I don't know whether Robert "Bicycle Bob" Silverman, about whom I wrote yesterday, uttered the title of this post. It's not hard to imagine that he did--le peinture n'est pas une infrastructure--when he was campaigning for the safe, practical lanes Montreal's cyclists enjoy.
Someone who did say that--in English--was a fellow identified only as "John" in Hertfordshire. He documented a "near miss" in which a driver squeezed him over to the curb.
"John" blames, in part the driver: "Whilst this was telegraphed right from the point when the van signals to turn right, there was a weary inevitability of at least one of the drivers not being able to see beyond the end of their bonnet and creating an easily preventable situation"
While the carelessness or cluelessness of drivers is not news to cyclists in the UK or US, "John" also blames what an editor of road.cc sarcastically calls "a great piece of cycle superhighway." His all-too-close encounter, he says, "demonstrates that poor cycle infrastructure, in this case a narrow lane that disappears just when you need it, can cause more problems than it solves."
He said what I've said--and, what I don't doubt "Bicycle Bob" said: Poorly-conceived, -constructed and -maintained bicycle infrastructure is not only less convenient, but more dangerous, for cyclists and motorists alike, than no infrastructure at all. I have seen too many examples of that here in New York, but too many planners persist in believing that simply painting a few lines on a street will lead to a safer co-existence, or at least a truce, between cyclists and motorists.
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