“They are not safe. They are anything but for safety,” said a woman who added vehicles in the two-block section sometimes drive in the middle of Springbrook to avoid the bollards.
Oh, so drivers behind of the wheel of an automobile are the danger. Why remove the bike lanes rather than the car lanes?
I heard that Etobicoke’s NIMBYs are insane, but this is a new level of stupidity from Richmond Hill.
Vertical paint/plastic bollards don’t work terribly well, but concrete barriers, speed bumps, and elevated crosswalks do. More expensive per kilometer, but significantly safer and also has a calming effect for pedestrian safety, too.
Oakland is transforming our hollowed-out downtown installing barriers for better bike lanes. Sacrificing one lane of traffic on each side, but it’s not like many people come to work downtown anymore.
and even then it’s not like it’s actually expensive, literally just putting down a kerb and pouring some asphalt to create what’s effectively a sidewalk gives you perfectly fine bike infrastructure, and that’s hilariously cheap compared to most car infrastructure.
It’s usually not an option to add a curb since that creates issues with drainage, and that type of work would only reasonably happen during a complete road reconstruction (where even the road bed requires replacing). However, there is the Toronto solution of dropping concrete barriers with openings on the bottom to allow storm water runoff to pass while providing a more concrete (heh) barrier for cyclists