can exist without a car
Great video! I'm glad TH-cam recommended it to me. An additional benefit of underpasses is you can wait underneath them for a rain shower to pass, or to get some shade depending on the weather!
There are other ways we should be able to get shade and shelter from weather in my opinion. A bike path underpass should be kept unobstructed to...well...facilitate bike traffic. We should have bus shelters, gazebos, sheltered park benches, and trees, in abundance. As well as businesses and public facilities that are accepting of people just visiting to spend time at such places, i.e. third places.
This is how the eastern side of my town is built - underpasses are used by the town as art spaces, local artists have painted the walls in many of them. The district is also designed so that retail zones, schools, and churches always back on to these pathways. Additionally, the district is designed in a way that the pathways take a direct route, but cars must take a somewhat circuitous route, I can walk to work in 10 minutes, or drive it in 7. As soon as electric scooters become legal here, I could do it in 4 or 5.
From my house I can walk to work, to the local shops (about 3 minutes walk, same time as driving), and walk to large greenspace areas in less than 10 minutes (although the pathways are located between developments, so they're a greenspace of their own).
Excellent video. If you wouldn't feel safe biking with your kid, it isn't a safe route. Bike paths create just this kind of safe route.
Great video showing off the city I've been living in and biking around for the past 33 years! I love the multi-use path network, and have witnessed many improvements over the decades. Paths following waterways are a great use of flood plains.
The biggest limitation is that our streams all flow from west to east, so we have fewer multi-use paths in the north-south direction. That's a big reason why we need protected bike lanes along north-south arterials, such as 30th Street, and Folsom Street.
Boulder is making plans now to start improvements of its Core Arterial Network, starting with Baseline, 30th, and Iris. I really hope they convert all of these 4-lane stroads to 3 lanes with a center left-turn lane, and protected bike paths on either side. There was vocal resistance when they tried this on Folsom a few years ago, but it's a much safer design for cars, bikes, and pedestrians and has been shown to be just as efficient for car traffic.
Boulder certainly has a long way to go compared to Amsterdam, for example. The city is still full of many dangerous stroads and expansive free parking lots. Boulder still has mandatory parking minimums. City council should remove these immediately. They raise the price of everything except driving.
You should go to Milton Keynes or Stevenage in the UK to see that a complete separated bike infrastructure is not always the best solution. I love multi-use paths for biking, but I usually avoid them altogether when I'm commuting..
They are good elements to a comprehensive bike infrastructure network, especially when they're actually designed to get you places. Sacramento has a few separated bike paths, but they're not useful transport corridors because they just go along the rivers and along abandoned railroad right of way. In my hometown of Chico, there are several bike paths through the city park, adjacent to the highway, and some too along abandoned rail. These paths actually get you places in town. Still, they do not constitute a comprehensive bike network alone, and we need to build protected bike lanes, protected intersections, car traffic filtering, etc. throughout the city to achieve that.
We have a single path with underpasses like this in my city. It is fantastic, I just wish it ran all the way across town to where I live.
There's a few in my hometown of Chico that unfortunately had to be designed with flood control in mind, as the Sacramento River Valley and its tributaries form a floodplain. The city has good riparian zones in the form of the city park along the creek, as well as a seasonal creek that is used as a flood channel. There is also an auxiliary flood channel north of the city. While the separated paths and underpasses are awesome to have, and they're one of my favorite parts of the city, we still need to build protected bike lanes and protected intersections for a truly comprehensive bike network. The reduction and slowing of car traffic, as well as through traffic through neighborhoods from cars, needs to be done as well so the city can become as pleasant and park-like as the parks all throughout.
@@mrmaniac3 Sonoma County is like that, too. Most of our best paths are along creeks or flood-control channels. But they don't connect up very well. That's where the work is needed, and yeah, some use of the road network is going to be inevitable.
incredibly refreshing to see a suburban community that still cares about pedestrian and cyclist infrastructure
I couldn't agree more! Bike lanes are helpful for getting me around by bike, BUT! I actually enjoy the parts of my commute that take me through parks, around the reservoir, and through areas where people, nature, and activity come together without cars.
