> Furthermore, many routes chosen are often potentially not very pleasant for the cyclist
And how. I've found that my preferred routes don't just differ from what Google Maps might suggest, they also tend to avoid all the places that my city thought might be a good place for a posted bike lane. The bike lanes are all on noisy, busy streets that aren't pleasant to ride on, and the bike lanes themselves are often full of delivery trucks and rideshare drivers.
I choose a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation specifically because I dislike all the noise and rush and stress that automobiles represent, facilitate and encourage. I've already decided to take 5 minutes longer to get where I'm going for the sake of having a more pleasant life, I can spare another 5 minutes in order to have an even more pleasant life. Worst case scenario, it still beats anything Peloton wants to sell me.
> The bike lanes are all on noisy, busy streets that aren't pleasant to ride on
Usually they get put there because of it; a quiet residential street doesn't need nearly as much intervention to be good for cycling, so they don't really bother with it.
The other thing is that, particularly in non-gridded cities, the roads are noisy and busy because they are often the most direct, flat route from A to B.
Finally, these thoroughfares are usually the safest places to cross other, similar thoroughfares. Less busy roads will have lower priorities at crossings, which can mean no traffic lights giving you guaranteed passage to cross, or even physical blockers in the median preventing you from crossing as well.
I don’t know: Palo Alto has “bike boulevards” which are residential streets but - have nonstop signs (all stop signs are on the cross streets) and dead ends (for cars, not bikes or pedestrians) every few blocks. Really makes them worth taking.
I use these all the time and wish more cities would do it.
One downside is that the cross streets usually have cars just rolling through the stop signs with no attention paid to the possiblity of an oncoming cyclist. Maybe adding a bike indicator on all the stop signs would be a partial solution.
Parking a bike anywhere still sucks, even in a city that provides such well labeled lanes.
“Maybe adding a bike indicator on all the stop signs would be a partial solution.”
Doubtful. Motorists tend to be strongly apathetic to anyone but themselves. Probably a red light that’s capable of spotting a cyclist and timing a crossing would be a blue sky solution.
> Usually they get put there because of it; a quiet residential street doesn't need nearly as much intervention to be good for cycling, so they don't really bother with it.
In my view (I'm Dutch), every road and intersection needs to be built with pedestrians and cyclists in mind. You might even consider another mode, as electric bikes and similar can be quite a bit quicker than bikes, but slower than cars.
Alternatively, let's say everything is built for pedestrians and cyclists. Then cars just have to "make do" and only in busy roads you make it safe for everyone. That's considered crazy but exactly the case in many countries for both pedestrians and cyclists.
Easy example: try walking a few blocks in various cities. How long do you have to wait for traffic lights? Now try the same in The Netherlands. The wait in other countries is often insane (1-2 minutes).
The Netherlands has done a great job investing in infrastructure, but it's not really a typical place. Even when you include all the land set aside for farming and nature, the population density is very high. The region here is about the same physical size and has ~300,000 people. Dedicated infrastructure is often helpful, but there's not the resources or justification to build it everywhere.
As density goes up, the need for specific infrastructure goes up, but you don't have to get as intense about it as the Netherlands does to create an environment that's safe and pleasant for cyclists and pedestrians.
Montréal, for example, is about as dense as any other large North American city (which is to say, not very), but still does a great job without, from what I can tell, any serious expenditure of resources on physical infrastructure. There are a few physically separated bike lanes, but mostly the city just focuses on calming down the traffic: More one-way streets, left turns permitted at fewer intersections, and a ban on turning right at a red light go a long way toward making the city's streets more pleasant for everyone.
I even find it's more pleasant to drive there than it is in my city.
I have worked on this - I used to simulate motorized traffic to use as a deterrent to cycling routes but the latest iteration just proxies this using road class
http://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-55669-8
Google street view would be such a rich mine for data on route pleasantness, unfortunately google don't like people mining it.
