Riding through a metropolis on a bike lane that ’s break from cars feels great . But when you roll up to a light , the infrastructure often vanishes , leaving you feeling vulnerable as you cut through busy lane of traffic . Now a new eccentric of overlap might keep cyclists safe and more seeable . And it was created by a designer who used to make telecasting secret plan .
The US ’s first “ protected intersection ” opened this calendar month on a busy turning point in Salt Lake City . With only a few modifications to the traditional railway car - centered intersection , it hold back cyclists entirely separated from vehicular dealings , give them easier to see , and even consecrate them a head lead off at the lighter .
The protected lane ( also called a cycletrack ) has been proven to make cycling in cities safer and encourage more people to ride . Yet even as the US enroll into a true bicycle renaissance , no one had managed to design a overlap that ’s just as safe as the lanes . Other land might providegood examplesfor how to move lots of bikes around — you may slobber over what ’s essentially afreeway - scale roundabout for Dutch bicycler — but these ideas get slick when fare planners try on to accommodate them to US route conception standard . planner had been attempting it since the 1970s , according to a Streetsblog article by Marc Caswell . But what works in The Netherlands — where multitude mount bikes more than any other transportation mode — doesn’t always work here .
Four eld ago , the National Association of City Transportation Officials ( NACTO ) released theUrban Bikeway Design Guidelinesfor US city . These guidelines furnish tidy sum of acceptable standards for protect lanes but few just idea for overlap . Nick Falbo , one of the urban planners who helped with NACTO ’s guidelines , was convert the US could do better . He started sketching out the theme for what would be known as the protected intersection .
Falbo bring at Portland’sAlta Planning + Designon projects straddle from city block - recollective streetscape reinventions to large - scale initiatives like Seattle ’s citywide bike plan . And he sympathise the challenge : To truly change the elbow room bike intersections are built in the US meant getting new idea into the federal roadway designing standards . But new ideas could n’t be published in the federal standards unless they had already been tested in the real world . “ This was a little too far ahead of the biz — it had never been done , ” says Falbo , who report it as the quintessential Catch-22 . “ We ca n’t put it in the guide until it ’s been done , so how to we inject this melodic theme into the infrastructure ? ”
It turned out that Falbo had an important shaft at his electric pig . Before he went back to planning schooltime , Falbo had been a video game designer , working as an animator on blockbuster biz franchise like Rock Band and Mass Effect . He illustrate his program for cyclists using his experience bring practical worlds to life .
tapdance his living background knowledge , Falbo make a video that showed how the protect intersection would help keep people on bike safely apart from vehicular traffic . Instead of a wonky , planner - focused approaching , Falbo used approachable graphics and accessible lyric . And he pile up the video and other shaft at a website he identify theProtected Intersection projection . The idea was promptly publish across a wide variety of internet site — not just bike web log .
It was n’t long before Salt Lake City fare deviser reached out to Falbo and said they wanted to try his melodic theme . Thiscity of extra - wide streets — thanks to Mormon biotic community provision — is known for experimenting with vehicular stream , so it ’s only raw that planners would begin look at its growing cycle internet the same way of life . They even had the thoroughgoing nominee intersection : A obtusely populated box where two major bicycle corridor crossed .
The intersection opened this calendar month but already it ’s not alone . There aresimilar protected intersectionspopping up in places like Davis , California , a metropolis celebrated for its bike culture , and an bare one in Austin , Texas . Boston also has one in the work . Falbo thinks that better the bike intersection is the key to the US bike movement ’s growth because these expanse are often the faint links in a bike connection . “ city are create fledged bikeway networks with multiple bike lane that connect and frustrate each other , ” he says . “ They will all face this quandary and need the best and safest resolution . ”
This particular solution might never have view the lighting of day if Falbo had n’t employed his animation expertise to cram up excitement . Planners often recur to explaining their ideas in text - heavy memos and wordy resolution , but composition is n’t always the good way to dictate alteration for a city , says Falbo . “ Planners are inherently storytellers , here to tell narrative about a place — what the problems are , what the possible futurity could be . ” have ’s desire more planners learn from his approach to build up better metropolis for all .
BIKESCitiestransportationUrban planningurbanism
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