Originally Posted by nick burns

Wow, billh has managed to make a bunch of people who normally don't agree with one another to join together. Maybe he has some sort of alterial motive... ;)

Originally Posted by noisebeam

I'd bet if any random group of folks on this thread were to cycle together on these streets in question and chat about different situations we would quickly come to see each others ways and share experience and everyone would learn something and come away a better cyclist.

Originally Posted by nick burns

Sigh. Fine.

Man, I feel like I've said this about a bazillion times. I don't care either way if there's a bike lane or not. It does not affect my ride in the least.
Here's my experience with them, which is limited to the ones in my area. Where there's a designated bike lane, it was at one time just a road shoulder. If traffic is heavy, I'll use the shoulder most of the time. If traffic isn't heavy, I'll use the right side of the regular lane mostly & shoulder it if needed. There's just less crap in the regular road lane & less chance of me hosing a $50 tire. That is the way I ride now and it is perfectly legal and functional. No reason to change it.
Whether there's a sign stating the shoulder is a bike lane or not means nothing to me. Yes, it is irrelevent.
Now if suddenly it's mandatory for me to ride in that converted shoulder 100% of the time, I'm not going to be happy. If there's little or no traffic, there's absolutely no reason why I should not be able to benefit from using the regular road lane & avoid the crap on the shoulder/bike lane. If other cyclists want to use the bike lane exclusively, jolly good for them. I'm not going to impose my ideals on them. Conversely I would expect them to show me the same respect.

Originally Posted by Serge *******

Any thread is about presenting information and arguments relevant to the thread topic. The poster's personal position on the issue should not be relevant, only the relevance of the words to the issue should matter.

Just because I'm against BLs in principle does not mean I can't provide information and arguments relevant to the issue of whether BLs use should be mandatory.

Basing an argument against mandatory usage on the premise that BLs cause much more harm than good for cyclists in the first place is one way to do that.

Another is to ask , as several have now, given that they are good for cyclists in some cases, but not in all cases in all situations, why mandate their use?

What benefit do cyclists receive from being legally required to be in the bike lane whenever various exceptions do not apply?

Originally Posted by bostontrevor

Hehe, I was going to say the same thing but I didn't want to jinx it. ;)

But seriously I do think it helps prove that while the bike lane controversy is still pretty hot, there is plenty of common ground between the two sides of that argument and lots to work on while we thrash out an acceptable solution or at least compromise to that single question. (A big one to be sure, but still just one question.)

Originally Posted by billh

Sounds like you have a problem with that particular BL installation and a particular law mandating its use. For gazillionth time, I'm saying that is not relevant to a general discussion of mandatory bike lanes. That's a design issue.

Originally Posted by noisebeam

Bill, the problem is that you are not going to wake up tomorrow and find all these poor BL designs rectified, in fact you will not wake up 10yrs from now and find them all fixed. So any discussion about mandatory use must consider the practical that there are and will always be bad BL designs.
Al

Originally Posted by noisebeam

Bill, the problem is that you are not going to wake up tomorrow and find all these poor BL designs rectified, in fact you will not wake up 10yrs from now and find them all fixed. So any discussion about mandatory use must consider the practical that there are and will always be bad BL designs.
Al

Originally Posted by billh

Before the thread, I was pretty agnostic about BL and hadn't thought much about mandatory laws. Now, I'm thinking how BL design may be improved and much more firmly in favor of mandatory BL laws . . . given a good design, which to me is the key. Thanks Serge!!!

Originally Posted by noisebeam

Bill, if you can show us what a good BL design is (or more imporantly a BL design guidebook that addresses every situation in every type of area) then we can discuss mandatory or not. As it is right now this 'good' bike lane* does not exist in concept or reality.

*by 'good' bike lane I do not mean a single specific lane on some known road, but a design that covers all possible BLs.

Al

Originally Posted by Serge *******

Let's see if we can agree on this much about bike lanes...

Do you support laws that require cyclists (with exceptions) to ride in bike lanes when they exist?
Would you support a law repealing any such requirement?
Would you support a law that explicitly stated cyclists are never required to ride in bike lanes?

VOTE NOW!

