Reviewing your top 20 street redesigns (plus: revealing the city's choice)

[@Shifter_Cycling]

So what do you think of the design the city went with?

[@BeneathWalls]

Super disappointing!

[@MarkHolmes1]

Poor.

[@humanecities]

Quite the bummer… Obviously, like you mentioned, it’s complicated. But I feel like we won’t reach the goals (climate, financial, health, etc.) of the city if we’re just doing half measures like this.

[@esgee3829]

if the car lanes rise up to the level of the mixed use pathway at crossings (to slow the cars), then ok, but not great. if not, then not great.

[@m--a]

I still think it should be one way.

[@LimitedWard]

I don't think it was mentioned in this video, but 0.3m is not wide enough for a tree. It might work okay for a young tree, but once it matures, the roots will spread out and destroy the concrete/asphalt surrounding it.

[@The_k81]

Definitely true. A hedge of native grasses can fit in such a space, but it doesn't give quite the same effect

[@kailahmann1823]

jup. The tree should be used as gaps in the parking lane - with a bike rack on each side and also creating a small gap to cross the street.

[@mymemeplex]

That's what I was thinking too. But you can accommodate trees by sacrificing half a parkign spot every 10 cars or so.

[@shioyoutube9041]

I live in England this is a problem as it destroys the pavement eventually, traditionally we would chop down the trees once they got too large and replace them with a new tree, but in more recent years they’ve been removing the trees and replacing them with shrubbery, or installing new trees elsewhere to make up for the removals. It’s a shame, since it makes streets a lot worse as a pedestrian.

[@shioyoutube9041]

@@mymemeplex This is so true, there’s a city I visit a lot in Portugal called Lagos, and on the main promenade street by the sea (N125) there’s a ton of parking on the side, but there’s trees fitted in every so often and it’s a nice effect, although I’d like more consistent trees personally.

[@Droxal]

This video made me a little sad, seeing how large drive lanes have to be in Calgary, and knowing that pedestrian only streets will likely never get built.

[@Shifter_Cycling]

It's a bit discouraging, I agree, but there is certainly change happening. I just sometimes wish it would go faster.

[@Littleweenaman]

It’s definitely an uphill battle but I think the reward really outweighs all the struggles for me at least

[@AssBlasster]

Or an intercity train...

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

​@@Shifter_Cycling16:53 Soviet don't have car. And all pople use tram and bus. And is road like in usa not street inside Soviet microdistrict 😊

[@daniellewis1789]

​@@carkawalakhatulistiwaZiL and Lada would disagree about USSR cars. They just weren't nearly as widely available as, say, Ford in the west.

[@definitelynotacrab7651]

700 hundred submissions is insane, glad to see so many get behind this idea

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Me too!

[@esgee3829]

​it's always fun to guess which f150 driver parked beyond the limits of a 45degree space on the street will pull out right in front of me in spite of all the cameras on the rear bumper

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Sigh.

[@percival1907]

I used to live in a town with lots of reverse angle parking. Solved the reversing problem but people from out of town struggled to park, haha.

[@SomeGuyWhoPlaysGames333]

@@percival1907 My city has some reverse angle parking, but people just do a really wide turn and pull in anyway, or just pull in if they’re coming from the opposite direction.

[@carkawalakhatulistiwa]

​@@Shifter_Cyclingwhat you think about soviet microdistrict vs USA suburb

[@Frostbiker]

Placing bicycle traffic in a bus lane is a great way to slow buses down to a crawl, so that nobody will want to take the bus, which in turn means the busway becomes an extra-wide bike lane.

[@Pystro]

Have you ever cycled next to a bus? Usually when I do, I catch up to the bus when it's stopped and the bus catches up to me when it's moving. It averages out to the bus being slightly faster than me in light traffic and me being slightly faster than the bus in heavy traffic and I usually keep up with the bus for 2-4 stops. (Admittedly, the "heavy traffic" situation is when the bus isn't in a bus lane). So yes, the bus will get slowed down a bit when behind a bike, but usually not too much.

[@AssBlasster]

Because a bus is known to never stop along its commute

[@kailahmann1823]

@@Pystro don't think of sporty cyclists, who do 30 km/h. Think of children, elderly or just un-sporty people, who are barely faster than walking. Also bus lanes are to make busses faster than cars (which are stuck in traffic), so they must be kept free of as many obstacles as possible.

[@tasomaniac]

This makes no sense 😂 busses will still be there

[@emma70707]

The way they have them in Seattle makes it clear that they're for buses but that bikes are allowed. I try to stay out of them during rush hour when they're needed to accelerate bus traffic (as a class 3 e-bike that can match the 25 mph traffic without issue, the constant stop and start is annoying if I get stuck behind a bus but I feel much safer in the ultra-wide lane and the bus drivers are super respectful of bikes), but they make for a nice ultra-wide de-facto bike lane on busy streets if I happen to need to go that direction on a weekend. I agree that if the stops are infrequent, a conventional cyclist could slow down the bus on the faster road, but hopefully we are slowing traffic in building frequent enough stops that that's really not an issue.

