Getting bike lanes built quickly and cheaply

What do you think — is there a place for "rapid implementation" bike infrastructure in your city?

It's really disappointing to see just how quick and easy it is to build safe bicycle infrastructure. I want some!

This sounds like tactical urbanism at an authority level. I really like the concept of go cheap first, tweak and finalise later.

Bike infrastructure is much cheaper and easier to build than car infrastructure, so it doesn’t make any sense that both take the same time to build in some places.

Really feels like in North America we've lost our ability to build anything anywhere. COVID was the first spark of hope I saw, but looks like things are reverting to the mean. I started going to city council meetings virtually and now I'm going in person cause damn it even if I don't end up changing anything I'm not gonna die saying I didn't even try.

That's actually really smart. Having the engagement process after something real has already happened allows the engagement process to add productive feedback to actually improve the project rather than just air ideological grievances.

There is a book called “The lean startup” with methods that are basically what you stated in your first example. Build something, get feedback, implement feedback. I wish more officials would use this type of method to implement change instead of wasting so much time discussing things. Taking action is key.

Yes, this is 100% the way forward. It's also the method used in Paris. Put down some temporary barriers, slap on some paint and test things. Afterwards you can implement what works permanently, but all the rest is already there, not perfect but THERE. I don't want a spick and span bike lane in 3 years from now. I want room to cycle without fearing for my life right now!

I think the biggest hurdles to overcome are car dependent people and NIMBY's. The counter to their opposition is, "This will save you so much money on your taxes. Fewer cars on the road means less spending on road maintenance and lighter traffic."

They did this in Sydney (Australia) during COVID, called pop-up cycleways. I wish they didn’t listen to the “community” feedback because there’s always a loud group of hostile motorists that complain, and the city council actually listens to them. Now the bike lane that goes past my home that I use every day is going to get removed because the council weren’t willing to take out a lane of parking to do it properly. My opinion is that every bike lane is precious, even if it’s not perfect, and we need to continually fight for our space.

This content needs to be shared to all local municipalities!! "Done" can be better than "perfect". Here in St Louis, a 1.4 mile bike path has been in the "planning" process since 2016. That's almost as long as it took to land someone on the moon after the first person was sent to space! Too often the desire for perfection and endless community listening sessions will derail a potentially great project.

This feels remarkably similar to "rapid prototyping" processes in software development. It's the same basic principles: build a cheap, easy prototype, get client feedback, tweak and rebuild. It's a good way to do things across many different industries. Also, very excited for a pilot project my hometown is doing for some cycling infrastructure downtown, I hope it goes well!

Jersey City, NJ had a 10 year plan to phase in bike lanes. Then COVID happened and they implemented that plan as a rapid build bike network within 6 months. Within a year the city went from typical North American car focused city, to looking like a city in the Netherlands with how extensive the bike lanes were. Now 2 years later the city has reached zero road fatalities on city streets, and they have been upgrading the rapid build stuff with permanent infrastructure. (They managed to make the city so desirable, it’s now even more expensive than neighboring Manhattan, NYC.)

Used to cycle commute along that Burnaby stretch - it was a awful - so much better now. Last fall I rode from Port Moody to The Vancouver Aquarium with my then 6 year old (30 odd km’s) and when we got to that stretch we were cheering! Later on the ride as we went around the False Creek sea wall signs appeared saying no biking on the sea wall and we were directed up to Pacific Avenue. I was prepared to turn around, no way was I taking my 6 year old on that!! And then we saw the dedicated bike lane on Pacific Ave (as show in this video) we were high 5’ing each other and continued our adventure to the Aquarium. Repeated the adventure with my now 7 year old and my 5 year old last month - My 5 year old rode his bike to the top of Burnaby Mountain last Monday. We drove to school (1.5km) all winter because the morning drop off traffic is insane.

Here in Tulsa, Oklahoma the new bike lanes have been very useful! I dislike all the buttons they want me to hit to turn on warning lights (that drivers take as a challenge in my opinion). I agree that it isn’t perfect but it’s done. If you ever wanna come ride a bike in the old oil capital of the world with more interstate and parking than New York City. I would love to send you more information on our local cycling groups.

What awesome examples of Strong Towns & Tactical Urbanism approaches! I feel like the biggest takeaway from the Strong Towns book that is so often ignored in these videos is that changing the process to be like this is FAR more important than exactly what you build, and that if we try to chase sustainability with the same bad processes that led to our car-dependent hell, it will most likely still go quite badly. Thanks for another great video!

‘Is it perfect? No. But it got done’ -you.  I sure long to hear this phrase repeated over and over in our communities all over North America. Thanks for the short, informative, and fun video. Cheers

This is really interesting. It's a great point, that you can't really expect a good discussion if people don't have a frame of reference. Cars are so entrenched that the public can't imagine it any different.

From a design and implementation standpoint this is the superior approach. You (the designer) now have usable statistics. Maybe nobody uses the lane because it is out of the way and/or goes nowhere. Relatively low cost and ease of change allows for rapid prototyping and iterative design. Doing so before opening to feedback means businesses get a chance to see the uptick from cycle traffic before reflexively quashing it. Etc. Etc. Etc. Big thing is it gets done.

They've done a lot of important bike infrastructure in Paris this way in the recent years, and I think it worked pretty well