Originally Posted by
mnemia
I've seen that site plenty, and I mostly agree with the general philosophy there. And I don't believe that VC is a recipe for failure so much as it's an adaptation strategy. We're never going to get safe bike lanes everywhere I want to go. So, I need to use VC techniques on occasion, mainly on roads that have no bike specific infrastructure and would otherwise be unrideable. Maybe that puts me in your 1%, but really, we kind of all are in the U.S.
I'm not a VC "purist" or evangelist, but I think it has its place. Some roads it's absolutely necessary to ride in a vehicular fashion for safety. On others, bike lanes make the experience more pleasant, though I would argue not necessarily safer. I'm not against all bike lanes, but I do think that having no bike lanes is often better on streets that are otherwise perfectly pleasant to ride on (low speed, low traffic). No bike lanes are also often better than poorly designed and maintained bike lanes that are common many places. OTOH, bike lanes are nice on some high speed arterials, or on bridges, for example.
I do not believe a lack of bike lanes is the real reason so few Americans bicycle for transportation.
I have to agree with you. There has to be some sort of middle ground between VC and bike lanes/dedicated bicycling infrastructure. And as you said it really doesn't have to be one or the other. And sadly down here in Florida all to often we read articles about cyclists who while riding in the bike lane have been hit and injured or worse killed.
As sadly way too many people (on both sides) think that a little bit of paint on the road is going to make the road "safe(r)" for us cyclists.
One of the big dangers with bike lanes is as noted in the article linked to in the OP is that the right most edge (where most people think that cyclists "belong") is usually in the worst condition of the entire road i.e. broken and/or missing pavement, or it is full of debris that a driver wouldn't want to drive through. But for some reason they expect us cyclists to ride through it.
It'd be nice if they'd leave at least a little bit of room between the bike lane and the right most edge of the road so that the debris can get blown totally blown off of the road, and that the damage remains in an area of the roadway that no one uses.