A current gap in the market, by the way, would be routing for e-bikes. In the UK the power assistance is legally limited to 25km/h which means it actually makes sense to take hillier routes so you can climb using power assistance then descend fast under gravity alone. Not seen a router which can do that yet!
Lately I've been avoiding them, too, because pedestrians - especially kids - have a habit of stepping into them without warning.
I've come to prefer non-thoroughfare streets where it's understood that bikes get to use the road, too. There, the only thing I have to worry about is rideshare drivers and Waze people thinking that blasting through residential areas at 40mph is their birthright, but, fortunately, my city has recently started getting more proactive about installing traffic-calming features into the roads, and that kind of behavior seems to be on the decline.
Portland does something like this. Small streets that run parallel to large thoroughfares are designated as "neighborhood greenways", and have various traffic calming measures put in place.
> Lately I've been avoiding them, too, because pedestrians - especially kids - have a habit of stepping into them without warning.
Paint bicycle paths in red consistently, plus ensure there's a height difference (a step down from a pedestrian path, then another small section that's higher before you reach e.g. cars). Basically what's being done in The Netherlands. Do ignore Amsterdam experiences though, the city centre there is not a good example.
they separated the bike lane in front of my previous office on 2nd street in SF. This did not stop rideshare drivers from pulling over through the parking spaces into the bike lane, effectively completely blocking me off with parked cars on my right on several occasions. I only worked there for a few months after the separated bike lane was put in so maybe drivers are figuring it out now but it was definitely not helpful while i was riding it. In addition they painted the entire bike lane solid green, which certainly helped visibility of the bike lane (was that a problem?) but also made it incredibly slick. the stop light at the bottom of the hill had an absurd amount of 10+ foot skid marks from people trying to stop on the slick surface.
A separated bike lane is supposed to have a physical barrier; SF's 2nd street bike lane was just a "buffered" bike lane, which means there's just some extra space between motor traffic and the bike lane. Poking around it seems like the city may have recently added some safe-hit posts to improve it a little bit.
I'm sure it was a relatively freak occurrence, but in the 2 weeks I spent in the Netherlands, I almost got killed by a vehicle that used a separated bike lane to pass. They were traveling in the opposite direction as me and I had to move over into the curb area as we passed each other, or they would have run into me head on at 40 kph.
Separated bike lanes means you cant move out of the way quickly when there are slow newbie bikers (Ive had two accidents because of bikers like this who swerve unpredictably as a natural course of biking), pedestrians crossing over them, or garbage, or w/e in the way. I avoid them at any point where high speed is possible and Ive never seen a car complain because I know how to ride with traffic without slowing them down.
In my view separated bike lanes are for casuals, not serious commuters. I'd much prefer sharrows and marked mixed lanes personally. Just visual reminders to drivers to share the road is designate our area is sufficient IMO.
You are perhaps cycling more for sport than transport. Cycling infrastructure needs to be usable for the majority of people (age 6 to 86, fit, fat, bicycle, tricycle etc).
Segregated lanes in Denmark and the Netherlands work fine. Those using a bicycle for energetic exercise will choose quiet places and times, just like car drivers who want to drive fast can't use city streets.
No I commuted for years, I live close enough to walk to work now so I’m less invested in this debate these days.
But I just think the marked lanes and sharrows are a good enough compromise for the serious commuters and the casuals. I’m not an expert nor closer to the mean of the typical rider (I build my own bikes, ride fast but safe, like a bike messenger without the suicide wish) so I try not to get all holy about this.
I should also note I find Toronto’s more plentiful marked lanes to be pretty good but I avoid the separated one on Adelaide. it’s much improved over past years.
What are sharrows for? I already have the right to the road without the sharrows.
As far as I can tell, their only purpose is to let cities pretend that they have done something for bikers, while actually doing nothing.
perhaps less than nothing - if a sharrows implies anything, then the absence of a sharrows must imply the opposite, right? And there are a lot more streets without sharrows than with.