This really shows the importance of not just making bike lanes, but also getting your priorities in approaching road design straight. Basing improvements and redesigns on the frequency and severity of collisions is the cornerstone of sustainable safety. Boulder is already far ahead of most of the US, but with this attitude they might make it to Dutch standards some day because sustainable safety got the Dutch to Dutch standards.
That design shown in 2:25 wouldn't be that out of place in the Netherlands. We have our own version of the raised intersection with level-ish underpasses here.
Multi-use paths are great for recreation and for a more comfortable and sometimes faster commute, but
A) how are you going to make multi-use paths in a grid city that doesn't have streams or old rail lines?
B) To reach a specific destination you'll still need cycle paths on car roads
Banning on street parking frees up a huge amount of space.
One positive thing I observed about Colorado in general especially around Denver area is all waterways seem to have a some sort of a bike path next to them- even little ditches.
What a high quality video with spot on commentary - keep up the good work!
underrated channel, i am your 104th subscriber.
I lived in New York where there is a good network of on street bike lanes and I used my bike for commuting to work daily from Brooklyn into Midtown Manhattan and for trips to the museum, parks, grocery stores (the bigger ones further from home, not just the local bodegas). I moved to Austin, TX where there is a relatively decent-ish network of on street bike lanes and I used my bike a decent amount of time to bike across town to work and for leisure activities, like getting to bars, etc. I moved to Dallas which pretty much has zero dedicated bike ways on the street but a surprisingly extensive network of bike paths off the roadways, much like Boulder, through parks, and alleys, and along creeks and rivers, and I never used my 2 bikes for commuting or for leisure activity. It was purely for early morning and weekend time trial workouts. I say all that to say, having on-street bike infrastructure and a city where drivers recognize cyclist with high visibility is much more effective in building better cities for everyone.
2:24 Wow, that is a really nice protected intersection! Could the city inform Switzerland about this? Because we haven't figured them out yet, we're still stuck in the bike lane stage. Even the rare protected bike lanes end right before dangerous intersections, with left turn boxes in the best case scenario (and usually nothing)
Nice Job! An American city other American cities can look to. We need a lot more of this. Cars are not just polluting, land-hogging, money pits. They are becoming more and more expensive and out of reach to more and more people. It's gradually becoming a mode only for the wealthy.
Incredible video
I'm watching this before I begin my pleasant bike commute home. A pleasant commute made possible by several scenic multi-use paths.
Congratulations on hitting the recommended feed my dude. Great video 🙂
With the first video no less!
Multi use paths are great. They made getting around Odense, where I used to study, a breeze as well.
This is a first video? Nuts. This is some high quality work :)
Nice
For a largely suburban city boulder has done a good job trying to retrofit its car infrastructure and making biking safe, at least better than most american cities. Id like to see more pedestrianization and improving public transit use/safety.
One problem with underpasses is they can get flooded really easily. We have one near where I live and with it getting increasingly wet more often it gets flooded a lot because it’s right next to a river. Have to wait a few days for it to subside and get forced back onto roads.
Good video! Keep going! Im subscribed!
Cambridge UK seems to be going down a similar route for cycling infrastructure - but there are no mountains (or even hills)!
2:19 30th & Colorado project now scheduled for summer 2023 completion
Sweet breakdown! The zoning also plays large a factor. The bike paths facilitate direct transit from housing to offices and industry. Housing in the west of the city, commerical in the middle and offices in the east (i.g.)
Busses aren't necessarily a worse version of cars, but if there's not enough of them and everyone still takes their cars so the busses get stuck as well, then they are (also helps to give buses their own lane, like any other mode of transit for that matter)
The overall traffic situation greatly improved here when they banned on street parking, and made the right hand lane of all roads dedicated to busses, taxis and bicycles. And introduced electric busses, with comforts like a/c, wifi, and usb charging.
I commute about 8 miles on a multi-use path with a few intersections with cars. It cuts right through town and feeds onto most of the stops I need to make. There's also 2 more pathways that do the same, fanning away from downtown. Quite nice, actually.
Almost every intersection has a stop sign facing the pathway but also has a crosswalk. This confuses the heck out of me who learned that cars should stop for crosswalk users. Try this: rotate the stop sign 90 degrees. Beyond that, build an underpass. I'm sold. No intersection. Everyone would be happy.
