Bike paths used by pedestrians are "mixed use trails" that are basically for recreational use. Someone cycling with a purpose to get somewhere, and especially if they have good physical ability from doing a lot of cycling, will tend to stay away from such. Doing your regular 35-40 km/h on these is crazy, and if you can go fast, why would you use a path where you can't do that.
While these trails are nice (obviously, we need recreational spaces), they don't do anything for congestion or commuting.
What kind of park has a biking path, I wonder to myself. I personally have never seen it; generally, paths are either mixed use or pedestrian only. Mixed use is fine, for people who go at an appropriate pace when in proximity to pedestrians, but some people treat mixed paths as an entitlement. It's more common for paths that are on commutes.
That's completely irrelevant. Some cycling paths in my area are mixed pedestrian and cycle. Mostly they are mixed car and cycle. There are a handful of dedicated bike paths but those often have pedestrians on them anyway. Good luck changing that.
The semantics of "bike path" are not interesting here. I ride my bike at around 8mph. I don't pass many conventional bicycles. I don't get passed by conventional cycles much either. When I do it is often by someone on an e-bike going twice as fast.
They work ok in areas that aren't particularly congested. Even then, many of these shared bike/pedestrian ways are just packed full of little things that slow cyclists down in a way a cycle lane wouldn't. They're also poorly maintained as compared to the street that gets re-paved every so often while they just fill the worst holes & cracks on the sidewalk.
That's why some enthusiasts in .fi choose to cycle in traffic (even though that's not really legal if there's a bike path on the right).
Paths in the US are usually multi-use. Almost no where has a dedicated bike lane, and if they do it's just a line on the side of the road. If you're going to be speeding along at 20mph the side of the road works just fine.
As somebody who sometimes cycles on the road even though there is a bicycle path and gets honked at by assholes like you, there are usually many different reasons why a bicycle isn't using the bicycle path.
Here are some of them:
- it's actually not a bike path. It looks like a bike path, but if it doesn't have a yellow stripe down the middle and isn't signed, it's a sidewalk, and it's illegal and probably dangerous to cycle on it.
- the speed limit on the path is 20 km/h, and I'm going 30.
- it's a mixed use path, frequented by toddlers who are very unpredictable and sometimes hard to avoid when going at high speed. I'd rather deal with assholes on the road than endanger toddlers.
- it's a mixed use path, frequented by people walking dogs. They're dangerous because dogs can veer suddenly, and that leash can snare a bicycle very easily
- it has poor road crossings. Most "recreational" bicycle paths in North American cities are much more dangerous for cyclists than riding on the road is, even though they seem safer. Why? 90-95% of all bicycle fatalities happen at intersections. The bicycle path still has to cross roads, and they generally do so either by merging with the sidewalk or by setting up a crossing a few yards away from the intersection. Some drivers do not slow down or look until they reach the intersection proper. To cross safely you have to slow down to walking pace and be hyper-vigilant like a jaywalker. The safest place in an intersection is as close to the centre as you can get, where you are visible to everybody.
- it has lots of curves and lots of close trees. Which means that visibility around curves is very poor, so it's not safe. It was designed for pedestrians, not cyclists.
- it doesn't actually go where I want to go. This is more common than you think: just because it parallels your road now, doesn't mean it will later
- I don't know where I'm going. Bike paths are very random, and often aren't marked on maps. If I'm following a map designed for cars, I have no choice but to use your road.
In summary, most so-called "bike paths" in North America are really just repurposed walking paths, and are unsafe and slow. Cyclists should be on the road.
As soon as any significant fraction of people use them they become congested, slow, and dangerous to pedestrians. Slowing to 5km/h repeatedly whilst waiting for an opening for a large portion of your journey makes commuting far less pleasant and severely limits viable range, and being overtaken constantly is unpleasant and dangerous for pedestrians.
The separated bike lane *and* the mixed use path is the end goal, but if the immediate goal is to save the city money and make people healthier rather than create conflict and negative sentiment towards cycling, then you need a separate route for ebikes and more experienced commuters. Sharrows or magic paint suffice for this (at least temporarily) with adequate traffic calming or if the main car flow has an alternate route.
I agree, but I prefer mixed use paths to mixed use roads. In terms of speed and safety, bikes are much closer to pedestrians than cars. It is insanity to have bikes sharing the road.
Or yell loudly at them. If the bike paths are obvious, people will quickly get used to them, especially if they themselves also bike on them regularly.
But multi-use paths where pedestrians mix with cyclists should be avoided at all costs.
