03-06-2022, 10:33 PM
(03-06-2022, 09:28 PM)danbrotherston Wrote:(03-06-2022, 08:45 PM)bravado Wrote: I have a planning/engineering question... I've been really liking the multi-use trail along Franklin in Cambridge. It's a really great way to get North-South in the city. It unfortunately has a LOT of driveway crossings and some very un-attentive drivers.
Since Franklin is a separated road, people trying to pull out of their driveway/parking lots are only looking at traffic from one direction and constantly don't notice me coming on a bike in the other direction. What sort of path/driveway design would help with this, other than the existing awful dotted lines?
This gas station for example has people turning in constantly and they never check for any pedestrians or bikes. This seems pretty negligent to me?
I am not an engineer, which means that I am not qualified to sign plans.
But I feel that I am more qualified to answer this question than our engineers are, since they actually build stuff like this, that is just utterly incompetent.
The first thing that should happen, is the path should be visually distinct from the driveway. They are both in asphalt right now, drivers don't have any reason to even know they are crossing paths with other road users.
Visual distinction could be the dotted line you mention, but even better would be a stronger signal using colour (most Dutch paths are red, we prefer green apparently.
Raising the path above the driveway would further strengthen this distinction for drivers.
Narrowing the driveway and squaring off the entrance would also reduce the speed drivers enter and exit the driveway.
Moving the path back from the road, so leave enough space between the path and the road for a driver to wait (allowing drivers to focus on the path, then after focus on the road).
Disallowing driveways on busy roads (which creates stroads) would make getting in and out of the driveway easier so the cognitive load on drivers is reduced giving them more attention to spend on you.
And I mean, this is off the top of my head. It's not like this is rocket science. It's not that our engineers couldn't figure this out (they certainly don't know it), but they don't care...this path meets all their engineering standards, so they aren't liable if you get hit, and it meets the requirements council gave them for active transportation without taking space from cars. That is their ONLY concern, they see this as a major success. Even better, they will later use the poor uptake of this infrastructure to justify NOT building more infra in the future.
What's even crazier is that the gas station has another entrance on the other side, they didn't close a single one to keep pedestrians and cyclists safe. This little miserable plaza has 3 entrances and they didn't get rid of any. The used car dealership next to it still has 2!