I'm pretty sure sharrows are for indicating to motorists that they should give you 20cm of margin when passing instead of the meter or so that would be customary on a street without them.
Like I said I’m not heavily invested in this argument but separated lanes aren’t a panacea and are probably the best compromise for the average rider. It’s just something me and a lot of people I know would avoid for safety and further push us into traffic while confused cars think we’re the dumb ones.
I’ve never been on a separated bike lane without it being jammed up and cluttered with people who don’t know what they are doing, unless it’s dead out I’m not using them or would avoid the street entirely.
I miss Montreal which built bike highways in neighborhoods adjacent to busy one way streets (another good idea). Riding there was always a joy. SF scared the shit out of me but mostly because the city is disgustingly dirty and the roads are weird.
'Speed differential' is a thing for any sort of traffic, be it cars, bicycles, and runners. 'Experience differential' is also a thing. It may be that one of the problems that you've experienced is due to the fact that you yourself "don't know what [you're] doing" and are riding far too aggressively amongst people who are learning or riding "casually" . . . as they have every right to.
That’s not a fair assessment of me nor the average biking commuter who does know what they are doing. There’s just always going to be a small minority who aren’t and are learning and I do not want to be forced into a tiny lane with them.
I’ve already said it’s probably the best compromise for tourist and casuals but I’m not using them unless as others mentioned they are wide enough for these people to be one side like a slow lane, others have mentioned Toronto has smaller ones than Copenhagen.
> probably the best compromise for the average rider
Isn't that a reason to support them?
> I’ve never been on a separated bike lane without it being jammed up and cluttered with people who don’t know what they are doing
Either:
a) It's busy. That happens in some places in Copenhagen during rush hour, and I have no right to go faster than anyone else. The city eventually widens the lanes, some are around 3-4m wide now [1], or people choose alternative routes, or allow 2 extra minutes for their journey. (I think some Dutch cities can be considerably worse, as there is less space due to all the canals.)
b) The people are children. Everyone gives them plenty of space.
c) They are tourists, or friends taking up the whole lane without realizing people want to pass. "Ping" them, the friends will move fairly quickly, the tourists... well, it's only the very centre of the city anyway. Treat them like young children, they have about that much experience on a bicycle.
> Like I said I’m not heavily invested in this argument but separated lanes aren’t a panacea
As mentioned, separated bike lines are way safer. Pedestrians won't suddenly step on bike lanes if you actually mark them properly and consistently, plus apply a height difference. Obviously there's exceptions to this but "right of way" goes in hand with "mistakes happen". Meaning, anticipate on what might happen. I cycle every day to work. There's something weird every single day. Sometimes a car, sometimes another bicycle, sometimes a pedestrian.
I live in The Netherlands btw, and those shared roads are _way_ more dangerous. What's way more likely is that the separated bike path was implemented in name, but missed out on the several bits that Netherlands has standard that other countries IMO completely mess up.
For the segregated cycle paths in Copenhagen, "legally, the minimum width is 1.7 metres"[1]. That cycle path on Adelaide Street, Toronto looks to be about as wide as the tram tracks (1.4m), but about ⅓ of it is wasted with rough asphalt at the edge, and for something like 80% of its length it's just paint, with the remaining 20% using poles and planters. There are also regular manholes.
One in Copenhagen [2] has a kerb most of the way, and is wider. It's still worse around the junctions than the standard design in the Netherlands [3] (somewhere in Rotterdam). (Note that both of these are typical, I clicked once on the map on a likely-looking medium-sized road.)
dmix praises Montreal, which looks to be approaching the Danish or Dutch quality, although still has a way to go -- there are gaps in the lanes, and they sometimes go traffic-side past parked cars.
