Originally Posted by
Roughstuff
I agree your comments should be helpful, suggestive, and pleasant. Better NO bike lane than a bad bike lane.
Dollar for dollar, the best infrastructure investment for road safety is installing shoulders, and keeping them clean and well marked where they already exist. Sounds like cleaning your road and putting a solid white line would be the besy alternative. Cheap, too.
Well said. Bike lanes do not create additional space on the road where none existed before. They act as natural debris collectors, encourage closer passes by overtaking motorists, lull some cyclists into maintaining a road position that makes them less conspicuous to cross-traffic, and reinforce motorists' prejudices that cyclists do not belong on the road. Wide, well-maintained shoulders minus paint reduce motorist/cyclist friction without all these disadvantages.