What impact will e-biking have on marked bicycle routes?

ebikemom

Well-Known Member
I find it interesting the the marked bicycle routes in a city I regularly cycle through are on arterials, when there are residential street options that are safer routes. Now, those arterials ARE flatter than the residential route. And, in this particular city, there are both views and parks if one takes an alternate route. I wonder how e-biking, if it becomes prevalent (or WHEN it becomes prevalent) will impact marked bicycle routes? With hills no longer a problem, there are safer routes than the flatter arterials. Thoughts?
 
Interesting observation eBikemom!

I would say it will be a long time before that a possibility. There will always be standard bike riders, even if eBikes take a large market share. Therefore there will be the need for them to be standard bike friendly.
 
I think the real impact is that the wider adoption of e-bikes will mean there are more cyclists out there riding more miles, which will make it much harder for local governments to ignore the needs of cyclists.

Personally, while in many ways I love Seattle and lived there for many years, I have to admit that Seattle is developmentally impaired in many ways. If you compare the rapid adoption of superior biking infrastructure in Portland or Vancouver, BC or Victoria, BC to Seattle the Jet City just looks kind of pathetic. The current screaming fight about cycling infra that the City Council doesn't want to build is merely a symptom of the larger problem.

And while I think Vancouver and Victoria are about as good as it gets for cycling infra in North America, they are still quite pathetic by Dutch standards.
 
In Wenatchee, the majority of the bike routes are not on the arterials. They meander through the neighborhoods paralleling the arterials.
 
I won't live long enough to see any impact in my city. They are making a nice effort for real bicycle lanes as they improve major streets. But the majority of the marked routes just consists of an arrow on an existing street sign (usually a stop sign). I finally saw another eBike last night. I can go months without seeing another eBike on our major Greenway.
 
In Wenatchee, the majority of the bike routes are not on the arterials. They meander through the neighborhoods paralleling the arterials.

This is also the case on Mercer Island. In Bellevue, though, while some arterials are avoided (like Bellevue Way), others are not, I think in order to avoid hills.
 
On the last 1.2 miles of my commute home, which is an average 5% grade with the steepest section at 10% the City and County of Honolulu is actually putting in a bike lane but only halfway up the grade. I guess they figure we must walk our bikes up from that point so no sense on wasting paint. Anyway, there's maybe only 3 of us who are determined enough to bike up this hill and they're putting in a bike lane. There are other places that have real bike traffic to warrant a bike lane and they give us one. Starting next week, there will be only 2 analog cyclists as I will be waving to them as I pass on my RadRover. :cool:

On the flip side, State DOT removed the bike lanes from a major secondary road that does see a lot of bike traffic in order to make way for an elevated train that is already 7 billion dollars over budget, years behind schedule and will probably never be operational. It sure would make a nice elevated bike lane though. ;)
 
As a soon to be e-rider but long time traditional rider I've been seeing good progress within the cities along the San Francisco peninsula, in particular Palo Alto. My wife and I rented a couple of demo e-bikes yesterday and road through Palo Alto and the Stanford campus. Pretty good variety of roads including arterials with protected bike lanes. Saw about 5 other e-bike when riding through the campus compared to 100 or more traditional bike riders.

My town of San Mateo is making good progress. I would like to see more infrastructure for securing bikes near the resturants and cafes.

One point about riding side street vs. arterials are the number of stop signs and the impact to your flow as a bike commuter. Also more things likely to dart out from between the cars like squirrels, cats, dogs, and even Puma's in some of our neighborhoods. ;)
 
State DOT removed the bike lanes from a major secondary road that does see a lot of bike traffic in order to make way for an elevated train that is already 7 billion dollars over budget, years behind schedule and will probably never be operational. It sure would make a nice elevated bike lane though.

Repurposing infrastructure to accommodate bike lanes is great. It’s encouraging to see DC DoT designing a bike lane for a new rail bridge over the Potomac. Legacy infrastructure provides its own challenges though, for instance DC DoT has declared it impossible to widen the ridiculously narrow 4’ wide two way sidewalk/bikepath along the I-66 Teddy Roosevelt bridge across the Potomac despite the fact they could at least relocate to the shoulder of the roadway the low traffic barrier that some idiot built into the path that is just the right height to topple a cyclist from the path into the traffic.

One big impact are the new e-bikeshare companies like Uber/Jump, LimeBike, they are convincing the cities in which they operate to update their ebike regulations, for DC this should hopefully mean the DoT will no longer mis-interpret municipal regulations to argue ebikes should not be permitted on the cities bike lanes.
 
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In Portland it is a mixed bag of side streets and some what the heck were they thinking. I don't think anyone will mind if you chart your own course. The less traffic the better.

When I was based out of Fisherman's Terminal doing boat work a few years ago I would ride mine up in Queen Anne all the time as the bike lane was less effort to get around there but not as scenic. Best thing is you look across at the water tower and say let's go there next. In fact I have pretty much covered the whole town over the years. Seattle is a great place to bike as well as here.
 
There is a lot more to great bicycle infra than painted-on bike lanes:

America's best new bike lanes 2015

Protected Intersections

Bicycle-friendly roundabouts

My point is that this is a solved problem. Civil engineers know how to make pretty decent bicycling infrastructure. Getting to there from here is a matter of political will. That means being a noisy, loud, cantankerous, and engaged citizen and emphatically being a squeaky wheel.

 
I live in Vancouver, and my completely unscientific observation is that they don't make a huge effort to put bike paths on flatter routes. I think where it makes sense and they have two good choices that they probably pick the flatter route, but there are some parts where they have to put bike paths on big hills. I think there's more of an effort to put bike paths where it's either not that busy or where they have room for the bike lanes and can make it relatively safe.
 
@Mr. Coffee Love the "car-free Sundays" idea in the video. Can you imagine that in any major city in the US? Wishful thinking. Probably take another major oil crisis for bikes to get serious attention here.
 
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