I completely agree that underpasses make sense here. The city I live in is about 88K in population and I can think of 3 underpasses in the high traffic areas. Maybe 5 more in the outskirts. Let's build more!
Great video! Though personally I've come to hate the multi use paths around Melbourne as I've become a more confident (and faster) rider, our multi use paths in parks tend to be absolutely full of dogs, kids and prams which personally stresses me out far more than the average unprotected quiet side street or parking separated bike lane, even in places with 4m wide paths it's just irresponsible to ride anything above about 10kph which sucks for getting places fast. I suppose it comes down to drawing a distinction between a path for recreation and a path for transit, the few multi use paths I do enjoy using tend to be the ones that are used for connecting destinations rather than enjoying the greenery. Keep up the great work! I'm interested to see more about how Boulder has built such a strong cycling population and see how those lessons could be exported abroad.
Ok now I know where I'm moving. Seems like the only American city to get it right.
Better have a good job to pay those skyrocketing rents! But for real, every city that I have found quite nice and would consider relocating to is completely out of my budget unless I had multiple roommates. It's so frustrating
After watching Citynerd, Pittsburgh might be an option for walkability and affordability. Not sure if they have much bike infrastructure.
Does Boulder do any dedicated snow removal on the pathways and bike lanes?
Seems like that would be a huge benefit and really promote four-season biking. My greater Denver neighborhood has unprotected bike lanes, but after a big snow, it can be two weeks before the compacted ice gets cleared from the bike lane parts of the street. The painted bike lanes are outside of the parking, and it's a wide street so even I catch myself breaking 30mph, because that's how the street is really designed, so wiping out because you hit an ice ridge would be super dangerous on that street.
I'm not hard-core enough to bike in 10F weather, but three days after most snowstorms it gets up to 50 or even 60F with that blazing 5280' sun, and with minimal layering casual biking to a store or to work would be fine, if snow and ice are mitigated properly. But down here, it isn't.
Great vid, really enjoyed! You’ve earned a sub
I'm going to disagree with the premise of this video. I will not speak to Boulder specifically since I don't live there, but rather I will speak generally. In general protected bike lanes and associated infrastructure on streets is the gold standard for a good reason. Multi-use pathways are fine for what they are... which is both a strength but also a key problem. They're intended for recreation. This means they meander at lower speeds and 'take the scenic route'. That's fantastic for leisure, but it doesn't measure up for the people who use their bikes as a car replacement. Multi-use pathways take a long time to get from park to park, whereas proper on-street infrastructure takes a cyclist from where they are to the businesses they work or shop at.
At the end of the day, I'm not trying to claim that multi-use pathways are bad. In fact we should definitely build more of them. I also enjoy riding them. But NOT as an excuse to skip the on road infrastructure.
Imho you are wrong. That the cities you know build them like that, Doesnt mean that they have to be like that. Here we have straight paths through a park in teh city, instead of a way around, I can tell you which one is faster. The they are intended for is only how the people that creates them look at it
Really enjoyed this vudeo! Im proud of my city, charlotte, for building alot of greenways along the 80 or so creeks in Charlotte
I'm going to guess the big difference between overpasses and underpasses is the required vertical clearance? With an underpass, you only need enough vertical clearance for a tall person to ride a bike underneath, but with an overpass, you need space for trucks to go underneath, right?
That and when you are on a bicycle an underpass is easier, because you go down before you go up and need less effort to do so because of the momentum you gained compared to an overpass. Unless the intersection is raised and the bikepath stays on ground level That would be easiest of course.
I rode in Denver which had a similar system, was quite jarring that every underpass had people doing crack in broad daylight though. Wonder if Boulder is the same.
Yeah Phoenix has a long multi use path that follows the grand canal, it's very nice and let you go under street intersections. The problem is the homeless population seem to congregate on the pathway. Not idea to take your children under through an underpass with 20 people loitering under there.
Subscribed thank you for dedicating this channel to represent your hometown; i admit I'm a bit envious
I'm finally able to call a place a Hometown - Cheyenne, Wy - I'll only do so once I move out. ....will edit soon brb
You may only have one video currently posted, but you're on a great path. We need non-vehicular traffic safety to be at the forefront of every community's Municipal government!
wow boulder seems nice. id never live there with all that snow but i should visit some day and rent a bike
I love this video.
