removing a bike lane

[shootingstar]

This is actually quite damaging for long term efforts in advocating and planning for bike lanes in a city that still has lots of resistant folks to any form of better cycling infrastructure.

After our city installed a bike lane in the north end, less than a year later the city removed it....after a citizen petition,etc. Ridiculous when the local community originally wanted it!!

Same for Toronto where a well used bike lane in downtown core was removed after it was there for a few years. Because of a decree by its buffoonish mayor who has done other strange, more foolish things there...

Yes, well there are the die-hards who think that more people will want to cycle by simply having wider road lanes shared with cars. Yea, sure. That hasn't happened en masse in North America so we have to try other tactics.

[velo]

I feel your pain. Where I live, bike lanes, along THE SAME ROAD will appear and disappear depending on the width of the road. So you may travel along a road for a few miles with a nice bike lane and then suddenly at the other side of an intersection, it's gone. Ten blocks later and it's there again. How can you call that "bike friendly"?? Different issue, but the core problem remains the same as what you are talking about. I have lived in Europe a few times in my adult life and do not see these issues, as cycling is part of everyday life. I think until that occurs in North America, we're going to continue to be frustrated as cyclists, especially those that commute in urban areas. Cycling is still not the norm. Sadly, it may never be.

[Megustalaplaya]

In my area the bike lanes do not allow enough room to stay out of the door zone, usually have debris in them, and if the motorist on your left is turning right you may get hit. I think I would prefer sharrows indicating the cars and bikes are to share the lane.

[Eden]

I'm another who is not necessarily enamored with bike lanes. I often find them to be more dangerous and less preferable to using the normal lane for all of the reasons Megustalaplay states. They give the illusion of safety to newbies and may well encourage some people to ride.... but in the long run I don't know that they are a good thing, because they also encourage bad habits in both cyclists and drivers.

[OakLeaf]

What they said. Roads do need to be wide enough to allow safe passing of much slower road users (wheeled, motorized or not). Adding one teeny half-lane instead of widening the existing lanes causes more problems than it solves.

[Blueberry]

I do prefer to have sharrows on the pavement, though. I don't know if there are any studies on it, but I always feel like motorists are more respectful when they are there (and at least there's a reminder at regular intervals for cars to behave - whether they obey them or not).

[skhill]

I too prefer sharrows to bike lanes (at least the ones we have). But I worry that they can plant the thought in some drivers minds that only where there are sharrows should they expect to be sharing the lane with bikes, instead of almost all the time...