Bike Lanes on Sidewalks - Feature Request

[Richcng]

Hi there,

I noticed this growing trend in Urban Design lately of having the bike lanes as part of the sidewalk (see diagrams)

Bike lane on sidewalk, planting near the buildings:

Bike lane on sidewalk, planting near the street:

Would be possible to implement such a feature to the Complete Street Rule in the near future?

Thank you!

[d-wasserman]

Technically, it is already in the rule. It is supported as far as Esri lets me. Long story short, it is very difficult to manage intersections correctly with this type of design. I can hide behind bike boxes or other intersection treatments, but the sidewalk bike facilities will not join up at the sidewalk joints. Please test it out and give me feedback, not many people have.
Note: The sidewalk and street shapes must be selected for this to work.

[Richcng]

Hi David, Thank you for your answer. You're right, it might be problematic for the intersections. Also wider sidewalks become difficult to handle precisely at the intersections. At the moment it doesn't look too bad using the current rule, defining bike lanes on the street (see screenshot) Maybe a way to improve this approach, could be elevating the bike lane itself to the sidewalk/curb level, with small ramps at the endings / intersections. If all stays at the same level, it may give the illusion that the bike lane belongs to the sidewalk and it feels a bit more protected from the traffic. Do you think this would be an easier approach?

[d-wasserman]

@Richcng sorry for the long delay.

I could raise the bike lane, but the problem is lowering it again. It would either be ramped or a flat edge. A few things have happened when I tried extrusions like this. I have a few thoughts on just raising the thing.

• UVs get messed up or become unstable - so much depends on the projection of the street, and in previous attempts extrusion made the UVs unstable. It can work though.
• The ramp transitions are hard - this got easier with insertAlongUV and I think is the missing ingredient.
• Parameter changes if done- If I did this though, should I get rid of bike lanes in the sidewalk shape? or just call it a "raised bike lane"?

[Richcng]

Hi @d-wasserman I see raising the bike lanes would create some issues with ramps, etc. I'm not sure what you mean about getting rid of the bike lanes in the sidewalk shape. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but I think the bike lanes are currently generated on the street shape, aren't they?

In my opinion the most complete solution would be having the possibility of adding a bike lane on both shapes; street or sidewalk:

• If the bike lane is added normally, it would be at the street level as usual.
• If the bike lane is added on the sidewalk, then it would be elevated at the sidewalk level.

This would also help the user to easily manage the 3 general segment widths (-sidewalk / street/ sidewalk- see illustrations above) in one case or the other.

What I mean is that in case we would elevate the bike lane as conceived now, which belongs to the street shape, it would turn into an extension of the sidewalk "conceptually". This would be a bit confusing for the user when looking at the general segment width that wouldn't correspond to the visual aspect of the sidewalk.

[d-wasserman]

This makes me want to look at abandoning sidewalk shapes entirely like Gothenburg, Sweden did. I could see that working, but just gross to implement. I will think about it.