[@gordredden9611]

This channel always wraps urban design in a thoughtful presentation. You love to see it!

[@Shifter_Cycling]

😍. Wow, thank you for the contribution! This is amazing, and it really helps keep this channel going. I appreciate the support very much!

[@charlieroth9584]

What Dr. Farnez Sadeghpour was saying around the 22:30 mark is key in my opinion. She talked about how important it is to turn driving into a active cognitive process as opposed to a passive cognitive process. It may sound counterintuitive from a driving standpoint, but adding obstacles and mechanisms that force drivers to think actively when driving would go a long way to improve safety for cyclists, pedestrians, and drivers themselves.

[@Liz-rj4uf]

Such a novel concept in NA..just got back from Portugal and all the drivers seem to be so engaged...pedestrians walk right out on the road, bicycles a bit disorderly but amazingly it seems to work...no honking horns at all, no slamming on brakes...cities are definitely for people here, cars second and drivers respect this. Not much of a bicycle infrastructure but refreshing to note that drivers definitely paying attention. 😀

[@joewatts6016]

Thats why I narrowed the lanes and parking in the middle to make people think. My other submissions, left the central parking out for when you got to junctions or needed more sidewalk space for a bus stop, bike stand, etc that would create a half lane width chicane back and forth.

[@zaired]

Something interesting that I learned about street construction is that, in montreal, if you want to make a street oneway you have to make a whole study around the impact that it will have, but if you want to remove parking, you can do it instantly with no repercussion. Also something interesting, minimum lane width for bi directional roads in montreal is 3 meters, but for oneway streets, it's 3.8 meters

[@BertStevensNL]

[@Amir-jn5mo]

These minimum street lane sizes are set to be a highway standard. Obviously if you are designing for a road at 100+KPH you want very wide lanes for safety. The terrible part is that cities here in US and Canada are applying the same highways standards for designing streets in the city which have opposite function, meant to get you to a destination and have you drive slowly and alertly. I don't know about Asia but Europe has two different standards for highways/ roads vs streets as mentioned in NJB's video on Stroads. Also took a look at Dr. Sadeghpours 2013 paper. Such a cool paper actually. Can't believe how that majority of cyclists are 35+ cycling to work. Lots of cool data and clean tables

[@BlairdBlaird]

One problematic factor with lane widths is that the insane truck craze barely fit in smaller lanes e.g. 2023 F150 is a bit above 200cm wide excluding the side mirrors, and above 240 included. A dualie 350 is >240 without mirrors, and almost 270 all in. Obviously banning these POS is a great idea, but that's a limitation Also semi trucks generally do need the width, even european tractors have a 240~250 track width (wheel wall to wheel wall), not including the trims, bolts, mirrors, etc..., and that's without turning. Then again it's usually acceptable not to allow semis on side-street, but that's an other YMMV. And in fairness to trucks, large vans like a Sprinter or Transit are generally 200 wide (~240 including mirrors) as well. Smaller panel-type vans tend to be closer to 1700 cabin width, 2000 including mirrors.

[@sandpiperbf9767]

Yeah, the design they went with is pretty close to the design I submitted. I would have narrowed the car lanes even further tho, and it's nice to see that they managed to squeeze some extra space and widen the street margins a bit. One advantage I do potentially see from this design is that adding in the bike lane means car traffic could decrease. So maybe on the next iteration a parking lane could be removed and boundaries between people/bikes could be more palatable. Like you said, cars are the least efficient mode of transport, and induced demand applies to other modes of transport as well, not just cars.

[@Shifter_Cycling]

You make a great point about induced demand working both ways. I wish this was more common knowledge.

[@paulebroderick]

What can also be done is small conversions of the parking lane in localised areas (ie kerb buildouts at junctions, dining decks outside restaurants, bikeshare stations, bike parking, benches and flower pots) without too much cost or structural changes.

[@CyanideCarrot]

I submitted a two-way bike lane design similar to the Soviet one shown, but after seeing all the options I would vote for the Parklet design. It could also have the drive lane change sides and wind its way along as the extra space changes uses to force cars to slow down

[@dorkichiban]

i was the kylie who submitted that parklet design! and i'm pretty sure i included a second paragraph in my explanation saying that the road should wind back and forth by having the space that was designated for parklets alternate from one side to the other. it would slow down cars which is one of the most important things for making a street nice to exist on, and it also allows for people on both sides of the street to enjoy the public spaces from up close instead of having to stare longingly at the other side of the street where people get to have all kinds of amenities while they have nothing. i experimented for a long time trying to fit a tram system, but unfortunately that just didn't feel possible with the options that existed on that website. ideally having a relatively narrow winding street with a low speed would allow for cars and bikes to share space (much like the person who talked about the idea of a fietsstraat but still used separated bike lanes, i do not consider sharrows to truly communicate that a street is shared space) and then the extra room created by not needing dedicated bike lanes allows for better public transportation, or more greenery, or more walking room, and most importantly more usable public space that's dedicated to people existing in an area and doing something rather than just moving humans from point A to point B.