I will say that as much as I love the paths I find near me in Utah, they are a bit too twisty and obviously "recreational" in design to be a viable options for longer journeys.
A widespread network of these might be the best way forward for US cities and towns, since we typically have to deal with longer distances than European counterparts due to our suburban sprawl. However, those networks can't excuse cities from also protecting lanes on the roads. Often, those lanes serve as important connectors for commuters that would otherwise not have the access or speed needed to push them towards cycling as a truly viable alternative to cars.
Sacramento has such recreational paths along the riverways. They aren't really useful transport corridors, but they at least serve as a recreational path. Chico on the other hand has several good bike paths that go through the heart of town, in the parks and alongside the highway. They serve as good transport corridors.
We absolutely need protected bike lanes and protected intersections all throughout town to make being on the streets genuinely safe and comfortable. Bike paths are important but are generally overvalued compared to building good bike lanes. The streets form the overwhelming majority of our transport corridors. We need to be able to get from home to work, school, groceries, the cafe, etc. Every element of how we achieve that is important.
I'd just like to add two things to this video, 1 no need to hate on buses, buses are great if don't right (again, the Netherlands is a great example of this.) 2. Multiuse paths are also great and in many ways preferred as they are more pleasant, but people need to pay attention to multiuse paths and when it's starts getting too busy, the two forms of transport need to be separated.
Thought i recognized that bridge in the thumbnail. Let's go Boulder
This is great. This everywhere please
Terrific video
Nice content
Nicely presented video. I watch a fair bit of content like this on you tube and I’m surprised Boulder has never been mentioned before. Seems the city is definitely going in the right direction.
Both following creeks, and underpasses, have worked well for Colorado Springs' multiuse network. The network goes to downtown, and to many businesses, as well as residential areas. I think that a completely separate (from car roads) multiuse pathway network is the way to go. Every mixing with cars is dangerous and unpleasant, except quiet residential roads. (And I've biked everything from pathways to streets to a packed dropoff zone of a major international airport. I also drive. And walk.)
I love in Denver, which also has a pretty robust trail system throughout much of the metropolitan area, and I probably wouldn’t even own a bike if it wasn’t for these trails
In places that have space multiuse pathways seem great! You can’t do this is dense cities or the sticks where I used to live but for places with that magic amount of density sounds amazing.
Also underpasses 😍
You can if you are open minded about closing off wide roads to car traffic, and possibly even demolishing some buildings
Why not the sticks? I used to live in the Midwest (Illinois) and the paths next to rail line / corn fields were great!
Very cool!
As a Dutchie I’m quite impressed with Boulders approach to cycling, especially compared to other US cities.
I only wonder if these bike paths lead to anywhere you want or need to go or if they are just there for leisurely riding?
Boulder's multi-use paths can get me pretty much anywhere I want to go. Sometimes it takes some creative detours, especially for north-south travel. But I do need to use the streets as well, a few of which have protected bike lanes, and many of which have painted bike gutters. It's often worth exploring "one street over" from the ones with lots of cars to find a better bike route.
I really enjoyed the video. I can't say I have encountered UP's before but I like them.
beautiful
My city has a ton of great multiuse paths that like this town follow a waterway or go through conservation areas. Most are a great shortcut and peaceful. Only problem is theyre not maintained in winter so cyclists are forced to smelly congested roads which are also narrow thanks to snowbanks and they still expect bikes and cars to share the same lane. Some winters the lane is to narrow for a car let alone a bike and a truck. We also have 0 protected bike lanes, just paint on the road and cars are allowed to park in them it seems. Commuting sucks here if you dont drive, old ladies have to hop 4 foot high snowbanks with a walker to either board a bus or cross the street......provided the sidewalk has evven been plowed. You'd swear Sudbury, Ontario was in a 3rd world country.
(Unfortunately) Drive past people taking some of these paths frequently omw to work . Always jealous of how relaxing it looks.
That's fantastic ! looks even better than nederlands and hardly any traffic . 👍👍👍
Bike paths are not always straight or direct. They generally take a longer distance to the same point. That's why sometimes when I'm walking on a path, I would diverge onto the grass (or dirt) to cut the distance to the nearest point if I'm running late.
