Bikes belong -- ramp for bicycles alongside stairs, Regensburg, Germany

Bikes belong -- ramp for bicycles alongside stairs, Regensburg, Germany
Originally uploaded by rllayman

This photo is by frequent blog commenter w, from his recent trip to Germany. I like it because it shows a very basic design technique, that if you build an extended walkway with a "well" for bicyclists, then bicyclists can go up and down stairs quite easily.

It's also relevant to the point I made yesterday about the framework for design review that is part of the NYC Street Design Manual.

When you have a robust and complete framework that considers this type of issue where relevant as part of a thorough consideration of bicycling issues within a street design plan, you are going to build into the system a robustness that makes bicycling easier, and therefore much more likely to happen, and it doesn't cost more to do, if you employ these kinds of techniques as a matter of course within new street projects going forward.

Whereas I think DC's bicycle planners might push for this, the systems and frameworks to ensure it happens both in the planning phases of projects (which are run by people not from the pedestrian-bicycling-transportation demand management unit) as well as the design, engineering and construction phases of projects (the Infrastructure Project Management Administration (IPMA)) don't necessarily exist.

And I don't think that DDOT's chief engineer is focused as much on pedestrians and bicyclists as she is on road construction and working within the city's budget on a short term time frame.

So again, if we had more robust design and process frameworks, the individual biases of various people in positions of authority would be cancelled out by the process, and instead the focus would be on obtaining high quality outcomes.