Someone was killed on the 401. Are these highways really safe?
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/cyclist-struck-lyon-laurier-crash-1.3744035
Someone just got killed on Ottawa's only separated bike lane. Are these bike lanes really safe?
http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/cyclist-struck-lyon-laurier-crash-1.3744035
Someone just got killed on Ottawa's only separated bike lane. Are these bike lanes really safe?
No, not safe enough, which means Ottawa should revisit the design, and consider a concrete curb to separate the lane such that vehicles turning right can't impinge on the cycle lanes. Radius too tight? Then vehicles will have to slow down more. Problem addressed.http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/cyclist-struck-lyon-laurier-crash-1.3744035
Someone just got killed on Ottawa's only separated bike lane. Are these bike lanes really safe?
This is my second reply to this, because I'm just just sat down to read the Financial Times, and lo and behold, they have an extensive multi-diagramed, illustrated and researched Weekend Magazine article on exactly this point. And to allow everyone to read it, this article is *non-subscription*! (illustrations removed to conserve text copy limit)http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/cyclist-struck-lyon-laurier-crash-1.3744035
Someone just got killed on Ottawa's only separated bike lane. Are these bike lanes really safe?
https://ig.ft.com/sites/urban-cycling/Is urban cycling worth the risk?
FRIDAY, 2 SEPTEMBER 2016
If you live in a big city, you may have thought about cycling to work. You will have weighed up the pros and cons: the health benefits, the low cost, the speed – versus the fact that you might be hit by an 18-tonne articulated lorry. On balance, you may have decided you didn’t want to take the risk.
You would be in the majority. In 2014, 64 per cent of people surveyed by the UK’s Department of Transport said they believed it was too dangerous for them to cycle on the road. These decisions are often based on gut feelings or anecdote: a friend who has had a great experience commuting by bike can inspire us to follow suit, while seeing or hearing about a bad cycling accident may put us off for life.
Such experiences are important. But what do the data say? As cities grow busier, obesity levels rise and climate change becomes a more pressing concern, we asked the FT’s transport correspondent and two of our specialist data journalists to investigate the risks and benefits of commuting by bike in big cities, something all of them do regularly. Here they give us their verdict: is it worth it?
Death and accidents
by Robert Wright, FT transport correspondent
When a new cycle superhighway opened along London’s Blackfriars Road this year, a long-standing danger was removed. The traffic lights were phased so that cyclists didn’t have to go through the junction at the same time as motor vehicles.
Nine cyclists died riding in London in 2015, all of them hit at intersections, highlighting the concentration of danger at these key pressure points. The designers of London’s new cycle superhighways have made safer junctions a priority. Transport for London, the government agency responsible for the capital’s transport system and the creator of superhighways, is also pushing truck operators to introduce new types of lorry with better visibility, because big trucks are involved in a disproportionately high number of crashes affecting cyclists.
These steps are typical of the efforts under way across the industrialised world to make urban cycling safer. Policy makers hope that, by providing better spaces for cyclists to use, they can encourage the growth of a clean, low-cost transport mode that will take some strain off existing transport systems.
“What we know is that the single biggest thing which deters non-cyclists from cycling is the fear of being injured by a car or a lorry,” says Ben Plowden, a senior director of planning at TfL.
Mile by mile, people in the UK are actually more likely to die walking than cycling, according to figures from the Department for Transport. For every billion miles cycled last year, 30.9 cyclists were killed, while 35.8 pedestrians were killed for every billion miles walked. Both activities are significantly safer than riding a motorbike – 122 motorcyclists are killed for every billion miles driven.
Of more concern are the statistics around injury. The UK’s overall casualty rate for cyclists, a broader measure which counts serious injuries and slight injuries as well as deaths, was around 5,800 per billion miles in 2015, not far off the casualty rate for motorcyclists – and almost three times higher than the 2,100 per billion miles for pedestrians. As well as cutting the fatality rate, TfL hopes its safety improvements can reduce the rate of injuries.
