— By Kevin Montgomery (@kevinmonty) |
We gotta admit: we're not particularly stoked on the new separated bike lanes along JFK in Golden Gate Park either. We love the fact the city is trying new things, and separated lanes have typically worked well in other cities, but they aren't really panning out in Golden Gate Park. People park their cars in the lanes, use the lanes as sidewalks, have made the approach to stop signs difficult, and people clearly have no idea how to park in the new spots. That's not to say the idea should be dismissed entirely—not at all. The city could put up new signage explaining the situation, install a curb between the bike lanes and the parking spaces, or actually stripe out specific spaces for people to park. You know, address the problems.
But KRON's Stanley Roberts! Fuck! People are Behaving Badly, you see, and those people are the government experimenting with improving our transportation. Grrrrrrrrr, Stanley mad!
Naturally, Stanley took his amazing voice and the camcorder he bought off eBay with all the milk money he's been saving up and interviewed a couple of angry (grrrrrrrr) dumb-dumbs in minivans about the problem. And guess what? They hate bicyclists! “Where should bikers be a bikin'?” In the middle of traffic, where they've always been biking. Obviously!
I don't know what my favorite part of the video is: when some green thing claims her door will now get sideswiped when she opens it (because, that's not already a problem on roads without bike lanes. Plus, she wants the American Privilege of opening her door into cyclists, not traffic) or when Stanley doesn't interview a single cyclist, urban planner, or someone who might actually be in favor of the lanes.
Watch below:
[Thanks for the tip, Tuffy! | Photo by SF Bike Coalition]
Comments (14)
I dont like stan, but I really dont like the new bike setup in the park. so crazy.
Does anyone else thing that maybe the character, Perd Hapley, is based on SF’s own Stanley Roberts? They’re style of talk and demeanor is pretty similar.
Yes, i was just watching a youtube video of Roberts about bike thefts in SF. The whole time i was thinking, is this Perd Hapley? hahaha
i noticed A LOT or reports talk the same way, the way the pause mid sentence for effect. but Roberts still sounds more like Perd then any other reporter i have heard.
KRON should stick to making videos about Bubba Rubb.
I don’t like those lanes either. They seem really dangerous because if pedestrians enter the bike lane suddenly the cyclist isn’t going to really have any option other to hit them as they’ve got curb on one side and traffic on the other. It seems to me that you’ve got more options when the bike lane is on the other side of the parked cars.
I sure hope not. They are safer for bikers, safer for peds, and much more efficient for drivers, too. It’s a win-win-win.
They’re certainly better than NON-separated bike lanes, but there are still some problems. As Kevin points out, there should be a curb or some of those flippy plastic cylinders to indicate to the more retarded of parkers that the bike lane is not where they are allowed to park.
the real problem here is that people are more used to checking for bikers on the non curbed side.
saw someone get doored this weekend when someone on the passenger side doored someone a few bikes ahead of me.
When the Berkeley Hit/Run happened, I tweeted the link to Stodgy Stanley and he tweeted back asking for any details I had because they were running it. He’s an all right bean in my book.
Streetsblog had a good response to this:
http://sf.streetsblog.org/2012/04/25/its-not-that-hard-to-find-people-wh…
It’s nice to see the City experimenting with these, but if we had a Mayor who really cared about the safety of cyclists, they’d be trying this out on Fell and Oak.
I wonder where the reporter lives? IN SF?
It’s interesting, in civilized countries like Denmark this configuration is the norm. It works really well there. Typically, the sidewalk and bike lane are raised, so there’s still a curb for cars to park next to. Maybe it’s because they have a shit ton more bike riders than we do, but pedestrians and cars know what’s what.
1) This may not be better for cyclists who like to go-real-fast but these change aren’t for you. It’s for folks who aren’t that strong on the bike yet. It’s a park. We should be creating bike facilities that help out the newbie/challenged riders. Not the fast folks who are already comfortable. Stay in the auto lane if you want to go faster.
2) Change is hard. Give it some time. Let’s see how it’s working in 6 months after folks have some time to adjust. Because…. it’s paint. It can get changed back if it doesn’t work.
3) Absolutely more education and more enforcement is needed for proper car parking. I have no idea why these streetscape changes are just thrown in and seemingly no thought given to tell people what to do.
4) Point #1 again. It’s a park. I now see kids biking on the street where I’ve seen none before. That’s a good thing.
The city of SF has set itself up for a lawsuit with these new bike lanes in GGP. Once someone gets injured killed we will see who is at fault for this latest of SFMTA stupidities. I tried out the new parking tonight with my two young children. To be safe I just opened all my car doors and left them all open until we were all safely to the sidewalk. It is so dangerous for people with kids that I think next time I will place a few flares out in the street and in the bike lane as well.