Saturday, December 27, 2014

How to create your own bike lane

From TreeHugger.com
bike lane separators © cyclehoop
There are many tools you can use to plop down a quick bike lane. The one picture above and below has several benefits, so I thought it deserved some special attention. It's called an "Armadillo." It's quite simple, but comes with a number of advantages.
For one, it actually creates a separated bike lane on the roadway, which is much more preferred than a bike lane that is simply painted on the side of the road and almost looks like a road shoulder rather than a dedicated path for bicyclists.
Secondly, while drivers can see that they shouldn't drive up onto Armadillos, and will quickly notice if they do, they also aren't faced with the unpleasant stress of driving next to tall separators such as cones or poles. I definitely think bicyclists deserve physical separators, but I don't think they always need to be tall and stressful to drivers.
© cyclehoop
© cyclehoop
Thirdly, these babies are made from 100% recycled PVC. 100% recycled content rocks, and the manufacturers deserve some props for that.
Another plus with these Armadillos is that they can very easily and quickly be implemented. That cuts costs, of course, and also makes it easier to implement test projects that could more quickly get separated bikes lanes added to your neighborhood, similar to the pop-up bike lanes I wrote about in February.
"Armadillos are bolted into the ground and spaced out so that cyclists can enter or exit the cycle lanes as needed," cyclehoop writes. "Much quicker and more cost effective to install than other solutions, Armadillos have been successfully installed and used by major towns and cities across Europe and North America for the past 7 years."
Here's a video featuring some of these Armadillo bike lane separators, and one more photo:

© cyclehoop
Some of the commentary in the video was cringeworthy, but what can you expect from the mainstream media?

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