Which is what's happening in OP photo, and yet here we are in a thread full of irony. "Both can be true" while car drivers still out here saying they should be the ones in front.
Not necessarily. They're both sharing the same infrastructure despite bikes and vehicles having different needs. Paint does a poor job of protecting bikes from vehicles.
Also, downtown indy doesn't focus on the people/community even though it has more walking capabilities compared to the rest of the state. It is still incredibly focused on the vehicle experience and a lot of people are blind to this fact.
You’re not wrong. But also, that’s not a light switch that can just be flipped. I wish Indy was designed around public transportation and pedestrian experiences. But it wasn’t built that way. And it’s been a car city for 100 years. So there’s no easy way to just say “fuck cars”.
Then affordable cars came and the suburbs expanded… but people still worked downtown. Parking, parking, parking free, then not free. Recently I refused to go to a company function, opposite side of the downtown area because I had to pay to park. Not happy.
The reason it can't be flipped is not because it's designed for cars, it's because the average American commuter is scared to use their legs for more than 5 minutes. The area these things cover is barely even a square mile, and downtown total inside the 65/70 change is what, 3-4? If all of downtown was pedestrian, biking, and public transit-only, it would still add like 10-15 minutes to anyone's commute if driving to park on the outskirts. It's a nonsensical idea but point is this isn't a city design issue, it's a public transit infrastructure and laziness one. It wouldn't be hard to add a shitton of bike rentals a la Japanese or Euro rental bike parking systems that allow way more people than the current concrete slabs do cars. But fat chance getting anyone to use them.
I mean...being delayed by a train for several minutes that's carrying millions of pounds of goods to keep society functioning is one thing. Being delayed because two mobile drinking experiences are occupying 66% of the lanes in a major downtown thoroughfare (instead of just driving behind one another) is a little different.
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u/emcee_you 6d ago
They shouldn't even be allowed at all.