The Battle Over Bike Lanes Needs a Mindset Shift

wired.com

4 points·zwilliamson··3 comments

It is a Good Idea to segregate traffic by Weight and Kinetic Energy.

Trains should not be next to Cars should not be next to Bikes should not be next to Pedestrians. As for Kinetic Energy, The Diverging Diamond interchange is an incredible example of increasing the Safety with which Street and Highway vehicle traffic can exchange, by Reducing the number of Collision points that are -Allowed to Exist-.

20mph Bikes being next to 40mph Cars is a HUGE difference in Kinetic Energy, and dedicated Bike/Pedestrian routes are always the most pleasant to Bike on. Maybe not the most pleasant to Walk on! But obviously, everyone needs to get themselves and their goods somewhere, and compromises need to be made...

I’ll never forget going to a community meeting about the design of a fully protected bike lane on Valencia St in San Francisco and one of the major opponents was there…Who you might ask? The owner of Valencia Cyclery! Blew my mind.

One of the downsides of separate bicycle infrastructure is that it has the tendency to demote cyclists to 2nd-class road users.

It would be fine if there was comprehensive bike infrastructure that allowed cyclists to never have to share road with motor vehicles, but we know that's not going to happen. As a result, drivers will see cyclists on the road and get upset and behave badly because they think to themselves that the cyclists "should" be using the bike infrastructure, not knowing that for part of the commute the cyclists have no separate infrastructure.

The cycling community would prefer the bikes be treated as equally deserving of space and accommodation by drivers, but it doesn't happen.

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