[@kailahmann1823]

@@dorkichiban I think, the parklets can be a great idea to gradually (!) reduce the parking spots. Removing an entire parking lane (aka 50%) is a save way to get angry drivers - but gradually removing spots that aren't used might work out even better.

[@frostykyogre]

The reason for the minimum lane widths (at least in Vancouver but probably similar in the rest of North America) is that delivery trucks (garbage trucks, fire trucks, ect.) legally have to access basically any street and for safety, some margins have to be provided above the vehicle width limits. In Vancouver we require 3.3m for a lane adjacent to a curb, 3m for a lane not against a curb or 5.5m for the total width of an adjacent parking lane and travel lane. That being said we do have certain situations where we dip lower but usually only by 0.1m. I saw another comment (by LimitedWard) about trees and their required widths and I agree, they need significant space for their root systems so we require 1.5m for treed boulevard (with 0.15m of that allowed to be curb to separate it from the road). We always try to have some street trees incorporated due to the multitude of benefits (cooling effect, oxygen production, water retention, ect.) but they could be planted in bulges breaking up parking to reduce the total width required for both. This street seems pretty narrow even by Calgary's 17.1m width. In Vancouver most of our roadways are 20m wide and when redeveloping we try to get more space (for wider sidewalks at commercial buildings or if the road is identified as a future bike route). In my opinion if a proper bi-directional bike route were to be implemented it would likely have to be converted to one way traffic with parking. I did manage to squeeze in a 2 way bikes and vehicles option but if parking is retained on one side the design would lack trees (unless the aforementioned parking pockets/tree bulges were used) and would have 1.7m bike lanes lacking some of the buffer space we typically add in for separation of bikes and pedestrians. We usually place our street lights between trees in the same space so it's kind of annoying Streetmix doesn't have an option that conveys this mixed-use boulevard space.

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Thanks for all the info here, it provides great context. I remember a raging debate about street widths in a neighourhood in my city several years ago and I could help but wonder why we build streets to fit the vehicles (like fire trucks) rather than buying vehicles to fit the streets we want.

[@frostykyogre]

@@Shifter_Cycling Yeah, that gets into a discussion of policy, likely requiring a change in vehicle width regulations. For something like fire trucks alone it would be an immense cost and timely process to switch over fleets in large cities. It's also something that would likely need to happen relatively simultaneously to prevent issues such as an ambulance from City B responding to a call in City A and not fitting down a slimmed road. This being said I don't even think service vehicle widths are really much narrower even in places like Amsterdam. While I was there I saw a garbage truck in downtown that was full size, the difference was that the street was fully pedestrianzed and it had to proceed slowly as people moved out of its way while the workers collected the trash. I think it will be much easier to look at road dieting through parking removal, one way conversion or even pedestrianized roads rather than attempting to force changes to service vehicles across the board. I know some places do have smaller garbage collection vehicles that could be used effectively if say an area had many roads for local only access that banned large vehicles. I know we have some mini snow plows for clearing bike lanes that could similarly be used in constrained roadways.

[@joewatts6016]

Thanks for choosing one of mine. Central parking has been used in some places I've visited. It slows traffic in many ways and allows parking from both directions. The removal of it at junctions or if you need more sidewalk space for bus stops etc, means it adds chicanes in to slow drivers down. Also parking in the middle stops dooring bike riders and cars are more visible in mirrors and if you know you are in the middle of the road you pay more attention to opening your door. Every driver that parks has to cross a lane of traffic which means when they drive they drive slower as they know what it's like to cross the road. Lastly narrower lanes with chicanes and 'obstacles' causes drivers to pay attention and slow down.

[@joewatts6016]

I think there was a study in america in the 50s that looked at road safety. Their conclusion was the stopping when you hit things is what killed. This meant the design code was really wide, straight streets with trees, houses, mailboxes really far away. That means you have a road wide enough for 4 lanes of traffic that's dead straight. People naturally speed, so you get loads of stop signs and low speed limits that no one sticks too. On the flip side; Narrow roads that are tight and closed in make you subconsciously go slower as your brain has to process more hazards and pay attention. I think it's places in the Netherlands that country roads with high speed limits are wide and have nothing next to them, but as you enter town or slower speed limits the road narrows and gets lined with trees. You naturally slow down. A correctly designed road shouldn't need speed limit signs, the design itself should tell you the safe speed to travel.

[@Beni10PT]

It is actually preety good that they will "test" how many bikes will start taking this route and hopefully in the future they will take it to a 2 lane instead of a multipath in the future :)

[@MultigrainKevinOs]

you know i have never noticed that all our 2way bike lanes are on 1 way roadways in Edmonton until it was brought up at ~18:00, huh i guess that is a bit of a barrier to design and implementation i never even considered. fun video concept, great to see everyone's ideas !

