It’s really dangerous to ride a bike on the roads in my 3rd world city even walking is dangerous due to bike lanes basically being ignored, motorcycles weaving around traffic, and poor nighttime lighting.
I just thought that dedicated bike/walking only roads connecting the major parts of my city would be a big boost for safety and I think it would greatly reduce the amount of people using cars.
Has this been tried somewhere else? Was it successful?
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Oh boy, strap in, you’re entering a world full of glory but also sadness because it’s not your reality :(
The short: yes and it’s even wide spread in some countries. Even in car obsessed Germany it’s usual to have either separate bike lanes or walking/biking only areas. Not wide spread or where we need it from my point of view but it does exist.
And then there’s Amsterdam. The only place I’m aware of the has a dedicated Wikipedia page(!) just about it’s cycling infrastructure:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cycling_in_Amsterdam
But this is not only a western thing. From what I’ve read and heard Singapore for example has an amazing infrastructure for waling and biking as well.
As a Dutchman, Amsterdam is fine but it is not the prime example of how to build cycling infrastructure. It’s quite busy and hectic, and there are many places around the country that simply do it better.
Groningen is usually the main example used for a great city to cycle in, and Houten is a good example of suburbia that prioritizes cycling.
I live in Eindhoven, and I’d even argue that cycling here is less hectic and stressful than cycling in Amsterdam (though Eindhoven is historically one of the more car-brained cities in the Netherlands)
Edit: Worth noting that Amsterdam isn’t bad. It’s probably still better than most cities around the world in terms of cycling infrastructure.
Amsterdam is quite ok really, except for the crowded city center because there is barely any space between the buildings. This leads to the same chaos as big cities in developing countries (everybody is everywhere).
They try a lot harder then Eindhoven, which is a shame because Eindhoven actually is roomy enough for dedicated space for everyone.
Shout out to Not Just Bikes, he has tons of video footage on cycling in the Netherlands.
Check out Amsterdam and Copenhagen!
I currently live in Malmö, Sweden which is not as known for this, but is one of the best cities for biking in Sweden.
I have lived in smaller towns in Sweden with great bike infra as well.
It is not unusual, it all depends on the city planners to not blow 100% of the budget on cars.
I was just in Copenhagen and went over to Malmo for a day. Just want to say that you live in a great city. Loved my time there and the people.
My home town built a bicycle-only bridge with a road surface that’s heated to slightly above freezing in winter.
It’s the shortest connection between 2 major districts:
There’s also a bicycle tunnel under the old town:
There’s a truck on the bicycle bridge?
Yeah, as soon as the bridge was finished, a truck tried to drive over it to take a shortcut.
They had to fix the bridge, fined the driver, and I believe built a barrier./r/fuckcars
Classic
I very much dislike when a municipality feels the need to drench their flagship bicycle infrastructure project in road paint. It adds hundreds of thousands in cost just to seal away the grippy asphalt (Did you know that asphalt pavement was originally popularized by cyclists?) under a thick layer of polymer that invariably gets slick when wet, and communicates a subtext that bike infra isn’t normal and common but so special and rare that we have to mark it with an incongruous color of paint throughout. Feels so very car brained and pandery.
Sorry for the rant. Both of those projects still look very fun and useful.
In the US, we tend to call them “multi-use paths” rather than “bike roads” and they too often get designed more for recreation than transportation, but yes, even very car-dependent cities are building them.
Case in point: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlanta_Beltline
The more popular parts of the beltline are basically unrideable on the weekends, with wall to wall people. Atlanta could be a great bike city—a year round bikable city—if they weren’t so focused on cars. It’s sad.
One of the towns I ride through has a really busy/dense section of the bike & pedestrian trail that splits into a pedestrian only section and a bike only section for 2 miles. The bike section always has people walking on it during the weekends, even when there’s plenty of room on the pedestrian side. Most weekends are still rideable, but some days I just ride in the street so it doesn’t take half an hour to go 3 miles.
Stateside the big one I know is the Minneapolis greenway, which is a proper road reserved just for bikes and occasional buses. There are a handful of rails to trails projects all over, but I don’t think they’re quite what you have in mind
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_highway We got some of these where I live (Nope, not the Netherlands). It is quite comfortable as there are signs leading you to the fast lanes and they connect the whole city. It is bikes only and where the lane crosses roads, you have the right of way
In my city (Vienna, AT), there is a long stretch of cycleway right beside a river, parallel to one of the busiest roads (which runs one level further up): https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Wientalradweg
Walking is technically also allowed there, but not a lot of people do it because there are sidewalks on the top too, which lead to more destinations.
There is also a former metro viaduct that’s been converted to a cycleway, though again, walking is allowed there too: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Bertha-Zuckerkandl-Weg,_Vienna
Of course the shores of the Danube and Donaukanal, including the Donauinsel, are basically (narrow) parks in which cycling is also allowed.
Not quite the same but my area has walkways and trails in park and forest preserve areas that can kinda be used. As someone mentioned the park ones can get crowded but are great if you just time it right. Like at one point I had a 3 mile bike ride but I would bike to miles to get to the lake front trail and do the three miles on it then bike 2 miles back in the morings because it was just so great. Opposite of what you sorta looked for as I more than doubled my commute and even increase my time on road bike lanes but again. soooooo nice.
Yes, dedicated bike lanes aren’t that uncommon, Amsterdam is famous for them. In SEA, bicycle+motorbike only roads aren’t uncommon, though its usually dictated by Right Of Way being too narrow to permit cars.
Honestly, so many hundreds of motorbikes can flow down 15 feet of road per minute, the issue is cars blocking the flow, which causes motorcyclists to behave chaoticly as they all fight to get ahead. Sections of Hanoi where they ban cars at certain hours are infinitely nicer to walk or bicycle through. In places where the motorbikes go too fast, speed bumps, lane narrowing, and other traffic devices keep them at reasonable speeds
I think that Fläming-Skate might also count, but it isn’t exactly for Bikes.
There is the Radschnellweg Ruhr (Bike Fastlane Ruhr) it’s (a planned total of) 115km of freestanding bike lanes (17km in parts has been created already). Source (Sorry it’s only German, translate with service of your choice.) https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radschnellweg_Ruhr_(RS1)
Prepared to be orange pilled. A wonderful world is waiting for you. But you will suffer like many of us to know it can be done but you will have to fight to make it happen.
Livermore, CA has some.
London has quite a few dedicated routes just for bikes. The UK in general has also got places where the bike lane is segregated from the cars by a kerb and painted bike lanes on roads are such a common sight you don’t even notice them. Near where I live they just closed a major road for 6 months so they could build a bridge over it for bikes.
