Towns and cities existed for thousands of years before the automobile came along. True, but then the automobile came along.
Streets and roads accommodated ALL forms of traffic, and the dominant mode was pedestrian. Then came the car, which moved at speeds hazardous to everyone else. So here we are.
Here we are.
Forget bicycles for a moment. Think of pedestrians. People should be able to move around their own neighborhoods safely.
That's why we have sidewalks and pedestrian underpasses and overpasses. That's why we have "WALK" signs, crosswalks, and laws to yield to pedestrians.
What we don't have are pedestrians attempting to walk in the middle of street lanes of opposing traffic attempting to compete with automobile traffic.
But bicyclists do - with often terrible consequences.
Too many suburbanites live in communities that require them to get into their cars to do anything and everything; they've lost sight of how good urban neighborhoods live.
This is not an 'urban vs. suburban' debate. I have lived in both, big cities and in the suburbs. I have seen cyclist create problems in both.
So: it should be part of basic road design that we build sidewalks and ample pedestrian crossings. With minimal upgrades, sidewalks and pedestrian crossings can accommodate bikes as well. On rural roads, have good shoulders; this is proper design for automobiles as well, but it also accommodates pedestrian and bike traffic.
Roads are generally between 8.2 to 10.7 feet in cities, and up to 12 feet wide on highways.
In every city, there are roads where it is impossible to build separate areas to accommodate cyclists without taking out pedestrian areas, or taking away automotive lanes that will create snarling traffic jams and/or make the traffic situation work.
We are dealing with basic physics here as well.
Unless you want to outlaw automobile traffic, cyclists are an inherent detriment to the regular, safe, and smooth flow of automobile traffic. They are less mass, less velocity, and harder to see. Period. The two are unequal competitors for the same resources.
Local situations will vary, but around DC one of the biggest problems is roads on which the shoulders and sidewalks were long ago sacrificed to squeeze in another traffic lane. Planners took the existing sidewalk, spent a bazillion dollars a mile putting in a new car lane, and deemed a replacement sidewalk "too expensive." Planners took a city street in an urban neighborhood and turned it into a high speed commuter sewer, risky to cross even if it's not fenced. This kind of thing kills neighborhoods and produces slums.
For every anecdote, there is another anecdote.
Bike lanes continue to create problems for commuters
Want to put a new arterial road through a residential neighborhood? Ok … provided you have a stoplight and a safe crossing every two blocks, put in a wide sidewalk for neighborhood traffic including pedestrians, bikes, moms with strollers and the joggers and dogwatchers, don't eliminate the on-street parking for local merchants, etc. I.e., don't destroy other people's neighborhoods.
Who is talking about not wanting to have resources and planning for pedestrians, dog walkers, or parking?
I stated that cyclists cause inherent problems due to differential speed and other factors. And they do.
Your commute is too long? Live closer to your job.
????????????
My commute is not long (I never even mentioned that, don't know why you brought that up), and as I have stated - I have lived in both city and suburban environments.
There are many, many places where sensible accommodations have been worked out. That is the desirable outcome. In urban and suburban areas, adequate sidewalks solve much of the problem. In the Washington area, the newer suburban areas seem to be building walking and biking networks as a matter of course, recognizing them as desirable amenities that are good for building strong neighborhoods. In DC itself, the city has more turnaround neighborhoods than you can count, and it is systematically emphasizing mixed use development with pedestrian and bike access. DC planners seem to have finally internalized the lesson that we simply can't cram more cars into the center city. Co-locating housing, offices, light retail and dining with pedestrian and bike access is now the standard. The newly rebuilt Southeast and Southwest Waterfronts are dramatic cases in point.
Our biggest problems are the 1960/70's era suburbs (the beltway suburbs) that were built by people with car-on-the-brain syndrome. About the same time, many established urban neighborhoods were also degraded in the interest of accommodating commuters. This was the period when sidewalks and shoulders on arterial roads disappeared in favor of new traffic lanes. It was the period when bridges were routinely built without sidewalks, so no one could cross except in a car. As a result, yes, some bicyclists ride on inappropriate roads and cause problems. In most instances, however, a bicyclist on an inappropriate road is not there because he wants to be. He's there because he's trying to get from Point A to Point B, and he's hit a chokepoint or barrier that forces him onto an inappropriate road to bridge a gap between safe biking routes.
Situations will vary greatly from one city to another, but around here, a lot of the action in the bicycling planning wars has to do with bridging these gaps. We have the makings of a pretty good biking system, with some terrific nationally known trails as major backbones (e.g., the Mt. Vernon Trail, the C&O Canal, Rock Creek, Sligo Creek, the Anacostia Trail network, the Capitol Crescent, the Washington & Old Dominion, etc.). But if you study the biking maps closely, you will find that many of these trail systems don't link up at all, or are theoretically linked via ridiculously long circuitous routes. In addition, in some areas, neighborhoods are built in such a way that people can't easily reach major bike routes from their own homes; there should be bikeable neighborhood routes -- sidewalks if necessary -- to allow people to get safely to the trails. Most residential neighborhoods are walkable and bikeable, with quiet tree-lined streets and light traffic. Downtown is a different animal; dedicated bike lanes will be necessary there, and should be protected where possible. Every street doesn't need to be bikeable, but planners must think in terms of a coherent network that allows people to actually get around town and reach major points of interest via safe routes. That's what will get them out of cars.
If it were up to me, I'd have all members of city and county councils, and all transportation planners, criss-cross an area on foot and on bikes before finalizing any major new transportation plans. Let them ride a few ten mile detours because they didn't provide a way to get across a major highway, or because they didn't want to budget for a sidewalk along a major highway. A lot of these irritations can be avoided at minimal cost if people are just sensitized to the issue.
To reduce it to a minimalist formula: build a blankety-blank sidewalk, and make sure there are plenty of safe crossings of arterial roads. Don't let roads become barriers. Sidewalks and stoplights would solve most of the problem.