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Yes, I didn't realize this until Dr. Sadeghpour mentioned it either.

[@lyssasletters3232]

More videos like this one please!!!!❤

[@christill]

Mine was two wide sidewalks with trees between them and the road. Two bus / cycle / van lanes going each way (although I made a mistake with my submission where both lanes were pointing the same way, and I couldn’t change it). There would also be loading bays occasionally where the trees appear. There wasn’t really anything to that effect in the 20, but there were a couple of pedestrianised streets that I liked.

[@inventor121]

OH WOW my design made it into here. I didn't even notice until now. I live in Calgary and I have... opinions on Transit and the city layout and how things are implemented. The minimum lane width requirement does however answer a lot of questions as to why so much of Calgary is under asphalt.

[@jezzarisky]

It’s become common in Utah on state highways often they put a 6’ foot side walk on one side and a non-designated larger 11’ sidewalk/multiuse trail on one side of the road. It wouldn’t be the worst thing, but the lack of clarity of it being a trail always feels a little unfortunate as they also leave the wide shoulder and then mark it as a bike lane so for more casual people you’re left wondering which you’re supposed tonuse I’m also a little surprised you didn’t know what a chicane was, I similarly had a quasi-chicane in my description of my design, I thought it was a pretty common street calming method(though it is most often used on sidewalks by train tracks and multiuse trails crossing a road rather than on the road itself).

[@alenpete8480]

12:43 I gave a pretty similar design, but cycle lane must be elevated in this case, otherwise cyclists will always be endangered by dooring from passenger side. Drivers are trained to perform shoulder check when exiting vehicles, but passengers are not.

[@matthewbutner8696]

I didn't submit a design to you but I did try playing around with StreetMix. By doing so I found out how space hungry cars are. You could have a really nice pedestrian only area or a bleh area that had space for cars and not much else as you can see from the city's design.

[@federicomarintuc]

22:30 I've seen this design on the suburbs of Buenos Aires on shopping streets leading to train stations. Speeds are low because there's a permanent interchange between the parking and travel lanes and people crossing from the parking area to the sidewalks

[@emma70707]

I'm fine with parked cars next to the bike lane as a barrier if it's a residential neighborhood but not a commerical one. People who live in the area or come there often (e.g. nanny, cleaner, friend) know to look, but someone coming once every other month for a haircut forget.

[@yossarian6743]

Awesome stuff Tom! Really fun project, and like you both mentioned, quite complicated trying to ensure adequate space for all street users. I'd definitely like to do that again sometime. Also, I hope StreetMix watches this video as I think several options came up during the video that weren't available as selections on the site that would be cool if they could be added in the future.

[@unconqueredsun6903]

This was wonderul! I should ask my mla if the city could do a contest like this next time a renovation project is coming up. All these had potential for sure.

[@Sly-Jack]

This was a really fun project! Would love to do more of them

[@paulebroderick]

I would imagine the “mid street parking” design would probably end up being built with a kerb on one side (alternating from side to side every 5 spaces / 30m or so) so you have “safe” parallel parking. Cars are so big now that you might not have visibility of the other side. With the angled parking - I prefer this to be angled so you drive past the space and reverse back in.

[@thatcarguy1UZ]

I know this might seem a bit counterintuitive, but despite the fact that buses are physically larger vehicles and therefore more intimidating, and also despite the fact the buses and bicycles both want the farthest right space on the road, I'm more comfortable sharing space with a bus than I am with cars. I think the big reason for that is the fact that I feel that a bus driver being a professional, is a more conscientious driver than the average private vehicle driver is. That's also how I feel about professional truck drivers. I know that occasionally you have the bad driver but you can say that about any class or category. I generally feel as though professional bus and professional truck drivers overall as a group are better and more conscientious behind the wheel. Because the bad ones don't last very long before they become uninsurable and no longer able to work in that profession.

[@LankyFrank]

Seems like business as usual in Calgary to half ass all non car infrastructure. I wish we would take after Edmonton's initiative and create a cohesive bike network plan.

[@Smaug1]

These ideas with trees as a barrier are no good, because trees grow in width over time and will eventually damage the pavement around. Roots will eventually damage plumbing and other infrastructure BELOW the road. Replace the trees with plants, Jersey Barriers or curbs. Outstanding video; thank you!

[@ecopennylife]

Glad the city went with some bike lane available, shocked over 700 sent designs 😎

[@MusaM8]

Minimum 3.35 meter width on the lanes? You'd think the cars are being driven diagonally or something.

[@felixsvensson5265]

The design that the city went with is potentially great if they remove one third of the parking spaces on both sides and put in some parklets/trees. Hopefully they also reduce the speed limit and install some speed bumps so that the fast bicycles can also be in the car lane

[@TheWolfXCIX]

Definitely love this, and would like to see another!