Originally Posted by billh

If we apply your logic to the motor vehicle code, then we should just abolish the vehicle code because there are some really lousy road designs out there.

Originally Posted by billh

Sounds like you have a problem with that particular BL installation and a particular law mandating its use. For gazillionth time, I'm saying that is not relevant to a general discussion of mandatory bike lanes. That's a design issue.

Originally Posted by noisebeam

Agreed there are some lousy roads. The motor vehicle code has been developed and evolved to be as practical as possibl. As it is it makes driving on good and bad roads safer. This is contrary to making use of exiting BL less safe by requiring mandatory use.

Al

Originally Posted by billh

OK, if the question is whether I want a mandatory BL for the one or two lousy BL that exist in St Louis . . . NO, . . . OK, HAPPY?! But the original question was posed as a general one, so discussed it as a general one.

Originally Posted by billh

as if to say "we disagree about whether BL are good or not, but let's at least agree they should not be mandated by law".

Originally Posted by billh

What's the best design out there? You VC freaks should know.

Originally Posted by noisebeam

There are thousands of BLs in the US that are poorly designed. You are in la la land thinking there will soon be some cycling utopia where BL are so perfect that mandatory use will actually make cycling safer.

OK, but lets imagine this cycling utopia with a competely separate network of multilane cycling ways that are never shared or risk chance of being sharted by motor vehicles or peds, they are maintained, cleaned, plowed. They get you everywhere you can get in a car and don't require any addtional distance traveled and one can as fast or as slow as you would have been able to on a road. They don't require any interaction with cars or peds except at a reasonable amount of controlled intersections. Well, then I could support that cyclists are prohibited from roads and must use this bike way.

Al

Originally Posted by noisebeam

You are the one advocating for mandatory use of BLs - if you are going to take that stand YOU are the one who must come up with the BL design that makes mandatory use a reasonable option.

The best design out there is a WOL with lots of signage for motorists as to what bikes may doing (i.e. cyclists merge left for left turn) my opinion.
Al

Originally Posted by billh

You have to be out of your frickin mind if I would be in favor of mandating use of the CURRENT system of BL. If that is the purpose of this thread, then there should be little discussion because there is little doubt the CURRENT system has problems. I would not even think about mandatory laws until there is better and more standard design. I said that from the start. It's you VC fanatics who gave the knee-jerk response and thought I was advocating laws mandating current BL. This whole thread is an excuse for you to bash current BL.

Originally Posted by billh

You have to be out of your frickin mind if I would be in favor of mandating use of the CURRENT system of BL. If that is the purpose of this thread, then there should be little discussion because there is little doubt the CURRENT system has problems. I would not even think about mandatory laws until there is better and more standard design. I said that from the start. It's you VC fanatics who gave the knee-jerk response and thought I was advocating laws mandating current BL. This whole thread is an excuse for you to bash current BL.

Originally Posted by noisebeam

No Bill, I am not out of my mind, I just can't read nor comprehend yours. I refer to this posting of yours not taken out of context:
"I don't see any problem with a mandatory bike lane law as long as there are proper exceptions for negotiating intersections and avoiding obstructions. This is analogous to laws requiring motor vehicles to drive within striped lanes"

I didn't read your mind that this was in some cycling utopia.

It seemed very clear to me that Serges poll was do you support mandatory use or not of current BLs - that is repealing or adding to current laws clearly implies for the current infrastructure.

I do think we have reached some understanding and there is really not much more to discuss - I also think it was a bit more painfull to reach this point due to folks playing politics about agendas and such instead of dealing with facts and clearly spelling out what your real thoughts are.

Al

Originally Posted by nick burns

You are delusional. You're so quick to say people are bashing bike lanes when you haven't got a clue what they really think about them.
You accuse people of being anti bike lane who have demonstrated quite clearly that they are pro bike lane, simply because they don't agree with you that they should be mandatory. You accuse me of being anti bike lane when I have repeatedly stated I don't care about them either way.
You have issues. Go for a ride & clear your head. It shouldn't take long.

Originally Posted by billh

. . . . if designers conclude that a BL is the best option for a given street, cyclists need to use it in order to maintain predictable behavior for motorists, ie. can't have some choosing to ride outside the lane and some within it because this will confuse motorists.