Defend Bike and Bus Lanes
In New York, 435 miles of unprotected bike lanes and 101 miles of designated bus lanes are blocked by cars and trucks. For a very long time, the data over this discussion of how well bike or bus lanes operate in the city has always been missing and ignored.
Alex Bell, as a cyclist and a computer scientist, has developed a prototype of machine learning algorithms by studying traffic cameras to track exactly how many bike lanes are blocked by those motor vehicles. He chose St. Nicholas Avenue between 145th and 146th Streets as the site and collected 10-day visual information. The testing result showed the bus stop was blocked 57% of the time, while the bike lane was blocked 40% of the time. Although only the percentage of time was measured, Mr. Bell has speculated and calculated about 850 vehicles blocking the bike lane and over 1000 in the bus lane. He made his project available and open online, and hoped more and more people could focus on this issue.
The blocking of bike and bus lanes is not only related to the mobility of transportation, but also affects safety of cyclists because they may need to transfer the path frequently and ride on motorways. It’s never too late to restrict and curb the violation of motor vehicles, and provide more space and rights for bicycles.
Source:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/15/nyregion/bike-lane-blocked-new-york.html
