Diseño Holandes - Ciclovías

Gracias a jUaN cArLoS ! ! !

Particularmente creo que los ciclistan deberian ir en la superficie de la vereda, no quiero decir que invadan la vereda peatonal, sino que la vereda peatonal sea mas ancha(la ensanchen para agregar esa area verde del video), con el area pintada y definida por donde circulan las bicis.

Los autos deben circular en un nivel mas bajo, la verdad ser ciclista en el Peru es Heroico por lo menos decirlo, lindando con la locura de atreverse a ir en dos ruedas donde circulan salvajes e individualistas que creen que la pista es de ellos.

En el video con imagenes reales que le sigue a tu video lo explican bien bacan, se nota que la ciclovia esta a un nivel mas alto que el de los autos, de esa manera el ciclista esta protegido, al menos donde se ve que estan al mismo nivel, existe un sardinel, el auto al parecer NUNCA puede invadir la ciclovia, como si se puede en Argentina, Canada, USA, Brasil, paises donde vi ciclovias "pintadas" sobre la pista...

Les recomiendo leer esta entrada, esta en Ingles pero es facil de traducir;

State of the art bike way design - a further look (Hembrow - BLOG)

Last month I wrote about the new NACTO designs for cycle infrastructure and held the junction design against Dutch junction design. The video that went with the post was taken out of the context of this blog and discussed on forums and other blogs. Without the context some people completely misunderstood it.

Right: Dutch design of an actual junction with cycle paths in red.
Left: the same ideas used on an American road to see if it could be done.

There were of course comments that you can’t really take seriously: “Yuck. That seems like a parody of over-engineering.”

And if someone dares to criticize anything American there is always this: “could be some anti-American bias there.”

Other comments were more serious but reveal a completely different frame of reference:
“I'm not convinced about the safety aspect. I think that this video exaggerates the danger of crossing at a narrow angle. It's just a lane change.”

‘Just a lane change’? That is an interesting way of seeing it. Indeed the whole object of this design is to eliminate just that action. Because a lane change IS a dangerous thing to have to do.

Some commenters were concerned about the remaining space for motorized traffic.

• “large vehicles are to move closer to the center of the junction, possibly disturbing traffic flow”
• [there] “appears to be a sharper turning radius for the Dutch motorist”

The radius is the same as for the conventional US junction. But yes, it appears to be sharper, thus making traffic go slower. One more advantage.

Others were not convinced about the advantages this design has for cyclists. Summarized they:

• believe the ‘swerve’ to the right and then to the left is slowing the cyclists that want to go straight on down;
• fear there would be conflict between cyclists going straight on and right turning motorized traffic;
• fear they would have to wait twice (and long) to make a left turn.

One person on a forum asked if there were Dutch people who have experience with this type of design who could give their view. Others too seem to think this is new and experimental design that should be tested. Well it was… for about 50 years now. Almost all junctions in the Netherlands with separate cycle paths were built exactly like the schematic design in the first video.

Further explanation


This second video shows the design ‘in action’. A number of Dutch junctions showing a number of situations that perhaps shed some light on all the questions. Now you can also see how the various green phases work. Not only do cyclists and pedestrians have their own green phase. Left-turning motorized vehicles get a separate green light as well, when vehicles going straight on -on the same road- have a red light. While this may seem like a bad idea because you would have to wait longer for your own green light, it is in fact the reason for very fast movements on the junctions. Once you get green you can proceed without any waiting for other traffic users that might be crossing your path as is usual in other countries.

More modern solutions

It is interesting that while other people question whether this design could work the Dutch actually have moved on to more modern solutions. The ‘simultaneous green for all directions’ David showed again in his last post is one more modern approach. But an even more radical change is that a lot of the junctions are being transformed into roundabouts. It turns out that these can handle more traffic in a quicker and safer way without even needing traffic lights.

This is still a cross-roads junction in Google Earth...



...but it was already transformed into a more modern roundabout
as can be seen in Google Streetview

So that is the next step the Dutch are taking. I’ll look into roundabouts in more detail in later blog-posts.