Stage 5 Changing Places

When people feel safer they are more likely to ride a bike, and they feel safer in bike lanes.

The idea of "vehicular cycling", where cyclists share the road with cars and act like cars, is looking sillier with every new study. A few weeks ago a study showed that a shocking 40% of cycling deaths happened when a cyclist was rear ended, usually on arterial roads. Now a new study, Lessons from the Green Lanes, provides clear evidence that separated bike lanes work really well, not only at saving lives, but in attracting more cyclists, making cyclists feel safer, and increasing economic activity.

Via Lauren Moss

It's easy to point out that there's something wrong with a system, such as the design of an urban street or neighborhood, but it's another thing entirely to come up with a design that would be better.

But when it comes to re-imagining the streets in your neighborhood, that process just got quite a bit easier, thanks to a new web app. With Streetmix, users design their perfect street, with the right balance of bike lanes, sidewalks, public transport and vehicle traffic lanes, just by dragging and dropping design segments and adjusting their parameters.

Some users are designing alternatives to real streets in their cities; the app uses real-world design constraints, which can help the layperson understand some of what urban planners need to incorporate in their designs and enable better communication between the planners and the population in design and use issues.

Via Lauren Moss