*Note: They are usually a design feature of the park layout, not for the convenience for bike transportation.*
And there is no true bike path if pedestrians, skate boarders, roller bladers, skaters and joggers can share the path. And this can slow down a biker even further than if it was on a public street.
bike paths are cool but when people with electric motorcycles think they are e-bikes shit starts to get fucky
Hate those guys
That's why there should be speed limits on bike lanes/paths .
It's not just Boulder. I live near Golden and I can ride all the way to Denver on bike paths. Bike paths and bike lanes are everywhere in and around Denver, it's as if a cyclist actually sat on the city infrastructure design team.
I do love Boulder but it has the downside of being one of the most expensive cities in the entire US to live in. My home in Denver is half the price of an equivalent home in Boulder and 2 blocks from the Cherry Creek Trail, the flagship of Denver's multi-use path network. However Boulder absolutely does intersections much better with the on street bike lanes and has successfully converted a significant amount of crosswalks / bike crossing into raised crossings which drastically increase safety. I've literally biked from my house in Denver to Union Station, hopped on the bus with my bike as cargo (it's a commuter coach bus) and then biked to my companies HQ. It took about 30 minutes extra each way but for a once a week commute on a nice day I prefer it over rush hour traffic on i25 and US36. Especially since several times over the winter the 50 minute drive became nearly 2 hours due to road work and accidents.
Still so much to but it’s a great start 🚴🏻♂️👍🏼
If you're an American city/town and able to have a larger amount of bike commuters over Portland of all cities, then you're definitely doing something right
Those paths look very twisty to my European eyes. Especially 3:46 looks weird due to the way the path stays exactly the same width and then makes those wild bends. But I guess you gotta start somewhere and this is certainly better than what I've seen in most places in the US.
How's the transit in Boulder?
Buses are really good. Somehow with the same transit agency as Denver ( RTD regional transit ) the buses in Boulder seem to be better planned out and more on time than at least the routes I use in Denver. But maybe I could be biased because when I'm in Boulder in less of a hurry than when I'm getting around Denver.
@@legatus_newt Thanks! Looks like Boulder is a great place for biking and transit.
Indianapolis Indiana when it was trying to reinvent itself to attract international business headquarters in the late 1980s came up with the idea of having 150 miles of exclusive speedy bicycle paths through the metropolitan area. Anyplace in the Indianapolis metro area was to be within 3 miles of a Greenway. The idea was to use speed to shrink distances of the low density topography of relatively flat Indianapolis to compensate for the higher densities typical of bicycle cities. The largest model of what this might be was the Monon rail-trail in Indianapolis.
There aren't that many abandon or rail banked rail alignments available so the next alternative was to use the stream valleys. That seems incredibly difficult, but it turns out in Indiana and greatly around Indianapolis all the streams appear to have been dredged and canalized in the 1800s to allow them to be drains for farm land field drainage tile piping to gravity feed into the deepened streams. This was done by large steam dredges assembled at the headwaters of the stream and working their way down to the confluence with a river. Most of the area around the canalized stream was leveled. They are nearly railroad grade level. They need to have some berm under the path to keep from flooding. Underpasses for the stream and path under highways are likely not able to be build to keep from all flooding and would need an at-grade crossing option when flooded. The bike path network needs interchanges with the road system at these location as well.
It was going to be called the Greenway network made up of exclusive bicycle paths. Each Greenway was going to have its own identity with its own logo. Just about every major stream would have had a Greenway retrofitted into it. Every stream would have needed some hydro studies and some changes to accommodate both the stream and the Greenway maybe miles of rebuild. The next alternative was utility line easements or right-of-ways. Those are less desirable because they lack the railroad like grades best for bicycle paths, but were included in studies. There were economic grades assigned to the various Greenway studies to depict what type of economic development might be expected by the implementation of an express bicycle path. Most of that economic development would come from providing the provision of a safe express bicycle path network that would attract higher income residents and businesses.