The front rank of cycle-safe cities worldwide are in northern Europe. City Cycling, published in 2012 and edited by John Pucher and Ralph Buehler, calculated the average number of annual cyclist deaths over the previous five years for every 10,000 daily cycle commuters in big European and American cities. London, with an average of 1.1 deaths per 10,000 commuters, fared better than New York’s 3.8. But both lagged far behind the 0.3 annual average deaths in Copenhagen and 0.4 in Amsterdam.
Simon Munk, infrastructure campaigner for the London Cycle Campaign, says the evidence suggests cycling is higher in cities with safe, segregated lanes and well-designed junctions. While cyclists in London still enjoy only patchy areas of segregation from traffic, their counterparts in Amsterdam and Copenhagen often spend their whole commutes isolated from cars.
Patchy information in the industrialised world makes it hard for statisticians to be more precise than Pucher and Buehler. Data for cities in the developing world – such as Delhi and Beijing – are still more incomplete. “In the cities where people feel under threat, they probably are under threat,” Munk says.
New York and many other world cities are planning similar road improvements to London to increase cycle safety. Paul Steely White, executive director of Transportation Alternatives, a cycle-advocacy group, says his organisation has worked with New York’s Department of Transportation to devise plans for safer junctions. Michael Schenkman, 78, hit in Bayside, Queens, on August 24, became the 16th cyclist to die in New York this year. Such tragic deaths tend to be concentrated, White says, on the city’s periphery, much of which lacks specialist facilities for cyclists, while traffic is heavy and fast-moving.
Some people may never be tempted on to their city’s roads until cycle paths are entirely separate, as in many parts of the Netherlands. In more than 20 years of urban cycling in the UK, I have been knocked off by motor vehicles twice and once by another cyclist. It was only by good fortune that I escaped serious, long-term injury. But the bald facts of those incidents fail to capture anything like the whole, complex picture of the risks I’m taking. Heart disease, cancer, stroke and a tendency to put on weight all pose far more serious risks to my life expectancy than the relatively small risk of a fatal crash.
All forms of transport entail some risk. I was knocked down as a child while crossing a street. I crashed my dad’s car off the road during my first driving lesson. I’ve been caught underground in a subway train during a track fire. Riding a bicycle represents, even under current sub-optimal conditions, a good trade-off between risks and rewards. And as urban design becomes more protective of cyclists, that trade-off can only improve.
[...more sections continue at length...]
https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/20...ghlights-danger-of-parking-in-bike-lanes.htmlVideo of cyclist getting ‘doored’ highlights danger of parking in bike lanes
Video shows Chelsea Mobishwash, 25, careening into a pole after being hit by a truck door opening.
Chelsea Mobishwash, a 25-year-old business student, was doored by a person in a truck that was parked in the Adelaide bike lane. The incident happened Aug. 26, 2016, near the intersection of Adelaide St. West and Morrison St. in west downtown Toronto
By BEN SPURRTransportation Reporter
Fri., Sept. 2, 2016
Video of a crunching bicycle crash in downtown Toronto last week is apparent proof that travelling in separated bike lanes is no guarantee of safety for the city’s riders.
The footage, posted online by 25-year-old crash victim Chelsea Mobishwash, captures the moment on Friday, Aug. 26 when she was “doored” by the occupant of a truck parked in a portion of the bike lane on Adelaide St. West., at Morrison St.
The video was shot by a surveillance camera at a nearby store. In it, a person inside the truck can be seen swinging the passenger-side door open just as Mobishwash rides by, sending her careening into a pole and then onto the ground.
In an interview Friday, Mobishwash, a George Brown business student who also works at a robot vacuum company, said the crash is just a blur in her memory. But she remembers that as she approached the truck, she wasn’t sure anyone was inside, and she rang her bell several times just in case.
