aspiringcyclist wrote:It looks like getting the car parking ban and widening of the cycle lane was a tough battle that took 10 years. I've read that pavement cycling is still a problem, though. Pavement cycling is a sign that the conditions aren't good enough, which is why I think it shouldn't be used as an example of high quality infrastructure.
Yes, pavement cycling shows that conditions aren't good enough, but it's general conditions over the whole network that have caused it to be a habit. If you cycle on the pavements anyway, why change your habits just for that road? It's an indicator, but not a smoking gun.
aspiringcyclist wrote:I'm not 100% certain about what turn you are referring to, but if I understand correctly, it's a fair point. I'm not sure on road cycle lanes provide much advantage in way of position though, perhaps just better visibility because there are no vans blocking the lane. The on road cycle path is probably quicker as you don't have to slow down and make a sharp 90 degree turn but instead change lanes and make a graceful turn if the opposing traffic is clear.
With the subjective safety of either, the popularity of segregation suggests people feel more secure. There's also the bus stops and ASLs which aren't good.
The thing I'm trying to get across isn't that one is better than the other, but that the degree to which it's clear cut depends on more than the road width and some pictures. Take that turn (forward a couple of stops in Streetview, next left, opposite the white van parked ~100m on from the start view, Zwartwatersweg) and from the pictures you're now in a 30 km/h zone and there is no other measure for bikes visible at all (in fact it's a through-route with similar connectivity to Gilbert Road). So is that street a cycling fail? Or is that street not busy enough to warrant doing anything more than the 30 km/h zone? I don't really know, because even assuming I could make objective sense of it I don't have enough information on traffic flow etc. and frankly, I don't know enough about cycle infrastructure and how it affects everything else.
What I'm trying to get at is it's not as simple as "fietspad good, on-road lane bad, end of". As Einstein said, a thing should be as simple as possible, but no simpler. Where you need the extra degree of complication it will make things work better, where you don't it will just cost more and get in the way. It takes more than a picture and an armchair expert (i.e., someone like me, quite possibly you) to reliably decide where the line goes. Someone has decided your target street there needs fietspads either side, but that Zwartwatersweg needs nothing at all: I suspect they went on a bit more info than is contained in the picture.
I'm happy to tell people what doesn't work backed up with reasons based on my own practical experience, but with a few odd exceptions coming up with an optimum solution based on the amount of info available here is in danger of underestimating the problems and overestimating our ability as lay people to fix it. "Nothing is impossible for the man that doesn't have to do it himself"...
Pete.
