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.

In my opinion, this praise-segregated-facilities-regardless-of design approach undermines best practices for bicycling operation, and confuses people about what makes cycling safer and more efficient. To extrapolate on what Bek says, it is certainly possible to cycle vehicularly (and defensively) in a bike lane, or on a path for that matter, but we must understand that this requires the bike lane to be designed, routed, and maintained in a manner compatible with best bicycling practices. Until that becomes a priority for those who make their living off of promoting bicycle facilities, many cyclist advocates will find themselves at loggerheads with bikeway advocates.

FYI, here is the LAB article on Cary, NC's BFC award. All but one of the photos were taken by me, donated to the town years ago, before we had any bike lane stripes.
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....pages/cary.pdf

Of interest to ILTB, here's the article on Gainesville, Florida, which seems to be very proud of its sidepaths:
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....ainesville.pdf

Bicycle Friendly Communities showing off their door zone bike lanes:
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....es/orlando.pdf
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....ntain_view.pdf
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity..../arlington.pdf
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....ges/denver.pdf
http://www.bicyclefriendlycommunity....pages/mesa.pdf

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.

nice.

I wonder how the rabidly foresterite VC ride in Portland?

My guess is they just put up with the pointy-headed do-gooders little paint stripes and proceed as if they didn't exist.

How do the 'I can't ride without a bike lane' folks ride in cities without bike lanes?

hahaha. your damnification of pro-facilties riders is pretty marginal and inaccurate, galenator.

bike infrastructure facilitates bicycling for more people and gets bikes on the roads, galen. I know of NO rider that 'can't ride without a bike lane.' your arrogant mischaracterization of us pro-facilties VC is pathetic.

I wonder what the rabid VC do when riding down one of Portland's bike boulevards or are approaching a bridge and use a blue lane? does their blood pressure go up, or are they comfortable in their riding hypocracy?

Yes, I took note that this article highlighted as The Most Significant Accomplishment: that 5.25% of the residents commute to work by bike.

The article didn't even discuss sidepaths but did show a picture of what appeared to be a very pleasant to ride sidepath adjacent to a busy road with no further info or description.

What is Steve G.'s point? The existence of a sidepath somewhere in a college town is something to make High Mileage Road Cyclists tremble in their cycling shoes, or is it alone something to rejoice in pride about? I'd say neither, and the article does neither.

Who knows? It appears that the characters who have problems with the Portland biking environment live in OH, MD, GA, and CA.

We have real life examples. There's several places in the country that have had bike facilities for a long time. Here in Minneapolis I found dedicated off road bike lanes from the first time I ventured out of my neighborhood in 1974. Yet, the fact that the infacstucture exists has not led to an effort to force us to use it in more than 30 years. I think Portland, Seattle, Madison, and Cleveland would be other examples of the same dynamic. Places with long standing bike infastructure have not seen an effort from restrict bike access to traffic lanes. Next door in North Dakota, where you would be hard pressed to find any bike infastructure at all, they have a mandatory sidepath law. In North Dakota, bikes are requiried to use adjacent paths and exit the traffic lane. Fortunately there are no adjacent paths in ND, so it dosn't really matter.

But that's sort of my point. Here in Minnesota, the politician that introduced a mandatory sidepath law could likely measure their polictical career along side man made isotopes. No elected official wants to see their name in a headline like this "Johnson to make biking around Lake Harriet illegal". But in North Dakota, nobody cares it's a meaningless regulation for a circumstance that largely does not exist. So it passes without debate.

With this history in mind. It could be argued that the presense of dedicated bike infastructure secures our place on the road vs jepordizes it. Take a look at the places with mandatory side path laws. Are they the places famous for their bike infastructure or are they the places where almost none exist.

5.25 percent of workers commuting by bike IS a significant accomplishment. other cities around the world have also increased bicycle use thru all manner of bike infrastructure. and the benefits are myriad.

steve's dismissal of the positive effects of more riders on the roads in bike lanes hardly does the issue justice. steve is marginalizing of the positive effects of bike infrastructure for political purposes, that in turn ******* greater bicycle use. Steve, way to go, keeping potential bicyclists DOWN in your community, buddy.

5.25%!!!!! Holy *****, they hit the home run!

Steve, I think you officially missed the forest for the trees. With 5.25% mode split, somehow I don't think you have cyclists getting picked off at every street corner or path crossing.

Where I live only 3.5% of commuters (not including students) bike to work.
I guess thats only 3rd base.

In Maricopa County (which includes the greater phx-metro area and more) about 40,000 adults travel 450,000 miles to work by bicycle each day, that represents 1.1% of total commuting miles (vs. precentage commuters who use a bicycle)

Al

Here's another way to say that:

When there's a bike lane, ride in it unless debris or other hazards exist. Otherwise, move left away from hazards.

