I used to think shared space was a great alternative to car-centric streets but after reading David Hembrow's blog about bicycling in the Netherlands for a while it's clear that shared space is just a half-measure. If you want a society where people other than (mostly male) daredevils in their 20s and 30s can cycle then you need segregated biking facilities. Holland's percent of trips by bike (modal share) is around 30% (America is about 2%). It got there by having world-class segregated cycling facilities, not shared space.
If you have the time check out John Pucher's "Cycling for Everyone: Lessons for Vancouver from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany": http://www.sfu.ca/city/city_pgm_video020.htm
What definitely does not work is drawing cyclist lanes onto the road. In Germany at least I think for a while it was believed that cycling lanes should be drawn on the roads rather than on the sideway.
The result is that the cycling lanes become very dangerous, because car use them for short term parking all the time (it is not unusual to have a parking car every 100 meters). That would mean cycling around the car and hitting the normal road. I think it is safer to just stay on the road all the time, rather than cycle in and out.
The parking on the cycling lane is actually illegal, but people don't care. Sometimes I consider just calling the police for every car that parks there, but I suspect they wouldn't really bother.
I don't see why this is a big deal. Philadelphia has some recently added cycling lanes that I use all the time. If a car is parked you just look and cautiously veer around it. Sometimes you have to wait for a few seconds if there's heavy traffic and the space is narrow. But usually there's even enough room to get around a car without actually going back into the normal lane, since our bike lanes are converted from fully sized car lanes, which are bigger than cars.
And of course people park in them short-term with their hazards on. I'm not sure whether it's illegal or not (in Philly people park with impunity long-term in the turn lanes sometimes). But if it is it shouldn't be, there's no better alternative. Park in the non-bike lane, and make other cars go around them into the bike lane? No idling at all?
I believe the big deal is that you are asking "regular folks" to weave in and out of traffic on a bicycle on the way to work. Not to mention all of the other hazards with the bike lane, at least in DC area, such as being the wasteland for crap left over after the plowed snow banks melt. I'm usually comfortable on even the worst roads but wouldn't want my wife to bike to work on many of them.
As a cyclist my feeling is that the risky situations are the ones were you cross into and out of traffic, or do anything unusual. So the cycling lane would be more risky than just driving straight on on the road. In the latter case, at least car drivers can see you from far away and prepare for overtaking you.
Maybe our streets are just not as big as yours in Philadelphia.
From my experience with cycling I can say that cycling on painted cycling lanes feels 2x safer than on shared space, and cycling on bike-only roads feels 10x safer (by far the worst problem on separate roads is dogs). The problem with shared space is that cars don't keep enough distance from the side. They go around you instead of driving in a straight line. This is especially a problem with trucks and buses, because they are so big.
What I usually do is cycling without hands on the handlebars. This keeps the cars at a much safer distance.
This is absolutely correct. The cycle lanes in Amsterdam took up relatively little space, had physical dividers, and at busy intersections there would be separate small traffic lights for cyclists - they get the green light about 10 seconds before the cars, which is usually enough time to get through the intersection and makes life easier for both cyclists and drivers.
I just wanted to double-check your comment about "ten seconds" - really that much? As in, timed with a watch, or it "feels like" ten seconds?
I'm only asking because ten seconds is actually quite a long time at an intersection, and it fascinates me that such a concession to bike safety would be made - and work.
Feels like. I dithered between 5 and 10, but although it was a decade ago that I lived there I remember thinking that dutch drivers were remarkably patient. Mind you, traffic laws there are such that motorists are almost automatically at fault if they hit a pedestrian or cyclist, so they have an incentive to be careful.
One more thing: the author of the article, Tom Vanderbilt, wrote a terrific book called "Traffic" and has a excellent blog (at http://www.howwedrive.com/). It was from his blog that I found out about David Hembrow's blog.
David Hembrow on shared space: http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2008/11/shared-space.html
If you have the time check out John Pucher's "Cycling for Everyone: Lessons for Vancouver from the Netherlands, Denmark, and Germany": http://www.sfu.ca/city/city_pgm_video020.htm