[*BCM*] Bike Lanes Revisited

[turtle]

I think the main practical problem with bike lanes (as opposed to the
psychological and political problems, which I'll spare you all for the
moment) is that traffic engineers, politicians, and other officials
treat the lanes as being weird, special, and not-real-vehicle
facilities.  So we get weird, confusing, unrealistic, and even
dangerous designs that place bike lanes to the right of right-turning
traffic, in door zones, under piles of snow, squeezed between other
narrow lanes, and so on.

This leads me to the previously mentioned psychological and political
problems with bike lanes.  I don't think traffic engineers and other
officials are going to be able to properly design dedicated bike lanes
(or special vehicle lanes of any sort) until our society starts
understanding that bicycles (and other small and/or human powered
vehicles) are "normal".  I believe that as long as bicycles are seen as
weird, bicyclists will be treated weirdly.  I also think that this is
why places like Holland seem to be bicycle paradise: not because they
have special bike paths and lanes, but because bikes are seen as
perfectly normal.

-Turtle

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"One day we must come to see that peace is not merely a distant goal we
seek, but that it is a means by which we arrive at that goal.  We must
pursue peaceful ends through peaceful means." - Martin Luther King Jr.