Thanks to Florida HB 971, we now have a “Mandatory Use” , when present, bike lane (BL) statute becoming active Wednesday, September 1, 2010. Although the wording has officially changed, de facto BL use (F.S. 316.2065 (5)(a) is already on the books and such wording amounts to nothing more than doublespeak!
While some BL’s may be better designed than others, and may serve a destination, the majority are ill conceived, implemented, and lack the eloquence and allure of the vehicular traffic lane, IMO.
The trapped feeling and frustration visible on this young girl’s face below, basically sums my experience with BL’s. Being the commuter/transport/utility cyclist I am, and knowing that I have a rightful place on a public utility reminds of this video each and every time I use a BL.
Preferential and exclusive use lane designations belong on limited access roads, places where I would not want to operate my vehicle in the first place.
I am traffic. The same roads that lead motorists to their destinations serve me and my needs much more effectively than any BL possibly could.
There are some nice (Key Biscayne) and some rather awful bike lanes in Miami. It seems in these awful cases that while the road has been re-paved while the bike lane is cracked, patched, washboarded and pot-holed. On the Venetian Causeway, there are often people running or walking in the BL as well. When I ride in the travel lane I can feel drivers’ eyes burning into my back that I should be a few feet over.
What, you can’t hear the horns?
Double-speak and another club for law enforcement and the motoring public to beat us with.
Bike lanes are a competent transportation planner’s tool, one of many tools available. There are places where they are useful and functional. Those places are actually quite few, and yet bike lanes have been allowed to become the de facto required standard for “bike friendliness” (which is akin to “truthiness”), and the only tool in bike planners’ toolbox (until the dreaded re-emergence of side-paths with the “new-speak” name of cycle-tracks).
To person with only a hammer, all problems look like nails.
P.S.
I should never be trusted with a keyboard after Happy Hour.