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Comment by rahkiin | Hacker News Reader

What makes cars deserve a big piece of asphalt but cyclers not? We have a lot of cyclers in the Netherlands and they deserve the safety and convenience of separate roads, away from multi-ton vehicles.

Also, bike roads are not as overly constructed like car roads (maybe just 1 or 2 layers of asphalt instead of more)

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The problem segregating bicycles is that that automatically means that they are excluded from the best infrastructure which are the regular roads, which by the way do not belong to cars. I suffer that discrimination everyday when I ride my bike and there is a bike path adjacent to the road in places where I had no problem before, and that's after many years of riding so I can tell you that it is completely safe to share the road. Bike paths are built to kick us out of the roads it is pretty obvious to me now.

Unless you ban cars completely from streets, no matter how good the asphalt is I would not want to be around cars. I actively avoid cars if I have an option to go longer path, but with less car nearby me. I have no driving license, but I'm sure that as a car driver I would also prefer to see cyclists away from me.

I don't see how someone would want to go on main street if you have an option to drive on a separate road.

Whenever I wanted to go to a place by bike I used to go into google maps then clicked on the "avoid freeways" option and I would take that route. Nowadays where I live I have to not only avoid freeways but streets or roads with bike paths, it is really awful. I've been riding my bike to work every day for the last 13 years and I realize that If I want to keep using the road safely and correctly I am going to have to buy a car or a motorcycle.

> The problem segregating bicycles is that that automatically means that they are excluded from the best infrastructure which are the regular roads

The above is purely a public policy decision. We (as in we the people) can decide to change this.

Of course the example here might not be so bad because it is so far away from the road that motorists may not know it is there. The moment they know and they see you on the regular road then they yell at you harass you.

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