Then the city gave the project to Indy Parks and Indy Parks like most park's department is anti-bicycle. Indy Parks had no intention of providing a welcoming express well integrated bicycle path network. The first thing Indy Parks did was to so call "super size" the Greenway network criteria making it open for pedestrians and them proceeded to do nothing to advance the knowledge of building a fast well integrated bicycle path system. Super size should mean increasing the width to 4-lanes or 20-feet.
Such a never-before-developed-bicycle-system needed to be development by a research institution such a Perdue engineering. Looking at the basics, such as the average healthy bicyclists can generate 1/10th of HP for 10 minutes. A practiced cyclists does considerably better, but many casual cyclists are below that level. There is no guidance regarding the limited power budget of cyclists in the design of bicycle transpiration facilities at least not publicly. It's about the same as the minimal amount of power budget to start a freight train at 1 HP/ton. That's the math reason rail-trails are natural bike paths. This is also the reason that less elevation changing underpasses are much better for bicycles than high over passes where you are in effect having to carry you and your bicycle to the roof top of a second story house just to cross a road.
There are many other specific bicycle criterial that have yet to be placed into engineering tables and charts. Freight railway criterial regarding grades and curvature work extremely well for bicycle paths. The maximum comfort turning G's of a bicycle is about 0.12Gs which is the same as that for passenger trains. If a cyclists hits fine gravel above 0.15Gs in curve they slide a bit. Maximum turning Gs for a normal road bicycle on asphalt above 10 mph is 0.30Gs. That falls to about 0.16Gs in the wet. On concrete there is not nearly the fall off in traction when wet. When seeing 30 mph bicycle design speeds those are based on dry asphalt when stating a 250-foot minimum radius; whereas, the minimum main line railroad curve is 10° per 100 feet or about 560-foot radius. Most bike paths use the secondary feeder path design speed curves of 20 mph or 95-foot radius on centerline. Highway designers typically think about how their creation is gong to behave in the dark and the wet. Park's department designers only think in terms of picnic weather i.e. no rain, no dark.
After thirty years the Greenway network project with Indy Parks was quietly defunded or never given the funding go a head. There was a photo in the Indy Park's Greenway brochure of an Indy Park's built greenway path wondering along a strip of land with sitting benches off to the side and no users and in the peripheral can be seen cyclists riding on the parallel neighborhood street that is level, straight, obviously in greater comfort, speed and less near clutter than what was suppose to be a world class bicycle facility path meant to pull in high paying jobs from around the world. In the last few years the Monon rail-trail has been taken away from Indy Parks and placed with the Department of Public Works that doesn't know bicycling facilities, but at least they are not anti-bicycle.
As I understand it in the Netherlands on level ground the standard speed of a bicycle is considered to be 20 kph, ie 12.5 mph, which sounds about right, maybe even a little fast.
Many European cities have this, and it works great. But we still need more of them.
I would be happy with a bike lane on the main street here. (Admittly the road is low traffic but high speed)
Why are the multiuse paths so wiggly? They'd be much faster if they were straight.
They follow the creeks and rivers as those create natural routes that bypass roads built for cars with bridges that go over those water features. A straight path would require interacting with car traffic or tunneling underneath roads to create the underpasses which would be more expensive and create a marginally faster route in a city that's 3 miles wide.
Thanks for the video, was really interesting ! Turns out there are cities in the us with good cycling infrastructure.
I bike everyday on the paths and would love to advocate for more tunnels (valmont and foothills) and the design of bike transportation infrastructure be done by civili engineers not landscape architects.
Someday we will be able to bike to Erie on a rail trail….. someday.
I think the problem in america is that there are 6 lanes roads in the middle of a city. In Europe you will rarely see a 6 lanes road even on the biggest highways.
I've never understood the prevalence of overpasses for cyclists and pedestrians. Road vehicles are _substantially_ taller than bikes/people, which means the overpass must be raised many times higher above the roadway to provide clearance versus how far a road must be raised (or pathway lowered) to provide clearance for pedestrians passing underneath instead of above.
This is putting aside the unfair energy economics of expecting the human-powered forms of locomotion to dramatically change their altitude up/down to go over the excessively tall overpass (often a substantial amount of effort), compared to asking the road vehicles with powerful engines and plenty of fuel/range to go over a slight bump while basically not changing speed at all.
Based I should move to Boulder Colorado.
