Originally Posted by
cyclezealot
Machka.. Say there is not bike lane. Would you not prefer a road with a lesser volume of traffic.. I recall roads I'd use to avoid high traffic volumes . But, should a problem occur such a gridlock, favorite roads I'd normally frequent would become a nightmare.
First let's talk about the "bike lane" for a moment. I would say that approximately 60-70% of the roads (highways - not roads in a city or town) I have used over the past 19 years have not had any sort of shoulder at all. Approximately 30-40% have had some sort of shoulder. The only reason that percentage is as high as it as 30-40% is because of the 6 years I cycled in Alberta where maybe about 60% the roads I rode had a shoulder.
Of the 30-40% of the roads I've ridden with a shoulder ... a miniscule percentage of them might have had something actually designated as a bike lane.
So we can indeed say with quite a high degree of probability that there will not be a bike lane where I ride.
I prefer either:
1) A large, fast-moving highway with or without lots of traffic ..... with a wide shoulder for me to ride on.
Or
2) A smaller, slower-moving highway with less traffic ... either with or without a shoulder. Most of this type of road doesn't have a shoulder, and that's OK.
I mentioned earlier that I use the basic paper map method of route finding, combined with trial and error. It really does work. I have rarely had any issues with the roads I've ridden on.
There was one time, however, when my instinct was to ride on the Bruce Highway in Queensland, but the campground operator suggested we use the Old Bruce Highway instead. It was more scenic, he said, and the traffic is slower. WRONG!! There was no shoulder and there were gravel trucks with trailers flying up and down that road. We were off and in the ditch several times as these things would not move over an inch. We knew the Bruce Highway was running along side the Old Bruce, and when we checked our map, we discovered a way to get over to it just a few km up the road ... so we dealt with diving into the ditch to get out of the way of these trucks up to that point ... and then headed for the Bruce Highway. The Bruce Highway was a wide, fast-moving highway ... with a wide shoulder. SO much better.
But the thing is, we discovered there was going to be a problem with the road and were only on it for maybe an hour before we fixed the problem.