No, much the opposite. The few (VERY few) times I have encountered a "cyclists don't belong on the road" comment, it was by someone surprised to see bike lanes, "Hey, what's that bike lane thing, bikes aren't allowed on the roads!?!" or something to that affect. That is usually from someone very new to Ottawa!

When I hear someone complain about "special" facilities, its usually the bus lanes... drivers get very pissed off and losing access to a wide curb lane.

Sure. I have no argument against that.

That must be Vehicular Cycling because that's the way most car drivers do it, also.

For the O.P., no I don't ride the same way I did as a child, but, like John Forester, the majority of cyclists that I see DO. Only on the sidewalk, never in the street. Not stopping to see if the street is clear and riding back and forth between street and sidewalk. I'd say that at least half the adults I see that "appear" new to commuting on a bicycle even stay on the sidewalk even with a wide bike lane where there's no parking. These people stop and dismount at every street crossing and never leave the crosswalk at a light.

I had a cyclist turn left in front of me this week at work. The street was plenty wide, and he made his left turn from near the right curb without signaling, or even looking. He must have done something, because I had a suspicion and slowed down as I got closer. Yes, the majority of cyclists I see still ride like all the kids out on bikes.

Bike lanes already exist, unfortunately, for the purpose of keeping bicyclists IN.
If numbers increased, what's wrong with bicyclists continuing to use normal existing traffic lanes, as vehicular cyclists do today?

You are distorting again. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt this time and presume it is not intentional. No one, certainly not Forester or I, have claimed vehicular cycling is the "ideal". Any denigration of that is wasted time and energy fighting a straw man.

You're assuming the visions are realistic. It is my opinion that a vision of transforming a modern city that was mostly developed since the advent of personalized motoring by adding an Amsterdam-like totally segregated cycling system is not realistic. My idea, by the way, is to underground all motor traffic, leaving the surface to human power. Yeah, that would be nice, but not realistic, not in my lifetime.

I imagine some "bike advocates" are traffic cycling novices, but not most of you that are regulars here. That's why I wrote, bike advocates practice vehicular cycling above.

There is no such city that I know of. That does not mean it can't be done. People are working on it, and new high tech training materials appear to be very promising. Stop fighting it, and join the campaign. I nominate San Diego to be the first.

You know, if you pick up any parenting book or speak with just about any expert you will find many of the same themes. For examples, there will almost certainly be emphasis on the value of being authoritative but not authoritarian with children, yet the vast majority of parents continue to raise kids pretty much the same way they were raised: treating the kids in an authoritarian way. There are people who are trying to change this, even though there is not one city in the U.S. in which non-authoritarian parenting is promoted and practiced by a large percentage of the parents. So what? They should just give in to authoritarian parenting and endorse it?

Just because segregated bike way systems seem to work in OPAC cities like Amsterdam does not mean that a vision of implementing something like that in a modern city is realistic.

Of course not.

But what your opinion is is a fact.
That is, if your opinion is that Campy is better than Shimano, then it's a fact that your opinion is that Campy is better than Shimano. But that doesn't mean that it's a fact that Campy is better than Shimano.

I hope this is understood now.

Thank you, let's move on, though I object to the implication that I have engaged in sophistry here.
There is a big difference between discussing semantics in order to clarify intended meaning and using semantics in order to distort intended meaning, dodge a question, etc. I engage in the former; sophistry is the latter.

Thank you. I have not ridden in NYC. But that's not necessary for our purposes here. I trust your judgement.

Now, please focus on your favorite street with a bike lane in the list and please explain why cyclists would not benefit if the bike lane stripe were removed.

Specifically:
You say your friends did not ride there before the bike lanes were added. Did anything else change besides the addition of the bike lane stripes and designations? Any other street reconfigurations? Was onstreet parking removed? Were other lane lines moved? Remember, I'm not saying change it back to the way it was before, I'm saying leave it the way it is now, except remove the bike lane stripe and designation - so there is just as much width as there is now, except the outside lane becomes a WOL instead of being adjacent to a bike lane. Would your friends stop riding there? Why? Do they not understand that removing that stripe has no negative impact on their safety? Good biking friends don't let their friends think bike lanes make them safer... surely you are a good friend, are you not?