Florida, if not the worst state in the union for bicycle, car hit and run, is in the top three. The bike lanes, if any, are only wide enough for one bike with only a white line separating it from cars. Littered with broken glass and trash every few feet. Most people call it a murder lane.
I cant envision these paths in very dense cities, like nyc. they seem to need a lot of space
This is the sort of infrastructure that can turn car dependent smaller and medium cities back into lively urban areas. This works great in Boulder because it has a lot of natural areas like the creeks and river where it's a no brainer. It also works because the urban part of Boulder proper (the city not the county) can be biked across in about 15 minutes. It's literally 3 miles wide. NYC has its own "greenways" like Central Park or the Hudson River greenway. Both of which take up space but make the city a better place to live.
Wow you guys have bike lanes? Jealous
Multi Use Paths - especially grade separated like this - are basically bicycle freeways, which is great! A note about underpasses is overpasses are typically better for crime safety in all but the densest cities, and e bikes make climbing the steeper grades no big deal. Along the same lines, the higher speeds of bikes does somewhat reduce the risk of crime in tunnels.
We have to keep in mind that bike paths need to be able to take you from useful places to useful places to be an acceptable transport corridor. If it's like Sacramento, where they mostly just exist along the riverways, they're not as useful as they could be as useful transport corridors. Chico on the other hand, has bike paths through the heart of town, in the city park and alongside the highway. These paths are not at the periphery of the developed area, and they get you part way to a lot of places in town. Chico's bike paths are useful transport corridors.
Also I think overpasses are generally less useful and practical than underpasses. Both are equally prone to being sketchy, and equally capable of being safe and useful. Chico's underpasses have a caveat in that most of them are designed to handle flooding.
What we need desperately more than useful separated bike paths are actually protected bike lanes in town, with protected intersections. In addition, we need to reduce the width of car lanes and streets, slow down and reduce car usage, and reduce the permeability through the city that cars have access to while increasing permeability for bikes and pedestrians.
Every element of bike infrastructure, from the separated bike path to the protected lane and intersection has its use and is integral to building a comprehensive network that is dafe and accessible. We need to recognize the importance of all of these elements.
Overpasses aren’t protected from the weather, and in a place like Boulder with real winter, you get ice on them. And most people don’t ride e-bikes.
Overpasses are pretty ugly also in terms of the landscape of the city, whereas an underpass may not even be visible to most people.
When I hear the argument that people-cycle-in-The-Netherlands-because-it-is-flat again (And I will >.< ) I'll link to this.
The premise of this video (and broader anti-bike lane sentiments among cyclists) seems to ignore that origins and destinations are typically on roads and streets where cars are endemic and that bike lanes, even unprotected ones, create a safer and more welcoming cycling environment. Saying that a bike path is better than a bike lane is like saying a highway is better than a city street. Sure, highways are safer and move traffic faster, but without city streets supporting transportation from origins to destinations (the concept of "last mile" comes to mind) the highway has no function. The difference here is that bike paths can function as linear parks, which is lovely, but if we care about bikes and small e-vehicles being used as transportation, we need to rely on bike lanes to connect these paths to create a network to facilitate movement from origins to destinations.
Most bike lanes are not built for intra-block travel anyway, I would rather walk my bike backwards on the sidewalk than cross the street to use the reverse direction bike lane. There isn't any cost or land use reason we can't cover both our high rise cities and low density suburbs with grade separated bike paths with exits in every block. The opposition would mainly be aesthetic. The cyberpunk urban bicycle freeway future is here for us, should we choose to embrace it.
@@FullLengthInterstates Umm, actually there is every cost and land use reason we can't have grade separated bike paths everywhere. (Also suburbs very often do not have blocks.) I think a more desirable outcome would be to have an environment where traffic is slow and biking and walking humans are safe within cities and towns. Also not seeing the connection between the reverse bike lane conundrum and grade separated bike highways all over the place.