I've only spent a few days of my life in the Netherlands, but my impression was that the secret ingredient that the Netherlands has and other places don't is nothing visible like infrastructure. It's that everyone generally understands how the system is supposed to work. I don't know if that's because of culture or formal education, but, in any case, it was really noteworthy. The etiquette was so clearly and consistently being followed by everyone that, even as a visitor, I was able to understand it well enough to not be in anyone's way (I think) within just an hour or two.
I mentioned way up above that I tend to avoid protected bike lanes in my city because pedestrians just walk into them without notice. The lanes in question do have a height difference. But, as far as I can tell, pedestrians aren't seeing the curb that separates the sidewalk from the bike lane and thinking, "Oh, the sidewalk ends here." They're looking a little bit further over, to the curb that separates the part of the street that's for cars from the part of the street that's for bikes, and thinking, "Oh, the street begins over there."
Around me in DC in roads with congested bike lanes the “serious” commuters tend to just ride with traffic. I think this works ok? The bike lane on 15th actually has two parallel lanes and you can overtake slower riders when there’s no oncoming traffic.
(Also I challenge the idea that relatively slow cyclists who nonetheless bike to work every day are somehow less serious)
Perhaps 1 in 500 cyclists in Copenhagen will use the road, even when it's congested. Even then, they usually do it only at the junctions, to get to the front or make an illegal turn on red.
Part of this will be cultural, Danes are relaxed and good at following rules, but it's also because it's less stressful just to wait until the next change of the lights, or go 20% slower and not have to pay attention to the cars.
This may be different in the US but all the separated bike lanes I have encountered in Europe are wide enough to pass other cyclists. There are also much fewer "slow newbie" bikers swerving around unpredictably than you seem to suggest.
Yes, sometimes you may need to slow down a bit because someone is already overtaking or the lane is too narrow but I will take that over having to share the road with cars any day of the week.
And FWIW I've been commuting by bike for about 20 years so I wouldn't consider myself a "casual".
Toronto doesn’t have that many separated and the ones I’ve been on have scared me more than riding on a street without any marking. I guess experiences my vary.
That's a complete opposite of how it is in The Netherlands. I don't think it's the experience though, it highly likely it's the implementation. In any other country they often completely mess up all of the bike infrastructure, including separated bike lanes only in name (loads of steps not done).
E.g. the width of the bike lane should be based on the amount of bikes they've estimated to ride on there. Bike traffic here is measured often. If needed the bike lane is expanded. Then height differences, consistent colouring, marking, etc. It should be obvious without thinking, something that's often not the case.
Bike lanes in the middle of a city are generally going to be interrupted by intersections every block or every few blocks anyway, so there's no reason to optimize for speed at the expense of the 'casuals' who make up most of the population.
In the UK council cycle paths seem to target the town centre, often a trains station and then run to the edge of the town. This is ok if you want to go to the town centre, but bad if you want to go anywhere else. The town centre is full of cars on tiny roads and other hazards.
I think cycle paths should be focused on running around the edge of urban areas in a ring. This would facilitate many more commuter journeys and help people avoid the centre. Cyclists would naturally use the quieter roads to access the ring.
I think there is much potential in this area. Google Maps et. al have basically solved A->B in most cities, most of the times. Strava has helped me with answering "I'm in a new city and want to bike 1-2 hours, where should I go" with their heat maps and route planner.
It would be nice if Google got their hands on the Strava data and integrated it for more casual bike-navigation.
I would also love a mode which lowers the cognitive load of navigation while biking. Perhaps I could save a minute by taking a short-cut involving 10 different turns, but when in unfamiliar territory (and hence using navigation software in the first place), each turn poses some difficulty. So many times I've missed to take a turn because the audio cues have been so ever slightly off.
>I would also love a mode which lowers the cognitive load of navigation while biking. Perhaps I could save a minute by taking a short-cut involving 10 different turns, but when in unfamiliar territory (and hence using navigation software in the first place), each turn poses some difficulty. So many times I've missed to take a turn because the audio cues have been so ever slightly off.
