Miele Man

As a life-long bicyclist with over 60 years of bicycling experience, I'll say I'm NOT a fan of MOST bicycle lanes. Far too many of them are simple painted stripes that put the bicyclist right in the door zone of parked cars. Bicycle lanes often remove the bicyclist from a driver's lien-of-sight which means the driver does NOT SEE the bicyclist and therefore is much more likely to right-hook the bicyclist at any intersection including driveways and entrances to parking lots. Far too many bicycle lanes end abruptly. Where does a bicyclist afraid or or leery of riding with motor traffic go then? For that matter how does the bicyclist get to the bike lane in the first place? Making a left turn onto a cross-street is often impossible from a bike lane especially a segregated bike lane. Another problem with bicycle lanes is that an overtaking driver often has no idea how fast a bicyclist is travelling. There again, if the bicyclist needs to merge left into traffic or if the driver makes a right turn a collision is a greater liklihood than if the bicyclist was riding in the traffic lane.

On top of this a lot of people do not like the idea of a traffic lane being removed just to accommodate a handful a few bicyclists. Waterloo Region in Ontario, Canada recently use orange cones to put in temporary bicycle lanes in three cities. The was such an outcry in one of the cities because the main road there only had one traffic lane left for automobiles, passed a hospital, and the bike lane had few users that the bike lane was removed. That actually made it safer for bicyclists to use that road because the temporary bike lane force bicyclists to ride in the gutter area with no way to avoid a pothole or any debris.

Add to this the fact that there is a significant drop in bicyclists in winter or in other inclement weather and you can see why many people don't see the need for bicycle lanes. So few bicyclist use them that the cost just doesn't seem to justify them.

Cheers