[@SamRoxxJDM]

It's really good to see you still making videos keep up this good work :D

[@adamt195]

Actually surprised my design was shown! But I love using streetmix and have used it extensively. Thank you Tom for sharing my design! I submitted a few, and always tried to be realistic with my approach (and follow good, proper design guides)

[@sandram689]

Loved this video. Super useful. I'm thrilled to see 700+ submissions and the creativity displayed. I'm much less impressed with the design that the city went with. As politely commented, it doesn't change the character of the street; it is and will remain car centric.

[@anannon8384]

Beautiful ideas. Well done!

[@sicko_the_ew]

For the one way one lane streets, here's an old idea that might be recyclable for some of them: The one way bridge. (Just in case you always had the luxury if two way traffic over rural bridges in Canada, this is how it works: There's a stop street at each of the approaches (might be better to use a light in the urban version, though). You stop. You see if there's anyone approaching on the bridge. You go if there isn't. If an oncoming vehicle arrives while you're crossing, it waits for you to finish. If there's a lot of traffic, I'd think everyone has to take turns - which might not work if you have generally selfish people there. So in a city, where you want to quieten a street, let's say the "up" traffic gathers at that light, as the down traffic moves through (like you have with roadworks - if that's how you handle roadworks). The "down train" passes through, will the "down light" turns red. And then as the last vehicle goes through, the "up train" is allowed through in the up direction while the down train gathers and waits. In between, there would be times where people can just walk across the street anywhere. Maybe ring a bell when the cars are coming next. I'm guessing there are less complicated ways of doing things, and that this would attract not inconsiderable hate from drivers.

[@thespanishinquisiton8306]

Hey my submission made it into the video. I can tell because the two bike lanes are both going the same direction, which I only realized after submitting it. It's the one with trees on one side and parking on the other.

[@SpySappingMyKeyboard]

Damn, I was so sure my "bike go brr" which was just a giant bike lane would be the accepted desgin

[@Asri_]

One of the biggest issues with bike lanes protected by parked cars is the tendency of drivers to use the whole space for angled parking. Without significant enforcement, it can end up functionally removing the bike lane.

[@WildBikerBill]

Or vehicles not sticking to their side of of the shared width lane because they want to pull up to the curb because they're loading/unloading grandma/stuff/the weather is bad/etc.

[@kornenator]

Interestingly they didn't seem to add any greenery in the official design, and neither did most submissions. Imho that can really add to a good street design, especially how hot summers can get when all around you is concrete with no shade.

[@GustavSvard]

6:00 yeah lighting is vital in winter! You guys in Calgary get more snow and colder winters than us in Stockholm, but you're pretty far south compared to us. Not to mention that awesome city for winter biking: Oulu! which is a good 14° north of Calgary. Gotta have that good lighting.

[@andyleighton3616]

The thng with wide lanes - and 3.35m is pretty wide - is that it will encourage dangerous overtaking. The normal width of a car is a tad under 2m (in the UK) which means that there is definitely a space where people will be tempted to overtake down the centre (and hopefully not drivers from both directions doing so simultaneously). This is made worse if you are cycling on the road of course as a lot of drivers probably don't want to give the 1.5m clearance anyway - so will slot into the gap and go by with very little clearance. For me 3.35m wide is only suitable for fast roads and those taking large vehicles (big lorries). If this is an urban road with people living alongside, and shops and such lke then 2.75m lanes and a 20mph/30kph speed limit would be fine.

[@dijikstra8]

Haha 3.3 meters "a bit narrower" than allowed. That's like a freeway lane on this side of the pond! The city's proposal still seems extremely car centric.

[@mklinger23]

I was one of the one-way submissions. I used my experience in Philadelphia because the lanes are pretty narrow and there are rarely multiple lanes.

[@Korina42]

My design didn't make it for whatever reason, so I'll describe it here: I narrowed the driving lanes as far as I was allowed to put the cars closer together and therefor slow them. I took both parking lanes away because there is so much off-street parking they weren't really needed; they were perfect for bike lanes. I left off transit because there are bus stops on the parallel streets, and widened the commercial sidewalk as much as I could to allow for street trees, sidewalk furniture, street lamps, and bike racks, to encourage people to linger (and spend more in the shops). I probably should have given a little more space to the residential sidewalk as it's pretty narrow. Sadly my design wouldn't work with freeway-wide driving lanes, as it depends on friction to slow traffic.

[@carrottheories]

I think that when lanes are narrowed and speeds are significantly slower, there is less need for things like stop signs which grind traffic to a halt. A road with many stop signs and a higher speed limit might take longer to travel by car than a road with slow but constantly moving traffic.

[@Earth098]

Very interesting exercise. Unfortunately I missed it. Can you please do more of similar exercisers which which we can participate.

[@georgekarnezis4311]

13:26 ugh this “door lane” thing for parking protected bike lanes is so ridiculous. Most cars have one person and their door is on the other side of you in this scenario.

[@nathanstanley845]

The one way design is brilliant

[@celestewilliams5681]

All I'm looking for in my city, is a good step forward. that seems like a great compromise design, which will encourage more people than previously did to cycle or use micromobility in the area.