Ok, sure, I guess some people have the luxury of a dedicated bike path with no intersections. Here in the city, I can’t get close to my (low) top speed because I hit a res light every block or two. When I used a suburban trail, it was mixed-use, so I had to go even slower to navigate safely around pedestrians and potholes.
What frustrates me most where I live is poorly marked bike lanes/paths. My neighborhood is surround by 'multi-use paths' that consist of a wide finely crushed gravel path next to a double wide sidewalk-like path. These are supposed to be used by cyclists as well as horses and pedestrians, and when used as such are glorious and completely safe.
Problem is, many cyclists don't realize they are for their use, and wind up riding on the narrow, winding, traffic-calmed streets where it's most definitely not safe or convenient for cyclists or motorists.
That's definitely the preferable path if there are significant numbers of pedestrians, yes. If the sidewalk is basically empty, I think it's okay to ride. And there are some 'multi-use paths' I've seen that are basically still just sidewalks where bikes are explicitly permitted.
Wide paths with a modest number of bikes are usually OK. But I've definitely been on narrower paths and trails where cyclists are expecting you to step off to the side every two minutes because you're in their way. I don't mind every now and then when I'm walking but it can get to the point where you can't really mix modes.
In this context, that statement is wrong. Cycle paths mostly keep cyclists safe from cars. They don't do much for pedestrians.
Worse, it seems that in recently years the city of Amsterdam is set on creating cycle paths in just about all streets but can't be bothered to engineer them properly. So the whole thing becomes a bigger and bigger mess.
Vancouver, a very bicycle friendly city, has numerous shared pedestrian and bike paths. Most of the ones that are shared are usually sidewalk transitions between bike lanes and busy streets where there simply isn't space to build a separated bike path.
That said, many, many of the bike and pedestrian paths are adjacent and are only separated by a painted lines, and signs urging pedestrians to stay out of bike lanes :/
We have 200 m total of segregated bike paths in my city so I don't have too much of an opinion on them.
My complaint is the feeling of being forced to use them when they are the dirtiest and most dangerous part of the road. They are just dashed white lines that were designed by someone who drove down the street in a Transit van once.
Since I've been moved to WFH I exclusively cycle on country roads, I feel like if we had more segregated bike paths in the city I wouldn't mind being stuck behind people, I feel like commuting or cycling into town is a different thing from cycling for exercise or as a sport.
I live in a country where cycling as a mode of transport is basically non-existent, 95% of the people I see on bikes are on road bikes and wearing lycra, so it's possible I'd feel differently about segregated lanes if there more of a cycling-as-transport culture here.
Agreed -- many of the shared paths have low 10-15mph speed limits for pedestrian safety which is fine for a recreational cyclist, but for someone going to work, 20mph on the flats is doable by a reasonably fit cyclist.
When there's a road next to a mixed-use path, I'll usually take the road since it's safer and easier than sharing with the pedestrian traffic.
So when I last visited Perth, I bought a bicycle and rode around a lot. Google Maps was helpful here in showing where the bike paths are. While other people might feel fine riding in traffic I never have and probably never will. Honestly I just don't trust drivers, particularly in this era of smartphones.
Anyway, there are vast differences in what people view as a bike path. Take Reid Highway as an example [1]. Those strips on either side of the road are the bike path. This is a highway with a speed limit of 90kph (~55mph), which probably means people are really going 120kph on what is essentially the hard shoulder.
There's no way in hell I'd ride on that. Personally I considered something like this stretch of Morley Drive [2] to be a good standard of biking infrastructure, for several reasons:
1. Wide bike path separated from the road
2. The road has a wide median strip. I can't tell you how much this helps in crossing busy roads.
3. The bike path isn't right up against the walls of residential properties. This can be a real nightmare for visibility of cars pulling out.
4. Bike paths shouldn't be clogged with pedestrian traffic either as in if it's a busy pedestrian area, have a separate pedestrian path.
Personally I just like to find long residential streets with minimal busy road crossings. You can fly down those things and don't have to second guess what cars are doing most of the time.
As for America in particular, I've said it once and I'll say it again the most anti-cyclist (and anti-pedestrian) rule is the ability to turn right at a red light and it's almost universal in the country. Even in places where it's technically illegal (eg the five boroughs of NYC) you have people who either don't know or don't care (eg once I told some driver fairly calmly after they did it and stopped at the traffic 50 feet down the road that it was illegal in NYC they told me to go F myself).
While these trails are nice (obviously, we need recreational spaces), they don't do anything for congestion or commuting.
reply