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Comment by gnulinux | Hacker News Reader

As a biker in Cambridge, I have mixed feelings about this. Biking in Cambridge is subpar, I lived in Berkeley, CA 4 years and biking was MUCH more comfortable there. I'm worried this will hinder the progress and slow down constructing new bike lanes. I want more protection BUT I also want bike lanes every where. If they're not gonna construct more bike lanes because now it has more regulation, this is a negative development. If this will not happen, this is a positive development. Time will show. I'm hopeful but skeptical.

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Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists (and pedestrians) for some reason. Maybe it's all the students. It's probably a net good thing that cycling lanes are being improved although there are certainly tradeoffs given the traffic and parking situation. However, whenever I'm driving home up Beacon Street after dark, there are invariably cyclists zipping around with no lights, going up streets the wrong way, and pedestrians dressed in dark colors randomly quickly stepping out from behind parked cars into the street.

The bike lanes that now exist probably make things safer overall but there's a lot of dangerous behavior out there on the part of many types of infrastructure users (including cars as well).

> Cambridge also seems to have a disproportionate number of unsafe bicyclists (and pedestrians) for some reason.

There's a certain "vicious cycle" element to this. If bicycling generally appears unsafe, then mostly (over)confident, risk-tolerant people will do it. Those are the same people who are comfortable getting away with unwise things like running stoplights the wrong way at dusk on their no-brakes fixie with a single tiny red blinkie mounted high on their messenger bag. ;)

It's also tied into a common argument against biking infrastructure: "Why would we build this? There aren't any people biking now." Chicken-egg, but there are many people who won't bike if it seems unsafe. And those people have a good chance of behaving more sensibly when they are convinced to ride.

Right. The argument "not that many bikes, why build bike lanes?" is a bit like "nobody crosses the river on a raft, so why build a bridge?"

I feel like unprotected bike lanes are near useless. Atleast in NY, drivers don't really care. Ubers/cabs will pull over quickly to let people off blocking them. Pedestrians don't look for bikes when they cross them, and bikers are often forced to leave the lane due to obstruction.

Same in Boston area, and I think this is a cultural problem that needs to be solved. I never had this problem when I was living in the Bay Area.

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