I think the main reason for both on one side like that (this is ignoring the standard, in-street lane) is that the protected lane also runs directly to the Bay Farm Island Bridge bike/pedestrian bridge, which is on the same side of the road. There seems to have (miraculously?) been some forethought and the planners decided to: 1) make it easier for the kids at the school to use the lanes; 2) make it easier for cyclists to get between the BFI bridge and the High Street bridge (part of my afternoon commute, actually); and 3) limit the number of crossings needed on a major road.

And here’s the street view image from your link when it had more run-of-the-mill bike lanes:

http://tinyurl.com/cetard

The only widespread examples of shared spaces that I can think of in the US are a lot of college campuses, where cyclists and pedestrians really do share the paths and plazas. There are a few reckless bikers here and there, and pedestrians who aren’t used to being around bikes sometimes get nervous, but for the most part sharing those spaces on campuses seems to work very well, in my experience. Bikes slow down to negotiate their way through the pedestrians, and pedestrians get used to having cyclists in their midst. And people watch where they are going for once in their lives!

The theory of drivers, bikers and walkers being more careful in “shared space” sounds utopian. In the situation in Germany, the opposite happened: bikers simply did not care if you were walking on their strip and acted accordingly. It was your fault: You were supposed to know the rules.

I liked your description on “seeing a lovable bike lane”!

If Alameda is “ahead of the game,” it is probably in implementation rather than planning. Oakland has an impressive “pedestrian master plan” and “bicycle master plan,” but when it comes to actually getting anything done, Oakland’s government is dysfunctional, its bureaucracy is mismanaged, and its finances are a disaster. I don’t follow Alameda politics at all, but just from spending time there, it seems to be run pretty smoothly and effectively (they clean the sidewalks, they enforce traffic laws, they fix potholes, and so on).

I’m sure a lot of the difference comes from Alameda being a smaller city, and a city without Oakland’s resource-draining social problems, but the contrast can be pretty stark when you go back and forth between the two.

Ruth: That’s interesting. As you say, the residents of Hannover are probably used to that arrangement, so it doesn’t faze them at all. There’s actually a school of thought known as Shared Space which says, counterintuitively, that it is actually safer on small streets in urban centers to allow bikes and pedestrians, and even cars, to share one undivided surface instead of separating them onto different lanes or levels. The theory is that if you make people share the space, it forces everyone to pay closer attention, take responsibility for their behavior, and to use more care as they negotiate their way down the road. Giving cars their own lanes, and bicycles their own lanes, and pedestrians their own area, is basically like giving everyone permission to be oblivious to their surroundings, and ends up being less safe for everyone.

Many cities in Northern Europe are way ahead of us in thinking through these things. I highly recommend this Boston Globe article about some of these issues. There are similar debates, by the way, about whether it is better to create bike lanes, or to have bikes share the same lanes that cars use. Some studies have apparently shown that most bike lanes, unless they are separated from car lanes by physical barriers, give cyclists a false sense of security, but don’t in fact make them any safer. I haven’t seen the studies myself, so I don’t know the details. (Berkeley has taken an entirely different approach, dispensing with bike lanes entirely and creating “Bicycle Boulevards” on side streets instead. The city erects obstructions to block or slow car traffic on those streets, and marks them very prominently as bicycle routes—seems to work pretty well!)

Peter: That photo was taken at the intersection of Fernside Boulevard and Washington Court, looking east on Fernside toward Lincoln Middle School. That spot is about a block or two east of where Fernside meets Otis Drive and the bridge to Bay Farm Island, at the southeastern end of Alameda.