Yeah! A lane for bikes! Why has nobody thought of that?

Bike lanes aren't great, nor are they a separate space -- they're in the street.

Not proper ones. Real bike lanes in bike-able cities have a small curb separating them from the street and then another one to separate from the sidewalk.

Agreed, and those are essentially what I'm advocating for, but the vast majority of bike lanes aren't like that. I live in Portland, the most bike-friendly city in the US, and we have very few of them.

I would also say they aren't really bike "lanes" -- they're not a lane in the street. The Dutch call them "cycle tracks" which seems more fitting.

When a bike lane is separated from the street they are called bike paths. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bike_path

For Bay Area HN folks: check out what San Jose has done with the bike lanes downtown recently. Separation from traffic using a combo of parked cars and barriers.

I find that style much worse than the "on-road" style due to people crossing the bike-lake to their cars without looking. They also routinely fill up with rubbish if there is any construction going on, or any issues with garbage collection (often enough that once per trip you have to get off your bike, take it onto the road, past the obstruction, then back onto the bike lane).

I propose "MiMo" lanes (Micro mobility)

Now this makes me wonder if we could install some sort of rail on viaducts and ride that with a bicycle...

Something like this but with a much smaller gap between the rails: https://hackaday.com/2012/05/01/rail-bike-conversion-is-a-su...