Fuck your existing lanes and fuck your 1.5-tonne beasts. Make some space, it won’t fucking kill you.
The zero sum game conservative mentality rears its ugly head again to yap some heinous shit.
My neighborhood is one of the poorer ones, and it’s got more people taking bikes than most other places I’ve seen in LA, yet the only places that get dedicated lanes or bike paths are wealthy areas where I don’t even see recreational bikers, let alone those getting to work.
That said, I’m 98% certain my local conservative city council is skimming the coffers, so I’m not expecting much.
They only way to remove conflict between bikes and cars, where the bike usually loses, is to remove cars or bikes. Giving the road to cars is tried and always runs into standstill traffic and stupendous infrastructure costs. Bike infrastructure turns out to scale more and is cheaper.
The irony of the idea that cyclists are “taking lanes” can only come from the mind of a motorist ignorant that roads in North America only started getting paved with smooth asphalt due to a campaign by what is today The League of American Bicyclists. It was only due to the hard work and advocacy of cyclists that roads ever became hospitable to colonization by machines in the first place. If motorists were ever honestly adamant in their demand that no lanes ever be “removed” then it would mean undoing every single car lane.
In an effort to improve riding conditions so they might better enjoy their newly discovered sport, more than 100,000 cyclists from across the United States joined the League to advocate for paved roads. The success of the League in its first advocacy efforts ultimately led to our national highway system.
https://bikeleague.org/about/equity-and-history/
TIL
In Tokyo the bike lanes are all loading and unloading parking for the large trucks, taxis, and private vehicles. Means you gotta merge into traffic because none of the bike lanes lanes are enforced. I see a lot of cops stopping cyclists to check their registration, but I’ve never seen them ticket the trucks and taxis illegally parked. Tokyo needs better enforcement and separate bike lanes like Amsterdam (with a physical barrier or different grade from the street), otherwise its really dangerous to bike on streets even with bike lanes.
Bicycles are registered in Tokyo?
Sounds like a good set of laws to me - especially registration (mostly to help drive down bike theft rates).
In South Africa roads are not even designed with pedestrian walkways. I would hear all the time in the news about drunk drivers hitting a group of cyclists or pedestrians. Its genuinely unsafe to go anywhere without a car. I now live in the Netherlands and I only bought a car 3 years after I moved here, because there is actual working public transport and even the rural areas have bike lanes.
Why did you buy a car?
Pretty handy to have a car. I have one too, for the first time in 10 years. But I don’t use it to commute and I actively try to avoid using it.
But sometimes you need to take the wife and kids to visit some family out of town or go down to the local hardware store to pick to materials. There’s a lot use usecases
IIUC, in Ontario cyclists are legally allowed to take up a whole lane on most roads.
Legally allowed doesn’t mean a whole lot when it’s 100kg vs 2000kg.
I don’t mean that it’s not a fair point, but is it worth a life?
We take the lane for safety, actually. There are many situations where it is much safer to take the lane.
I suppose carrying a few cameras would help to insure safety.
That just means the footage would go on cyclists/protestors getting owned compilations.
The real answer is to have your own vehicles blocking other traffic while the cyclists do their protest… and to be armed.
When using a crosswalk on foot, I always make sure a car is stopped in it’s lane before proceeding to the next lane. Full eye contact. It doesn’t matter that I’m in a crosswalk. I might have been in the right, but that won’t matter if I die.
It’s the same with cycling. Cameras will only help after the fact, and maybe a bit if it’s very visible. But the best thing you can do is not trust any car, and avoid travelling where you have to trust cars.
In most coastal US cities, if bike-specific facilities are unavailable or blocked then it’s legal to take a full motor lane. At your own peril of course, most drivers and many cops are indifferent to this information. Vehicular cycling is sadly not the answer to getting everyone out on a bike.
Organized protests should not be too difficult (probably ditto many unorganized ones. 😁🙂).
I loved this one:
I think you left out an “n’t”.
corrected and thank you for the correction. 😁🙂
And these statistics (I would appreciate OOP’s sources if they’re available) would be good ammunition in the lawsuit filed against the Ontario government for their bill that is spuriously trying to remove bike lanes in Toronto.
I mean I’d love to believe this but there’s no source
Found one and updated it!
As a car-brain it would be really nice if I knew bikes weren’t going to be in my lane. Then I know I could go faster.
Bike lanes might help insure this.
Yes, that would be awesome
I don’t think they provide insurance, but I do think that’s what the previous commenter was saying it’d ensure. You’re most likely in agreement.
You just need to properly segregate them
There’s no reason for bike lanes to be side by side car roads. Bikes don’t need the same level of turn rate or intersections at all
Like my commuter road in oslo takes me about 30 minutes, and is only next to the road for a km or two. Even then it’s not advertising in the road, but on an elevated track next to it. Most of the time it’s an entirely separate route, shared with pedestrians.
I think that’s their point.
