Posted on 12/17/2017 2:23:19 PM PST by Lonely Bull
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Today the bicycle is a mixed bag, usually with more negatives than positives. In many cities, bike lanes now consume more road space than they free up, they add to pollution as well as reducing it, they hurt neighbourhoods and business districts alike, and they have become a drain on the public purse. The bicycle today — or rather the infrastructure that now supports it — exemplifies “inappropriate technology,” a good idea gone wrong through unsustainable, willy-nilly top-down planning.
London, where former mayor Boris Johnston began a “cycling revolution,” shows where the road to ruin can lead. Although criticism of biking remains largely taboo among the city’s elite, a bike backlash is underway, with many blaming the city’s worsening congestion on the proliferation of bike lanes. While bikes have the luxury of zipping through traffic using dedicated lanes that are vastly underused most of the day — these include what Transport for London (TfL) calls “cycle superhighways” — cars have been squeezed into narrowed spaces that slow traffic to a crawl.
(Excerpt) Read more at business.financialpost.com ...
All those negatives were planned. Eventually they were going to be used to ban cars, just like Obamacare was meant to fail and usher in single-payer.
It’s Agenda 21 - squeeze people into smaller and smaller controllable spaces. Cars would be too much freedom.
The cyclists around here travel the bike lanes at their peril. The car drivers are so bad around here that they have run over several cyclists and the bike lanes for the most go unused except by the ones that illegally drive on them.
I don’t know. If you plan (or re-plan) a city, it’s been found that one of the most important aspects of an attractive city is WIDE SIDEWALKS. I don’t see why you couldn’t add separate pathways for bicycles also.
On the large coast of Santa Monica Bay in Southern California, they have wonderful walking paths and separate bicycling paths and it works very well. Very inviting. But it takes good layout planning or re-planning.
Don’t ban anything.
It’s called FREEDOM. A foreign concept to many.
My experience with bicyclists in my old little Ga town included single bicyclists on a winding two lane country, double yellow lined no-passing road , riding down the middle of the lane in their tight bicycle shorts that leave no doubt that they have been circumcised, giving the finger to farmers who lightly honk so they can pass the unyielding, road hogging bicyclist. This same bicyclist doesn’t even spend one single dime in the town they inconvenienced so they could have their country road experience, biking through the land that my husband’s ancestors farmed for generations.
Oh, and F you bicyclists who though you were going to get our farmland for nothing so you could have your bikepaths.
It’s the same with diamond lanes, where they even build parallel bridges for carpoolers. If they utilized that space (and public funds!) for additional normal lanes, the average traffic flow would improve.
I got a better idea.
Let’s ban bans.
Look, ignorant government policy is ignorant policy, whether it is pro-car, anti-car, pro-rail, anti-rail, pro-suburban sprawl or anti-suburban sprawl, or as here, pro-bicycle or anti-bicycle.
The problems caused by policies addressed in this article are not the only possibilities. Bicycle friendly cities are certainly possible without stupid outcomes. Many folks here on FR ride bikes - a lot - and are neither a**holes or liberals.
A new law here in Oregon mandates that a motorist must clear a cyclist, when passing, by three feet, which means that you are forced to cross into the on-coming lane, going over the double yellow center line. So on any day, you see five to ten, grey haired recumbent cyclists, riding down the center of the lane holding back several cars from passing.
I’ve invented a sliding 2X4 that can extend out four feet, and retract, from the right rear window, all in two seconds.
cars have been squeezed into narrowed spaces that slow traffic to a crawl.
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that’s nothing wait until Milwaukee’s trolley to nowhere is finished - the stops are in the middle of the block, not on the corners. Don’t even think about bikes ...
Orlando has a very carefully planned commuting system in which the Sun Rail commuter trains run at a loss and average killing two people a month. There are dedicated bike trails in several areas which serve as body dumps for local murderers. And let’s not forget the bike lanes and pedestrian crossings that eliminate about one pedestrian or cyclist per week. (I believe we lead the nation in that category.)
Local motorcycle enthusiasts are featured frequently in the obituary columns although few details are provided on the speed they achieved before checking out or whether they were wearing a brain bucket.
Excellent points....by chance I’m currently in Bogota Colombia and Sunday is ciclavia day......streets all over are trans formed for walker, pets and bikes. Traffic patterns are turned around and nothing moves.....but the citizens seem to like it..
I guess Sacramento is different than any city examined by the author.
It’s flat, with CA weather. Bike lanes abound on wide streets.
Businesses downtown cater to bicyclists by putting rack out front...secured from thieves.
It’s a cyclists paradise. And people USE it.
Additionally there are several “river” and “rail” trails atop levies and old rail line that serve as highways...closed to motor vehicles (they were never allowed) which act as freeways for bikes.
It is possible to commute from south of downtown Sac all the way to Folsom (26 miles), or Davis (18 miles) and never encounter a car or traffic. Perhaps a few in the last mile.
The weather is never below 28 deg and rarely above 100.
A bicyclists paradise I tell ya. And at very little cost to the city/county.
Well, you’re certainly not contributing to the “Happiest Place On Earth” theme.
“I’ve invented a sliding 2X4 that can extend out four feet, and retract, from the right rear window, all in two seconds.”
That’s why I’m always packing a .357 when riding. Just hoping...
Bicycles, and human-powered vehicles of all kinds, are very specialized forms of transportation and while they fill a niche for recreation and limited commuting, they are by no means a serious factor in moving large numbers of people, and that only over short distances.
Where there is a mix of pedestrians and cyclists, the separate paths make some kind of sense, but to mix human-powered cyclists with motorized traffic is mixing oil and water.
I see these rent-a-bikes now littering the streets all around downtown Dallas.
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