Sunday, June 30, 2024

Cyclists, Drivers, Runners and Pedestrians

One challenge for urban designers is that cyclists exist in an awkward superposition state between pedestrians and drivers - bikes are larger than people but smaller than cars; cycling is faster than walking and slower than driving.

Across the road network, therefore, we've generally accepted that dedicated bike lanes are an appropriate compromise - they create dedicated space for bikers ranging from 10 mph to 25 mph at the cost of ~6 horizontal feet.

The rise of electric scooters and bikes, however, necessitate a similar segmentation on mixed-use trails - because electric assistance increases the median speed of a bike has increased from ~10-15 mph to 15-20mph, the gap between both walkers and runners and cyclists has become much larger. Especially on highly-trafficked trails, situations in which two cyclists at different speeds are trying to pass pedestrians is becoming increasingly common.

The solution is to split off a packed gravel running and walking trail from an asphalt-based cycling trail. It should be well-graded to support strollers and ideally isolated from the biking trail as much as possible - e.g. by putting a pedestrian trail on one side of a river and a bike trail on the other side.

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