Originally Posted by
genec
I think the thing that irritates me the most about paths and bike lanes is they tend to be put where they do the least good. Paths are put in parks or along rivers or RR beds, but rarely in congested urban areas as an alternative to crowded high speed arterials.
Oddly enough, both of the paths I use regularly let me bypass an arterial route in a congested urban area. It's not the path's fault if it was laid out badly (and yes, there are bad bike paths in Madison). The fault comes from poor planning. Often in a crowded urban area there is no room to lay out a path without using eminent domain... which tends to create a lot of ill will on the part of the property owners. Getting a road to go someplace useful can be just as hard or harder than getting a bike path to be useful. Just ask PENNdot... they spent over a decade in the courts trying to enforce an eminent domain claim to modify US 322.
It takes a lot of hard work by the planning department to make our roads useful. I don't think it's reasonable to expect a bike path or bike lane to work as well as a road without putting in the work.
Bike lanes are put on quiet roads, and here even arterials, but oddly on the arterials if the road becomes narrow or there is on street parking... oops nothing for cyclists.
Again, this is not a case of bike lanes are evil. It's the planning was done badly.
On street parking is convenient for drivers. It's a source of revenue for most cities. It is dangerous to drivers (think about how careful you are when you use it) *and* to people using the road. Cyclists aren't the only ones who get doored, we're just the ones who get hurt worst by it. It causes problems with various sorts of delivery trucks. On street parking makes street cleaning and road maintenance harder than they need to be. A city planning group has to balance the bad elements and the good elements. Often, it is easy for residents who drive to argue that their convenient and revenue producing parking should stay, even tho it is dangerous.
If cyclists ally with truckers and trucking businesses, it might be easier to get a change. They find on street parking unsafe too, and it's a problem for their business. It's also helpful to have suggestions on how to handle the parking shortage and revenue shortage created when on street parking is removed. You may not get a good bike lane out of this activism, but I'll take not getting doored over a bike lane *g*.
Good design doesn't happen by accident.