Absolutely brilliant - the process

Before and after - the contrast

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thats pretty sexy
Red is sexy...and that's fire red!  Why you makin us jealous John?

Neat.

 

instead we are going to spend gadzillions on "protected" bike lanes that will be like bowling alleys filled with debris, new-freds and lances riding past you at 30MPH while trying to dodge granny at 5MPH all in a tiny lane that you can't move out of.

 

I've love for them to spend that wasted money on more of these types of things instead. 

Agreed.

James Baum said:

Neat.

 

instead we are going to spend gadzillions on "protected" bike lanes that will be like bowling alleys filled with debris, new-freds and lances riding past you at 30MPH while trying to dodge granny at 5MPH all in a tiny lane that you can't move out of.

 

I've love for them to spend that wasted money on more of these types of things instead. 

The color contrast really pops and would be a great visual cue for cars to not drive in bike lanes. I ride on Grand and Illinois when going to/from work and cars drive in the bike lane all the time since it is fairly wide on those streets.
Heck, I'd be happy if the roads were as smooth and well-marked in the "before" video  THAT would be a huge improvement over what we have now.  The "after" picture is really nice but I really doubt we will ever reach that level of road nirvana in our lifetimes -not with the corrupt chicago politicians in bed with the corrupt labor bosses and our system of kickbacks for work that is never actually done and shoddy work that is passed off as "good enough" as long as all the parties get a good long drink at the public troffer of money.
Just watched the "process" (first) video.  This seems like a curiously expensive and cumbersome method to end up with two red strips on the edges of the road.  Essentially they are building three roads side-by-side, necessitating three separate passes with machinery and personnel, using two different materials.  The red asphalt is likely more expensive than the black.  Wouldn't you get essentially the same result by laying black asphalt in one pass all the way down the road, then having one guy run a four foot wide stripe of red paint down the edges? Or am I missing something here--is the red asphalt "grippier" for bike tires or something?  I'm thinking a road-building crew is making a LOT of extra money by using this red asphalt method.

Paint or other surface coatings do not seem to last very long in our climate here in chicago. It's also very expensive.  coloring the road coating is probably cheaper in the long run.  They have to make separate passes to make a road wider anyhow since the machines that lay down asphalt are only so wide.  

 

If it  were a simple matter of adding something colorful to the mix or using a slightly different formulation then I don't see that it would be that much more expensive than doing all one color-type other than a bit more work in keeping things separate and planning/coordinating in advance to make sure the right stuff goes where it is supposed to go and not where it isn't. 

The Dutch are willing to spend good money to get bike paths.  U.S. politicians, like those in both Chicago and Milwaukee tend to spend only to do just enough to get by.  Those Dutch roadbuilders are true workmen.  Because local streets are on the bottom of the food chain compared to Interstate, U.S., and state highways, the counties and municipalities often have to fight over the crumbs that are left. 
Unless the paint is some special formulation, I wouldn't ride in a bike lane that was painted.  The paint that's used for traffic markings gets really slick when wet and it's not that tough to slide out if you're doing a turn or other something similar and hit wet paint.  The only thing that's worse in terms of traction is wet metal plates or manholes.

Thunder Snow said:
Just watched the "process" (first) video.  This seems like a curiously expensive and cumbersome method to end up with two red strips on the edges of the road.  Essentially they are building three roads side-by-side, necessitating three separate passes with machinery and personnel, using two different materials.  The red asphalt is likely more expensive than the black.  Wouldn't you get essentially the same result by laying black asphalt in one pass all the way down the road, then having one guy run a four foot wide stripe of red paint down the edges? Or am I missing something here--is the red asphalt "grippier" for bike tires or something?  I'm thinking a road-building crew is making a LOT of extra money by using this red asphalt method.

The other nice thing about the bike lanes (both before and after) is that they didn't have the live traffic on one side and the parked cars on the other.

Asphalt can be dyed certain colors. They are using dyed asphalt. There's no paint applied. 

S said:
Unless the paint is some special formulation, I wouldn't ride in a bike lane that was painted.  The paint that's used for traffic markings gets really slick when wet and it's not that tough to slide out if you're doing a turn or other something similar and hit wet paint.  The only thing that's worse in terms of traction is wet metal plates or manholes.

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