Archinect - News

New York City is testing out new bike lane barriers across three boroughs this summer

2022-06-13T15:28:00-04:00

The city is experimenting with new types of bike lane barriers to separate cyclists from traffic ahead of what’s typically a busy summer biking season. It plans to install the materials in five locations in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens. It will also put up a new type of barrier in the Bronx to protect a bus lane there.

If effective, New York City’s Department of Transportation could include the new rubber and concrete barriers and curb designs as part of its plan to reinforce 20 miles of bike lanes in the city by the end of 2023. These barriers can effectively separate bike lanes from vehicular travel lanes without large-scale installation operations. The city also recently began deploying Jersey barriers, modular concrete or plastic barriers used to separate traffic, to secure bike lanes. The test for these new bike lane barriers is to see how effective they are in preventing vehicles from driving over them. The first of the barriers will be installed in Union Square this coming weekend. A protected bus lane pilot lane will also be installed in the Bronx.

This initiative aligns with Mayor Eric Adams’ plans to spend $900 million to build more bus and bicycle lanes throughout New York as part of the Streets Master Plan, passed in 2019, requiring the city to build 250 miles of protected bike lanes ...

LA's new Sixth Street Viaduct is about to change common perspectives on public urban space

2022-03-28T12:34:00-04:00

Once it opens, construction will start on public playing fields, gathering areas, green spaces and a dog park at the foot of the bridge on the Boyle Heights side, and a performance stage and green spaces on the Arts District side. And cyclists can gear up for the fall unveiling of a 10-foot-wide bicycle lane going both directions on the bridge, which they can access from the bike lane at the river via a steep spiraling ramp. It is a ride that will take some energy.

LA architect Michael Maltzan spoke about his desire for the reborn cinematic landmark to be received as a public space that is suis generis within the available Downtown and Boyle Heights vistas, which are mostly blocked by hilly areas and typified by a lack of public space.

“The bridge is really meant to be a civic armature, to turn infrastructure into something that weaves together the city and connects communities. It's really going to be an observatory,” he told KCRW's Frances Anderton. “It gives you a different image, a different picture, a different view, a different vantage of the city that you think you know very well.”

Previously on Archinect: LA's famed 6th Street Viaduct now has its first span in place

Maltzan also discussed his built-in challenge for Angeleno cyclists, a group he counts himself among that has exploded since the beginning of the pandemic and plays a pivotal role in the city’s comprehensive 2035 mobility plan.

“You have to put in a bit of an effort to earn ...

The Brooklyn Bridge’s infrastructure improvements are kickstarting a renaissance for bicycling

2022-03-25T13:18:00-04:00

The Brooklyn Bridge finally caught up with the COVID-19-era rise in cycling last year after the city opened a dedicated bike path on the iconic span’s roadway. It was one of the signature initiatives in the final year of the Mayor Bill de Blasio administration, and advocates lauded the addition, which was also the first reconfiguration of the bridge since old trolley tracks were permanently removed in 1950.

Bicycle traffic on the bridge increased by more than a quarter from 2020 to last year. The jump is indicative of an overall city-wide trend, which has seen New Yorkers’ biking habits increase at a rate of 33%. The numbers likely correlate to the pandemic-era decrease in subway ridership caused by fears of viral contagion and an increase in violent incidents.

New York inaugurated 30 additional miles of dedicated bike paths in the past months, leading to a marked increase in traffic on the Manhattan and Queensboro Bridges (although DOT noted a minor decline in the use of the Williamsburg Bridge). The (almost) 139-year-old structure had previously only allowed for very uncomfortable biking on its crowded pedestrian walkway before construction was completed in the fall, after which the AMNY recorded a whopping 88% increase from the same months in 2020.

UPenn study uses biometric data to identify unsafe urban infrastructure

2021-07-21T17:08:00-04:00

A new study published in Accident Analysis & Prevention shows how biometric data can be used to find potentially challenging and dangerous areas of urban infrastructure before a crash occurs. Lead author Megan Ryerson led a team of researchers in the Stuart Weitzman School of Design and the School of Engineering and Applied Science in collecting and analyzing eye-tracking data from cyclists navigating Philadelphia’s streets.

As explained in a piece by Penn Today, current federal rules for making safe transportation interventions require the notation of crashes. This reactive approach relies on previous human cost before new considerations are made. Seeking to minimize harmful events altogether, Ryerson and her team sought to capture data on human behavior to better understand what factors make an area unsafe rather than previous data.

