random observations

[mindstalk]

North Oakland has become rather aggressive about traffic calming on residential streets. Lots of circular planters in intersections, like a micro-rotary, to slow cars down; that's been around for a while. But new was lots of barriers: say you're allowed to enter a street, then you probably passed a barrier blocking exit in the opposite direction. And when you reach the end of the block, you'll be facing a barrier across the intersection, so that you'll have to turn left or right rather than go straight. (Legally, anyway -- I saw a few drivers cheat.) So the streets are internally two-way, but a maze of limited accesses to prevent traffic from running through.

Lots of bicyclists without bike helmets in Montreal. I'd guess helmets are like 50%, though I haven't really counted. Common, unlike Osaka or Amsterdam, but not as ubiquitous as I recall from the US. Some of that is people on Bixi bikeshare, but I've seen road bikers in traffic without a helmet. There did seem to be more helmets yesterday on the canal shared path, but that's the sort of thing that probably attracts faster biking (apart from having to share with the pedestrians.)

More bikers than I was used to in LA, not sure about Boston or Oakland. I see a lot on Maisonneuve but it has a physically protected bike path.

Montreal forbids biking on the sidewalk, unlike LA. The one sidewalker I recall seeing was laboring uphill toward Mont Royal. Can't say as I'd be happy to bike on the major streets here.

Comments

[squirrelitude]

I recently heard someone around here (Somerville, MA) describe it as a method for separating bike and car traffic: Bikes go around/through the obstructions and use the residential areas as their thoroughfares, but cars are diverted to larger, faster roads except for last-few-blocks travel. They said that Portland has been doing a lot of this.

Somerville doesn't have that to speak of, but we *do* have a lot of one-way streets, and a handful of them are two-way for bikes (to similar effect). I'd like to see more of that!

[mindstalk]

Yeah. See my other reply.