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Old 06-09-19, 10:29 AM
  #15  
Rick
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I can say that I am a safe cyclist, in that I have not been hit or hit a car or other obstacle in decades---either I am unbelievably lucky or I know what I am doing and do it properly to suit the obtaining conditions.

However .... the problem with blocked and unmaintained bike lanes, bike lanes installed purely to get "bike-lane mileage" in order to win grant money which go from nowhere to nowhere .... bike lanes (and shoulders) full of holes, crumbling pavement, road kill, etc. are real issues every cyclist who actually rides a bike on the road.

The biggest issues I have with "protected" lanes is that the "protection" is almost never going to be sufficient to stop speeding cars, but will be enough to hem in cyclists who face debris or puddles .... and the "protected" lanes will not be swept because there won't be a street sweeper which fits .... and natural runoff won't clear the lanes either.

Further, salmon cyclists will suddenly become very serious issues, not just comical annoyances....

Further, the issue of when one can turn becomes a most serious issue. Cyclists will not be able to turn at every intersection unless the "protection" ends at every intersection---and drivers will then have to be on the lookout for cyclists coming form behind some barrier and suddenly being in the lane ... and I do not trust drivers.

A four-foot bike lane on each side of the road Should be enough depending on whether a given municipality bothers to do regular road maintenance.

In dense urban areas .... all of this becomes much more problematic because real estate is at a premium and and it is hard to convince drivers to vote for fewer traffic lanes .... or more cyclists. But I would argue that in busy urban areas, the potential for actual cycle-commuting is higher. So basically ... it is too late to do it right in most cities, and most riders probably don't ride in dense urban areas anyway.
I mostly agree with this. Now if you could only get city planners traffic engineers and the rest of the public to use this kind of intelligence. Much or all of what they call bicycle infrastructure Is forced by opinions of people who have no business making these decisions. When I travel I do my best to avoid on road bike lanes.
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