Quote:
Originally Posted by Jay Random
The point is that multi-light waits are caused primarily by volume of traffic, and there isn't that kind of volume in any bike lane.
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Volume of car traffic has more to do with the actual physical volume of the vehicles and safe operating distances required between them than the number of people being moved. Through a little googling and application of common sense, it seems at most you could get 30 vehicles per lane per minute through an intersection on green (assuming the road ahead is clear).
Bike lanes are about half as wide as a car lane. I couldn't find a number, but I don't think you'd have any trouble clearing 15 bikes in 15 seconds, or 30 in 30 seconds (you could get a lot more than 60 tour de france riders through in a minute, but factoring variable speeds of commuters and following distances, it's probably less than 60 for a full minute).
So, per meter of lane width in a rush hour intersection, bikes are about 4 times more efficient than cars. Vehicles could make up for their inefficiency by carrying more passengers, but that seems especially rare at rush hour.
Basically, you're going to need more than 50 bikes in one place trying to go the same direction every minute before you see anything resembling congestion in a bike lane. But, as soon as you get more than 23 cars in a lane trying to get through a 45 second green light, the whole system starts to fall apart, and does not easily recover.