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It's barely been a week since New York started allowing people to go online and report vehicles blocking bike lanes, and the city has already logged more than 200 of these annoying and dangerous violations.
As predicted on CityLab, there now exists a map of illegal parking in bike lanes. Based on tips to New York's 311 app and website, the city-produced map shows alleged lane violations occurring mostly in Manhattan and Brooklyn with a decent smattering in Queens. Red dots indicate situations where the police "responded to the complaint and took action to fix the condition," according to NYC Open Data. Blue ones denote where police decided "action was not necessary," where the offending vehicle had skedaddled before cops arrived, and complaints with insufficient info from tipsters.
Drivers block bike lanes because city blocks do not have designated unloading zones.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 16 2016, @08:47AM
Putting the parking lane between the traffic and the bicycle lane is how it's done here in northern Europe, where we have a lot more bicycles, and it works fine. However, we also have a rule that you are not allowed to park close to an intersection (as far as I know, that rule is a lot older than bicycle paths).
(Score: 3, Informative) by tfried on Wednesday November 16 2016, @09:14AM
We have the same rule, here, and I'd have to look it up, but it's only for some 5 to 10 meters/yards around an intersection. Not enough to be terribly helpful in this situation. Besides, you'll still have the problem of drivers coming from the crossing road (or even from a private drive way; in my experience, those can be really dangerous) pulling up all the way to the inner edge of the parking lane (where the road appears to be "start" and of course where visibility is best), thus blocking the bike lane.
You know, my city really has a wild mix of all types of bike lane solutions. No bike lane at all, cyclists and pedestrians sharing strips of various widths, dedicated bike lanes of various sizes with parking lane in between cars and bikes, bike lanes in the middle of the road (between the traffic directions) and bike lanes right next to traffic. The latter is really the only one where I feel safe going across an intersection at a steady pace.
Of course, I do suppose in a region with a lot of bicycles, car drivers will be more prepared to look out for cyclists, so that may alleviate some of the problems with "inner" lanes. Hen and egg, though.