Originally Posted by
Digital_Cowboy
Will those protected bike paths go everywhere that cyclists want/need to go? Here in St. Pete/Pinellas County we have the Pinellas Trail that pretty much goes from one end of the county to the other. BUT it does NOT go everywhere that we want/need to go.
As an example, when I am going out to the VA I take 1st N. south to 30th Ave. N. Than I take 30th Ave. N. west to the Tyrone Mall area where I am able to hop onto the Pinellas Trail. That is also the only section of the trail that I use or goes where I want/need to go.
Also how is the city/county/state suppose to secure the property to build these protected paths? Property owners are not going to want to give up part of their property, and using imminent domain to seize the property is just going to piss them off.
As has been said before within city limits we need to slow down the speed of the roads, we also need to have those speed limits strictly enforced. And motorists need to be encouraged to car pool, use public transportation (demand more public transportation) and ride bicycles.
As it is because there are still so few of us on the road on bikes we are seen as someone that drivers can ignore.
This conversation is an aside to the larger one...
This "bike paths will not go everywhere" argument is completely false. Did you read the post you responded to? "It works fine in slow moving residential areas, but not feeder and arterial roads." The writer of that post only needs bike paths for some roads.
Freeways don't "go everywhere," and yet they seem to work fairly well for the motoring public. Why cannot a similar structure also work for cyclists... such that cyclists and motorists don't have to mix on feeder and arterial roads?
Of course the other solution is to stop designing feeder and arterial roads to look and act like freeways. Either solution works.
BTW the trail you are ranting about is likely designed by a Parks Department, for recreational weekend cyclists... not a traffic engineer, trying to design a transportation system.