The team developed a quantitative methodology to evaluate cognitive workload, a measure of mental effort put forth by someone in response to certain tasks, in cyclists when faced with various infrastructure designs.

One of the main findings was a correlation between locations with disproportionately high numbers of crashes and consistent biometric responses that indicated increased cognitive workload. While high cognitive workload doesn’t mean a person will definitely crash, it can be inferred that one is less effective in processing new information, which could lead to d...

New York to spend $100M to extend the Waterfront Greenway surrounding Manhattan

2017-04-27T12:32:00-04:00

The Manhattan Waterfront Greenway is a 32-mile ring of parkland that surrounds Manhattan—or almost all of it, that is. Between 41st and 61st Streets along the East River lies a “glaring gap”, as The New York Times calls it. Mayor Bill de Blasio has announced that the city will spend $100 million to close part of the gap, with another $5 million dedicated to smaller gaps in Harlem and Inwood.

Specifically, a path will be built atop pilings from 53rd to 61st Street, standing some 15 feet from the shoreline on a boardwalk rising above the water. Eventually, the goal is to surround the entire island with bike and running paths.

“The Hudson River Greenway has vastly improved quality of life on the West Side, and we want families in every corner in the borough to have that same access to bike, walk and play along the water,” Mr. de Blasio said. “This is the first of many big investments we’ll make as we bring the full Greenway to reality.”

In spite of sleet and snow, cycling prevails in Minneapolis

2016-01-18T13:33:00-05:00

Minneapolis, despite its frigid winters, has surged to the top of national rankings for urban biking and was the only U.S. city included last year on a global index of bike-friendly communities. Since 2000, the percentage of bike commuters here has jumped 170 percent [...] Minneapolis' bike-friendly reputation advanced on the saddle of key elected officials, grassroots advocates and critical investments that over the past decade helped transform it into a mecca for biking.

Germany opens first stretch of new cycling superhighway

2016-01-04T18:18:00-05:00

The newly opened portion is just 5km (3 miles)— but the completed highway is set to span over 100km and will connect 10 cities and four universities .... Almost two million people will live less than a mile from the new cycling autobahn [...] the bicycle highway will be 13-feet wide—or almost double the width of normal cycle paths—and have no crossroads or traffic lights. [...] it’ll also be greener. RVR estimates that the route will take 50,000 cars off the roads every day.

Jakarta's "car-free days" are only the start of the city's long journey to becoming bike-friendly

2015-09-11T18:13:00-04:00

Ask a cyclist what it’s like to ride in Indonesia’s capital – a sprawling megalopolis of 10.2 million people...More than likely, they’ll tell you it’s outright dangerous...Car-free days may be popular, but there is almost no [cyclist] infrastructure... [However, there] is hope among cyclists that bike lanes will become a priority after the city’s [mass rapid transport] system is finished in 2019. In the meantime, several young innovators are taking matters into their own hands.

Copenhagen could ax its pioneering city bike program by month's end

2015-04-17T19:20:00-04:00

In 2013, Copenhagen—a city of ebullient cyclists—launched the mother of all city bike schemes. Its white bikes were fitted with motors and GPS-enabled tablets—expensive, but designed for a place whose people and visitors truly believed cycling was the best way forward. Now the city that pioneered its first shared bikes in 1995 is facing a stark possibility: no bike share scheme at all.

Field Operations to Helm New Miami Underline Project

2015-03-24T18:47:00-04:00

Proponents of the Underline bicycle route and linear park that would replace the threadbare M-Path under the Metrorail tracks from Dadeland to the Miami River have picked the co-designer of the wildly popular elevated High Line in Manhattan to draw up a master plan for their idea. James Corner Field Operations was selected by a local jury from among 19 architectural teams that submitted entries in a competition.

Boris Johnson greenlights London's "Crossrail" bicycle superhighway

2015-01-29T15:10:00-05:00

Boris Johnson today confirmed he would build Europe’s longest segregated urban cycle lane through central London after delays likely to be suffered by motorists were reduced. The Mayor approved the “Crossrail for bikes” protected route through Parliament Square and along the Victoria Embankment and Upper Thames Street after it won overwhelming public support.

