What makes for bad bike lane?
Poor conception, planning and execution. Oh, and shoddy or non-existent maintenance.
Too many “bike lanes” are nothing more than strips of asphalt or concrete delineated by stripes or arrows from the main roadway. Some are even worse: You wonder whether whoever designed or built them has ridden a bicycle since childhood—and whether they rode beyond their family’s yard or the local playground—or whether they’re conspiring with vehicle manufacturers and fossil fuel extractors (and other Trump campaign donors) to kill off cyclists.
I lean toward the latter after seeing Momentum Mag’s “These Could Be The Worst Bike Lanes In America.” There are the kinds of lanes I’ve ranted about in previous posts: the ones that begin or end seemingly out of nowhere, the ones that go nowhere and those that are all but impossible to enter or exit. Oh, but there’s worse: lanes that merge into, or emerge out of, highway traffic and one that is sandwiched between 70 mph (115 mph) lanes of traffic, separated only by lines of white paint.
Although I’ve ridden on some doozies here in New York, none from my hometown made Momentum’s “worst” list. That lanes in Texas and Florida (which has, by far, the highest cyclist death rate in the US) are in the article is no surprise, at least to me, as I have ridden in both states. But I find it astonishing that Seattle and some supposedly bike-friendly communities in California would also have such egregiously dangerous lanes that, in some instances, are even more hazardous for cyclists than the traffic lanes.
