re: ellepea… haha yes finally somebody said it!
i had to study this shit in traffic engineering…
traffic engineers do not design hipster skid potential or tyre life. and if you had a boo boo, we are all sorry, bitumen isnt exactly soft anyway.
its a good thing, gives cyclists a more visual right of way in bike lanes, especially at intersections. and is 20x better than slippery paint
ive probably just repeated here but i had to second.
…having said that the annoying thing ive found is it feels like the stuff has a lot of rolling resistance…
its probably my mind playing tricks but the fresh stuff feels like your cycling over a sand pit.
I’m not sure I agree. I don’t really think a darkish green is that much more visible than black, which in my opinion makes its disadvantages outweigh its advantages. Surely there are other ways to make cyclists more visible than to have uber-abrasive paint? As a couple of pointed out, cyclists have already started riding next to the bike lane. I’d rather not ride through glass, even though it isn’t loose, it’s still glass, and I’d rather not have pieces of it stuck in my tyre or my skin.
I come back to my point earlier… what’s the problem with stopping on asphalt?
your right there’s not a problem with stopping on ashphalt, but its primary function is visibility. its the fact that if your going to apply a surface coat of something, you can’t just paint it and put a sign up saying ‘caution slippery when wet’. so someone in the office has said throw sand and glass through it. wether this translates into a good idea or not… its debatable. i wonder if the majority of riders are for or against it.
regarding colour: i agree some of it is pretty dark, but mostly still visible. some countries have used yellow which stands out a bit more.
traffic engineers should get a clue. if they lay it down on roads to mark out bike lanes over intersections but don’t consider tyre life or the damage it causes someone if they fall then its already failing.
if they insist on covering roads with it then steamroll it flat and vacuum up the excess.
and coarse chip asphalt is any better for landing face first on? I guarantee the skin abrasion factor is the absolute last thing going through a civil engineers thought process when considering this as a traffic safety solution.
It just seems to me that this is is just complaining for the sake of complaining… (which i’m guilty of more than i’d like to admit)
this isn’t going away, i think we just need to learn to deal with it
Tyre wear isn’t an issue, just don’t skid on it. but if you fall on sandpaper, its going to tear you to shreds. Thats the issue I have with it.
Go and rub your hand on some rough ashphalt, then go and do the same on some fresh green murder. I can guarantee you the second is much worse.
I personally have no problem with them marking bikelanes, but these city planners can’t just throw a potential hazard on the road without thinking of the danger to road users and even pedestrians.
The problem here is that Urban design is usually just appropriated from Europe or North America. The Copenhagen lanes are a prime failure, they don’t work for anyone. Pedestrians don’t realise what it is and are mowed down by bicycles visa versa for bikes. Because of the car parking on the road side of the traffic island cars cant see pedestrians or bikes when turning. This model does work in Europe, where drivers are more used to cyclists and seem to have tendency, well what I noticed living in Vienna, to virtually stop before turning. The bike lanes in Vienna were the best, each side of the major roads had a bike lane painted in each direction on the footpath, but at the very edge near the road. Of course they don’t have all the crappy infrastructure and poles etc. on the edge of the roads like us.
yes, it cuts your tyres to shit, and yes i hope to never go down on it (though there’s probably some potential for a lawsuit ;)). but after one skid, you’ll learn not to skid on it. no biggie. it is very grippy. and a lot of it does disappear after a few months.
but yes, the logic of laying down broken glass in the bike lanes does beg the question.
they can’t just paint the surface, cos it’s slippy as a mu’fuck.
Stay clear of any freshly laid lanes! Normally I try to stay out of the new green/glass bike lane bits but yesterday I inadvertently rode through a brand new section of it along Albert Rd East Melb and managed to get a shiteload of little bits of glass and gunk flick up into my freshly cleaned chainline. My bike went from silky silent to alarmingly clunky in about 3 metres. Awesome.
I have no problem with it. Sure the first couple of months are shit. But after that, and once all the loose shit has worn / washed away, it seems quite good. A lane on my commute is now about 3 months old and there is no loose crap coming off it anymore. But it is still visible and grippy.
That said, I ride with a front brake, and I find a grippy surface to be excellent for stopping – because I use my legs in addition to the front brake, a grippy surface makes stopping more effective because it means I don’t skid. If I have to stop suddenly on a slippery surface the back wheel skids easily which I find results in a slightly longer stop and less control.