[@joellethaby8140]

As someone who lives in the area, and someone who just finished a transportation/civil engineering degree (Dr. Sadeghpour was my prof 👋🏻), I found this video very interesting! It was of course very sad to see the actual design after seeing so many fun concepts, however, I understand that the City has to take community engagement seriously. The main take away I have from this video is how great of a community engagement tool Streetmix could be! If everyone providing feedback (especially people living on 34th Ave) were able to go through this exercise and submit them to the city they might realize that the potential for their street is so much more than two lanes of traffic and two lanes of parking. Great video and very cool to see international perspectives on my community!

[@Shifter_Cycling]

I had the same thought as I went through all of the designs -- what a great tool for generating ideas and getting engagement, rather than just asking people what they think.

[@ericgauthier7040]

The survey results indicated green space was more important to residents than good movement but the city did not add any green space whatsoever. Clearly they didn't listen to the residents.

[@ujai5271]

3.3m Minimum width? How are you supposed to enforce any kind of speed limit in a highway sized street?

[@Korina42]

Hubby and I had the same reaction; that's ridiculously wide!

[@WildBikerBill]

It's likely to accomadate trucks making deliveries. They don't magically get any narrower when they come off the highway.

[@lipp1992]

Lol awesome, I made one but didn't submit it and even got my two older sons (ages 8 and 6) to play around with it and design new streets, they love it. I eliminated cars entirely and had bike lanes and green street cars going both ways. had a total of 94K people per hour.

[@alexanderboulton2123]

This is definitely an example of one of the few things America does right in urban planning and street design, which is PEDESTRIAN CENTERED SMALL ONE WAY STREETS

[@jeffzhejiang]

Lots of really dream like ideas. Too bad they all would have the problem that wasn't talked about much, cost. At least the way things are done in North America. As far as bi directional bike lanes on one side, Montreal has a lot of those and they are separated with curbs and sometimes parking and honestly I would take that over any other system that doesn't involve separation, including single direction bike lanes on each side that aren't separated. Our cities have to get wise to the economic and health benefits of great cycling infrastructure a la European cities. Great video Tom and Dr. Sadeghpour.

[@halleradam]

This Adam is strongly against sharrows.

[@rachelbird2440]

It's so cool to see everyone's designs. I did one too after seeing the video, but I was too late to submit it :(

[@humanecities]

Alex here! Thanks for the shoutout! It was really exciting to see what everyone came up with. Hopefully we can continue to see this sort of engagement with city planning. My ultimate dream would be to have a tram going down this street… someday… In my video, I tried to go with something a little more pleasing to everyone: kzbin.info/www/bejne/r3PNoX9-nK93kJo

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Thanks for the design and the video Alex! A tram would be amazing someday. The nieghbourhood originally had a trolley that went downtown, so it would just be restoring what was there originally.

[@stuarthirsch]

Good Video. Forget lowering speed limits, To many drivers they are meaningless or the think a speed limit means the lowest speed they will drive.

[@GloriousSimplicity]

Center parking looked great

[@test40323]

I like the design with no cars. Bank robbery get away bicycles are easier to catch!

[@lewisnelken1966]

9:15 any time theres 1 way bike lanes and one is more optimal (safe) than the other, I feel like people would just use the safer bike lane and go in the wrong direction

[@WildBikerBill]

Sharing of a lane by the largest (bus) and smallest vehicles (bicycles) just seems like a very dumb idea. When a bus is stopped and bicycles are overtaking him, the bikes are going to be difficult to see when the bus is ready to go again.

[@kylehagertybanana]

both lanes on one side is great! just ride on the green paths!

[@kailahmann1823]

I understand, why they kept both parking lanes for now with the higher density and becoming a destination. However the lanes are still much to wide for a calm street that doesn't have a regular bus service. Width in Germany for a street at 50 km/h (!) is 6,5m with busses common in both directions and then -50 cm for each direction that has little to no bus traffic. At 30 km/h you can chip off another 50 cm. Making the lanes as narrow as possible is the most important trick to make streets save.

[@myrrhfishify7743]

I am glad they did a grade separation for the multimodal lane. One factor of separated bike lanes or bike lanes next to the curb and gutter is all the trash (leaves, glass, water, dirt, trash, etc.). Separated bike lanes are nice for the bicyclist until they get all the trash. I sat on a committee for urban biking, and the consensus for that committee was for sharrows, because the bicyclist was always riding through gunk. I personally prefer the separated bike lanes for safety, but often, they don't get cleaned like the roadways and they are not illuminated properly. I was glad to see Dr. Sadeghpour commenting on these submittals. Often, civil engineers (at least here in the US) are not favorable to traffic calming (e.g., chicanes, narrow lanes, sharrows), because they might reduce the ability to meet Fed requirements for traffic mobility (e.g., street maintenance or intersection wait times), which in turn can cause less Federal funding to be given to projects. I hope that more civil engineers (especially those at the agencies) look more to multimodal and multiuse streets for people, not just movement.

