Zurich's Plan For Safer Bike Routes (And How It's Going)

Zurich's plan to transform into a bike friendly city through a city wide interconnected bike network is ambitious, but of course it brings about it its own challenges. Let's check out the first route made and see how it looks.
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Reddit: / inductionpan
Tiktok: / inductionpan_yt
Instagram: / inductionpan
X: / inductionpan
(All links below are in German)
You can read more about the route here: www.stadt-zuer...
Bikeable posts:
- Traffic 1: bikeable.ch/en...
- Traffic 2: bikeable.ch/en...
- Traffic 3: bikeable.ch/en...
- Road completely blocked: bikeable.ch/en...
- The crash: bikeable.ch/en...
Referendums/Initiatives:
- 2020 "Endlich Sichere Velorouten" Initiative: www.stadt-zuer...
- 2021 Transportation Richtplan: www.stadt-zuer...
Scenes were filmed at the end of March 2023; the situation might have changed by now.

[@ArthurKorn]

doorzone bike lane in front of lezipark, great job Zurich!

[@nullor]

Nice to see some "from the trenches" urbanism content from EU, I feel a lot of youtube urbanists make us look too utopian.

[@inductionpan]

I agree, there's still progress to be made. Especially in Zurich, these bike routes are still far from perfect, but luckily there's a very vocal group of people here fighting for change.

[@Sigmandfreud69]

underrated video

[@inductionpan]

Thank you!

[@XnonXte]

Having too good public transportation is such a great problem to have, thus why I presume the city hasn't build much of bike lanes considering its good public transit

[@inductionpan]

That's true. A common pattern I see in Zurich is a four lane road, where two lanes are dedicated to tram tracks, and the other two to everything else. The everything else consists of a lot of cars and people on bikes who aren't as scared of cars as others. I would like to see dedicated bike lanes, but this involves limiting the number of cars on the road (for example with traffic lights that let the trams pass by the cars while they wait) such that the trams can make their schedules.

[@inductionpan]

One more thing: the cars in this situation would share the road with the trams and buses, which could keep their schedules if the cars did not back the trams up.

[@user-ib9pz6id5b]

Yeah, I see the same problem in my hometown, Prague

[@razorblade1596]

Looks horrible. Made for cars and then some useless paint thrown here and there

[@inductionpan]

Unfortunately, this road was built to quite car centric standards when it was first built. Since the new "Richtplan" came into effect in 2021 that designated this road as a bicycle priority route, there has not been much time for a complete street redesign yet, which is why they put the paint there for now (since paint is cheaper and faster than a complete redesign, and serves as a temporary solution). As I mentioned in the video, this road has plans to be redesigned in the future such that it's more bike friendly and not made for cars. I feel like this will come a long time in the future though, since it feels that any change here takes forever. For example, the bike tunnel I mentioned in my first video has been talked about for like 10 years now, but they just started building it last year (due to all the processes).