On the planning end of things, bike lanes make a lot of sense. But unfortunately from a usage and enforcement perspective, they are often worse than useless. Where they would be most useful is in rural and suburban areas, but I only ever see them in cities. And one of the main problems with city traffic is people parking wherever they like for few minutes, whether it is a real parking space or not. In some cities there can be vehicles in the bike lane every 50 feet or so. These are often cabs, package delivery, food delivery, contractors. And worse, municipal vehicles such as busses, police, public works. Ironically, one of the biggest hazards in bicycle lanes is other cyclists! If one is easily going 30MPH, one is much safer biking in the traffic rather than trying to deal with a casual cyclist going 10 MPH. And when I have pressured municipalities into enforcing the parking and access with regards to bike lanes, they have often resorted to threatening ME for ordering them to do their job.
Another problem is that cyclists are typically required to stay as far to the side of the lane as safely practical, but how far over this is can vary considerably. In a city with good pavement and clean streets, close to the edge is not a problem. But in many areas, the edge of the pavement deteriorates before the middle does. And some areas are chronically cluttered with debris which is not safe to bike through.
Or just make people pay attention to what they are doing, as well as their surroundings, since they are supposed to be doing that anyway. My experience suggests that people accept the tradeoff of less awareness/safety because they prefer to go 50MPH instead of 35MPH, and justify that this works most of the time.
YES! Consider the goopy consistency of tar, it only solidifies a little bit when used to pave a road. Hitting pavement at 30MPH hurts, but you can feel the “give”. On concrete the same impact would break bones. Also there is a significant difference depending upon temperature. When asphalt gets close to zero Fahrenheit it gets much harder, but is still softer than concrete of the same temperature.
My guess is that it is more difficult to patch concrete roads. Once frost heaves a pothole in the road, it is a more brittle split and more concrete can’t be just poured on easily. It would soon pop out. Pavement can be quickly patched with just a bit of hot asphalt. Also it would be much harder to access utility lines running under the street for maintenance.
Meanwhile thick slabs of concrete are easier to maintain as sidewalks. IIRC lots of sidewalks is Boston are/were asphalt instead of concrete.
I remember reading that concrete roads are actually cheaper in the long-term, but it’s a much more expensive initial cost for putting it down, as opposed to asphalt (which you just lay down and flatten).
And there’s also the road noise (I hate driving on concrete, as that loud, high pitched humming is really annoying).
Yes Concrete costs a lot more and takes a lot longer time to lay down. BUT, it tends to last a lot longer and require much less upkeep. If you note, bridges, at least around here, are almost always paved with concrete, where as the roads are asphalt.
Coming to Canada from countries where rear turn indicators are amber and separate from tail lights (Australia and UK), my experience is that separate indicators are FAR more visible. At night the weak dull-bright pulsing of taillights is almost invisible to me and easily confused with brake lights if you can only see the rear corner of the car. Of course, here in Canada, pretty-much no-one uses indicators anyway. With a Starbucks/Blends/Artigiano/Tim Hortons in one and and a cell phone in the other, who has a spare hand for operating them?
And why are cars allowed to park so close to corners and pedestrian crossings? And why is the manner of use of circular traffic lights and directional arrows not standardised? And what is it with these 4-way stop signs that NOBODY stops for?
There used to be some really great concrete roads around here, built in the late 50s and early 60s. They were cleverly raked and grooved to provide optimal grip, road noise and drainage, really very well done. Huge cost savings over time, too.
But in the 80s, the state tried to do it again (because the old ones were finally starting to show a few signs of wear) and they used stone and sand that had some kind of chemical issue… alkali-silica reaction, they called it. The local citizenry called it “using cut rate materials probably provided by the Jersey mafia”. But anyway the new concrete roads crumbled away almost immediately at tremendous cost to the taxpayer. It was a complete debacle, especially since the new roads (while they lasted) were not built to the old standard of quality. Now we use slag cement concrete.