[@viewer-of-content]

The crazy thing I thought of that I'm not sure your software allows is an elivated walkway for bikelanes. Elevated walkways have mostly failed outside of cold downtowns like Minneapolis, but Bicicles could be a solution. A 15% grade is doable as on ramps, and you only have to make it just wide and strong enough to let a plow go down it. So with more modern materials/designs since the walkways were tried in the 1960's-1980's you could have slim cable stayed bike lanes above parking or turnlanes.

[@nickberry5520]

South Philadelphia has center lane parking (but probably not on purpose)

[@xouxoful]

Good point negotiation : drivers are often not used to negotiating their space. But drivers feeling comfortable isn’t necessary good news for safety. Roundabouts are more challenging than red lights but they’re safer because involved speed are low.

[@WildBikerBill]

Roundabouts are also safer because collisions are off-angle glancing blows rather than 90 degree T-bones.

[@tyskigolf]

I wonder if "car" protected bike lanes would work better with a bi directional path so people cycling nearest to the vehicles are facing the occupants in the vehicle.

[@Jack-fw4mw]

21:43 We have some Mid Street Parking in Seattle. 14th Ave NW, between Leary Way NW & NW Market Street. It is pretty uncommon though.

[@forivall]

When I think of angle parking, I think of the fancy parts of Vancouver, like Yaletown and Kerrisdale, and small town main streets (like coaldale Alberta)

[@muppetist]

Regarding Justas's submission - it may be that Calgary doesn't allow a 2-way bike lane on one side of a 2-way street, but it's not a provincial prohibition - Edmonton has many of them, including new ones built just in the last couple of years.

[@lisabrown8772]

Edmonton has two way bike lanes on two way streets - basically our whole downtown bike grid is like this. Maybe they got around the rules because it is technically a "temporary pilot", though they have been there for years.

[@gingermany6223]

One alternative to std angled parking is to make it reverse angle parking where you back into a spot. Much safer and has the same foot print. Works really well on one way streets.

[@GloriousSimplicity]

One issue I saw with the first design is that the trees are too close to the road and bike lanes. This is a problem because the roots will expand and cause the pavement to buckle.

[@tasomaniac]

Yeah, I hate these streets in Berlin. It is terrible to cycle on these

[@jjuans6]

Shoutout to Dr Sadeghpour- one of the best profs in my civil engineering undergrad education!

[@lafamillecarrington]

I'd be interested to know what research has been done on traffic flow and numbers when one-way systems are introduced. It seems like a good way of reducing car flow, whilst providing more space for pedestrians and cyclists.

[@xymaryai8283]

i very often use my bike as a low speed mobility vehicle as well as long distance transport, but bike lanes and sidewalks do not accommodate walking and talking with friends with vehicles that require a bit more width, having streets with far less fixed use guidance, and instead having large pedestrian and low speed mobility areas with a smoother gradient of speed.

[@JustClaude13]

In my town we have a narrow two lane road with a 45 mph speed limit and sharrows in the middle of the lane. "Hello clueless, my old friend; we've come to laugh at you again."

[@stevethe3060]

Trees look nice but over time roots push up concrete and paving which makes for undulating surfaces which can also cause cracks and pot holes their leaves become slippy when wet or frozen especially when massed together ,maybe replace trees with hedgerows the ones without thorns or put flowers /plants into heavy planters to separate cycles from vehicles .

[@vwmullen]

You missed a key feature of most chicanes, which is that the the road narrows to ~1.5 lanes. This forces the cars to negotiate with oncoming traffic and take turns going through the chicane, which slows traffic and makes driver more alert.

[@tabula_rosa]

theres a district in Lima with a major foot market where they "reclaimed" the streets by turning the entirety of the street into a foot path for pedestrians. cars are allowed on the street but they are guests to the pedestrians. they put bollards at the major intersections into the district, & left a little gap in the middle wide enough for 1 car to get in & out. you can take a car there if you need to, but you need to NEED to do it bc you're sharing the street with hundreds of pedestrians, & you must drive slowly & responsibly enough to wait until they've given you a clearance to go. there are roads to go around the district, and some small avenues that cut through the district parallel to the major streets, but overall the design of the district is explicitly hostile to cars & it's quite great. restaurants will just put serving tables out on the street, people will pop up tents for events there. there can be hundreds of people on the street with you, conducting business & shopping & ordering and it still sounds far quieter than an empty street anywhere in the city because you'll see, maybe, one car a day if you live there. also because all of the excess space relcaimed from cars is more than pedestrians can take up, it is also a space used largely for just hanging out in public, which makes it into an incredibly safe & friendly area. if you wanna look at it, look up "mercado magdalena lima" on google maps & click thru the pics real quick, there's a lot of photos around the foot market. keep in mind that all of the pictures without a roof overhead of the picture-taker are taken outdoors in the district around the market (the market itself is all indoors) and what you'll notice is that it's incredibly hard to spot any cars at all, & far easier to find people just doing stuff with the street -- whether it be restaurants putting dining area on the street with concrete bollards for plants to create nice scenery for their diners that passing pedestrians can then use as benches which gives them time to be enticed into spending money