I would love having this mode for cars as well. Sometimes to shave off a couple of minutes, maps will route along the hypotenuse of a right triangle via a lot of turns on smaller roads. I would have preferred just going along the main road and making a single turn, even if that took a few minutes longer. This is especially important at night where the road signage may have reduced visibility.
I feel that pain. I live on a side street right off a very busy road. EVERY time, it suggests that I make a death-defying left turn, even though I could go one street over and turn with a stoplight.
Sometimes I do choose to make that left turn myself, though. In light traffic (middle of the night, etc.), it's easy and it's faster. In heavy traffic, it can be impossible.
If only they had access to traffic data, and if only they had people skilled in algorithms and AI, they could use those two things to figure out when to suggest (unprotected) left turns and when not to. Oh wait... they do have that data and that expertise.
I was driving the other day and pondered whether measuring pulse/blood pressure/other factors that indicate stress while traveling a recommended route (or even passively, correlating to time+day) could positively inform route quality.
(*It honestly seems to prefer them, even in Seattle where everything is a reflective sheet of glass and pedestrians are shrouded in urban camouflage 300 days of the year.)
Yeah, i think this is even more important for driving. on a bike, if i take a wrong turn it's no big deal, i'll turn around. in a car, i could be driving a while before i have an opportunity.
I would pay real money for a navigation app that would tell me which route was the easiest drive.
Every time I use Waze, I end up pulling my hair out from all the stress-inducing second-shaving measures. Left turns zig-zagging across the city? What could be bad about that??
The idea of low cognitive-load routing is great. One could take in to consideration "how does this driver/cyclist typically navigate to the point they've requested," and providing a route that augments an already well-worn mental path with something a little better and easier (or faster) as well.
Does Strava take user feedback as an input? It irks me how Maps/others seem to not take elevation, road condition, or general "pleasant-ness" in to consideration when it comes to routing …
Anecdotally, my impression was that Waze users tend to prefer routes that keep you moving and engaged (by making turns), while Google maps has tended towards picking equally fast routes but that might be more stop-and-go and boring.
… which reveals a lot of implied preferences that have been made. For in-city drives, what I'm looking for will depend what mood I'm in: Do I want to zone out and listen to a podcast? Blare music, scoot around, have fun? Take the scenic route?
I would agree that Maps and Waze strike me almost as opposing forces in how they do things … without making it apparent.
This is exactly why I hate Waze: people "scooting around" are exactly the worst ones to have on residential back-roads, where children might be playing, people sleeping, and where there's less often a cycle path.
Fortunately, traffic engineers in the larger European cities sometimes block off residential roads to cars to prevent "rat running".
Maybe routing apps should have an initial onboarding (or route-specific questions) similar to 401(k) / investing apps: "what is your tolerance for risk?" and "how well do you know this area?" and "do you like calm or active routes?"
That is what I do when I ride my bike to work. I ride a path I optimized from the shortest route to the safest and most pleasant (and still short enough). Good to see OSM can help us with that. I wish more people used and supported OSM instead of Google Maps.
The route that google maps gives me to ride my bike to work would be close to suicide. The route i take is basically parallel to it but a block away for 90% of the ride. much safer, prettier, and in total probably only about 500ft extra on a 5 mile ride.
Some software engineer on reddit developed trailrouter.com, which was designed for runners and does a pretty good job of finding the "scenic route." I talked with them for a bit and they set the weights so that it worked quite well from my neighborhood.
That sounds like a cool idea. Sadly, I tried it from my current (moderately rural) location and discovered the shortcomings of its knowledge of the local map. Best route is to run around the neighborhoods, but it doesn’t know that there’s a few foot paths connecting the roads making that possible. First, it suggested running along the highway (it sees the river and bike path and doesn’t realize there’s no sidewalk or walking path). Attempt 2 suggested starting out by running up the steepest hill in the area (ok, this is often unavoidable). Attempt 3 was mostly reasonable, except for the lovely jog at the end through the local manufacturer’s gated parking lot (they own both sides of aforementioned river, so the map sees water, and doesn’t realize that you’ll only see office buildings and asphalt). So the algorithm seemed to be fair, but the local map information was rather poor.