“I started speeding on by, and as I was going by I felt something collide with me, and to be honest I really had no idea it was the door,” she said. “I just remember feeling really confused as to why I didn’t make it through, I had plenty of space. . . I was in a lot, a lot, a lot of pain.”
Mobishwash said her left arm was gashed by the door, and required six stitches, but luckily no bones were broken. She said she received painful bruises to the left side of her body and her ribs, and a week after the accident it still hurts to breathe. She can barely use her left arm.
Chelsea Mobishwash is seen on Adelaide street west near Spadina where she was hit. (RICHARD LAUTENS / TORONTO STAR) | Dooring is an offence under the provincial Highway Traffic Act, and carries a fine of at least $365 and three demerit points. Smith said police have 30 days after the alleged offence to lay a charge.
Parking in a bike lane is also against city bylaws and carries a $150 fine, but the charge can’t be laid retroactively, according to Smith.
Jared Kolb, executive director of Cycle Toronto, described the footage of Mobishwash’s crash as “gutting.” He said the incident is evidence that the city needs to revisit the design of its separated bike lanes, which mostly rely on “flexi-posts” to provide a physical barrier between bicyclists and car traffic.
The posts, which have been used on separated bike lanes on Adelaide, Richmond St., and Bloor St., have gaps between them and “are not working to keep motor vehicles out of the bike lanes. That’s something we see repeatedly,” Kolb said.
The lane on Adelaide, like those on Bloor and Richmond, have been installed on a pilot project basis.
According to the city’s manager for cycling infrastructure, Jacquelyn Hayward Gulati, monitoring of Adelaide has shown that the flexi-posts “reduce illegal stopping and parking within the cycle tracks.”
In an emailed statement, Gulati pointed out that the city has installed other forms of separation, like planters, on some parts of its bikeway network. “Improving road safety is one of the city's key objectives,” she said.
Excellent! Even if that's not exactly what could be used, it's the gist of what could be. Bollards as is are a sick joke...pardon me, ...a *killing* joke.Doesn't even need to be a concrete curb. I saw these used in Madrid to create bus lanes last year. They'd be effective as bike lanes too, and simply need to be screwed into the ground just like bollards, so not much work or cost.
These lanes need to adopt a lot of #VisionZero practices.http://www.cbc.ca/beta/news/canada/ottawa/cyclist-struck-lyon-laurier-crash-1.3744035
Someone just got killed on Ottawa's only separated bike lane. Are these bike lanes really safe?
Bravo - hear, hear!These Recycled Plastic Dividers Can Create A Bike Lane In A Second
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I dunno, what if Toronto Roads Dep't can't read the instructions?
The lights would go a long way...provided both motorists and cyclists observe them...to addressing a lot of dangers. But Toronto is unwilling to do it right.These lanes need to adopt a lot of #VisionZero practices.
Including traffic light bike-safety-optimized timings to make left/right turns red/illegal until bikes have gone ahead. Currently, these don't.
What trail? I just cycled into Toronto from the east, and would have followed the Don River Trail south from Pottery Rd save for your talking of this "newest cycle path". There's nothing there that I could see! And I hit Bayview during rush-hour. Yikes! Had to detour up the other way with the trail towards Mr Pleasant, no way for continuing on Bayview south in those conditions. Ended up coming across town on Dupont...that's punishment for something.OK, new topic:
Toronto's newest cycle path must be Bayview Ave from Rosedale Valley Road to Pottery Road. The paving finished up last week, and the connection to the east side Don Valley trail via a new pedestrian bridge is to be completed this autumn.
I found the trail surprisingly narrow with a few misplaced hydro poles in the trail itself. It seems as though there will be some sort of barrier between the roadway and the cycle path (right now there are just a bunch of large orange pylons). However, it is much better than nothing and helps connect the Brick Works to surrounding neighbourhoods.
The lower Don trail improvements seem to be delayed by complications at the Bala Underpass. Technically the trail is closed, but many were sneaking through the fences just fine.