this post was submitted on 22 Jul 2026
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Bicycling

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[–] accideath@feddit.org 8 points 6 days ago (4 children)

Thing is, painted lines do actually work though. That is, of course, if you have properly trained drivers and enforced rules.

In a town near me (in Germany), they started pioneering a system (that is already being used successfully in some other European countries like the Netherlands) where there is a painted on bike lane on each side of the road and the space in between only large enough for one vehicle. Traffic flows normally when it’s only in one way and when there’s oncoming traffic, the cars can go on the bike lanes, as long as they stay behind the bicycles.

The system works. Surprisingly well, actually. There’s less cars, less bikes on sidewalks and more bikes overall.
There also haven’t been any accidents where a human got injured and people were generally driving more defensively and keeping safe distances to bikers when passing them, much more.

So the problem aren’t the painted on bike lanes, it’s bad and egoistic drivers and an overly car centric mentality.

[–] drosophila@lemmy.blahaj.zone 7 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

If you consult the CROW manual for bicycle traffic, which is what the Netherlands uses as a guide for road design (and is where the design you're talking about came from), you will see that there are certain constraints on when various designs should be used:

The street's speed limit and motor vehicle traffic volume have to be low enough, and it matters what category the road has been classified as in both the motor vehicle traffic network and the bicycle traffic network. Since instead of just thinking about roads individually, their place in the larger system is considered:

(This is the bicycle network of Amsterdam)

The width of the throughway and whether there is enough room to fit the infrastructure for a given combination of network links within it is also important. That's another reason why it's best to plan the networks holistically, to make the best use of all available space on multiple adjacent roadways.

Of course if you decrease car traffic volumes and speeds to a low enough level (by making other transit modes more attractive, making more of the urban area mixed use, etc) you can start using the higher categories in the above chart more. But the standards in the Netherlands are not so simple as "just put some paint down anywhere and it'll work so long as the drivers are educated". And that's without even getting into how they design roads to enforce their own limits on speed and traffic volumes, using things like chicanes and modal filters. So, some amount of effort goes into creating the conditions that make such a design safe, rather than the drivers just deciding to do it themselves.

[–] jtrek@startrek.website 8 points 6 days ago

That is, of course, if you have properly trained drivers and enforced rules.

We don't and will not in our life time. So for practical purposes, they do not work.

[–] Etnaphele@lemmy.world 2 points 5 days ago

Painted bike lanes have other problems: maintenance and grip when wet.

Germany is one of the few countries where people bother to drive properly, with eyes on the road and respecting rules and weaker traffic (sadly the situation is changing for the worse…). In Italy - where a proper bicycling culture exists and one could expect a lot more acceptance - it’s a disaster, with many young cyclists being murdered by idiots in their cars.

In many countries, there really is a need to properly shield cyclists from irresponsible drivers, particularly in a world where caring for others looks like a long lost virtue.

[–] logi@lemmy.world 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Ah yes. I cycled from Italy into France last weekend and rode on one of those for a bit. There was not really enough traffic to know how well it works.

[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 5 days ago

That's kind of the reason those are used, don't need to invest much for streets that aren't used that much.