Originally Posted by Bekologist
...remember, Steve, you can ride in a vehicular manner using a bike lane.
Why hasn't VC caught on, Diane? Because riders, as a group, don't want to ride in high speed traffic. cities with better planning for bicycling via infrastructure have more cyclists on the roads.
Remember, Bek, you can also ride in a vehicular manner on pleasant low-speed streets.
Bike lane stripes aren't going to help with tricky merges, diverges, unions and separations on high-speed roads and heavy traffic. If cyclists don't feel comfortable with such road designs in traffic, then the alternatives are to improve their ability to utilize alternate routes, or to minimize the use of high-speed junction design on roads that are important for bicycle transportation.
Communities with well-connected networks of local streets have higher volumes of bicycle transportation than those with only relatively unpleasant (for the traffic-averse) high-speed arterials available for useful trips between land uses. The best way to navigate these local streets by bike is in the vehicular manner. Arterials can be made more pleasant for cycling by having adequate roadway width for motorists to pass bicyclists at comfortable distance, conveniently.
Vehicular cycling is the basis for the legal classification of bicycle operators in every US state; it seems to me to have "caught on" a long time ago.