Most examples of "protected" bike lanes I see in the US are subpar at best. If they have any form of physical protection, it's usually in the form of small rubber or concrete mobile curbs that are not a barrier to intrusion from cars. Even more common, they are literally just delineated by flex posts, a small buffer zone, or both. Almost everywhere there are these so called, protected bike lanes, or even ones with proper curbs or elevation (like sidewalks), they still lack a crucial element, that being protected intersections. Without protected intersections, they're not protected bike lanes in my opinion. We absolutely need to have good low car traffic streets, actual protected bike lanes with protected intersections, car only roads and highways with bike routes insulated and grade separared from them, and completely separated paths through parks and next to waterways. All of these things are needed. We need to have access to businesses, daily necessities, and housing in town where a path along the creek can't give you direct access to such things, and it should be safe for the very young and old. We need to be able to cross roads, rails, rivers, and highways safely, whether attached next to car lanes or separate on a bike only or multi use path. It's important to recognize that Boulder's pathway network is really good, as is the pathway network of my hometown of Chico. But it's also important to recognize that these cities are failing to deliver by not building good bike lanes. Comprehensive bike infrastructure is cheap to build and brings value to the community, and there are no legitimate excuses to ignore the need for it.
And every example of "protected bike lanes" shown in this video using actual video footage, would not meet a reasonable definition for that term. It's a shame that you're shirking something that you don't have a good example of on hand. There is a shot of an intersection in a design illustration when you were talking about underpasses, where the currently existing intersection does not have progected lanes or actual protected intersection design. The illustration shows the underpass and the intersection above it with protected lanes and protected intersection design. Granted, there are some legitimate protected intersections, some examples in California, that are still unpleasant looking because the streets and car lanes are still wide as a highway, without median refuge, and with very few trees/vegetation or nice buildings around. Please don't say that protected bike lanes aren't great just because Boulder is incapable of producing them.
I'm still liking and subbing with the bell lit up. I know you're receptive to healthy discussion and this is still a good video :)
Riding on the shoulder of Valmont Street from 61st to and from the South Boulder Creek path was the worst. Got my daily dosage of benzene. Also whoever designed the multi-use path on 28th street that is intersected by way too many curb cuts for parking lots needs to go into a new line of work.
Never thought I'd actually wanna visit the US so much, cool.
Also, my entire city 79 sqkm city has about 3-4km of bike lanes. It's horrid!
Expensive af to live there
2:15 Underpasses under intersections do not save lives, but what do are:
safety islands; inability to do a right turn while going straight traffic light is red; automated bicycle/pedestrian detection and giving them a priority in crossing the street.
All underpasses are, a super expensive infrastructure project that cost a lot to maintain,
plus it’s a potential “housing for the homeless”…great for them, not so much for the local residents.
Author of this video should travel to Nordic countries to get a right prospective on urbanism/city planning
instead of planning a guess game. =)
Honestly I expected the Netherlands average to be closer to 90% not 27%%.
We bike a lot, but biking to work depends on the distance of the commute, the weather and type of work. Most people use their car or public transport to get to work. The bike is mostly used for shorter trips (on average up to 5-8 miles), like doing daily groceries, going to the train station, visiting nearby friends, going downtown for a drink, getting to school, visit the doctor/dentist, getting to your sport club and so on.
Make sure to increase your voice volume next video my man
Underpasses sound good to have, but too expensive to get built in places where few people bike. Protected bike lanes on streets seem as though they would be a better use of money, where we can't have both.
Few people bike and walk where there is no infrastructure to bike and walk. If the infrastructure is built the demand will be induced.
@@PRH123 Right, I should have said places where few people would bike even if the underpasses were built. The demand that's latent will be induced, but you can't get more people to bike than are in biking distance of their destinations.
Well I was going to add Boulder to my short list of North American backup plans, but then I saw the home values on Zillow. Just wish the best cities in the US for biking were actually affordable.
But, see, that's the thing. We've heard city planners, traffic engineers, developer lobbies, and franchise auto dealer lobbies say for years that people "want" to live in car dependent suburbs. But, if that were really true, wouldn't car dependent suburbs be the most expensive places to live? Instead, places like Boulder that have great cycle paths, or walkable neighborhoods, or are what they used to call "streetcar suburbs" are the most expensive places. Really kind of blows apart the whole "but people want to live in car dependency" argument those lobbyists make. Yet they win, every time.
"But, if that were really true, wouldn't car dependent suburbs be the most expensive places to live?" Got it in one. It's a supply/demand problem.