"Pointy-headed doo-gooders?"

Have your ever read Dale Carnegie, man?

3.5% is still very respectable. We have 4% in SB.

Scot Gore's observations are true for me, too. In the 42 years I have lived in Santa Barbara, cycling infrastructure has grown but threats to marginalize cyclists have been unable to be carried out and scarcely even attempted. The wails and gnashing of teeth that we'll lose our rights to the road seems to be nothing but noise. 42 years and things only get better for us, not worse.

I am happy that some cyclists will fight for our rights to use the roads fully, but they need to stop the hysterical handwringing about how we'll lose our rights if we allow facilities to go in. That's not true. We should all be fighting for both full access to the roads AND facilities because that increases our power and numbers.

Yeah man, and he rode VC....

It's a flat college town with serious parking shortages. Of course they bike.

Similar to NC State University, the most important facility affecting the popularity of cycling is bike parking. When I attended there, there was inadequate bike parking and the police were cutting the locks and confiscating bikes locked to railings and other attractive objects near entrances. We got the school to greatly increase bike parking and the railing problem stopped, and the bike volumes increased.

When I attended NCSU, there was a pretty serious harassment problem if you rode on the street instead of the sidewalk. Most of the cyclists rode on the sidewalks, and that's where the accidents were concentrated. Recently, NCSU took the step of marking sharrows in the travel lane outside of the door zone. The harassment problem appears to be much less. Gainesville appears to be taking the opposite approach, designating the sidewalks as bikeways. I doubt it has any effect on increasing cycling.

ILTB challenged the idea that anybody was creating sidepaths in urban areas in the US. I was just providing a documented example.

Seems like things vary tremendously according to local politics, also.

If cyclists keep their voices in the process, we have a better chance of improving things?

Without trying to be contradictory, Oregon does have a mandatory bike lane law. However, the statute states that before it takes effect, a public hearing must be held first declaring the bike lane safe to use. Unfortunately, the one time this was tested in court (Potter decision) the appelate court said that the fact that the bike lanes were approved by the city traffic engineer was ipso facto a declaration of safety. OTOH its pretty much a non-issue, except with two traffic cops named barnum and balzer who have made it their career goal to harass cyclists with tickets for everything from riding outside the bike lane to riding a fixed gear bike without a separate brake.

If you're trying to roll back global warming these numbers are nothing; we need to achieve a mode split of ten times these amounts.

But the Portland cops are only enforcing the law as they understand it. So what is the problem, the cops or the mandatory bike lane use law? Has any judge sided with the cyclist in these cases?

I challenged that there is any significant sidepath construction being done in US urban areas, and that the carrying on about alleged negative effects of the relatively few sidepaths that do exist borders on hysteria.
BTW, when was the pictured sidepath built? Does anybody who lives there complain about it or negative effects?

Those two, specific Portland cops are enforcing the law as they understand it. Strangely enough, the rest of the Traffic Division doesn't understand the law in quite the same way as Officers Barnum and Balzer. As far as I am aware, people that contest the bike lane tickets get them overturned. That said, interpretation of traffic laws as they relate to cyclists is also highly dependent on which judge you get. This is total hearsay and rumor, but I have heard that certain judges ride their bikes, and they are the ones you are to hope to get presiding over your case.

The problem is both laws and cops. Even if there were no bike lane, Oregon has a "ride right/mandatory lane-sharing law" cops could use to hassle bicyclists.

http://www.leg.state.or.us/ors/814.html
814.430 Improper use of lanes; exceptions; penalty.

So I take it you folks agree with those evil, hard core VC'ers that these mandatory lane and stay right laws should be withdrawn; and that only slow moving vehicle laws should apply to cyclist when they would apply to other slow moving vehicles?

I still recognize the value of on-road facilities and striped, classed bike lanes in bringing more riders to the roads, increasing trips by bike, decreasing indexed crash rates for bicyclists, and increasing driver awareness of bicycles on the roads.

I still recognize that bike infrastructure and a vigorous program of bike advocacy such as seen in Oregon has gone a long way towards continuing to secure bicyclists' rights and increase state awareness of bikes as transportation, despite the gloom and doom vc damnification.

How would a 'vc'- (is there such an animal?) ride a bike boulevard in Portland, anyway? angrily? or embrace a city that is engineering the infrastructure towards bikes as transportation?

I'm not sure I understand what you mean about the latter, but as to the former, I don't think that anyone I've ever spoken to who supports bike lanes conceptually also supports mandatory use laws.