Re:A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shop...
by porknubbins on Monday August 23, 2021 @10:37PM
(#28284563)
I ride in bike lanes, road sides and sometimes in the middle of the lane. When I started cycling seriously I tried to go full vehicular cycling, but a lot of the time it endangered more than it helped and made drivers angry. 10K+ miles later the one thing I’ve learned is not to be dogmatic, there is no one safest way to ride for all roads and environments. Some roads are way better with bike lanes and some bike lanes are terrible. I just do whatever seems safest.
Re:A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shop...
by lmm on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @01:39AM
(#28285470)
I've ridden a similar distance and I've actively given up on ever using bike lanes except for lanes that I specifically know are properly laid out and maintained, or a handful of places that do decent lanes (the Netherlands, London post-2010). It's just far too common for a bike lane to end up being a trap, and you have no way of knowing it's going to dump you into a blind corner / high kerb / unavoidable debris / muddy field / ... until it's too late. I agree with doing what seems safest, but you simply can't trust an unknown bike lane, so using one is just too high risk.
Re:A bike parts company ditched Amazon to support indie shop...
by einpoklum on Tuesday August 24, 2021 @02:04AM
(#28285596)
It's a perfectly fine principle when bike lanes are universal.
In the Netherlands, for example (well, much of the Netherlands, I haven't been everywhere), the bikes are on the bike lanes, the cars are on the car lanes, and that's that. You have no motivation to go on the car lanes (except on small alleys with no lanes), since the bike lanes just get you wherever you want to go.
It establishes the wrong principle - it makes drivers feel entitled to exclude cyclists from the main road lanes. A bike lane that isn't wide enough, isn't adequately maintained (sweeping, filling potholes...), leads to blind corners, or just dumps you out into the main lanes at junctions, is worse than useless - it actively makes cycling more dangerous, because drivers feel no need to share the main road lanes.
> I don't think there's really a solution to the turning problem, unless you're proposing tunnels at every intersection for cars/bikes.
The solution is to have bikes be part of the main traffic stream at that point. If you have a bike box at the front of the queueing area, and ideally a bike phase on the lights, that can help a lot.