It is not rational to believe that lots and lots of cyclists
could ride anywhere they wanted on a 45mph, two lane
road. It would be total chaos. Do you think car drivers
would be happy to do 15mph everywhere to accommodate
bicycles ? Ive never been kept in by a bike lane. I use it as
just another option to facilitate any situation that might arise.
In the Busdriver thread I posted about being right hooked by
a redneck busdriver while riding totally vehicularly and taking
the lane. She went around me into the oncoming lane to do this.
Imagine this scenerio being repeated hundreds of times a day.
There is a certain amount of order required to make a system
work efficiently. This is why SMARTcar drivers dont complain
about not being allowed to drive the outside lane on the Autobahn.
Look how many threads bring up concerns about rogue bicyclists.
Do you think someone who wrongway rides at night with no lights
can be counted on to ride vehicularly and with no guidelines or
visuals to remind them of where they should be for everyones
well being ?? I dont think so.

I appreciate the gray areas, for without acknowledging them, one is unable to address reality.

I have a similar experience to yours, in that motorists tend to treat me with respect on the road, but at the same time, talking with coworkers and friends privately, most of them are amazed that I would ride a bike on the road with cars in traffic. This is not a gray area. This is a widespread attitude that cycling on the road in traffic is not normal.

Whether or not they've been taught that actively or passively, it's believed and reinforced on a daily basis. It's probably one of those widely-held beliefs that goes largely unnoticed until one of us comes along to turn over the rock and expose it. However, it has been my experience here in Atlanta that those who were raised here believe the sidewalk is where a bicycle should be ridden, and can recollect being taught so by parents.

It's not really far-fetched, since riding a bike on the sidewalk was my natural choice as a child until I was corrected on my way to school one day (I was taught to stay out of the street to protect me, and applied that teaching to bicycling as a child,) and is also what I sometimes see parents do when taking their small ones out for a ride, all of them tooling down the sidewalk together. I'm not sure I agree that teaching a very small child to ride on the sidewalk is a bad thing, since one needs special awareness of traffic before venturing out into the street where a car can end a life. But once one graduates to adolescence, or slightly before, one should learn to ride their bike on the road if they are ever going to adopt the bike as their way of getting around. Sadly, when most people hit that age, they simply graduate to a car, and keep their bikes-on-sidewalks attitude.

However, this does not mean that I am against building special facilities for cyclists. I am only pro-choice in that regard, as I want to be free to ride where I see fit. Sometimes that's on a path or bike lane, sometimes it's on the road without facilities. On the road, sometimes it's on main arteries, sometimes it's bypassing them on quiet residential neighborhood streets (some are kind of neat, with very old houses and such.)

I beg to differ... that little white stripe has always been an indication of something. Usually the edge of a roadway but nowadays also a bike lane. Granted, if the road was not widened, it just made for a more risky lane to squeeze by the cyclists.

Give me some data to support that removal of the striping has a positive impact on risk and I'll quit riding in bike lanes. Seems to me that any little advantage/signal, such as a white stripe, bicycle stencil or diamond that may help motorists be aware that something is different are useful.

I, too, race between bike lane routes to minimize the time spent on old fashioned roads.

Do you really need data to prove that the bike lane stripe causes more debris to collect there?
Do you really need data to show that motorists are more lackadaisical about overtaking cyclists when they are separated by a stripe?

When you're comparing "bike lane routes" to "old fashioned routes" I don't know what you're comparing.
I'm asking you to compare your favorite "bike lane route" to the exact same route with nothing changed except for the removal of the bike lane stripe.

This is the argument that was used to justify the first U.S. bike lanes in the late 60s and early 70s. The fear was that cycling was getting so popular that there would be cyclists all over the place, and they needed to be controlled. Is promoting this argument your idea of bicycling advocacy?