Atlanta plans big for bikes, and Atlantans turn out big time

2014-10-17T18:13:00-04:00

The massive Beltline and an impressive grid of protected lanes that will connect the trail system to key urban destinations are poised to remake transportation in the city that anchors the country's ninth-largest metro area. [...] As the video above shows, Atlanta's embrace of active space is part of a psychic shift in a city that's shaking off its old Sprawlville USA image with a combination of bike, transit and affordable housing infrastructure.

Similar bike-friendly development is underway in the South's other notorious mega sprawl metro area, Houston: The Bayou Greenways Plan: A Game-Changer for Houston?

MIT's MindRider helmet draws mental maps as you bike

2014-08-29T14:55:00-04:00

Originally developed at MIT, MindRider is a new helmet that shows, in real time, how your rides, movement, and location engage your mind. The MindRider app maps and tracks your engagement, and allows you to share your maps with others. These maps provide quantified insight that empower you to maximize your riding experience, and they are a great resource for riding communities and street advocacy.

Unlike many other biometric monitoring devices, the MindRider helmet isn't just about recording your physical activities; it's about harvesting data from normal routines to better inform public policy. The MindRider "reads" electrical activity between the brain's neurons, but the technology isn't invasive enough to determine anything beyond where on the route you're concentrating ("Hotspots") or coasting ("Sweetspots"). For an individual rider, boiling down the data into these two categories simplifies the ride experience, but with enough participants, the service can paint the cycling personality of an entire city, and provide a highly personal way to publicly engage with cycling. Maybe it can even make drivers empathize with stressed out cyclists.

While the actual helmet isn't commercially available quite yet, MindRider recently reached its Kickstarter goal to create "The MindRider Guide to New York City", a map and guidebook to the city's mental cycling infrastructure. Whether tha...

Why a bike city? Why not a mix of biking and transit?

2014-08-14T14:20:00-04:00

I see nothing wrong with replacing the hegemony of cars with the hegemony I am proposing, of bikes. Those who need buses would be no worse off than they are now. But a problem would come if a city like Amsterdam had a bike modal share of 90 percent, as could achieved if end-of-trip strategies were built into all buildings to eliminate the problem of bike theft, and if shelter removed the inequity of cycling being the one mode remaining where people get wet.

Bike Lanes Don’t Cause Traffic Jams If You’re Smart About Where You Build Them

2014-04-16T13:45:00-04:00

New bike lanes certainly make life better for cyclists, but how do they affect drivers? This question is hotly debated, especially when a new bike lane replaces a lane used by vehicular traffic. It seems that unless a ton of people start commuting by bicycle, giving away a lane would cause increased car traffic. But is this really the case?

Green Lane Project brings protected bike lanes to six U.S. cities

2014-03-12T15:07:00-04:00

Cycling advocacy group People for Bikes has selected six U.S. cities to receive funding and consultation for new protected bike lanes, as part of its Green Lane Project. The annual Project collaborates with cities over two years to expedite the installation of protected bike lanes, one of the ways People for Bikes aims to establish bike-friendly, lower-stress streets. This past January, the group published a report documenting how protected bike lanes help local businesses, drawn partially from cities selected by their Green Lane program.

This year's cities are Atlanta, GA, Boston, MA, Denver, CO, Indianapolis, IN, Pittsburgh, PA and Seattle, WA. During its first two programs (2012 and 2013), the Green Lane Project was responsible for nearly half of the entire nation's increase in protected bike lanes, growing from 80 to 142. Previous cities that benefited from the program include Austin, TX, San Francisco, CA, Portland, OR, and Washington, DC -- now serving as mentors for future cit...

Protected bike lanes strengthen city economy, report finds

2014-01-22T13:07:00-05:00

According to a recent report from PeopleForBikes and Alliance for Biking & Walking, protected city bike lanes can actually encourage local business success. As trends show workers moving into U.S. cities (rather than out into suburbs), and businesses catering to a younger workforce that relies less on cars, cycling infrastructure has becomes integral to strengthening local businesses and encouraging long-term economic growth for the entire city.

A lot of what delays cycling infrastructure is the presumption that it only benefits cyclists. It can be hard to justify to citizens who don't cycle that bike lanes and bike-share programs will benefit the city at large, and not just the "cyclist" demographic. But cities have begun to take notice of the positive change that cycling infrastructure can help bring to their local businesses, in very concrete ways.

The report focuses on statistics from cities with expanding networks of protected bike lanes: Austin, TX; San Francisco, CA;...