Originally Posted by sggoodri
This is what I'm saying - not that all bike lanes are bad, but that in Andy's world, they are all good, and all are better than normal roads lacking bike stencils, even the most pleasant residential streets with wide pavement, minimal traffic, and low speed limits. To be "Bicycle Friendly" during Andy's reign at LAB, a road needed to have a stripe and a bike stencil on it, or have a sidewalk designated for bikes. That's how the BFC score sheet worked, and how the marketing went.
There was certainly a push to stripe bike lanes on arterial streets in the mid-late 90s. Portland is moving back to 'bike boulevards' which are essentially 'pleasant residential streets with wide pavement, minimal traffic, and low speed limits' or parallel routes that are route-marked for cyclists and have some other enhancements like limited stop signs and traffic diversion/calming/special signals at arterial crossings. You still need to come out onto the arterials to make a river crossing, though. The blue bike lanes facilitate traffic flow at several of the river crossings.