Yes. Haven't noticed an extraordinary amount of debris. Maybe that's because cars cross the line?

Yes.

Routes without bike lanes.

I would probably not ride on my 'favorite bike lane route' if the stripes were removed. The stripes at least keep most of the Cadillac Cruise Missles centered in their lanes. Without them, they'd be swerving all over the place.

huh, the vast majority of bicyclists I see in seattle are riding in a vehicular manner.

I trust your observation.

By the way, you can take a virtual ride down any of those streets by going to Street View on google maps.

One additional note- I crack up when you Southern CA folks talk about bike lane debris. Here in the Northeast our roads are in such bad condition that any part of a road is filled with hazards from potholes to chunks of pavement. In the winter a lack of debris of any kind would be an anomaly regardless of the presence of a bike lane or lack thereof.

I want to flip the coin.

First, let me say that I often ride in the middle of the right lane on a four-lane, two-way street that has a bike path parallel to it, between the street and the RR tracks. Basically an "ideal" path, with limited intersections (the yellow "Share the Road" sign sporting a bicycle icon supports my practice, though the occasional motorist doesn't seem to agree.)

My feeling is that motorists don't give a damn about whether or not cyclists have a place to ride. They aren't the ones clamoring for bike facilities. It's cyclists themselves in Atlanta.

I agree that motorists benefit from cyclists being moved to the side in bike lanes and paths. But motorists aren't the ones pushing for bike facilities where I live.

Are things different in California? Am I missing something locally?

I think part of this may be regional. As ₤ in Pa may have noticed in FL there are lots of sidewalk cyclists and in many ways I understand why, it's not just that the roads are so poorly designed to be shared with cyclists but that the local mindset of drivers seem to expect that behavior of cyclists so when a cyclist takes to the road they seem really unclear in terms of how to respond.

^^^ Yes !
And, the 4' wide sidewalks or 'MUS's are promoted by local pols as being bike lanes.
They are great for that, but car people here just cant understand the concept of 'bike as
vehicle' if you choose to ride on the road, which of course I do.

It is a question of politics. Note that motorists pay for bikeways; if they didn't want to pay, we wouldn't have them. In California, the financial part of the bikeway law said (I presume that it still does) that bikeways are a justified expense if they increase the capacity of the highway, a statement that is taken on liberal terms, as in a bike lane increases the capacity of the highway by reducing delays by motorists caused by bicycle traffic.

However, that's not the most significant point. Motorists had created, over the decades, the public view that curb-hugging is the only safe way to ride, as implemented by exaggerated fear of same-direction motor traffic. We all know that that anti-vehicular-cycling public view exists. As a result of this public view, motorists never have to advocate for bikeways for their own convenience, actions that would be seen as simply selfish and self-serving. Instead, they combine with the bicycle activists in advocating safety produced by bikeways, with both parties believing that superstition because that false superstition suits their agendas.

then please explain to me the how the motorist's agenda is served by the current efforts in NYC to add more bike lanes, bike paths and other facilities as part of an overall strategy to reduce private automobile use in the city?

john, your last paragraph is opinionated and has no basis in fact.

No. At this point there is no prevalent concern with "bikes taking over", so the emphasis on cyclist segregation by motorists has dissipated. But "bike advocates" have taken up their cause.

Funny, I was thinking the same thing but I think I had the roles reversed. Good luck with hiding yourself away in your Bikelane Burqa!

I'm sorry but the stripe (solid line) is supposed to tell motorists "do not cross this line". It's the same as the solid line in the middle of the road is to prevent ppl from indiscriminately deciding the oncoming lane looks like a better place to drive. Removal of the stripe would tell motorists "look kids...a new wide lane to rage on!!!!" I still stand behind my opinion that motorist education is direly needed to get the point across that motorists, while the alpha dogs of the road, are not the only dogs allowed in the kennel as it were.