A little bit of bikecentric fun.
https://dutchcyclinglifestyle.com/imagine?step=imagine
The vision for the main road through our village...
There'd be a load of angry people out yelling at people walking and on bikes and somehow they'd still find a way of parking their cars on it.
According to that link it’d look like someone had nicked my front garden and pedestrianised it.
Or planted a load of unwanted foliage in front of my house.
Also I’d be absolutely soaking wet/cheesed off, getting back from work close to midnight and having to park my work van somewhere random, where no doubt some scroute would be emptying it of tools.
It would be great. No tossbandits driving like total ****s at double the current speed limit and nearly killing kids / dogs / cats / other animals, or losing control and hitting houses.
No ****tastic parking of vans and motorhomes in dangerous places like at the peak steepness and peak narrowness whilst on a 45 degree bend with its adjacent way-too-narrow footpath-to-not-get-wing-mirrored.
Bring. It. On.
(Oh and can we have a gondola lift fitted to take us to and from the valley bottom).
@robertajob, do we live in the same place?
Two options have resulted my street being flattened out with a 'tunnel' into the hillside, and another has built a row of three story buildings across the front of my drive and lots of miniature people! I think this AI has lots of learning to do! PS Think twice before sharing photos directly outside your house!
My lane isn’t on Google street view. Tbh, we only get about 10 cars a day (mostly residents, it’s so narrow that locals stay away.) so am pretty happy with it as is tbh. Kids play out in the lane on their bikes, no issues. Tried it for the nearest main road and it looked great though.
Think twice before sharing photos directly outside your house!
Definitely! I used the neighbours' house with the 3 cars instead.
I can't quite figure out why they've added lots of midgets along with the wild flowers and cobbles, there's actually less space for bikes...
PS Think twice before sharing photos directly outside your house!
I didn't. That is our village, but nowhere near the bit I live on.
Liking this.
The starting picture wasn’t bad, a van and a car parked on opposite sides of the road, straddling the pavements a bit, but importantly just offset enough that any 2-way traffic would be slowed as folks gave way to oncoming traffic.
The Dutch result is nicer.
Mine would still look like a dirt track in the forest...
Very pretty an all that, but can someone move the big plant-pot, the binmen are coming!
The vision for the main road through our village…
That's be great - but try doing it in the villages of the Derwent valley with their 13% hills!! 🙂
This is the UK. The flower beds will soon be covered in McCups and half empty cans of Monster.
Hmm someone has dumped a bike in the hedge.
My road gets widened massively (by removing everyone's front garden) and cobbled. Looks like a town high street except without the shops and cafes.
Pretty sure there's a better solution that doesn't involve bulldozing my garden. 🤔
Plus all those new trees along the edge of the pavement would block the light to my garden. I mean house.
No need for fancy filters.
The road - now a traffic jam.
The Pub - now a BP forecourt
The trees behind it - now a large kwik-fit style car garage
The shop opposite - perennially at risk of closing as the road is busy so no one crosses it and no one walks and the only parking is now the BP garage.
The trees opposite - also a car garage
F*** cars.
Mine would still look like a dirt track in the forest…
🤣🤣Mine too. It can't even find the nearest two villages to do it 🤣
Doesn't cope well with already green and rural roads
Center Parcs?
The AI really likes adding cobbles, doesn't it? Most of the cobbles it adds don't look particularly bike-friendly, either.
On my street it also seems to like adding rows of gaily-coloured but curiously small and/or truncated shops.
The last place we lived used to be prone to speeding. Cobbles and narrowing it would do wonders.
Despite its imperfections this the first time an AI tool has made me smile…
Before:
After:
AI is great isn't it.
Funnily enough, I have a meeting next week to discuss things like this in our area!
Our street is part of NCN 7. They are also a main way to school for many kids.
And only has 48 houses on, of which 12 are in cul-de-sacs off it. At each end are two access roads from the main road, which also form access to two other estates which are slightly larger (say 80 houses)
It would be so easy to make it 1/4 a one-way car lane, 1/4 walking and 1/4 cycling (both directions) and 1/4 parking and green infrastructure as every house has minimum of one, some upto three, parking places.
IMO, active travel and green infrastructure are linked. We need to be radical about designing our streets, and the last few years of climate change has shown we desperately need more nature based solutions to the changing weather we face.
Something like this our street mightlook like:
Currently:
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Basically just changed some block paving for cobbles on my street. Not sure that’s better for cycling.
That said, our street normally has folk walking up and down the middle of it. And sometimes cycling.
AI is great isn’t it.
In that example, yes. Adding in thriving local trade in walking distance, and loads of trees, does beat a desert of single use residential properties.
Going to have to play a bit more.
For back home in UK it doesn't work, and turns a rural cul-de-sac in to a bustling city centre where all the lap fencing are turned in to shops. With cobbles of course.
For my street in Germany, it turns it back in to what it probably once was at one point. It's a cobbled street that was tarmacced over, and they come round once a month to repair it. But there are construction works going on which has messed it up properly. So the AI shows what it would look like if they cobbled it properly once the works have finished. And made it not a rat run.