[@HermannKerr]

We have street dining here in Salmon Arm in the summer which chews up parking space - I love it. On all the designs I liked the first one best as I loved that it had separation and all the trees. The city design sucked with two rows of parked cars. I thought the design idea of switching parking from one side of the street to the other that they use in residential streets would create sufficient chaos at least once a week to discourage people from parking there or not having a car.😂

[@alpd7638]

I'm only on the first one, and i realize this is a feature (flaw?) Of the software used...but there is no space accounting for utilities and services. A single-phase pad mount transformer needs 1.5m square plus 60cm from back of curb. A hydro pole is 30cm diameter and also needs 60cm from back of curb.

[@HolgerNestmann]

I wanted to comment that more chaos would help and then I saw Yeg Davids suggestions. Thats exactly how I would have set it up.

[@justinsimaluk314]

Why is the minimum road width 3.3m on a road that doesn't have buses?

[@darkranger116]

"its unlikely to upset many people" im part of the 12%. Upset the drivers and make the People really happy.

[@gregvassilakos]

Now tell us what you could do with Culver Boulevard in Culver City, California. The street is about 75 feet to 80 feet wide from curb to curb (excluding sidewalks). It was recently redesigned to have a general traffic lane in each direction, a bus only lane in each direction, and a bike lane in each direction. The city council has voted to redesign it again to have two general traffic lanes in each direction and a combined bus and bike lane in each direction. It seems to me that it should be possible to squeeze in two 11-foot general traffic lanes, an 11-foot bus lane, and a 5-foot bike lane in each direction, but the median and any turn lanes would have to be eliminated.

[@Pystro]

11:41 Technically, only the submission at 4:30 is "legal" in terms of driving lane widths. Nobody else put 3.35m (11 ft) wide roads in their designs. (Unless in the example at 18:52 you re-allocate the driving lane and parklet widths to 3.35+2.25m). For comparison, in my suburban neighborhood (in a medium-to-large sized German city) the roads that trucks are supposed to use have widths between 2.8m and 3.8m. The 2.8m example is an old winding road that they probably can't make any wider without sacrificing having legal sidewalk widths on both sides, and it's also obstructed in regular intervals with cars parked half on the sidewalk. In that state you could only comfortably go 40km/h (mostly because of the curves though), and encountering trucks was mostly only a problem because of those parked cars. If I remember correctly, they disallowed parking now, and the 2.8m widths works fine when a car and truck meet. It's not the most comfortable width for that but it works at 50 km/h. Roads where the planners were able to freely choose the widths - as evident by the fact that they have bike lanes (level with the sidewalk) - are between 3.1m and 3.8m wide. Those widths feel fine going 50km/h even when a truck is coming the other way. So even as a European, those 2.4m that many submitters squeezed the driving lanes down to seem a bit narrow for what is effectively a collector.

[@Shifter_Cycling]

Road widths are really a problem here in North America. Not just the law, but the perception among drivers who already think this width is too narrow.

[@jacksonhill1813]

Mid street parking quite common in CBD in Melbourne australia. Works well, but cars parked at 90deg to traffic and integrated by trees, and barriers etc.

[@GATTACALOVER]

Ahh, I was so disappointed by the final product after all the great designs had been shown. Thank you for the interesting video though.

[@tasomaniac]

Shared with bus lane is not the best but also not too bad. My experience from Berlin: most bus drivers respect the bicycles but some don't and that's scary. 9:20

[@G8Thunder]

Looking at the street in Google maps/street view, this location seems a prime location to narrow the lanes. Minimum road widths, particularly the typical spacious ones we have in NA, are a large reason why people speed. Since 34 Ave is predominately residential with the occasional pocket of commerce like where you filmed, a narrower street with a lower speed like 20mph/35kmh or less would be totally viable given the number of frequent cross streets, and would help the other street users to feel comfortable while sitting outside shops, walking, or biking. Utilizing different, particularly narrower, lane widths in NA would be nice to see more of. Too often a road is designed to an pre-designated minimum, and a speed limit sign is slapped on it in an effort to make drivers do the right thing. If we would design streets with elements that make drivers subconsciously slow down, like using narrower streets, trees close to the road, different road surfaces, speed tables/elevated-crosswalks, we could easily get by with narrower streets and more room for non-car users.

[@NickCombs]

Instead of having the multi-lane end, maybe they can use cheap bollards or barriers until the budget exists for permanent changes.

[@emmettpickerel]

Re mid-street parking in North America: I don't know if it was officially legal or not, or currently true, but in San Francisco this was quite common in the mid 2000s.

[@hyleslie]

Just fyi: Edmonton has bidirectional bike lanes on streets with two-way car lanes. 100 Ave is one.