urbanism – landscape – ideas – theory – whimsy

Bike Lane Ideas from Paris

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Tonto sent these bike lane examples from Paris in as a suggestion for ways to improve the way we deal with bike lanes in Toronto (this was part of his comment in response to the last post A Bike Lane Disappears… ). As he says “One solution however, to properly demarcating bike lanes, can be found in Paris. Here are some shots of possible divisions between vehicular and bicycle areas. Some work would need to be done to prevent snowplows from tearing off the strips, but I am sure there are ways around that.”

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“Some work would need to be done to prevent snowplows from tearing off the strips, but I am sure there are ways around that.”

Since the city doesn’t feel obliged to clear bike lanes in the winter, that shouldn’t be a problem.

While that seems to be true, I find that roads with bike lanes tend to still have a wider ridable area clear of snow than roads without – at least when there’s street parking. I fear that having an actual extrusion on the road surface would result in bike lanes that get a solid snow coating that builds up and stays longer than elsewhere, which would make biking in winter worse than it already can be. I would like to know how Montreal handles the bike lanes they have that have vertical plastic poles along them in winter. Do the poles stay and the bike lane gets plowed? Do the poles stay and act as markers for where the snow plow stops? Does the bike lane just become a big repository for snow? I know there’s a winter biking population in Montreal, so it would be interesting to see how the city handles snow clearance.

The first picture is really great. I was wondering if I could use it in a project I am working on related to bike lanes.

Thanks!



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