Here in Oxford, we have seen our fair share of crazy schemes. Here goes for some personal bug-bears....
1 The bike paths that are painted on the pavement (sidewalk): They are completely uneven and stop at every side street. OK for some I suppose to give them space away from the road - but the schemes are very inconsistent.
2 Bike paths that abandon you at dangerous junctions and roundabouts or where the road gets narrow, where one would most appreciate some help. Most of them!
3. My favourite - a perfectly safe road through town was redesigned by adding raised platforms at every junction along its length, plus small square raised bumps (one for each direction) at regular intervals in the "car section". I was nearly swiped several times by motorists cutting inside these to avoid them. Later the authorities added 2 foot long rubber block markers, about 3 inches high every 3 or so feet along the edge of the bike lane to prevent this. These were invisible at night - I saw them cause two riders to crash. They also prevented you getting into or out of the bike lane, took up valuable road width, trapped broken glass & debris. A shor time after their installation they became loose and turned into obstacles as they swung into the bike lane... Later the brick paved junction "platforms" started to loosen and break up leaving a treacherous surface. This has to be a case of "safety" making things worse - it actually caused bike-car & car-bike aggravation where there had been none before.
Recently they stripped all of this scheme out apart from one set of car humps and their accompanying rubber bike crash traps. Thank goodness.
I believe much of this work is done to meet targets for safety, based on government and council policies, rather than to fix real problems, so that they can be proud of "x new miles of bike lanes with new safety measures". Many measures help nobody using the road - I felt sorry for the motorists that needed to negotiate some of them (sorry, but it really was that bad). Nobody who plans roads seems to understand how different levels of traffic interact even in Oxford, where there is a very high proportion of cycling journeys.
If that turned into a rant I apologise - the council have already received my views (well reasoned, hopefully non-militant) on more than one occasion in writing. I'd be happy to offer more advice from a cyclists point of view, if it were to be taken on board.
Safe riding,
Ed
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Get a bicycle. You will certainly not regret it, if you live.