UniChris

To be blunt, a main reason is that when people claim they're building for bikes, what they actually build tends out to be not only dangerously mis-designed, but far slower and more aggravating to use than the routing offered to drivers. At night or in winter, it might not even be usable at all - which they'll excuse by calling it a linear recreational park, rather than a transit facility. Rather than look at the trips people are trying to make and address the actual difficulties, they'll build some expensive monstrosity on one previously usable stretch of road that provides little help or actually makes things worse, and continue to ignore the areas that have the actual safety or usability problems that prevent making those trips by bike.

Typically what's actually need to make cycling work is just to make sure there's well paved shoulder-like space so that cyclists can be safely and easily passed, but in a way that keeps cyclists a mutually aware part of the traffic flow and able to move into one of the ordinary lanes where we need to for safety at intersections or to turn from there.

Car-like routings don't appeal to everyone who first thinks about using a bike, but when people actually try to do it on an ongoing basis, they turn out to be strongly preferable in all but the worst high-volume, high-speed traffic situations, which are uniquely the sorts of spots where bike-unique construction and signals start to offer actual benefit, instead of delays and dangers that discourage cycling. Yes, there's a level of road where any one of us is going to take advantage of a pedestrian-type option - but short of that, forcing cyclists to revert to being pedestrians is design that discourages cycling. Making that the primary offering is only justified in the worst of situations - anywhere else, it can only be considered an option when it doesn't come at the cost of the road width needed for actually safe and practical cycling, and when sufficient effort and education is done to educate users about the risks of mis-using pedestrian style infrastructure without adopting pedestrian style caution behaviors.

Before people start falsely claiming that is only the viewpoint of only highly determined cyclists, rather than the result of considering how the actual (vs perceived) dangers to cyclists come so much from trying to go through the wrong parts of intersections without traffic awareness, consider a reason why even so many very inexperienced bike users are already and increasingly going to be trying to move at higher sustained speeds than even most dedicated roadies:



The only realistic answer to commuting in that heat would be electric motors. Pedaling my bike is fundamental to the whole point for me, but if I were going to try to travel in those temperatures, and wanted to do it without using an electric car, the next best choice would be a two wheeled electric device. Probably the right answer is a registered, road-legal electric motorcycle, but in reality lots of people are taking the opening provided by allowance for "e-bikes" and buying throttle based things that are more moped than bicycle.

Pedal assist is for situations where someone needs to claim they are still riding a bicycle - either claim that to themselves, or to comply with any actually enforced rules. But it's the last thing you'd want in that sort of heat - no, you be looking for the cheapest, fastest, most passive to ride thing you thought you could get away with calling a "bike" rather than putting plates on.

And because the market for such things is precisely the people who were not previously trying to use a pedal bicycle for such trips, it's going to be people who at best use the designated bike route (if they don't take to the sidewalk). Throttle based light electric motorcycles are happening, to a degree that's probably unstoppable. And if you think about it from a transit policy perspective, that's a good thing. But we need to fit them safely into traffic. And the last thing that's going to do that, is sidewalk style routings that require basically coming to stop before going through mis-designed sidewalk-style intersection. A highly skilled bicyclist might recognize the need to do that to survive such mis-designs, but the people counting on their electric motor are observably the most ignorant users of two wheeled devices out there.

If we're gong to design for bikes (which means designing for the things with motors too), we need design and route designations that actually promotes safe behavior for operating a two-wheeled device at less than the speed of other road traffic:

1. Generally in situations of sufficient visibility ride on the slow side margin of the roadway, which should be made wide and smoothly paved enough to do so safely
2. Maintain awareness of and with other road users, including by use of a glasses or helmet mirror, appropriate nighttime lighting, clothing that stands out from the background
3. When approaching an intersection without following traffic, consider moving more into the ordinary lane to stand out from the background and be more visible to those who might enter the roadway or turn across it from the opposite direction - not just visible to drivers but to pedestrians and other cyclists, too.
4. Do not ride through intersections on the wrong side of a turning lane; occupy an optional turn lane, move to the through side of a mandatory turn one.
5. Avoid passing slowing or stopped vehicles on the unconventional side, even in a nominal bike lane. If it is necessary to do so, do it slowly at a speed where one can react to others (including pedestrians) who act from an assumption that if the cars are not moving, nothing else is.
6. Look ahead for obstacles and threats such as debris, paving flaws, and parked cars, and change into an ordinary lane well in advance of reaching them
7. Where and when cooperating with other road users is not a comfortable option, using pedestrian style crossing aids is, but pedestrian facilities are designed for pedestrians who stop and look, not for cyclists who charge boldly in like through traffic.

For cycling to actually be practical over beyond-walking distances, there needs to be a much wider recognition that forcing cyclists to use pedestrian-style facilities is the last resort - rather than the first resort the ignorant keep trying to make it.

The arguments of the "segregationists" who believe that cyclists and drivers cannot cooperate already failed to recognize the actual sources of danger to pedal cyclists, and accommodate the needs of those trying to use pedal bicycles to actually go places - but the segregationist position utterly fails to provide a viable answer for where electric motors are taking the two-wheeled transportation demand.