London Cycling Design Standards

Most of my time at work and in researching bikeway planning and design is spent happy and excited in finding out what other places in the world are doing to make cycling a safe, efficient, and preferred mode of transportation. There is another chunk of my time that is spent in utter frustration at my own city and country in why we aren't willing to embrace such simple solutions to our bike culture regression.

In some of my meetings with the New York transportation officials, they mentioned that their main case study was the city of London and their Design Standards. I have been delving into their strategies and my mixed emotions were again surfaced.

The adjacent graph summed up how simple bike planning can be. My biggest adversaries to bike facilities, typically ask why we are proposing the particular bike facilities in certain locations. The graph simply explains how car speed and volume, regulate when and where to implement certain facilities. I am always the first to try to calm traffic and keep bikes in travel lanes, but in good conscience I cannot put bikes in direct contact with automobiles when speeds and volumes are higher than most people would feel comfortable riding in. Things can be as simple as riding a bike, and America needs to look at the successes of other countries to see where they can crib the solutions and reap the results.