Author of trailrouter.com here. Your analysis sounds correct - I am indeed limited by the source data available, and you correctly infer that I rely on "features" available in openstreetmap (rivers, parks, etc). Nonetheless, would you mind sharing your location and I can take a look anyway? Feel free to email directly, my email is on the website.
I am that software engineer! Thanks for posting here. I've been working on some significant algorithm improvements over the past couple of weeks (which have just gone live), and have a few more bugfixes to make, then I was going to post it to HN myself in due course.
Is that first tool available to use somewhere? Looks like it was just a short-lived academic research paper and not something that was actually publicly released. I would love to try it out myself!
Walking is my favorite way to get to know a new city, and it not always easy to determine a good way to walk by eyeballing google maps if you’re not yet familiar with a new city.
The tool in the screenshot is https://maps.openrouteservice.org/. The greenery/noise filters are available there, but only for Germany. It is indeed an academic project, but is actively developed.
Disclosure: Author of trailrouter.com, which uses openrouteservice under the hood, but has its own algorithm for determining green/natural spaces to run in.
In Tokyo, when I have the choice between an above ground train or a below ground option, I tend to choose the above ground choice if I have time and it’s not too much slower. This way I can enjoy the view and avoid the subway tunnel noise. I’d love software that would factor these things in too.
So you can easily contribute to data (https://osm.org) or to one of these open source engines to achieve what you prefer.
Personally I have the feeling that especially for walking and cycling they are already better in many areas than Google or similar but as a co-founder of GraphHopper I might be influenced ;)
When a long distance girlfriend came to visit in SF, this feature would have been really handy. Instead, her first impression was the worst of the Mission and she ended up hating the city.
I spent considerable time looking into how this could be done well. There are numerous factors that could all be fed into an algorithm to calculate the "pleasantness" for each segment of the pedestrian network. I had focused on factors such as the distance between the traffic and the sidewalk, the speed and quantity of the traffic, and the barriers between. (curbs, trees, parked cars, etc.). Also intersections, trees, street lights, surfaces, etc. This article mentions the use of noise which is something I had not considered.
Just want to say Google: Can we please get the option to disable left turns onto major roadways from a side street with no stop sign for the major roadway?
I frequently have to reroute myself due to these “shortcuts”
As someone who lives in a very touristy city with a lot of hot spots for crime that locals know should be avoided, a navigation tool that knows how to take extra factors (like safety) into consideration when path-finding would be a real boon for the vacationers. So many times I've asked Google Maps how to get somewhere and taken a completely different route in the interest of my own safety, and there is no way for someone who is not local to know which areas to avoid.
Something like this is exactly what I've been looking for. I like walking both when I visit a new city and also walk regularly every day (trying to get to those 10k steps).
What I would like is something like google maps where I can say I want to walk from A to B (or back to A) but take a nice route, avoiding ugly/dangerous/crowded parts of town etc. The more configurable the better.
And how. I've found that my preferred routes don't just differ from what Google Maps might suggest, they also tend to avoid all the places that my city thought might be a good place for a posted bike lane. The bike lanes are all on noisy, busy streets that aren't pleasant to ride on, and the bike lanes themselves are often full of delivery trucks and rideshare drivers.
I choose a bicycle as my primary mode of transportation specifically because I dislike all the noise and rush and stress that automobiles represent, facilitate and encourage. I've already decided to take 5 minutes longer to get where I'm going for the sake of having a more pleasant life, I can spare another 5 minutes in order to have an even more pleasant life. Worst case scenario, it still beats anything Peloton wants to sell me.