Originally Posted by
dougmc
... and reduce motorist acceptance of bikes in roads that do not have said signs.
"OK, the cyclist can use the full lane over there on that road -- there's a sign! But this road has no such sign, so he must not be able to do it here.
'Hey! get on the sidewalk where you belong!' "
Okay, this is the argument that gets dragged out,
ad nauseum, by the anti-infrastructure crowd. And, granted, I can see the logic: it
could, conceivably, happen that way.
But is there solid evidence it does, indeed, happen that way often? Or that the (theoretical) increased hazards on adjacent streets is not overweighed by the (equally theoretical) decreased hazards on the marked streets?
Data mine it, determine incidents per miles ridden both before and after infrastructure improvements. Do this in many places that have made infrastructure improvements, to get a large sample size. Then use statistics to look for correlations between the two. Get fancy, find an r-squared value while you're at it.
Without hard data, you're just spouting dogma.
I'd be a little less critical of these signs if they said "Cyclists should use full lane".
And I'd be
exceedingly offended by some gov't authority trying to tell me which of two legal riding alternatives I "ought" to pursue--particularly if I believe that whatever gov't apparatchik approved the sign in that location had zero practical cycling experience.