CPF - Canberra Transport Photo

Image sourced from http://www.geo.sunysb.edu/bicycle-muenster/traffic.jpg

 Image souced from https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-33BQZUFMESA/UFbhHXz8j0I/AAAAAAAADCw/H7OLJLuXHww/s1024/Canberra%2520Transport%2520Photo_x3_2400px_logo.jpg

 

The Cycling Promotion Fund of Australia has just recreated the now famous Munster transport photo from over twenty years. The original is the top photo while the Canberra is the lower one. It is a excellent demonstration why private car travel is not the smartest why to get about in an urban environment. As the press release states

“In the space it takes to accommodate 60 cars, cities can accommodate around sixteen buses or more than 600 bikes.”
 

This is very valid point but I would push it a little bit further as they are talking about area, not traffic lane length. The Bus used was a Standard 12m rigid, and the average car is 5m long, so if you times 60 cars by 5m you get a queue of 300m of cars. Then divide that by the 12m Bus and you get 24 buses in a single lane that only 60 cars would take, not including the space between each vehicle. If you include the metre that you would have between each vehicle you would fit in another bus, so that is now 25 buses.

I have to say the 600 bike claim I find a bit of a stretch as they would have to be very closely parked. That said most racks that are around the place do allow for that kind of density of bicycle parking. Traffic lane length on this one is a little harder, as multiple bikes can ride alongside each other in a single traffic lane where that is not the same for car/bus scenario. With that it could be assumed that 3 bikes across could fit into a typical 3.5m traffic lane and each bike is 2m long with a meter gap between each bike. There is 69 bikes, three across so 69 divided by three times by 3m (length of bike plus gap) equals 69m of bicycle traffic. Therefore 300m of car traffic divided by 69m of bicycle traffic times by 69 riders. I know this is all long winded but the point is, In traffic you could fit 300 bicycle riders into the a single traffic lane that it takes 60 cars to occupy.

Ofcourse this is all getting very technical and the dynamics of all these figures change once they start to move and area is also relative to speeds but the point is. Cars take up to much space in an urban environment and most sensible thing to do is to encourage people to ride a bike and to use public transport where riding a bike is not practical or possible.

I will leave it with the youtube clip from the photo shoot