The Economics of Bike Lanes

Re:The Economics of Bike Lanes by jrockway on Monday October 24, 2011 @08:45PM (#3152260)

I think Forrester has some stats that show riding in a bike lane is more dangerous than sharing the road with traffic. But one could argue that bike lanes attract cyclists who haven't learned or thought about safe cycling, whereas the unmarked street scares that demographic away.

The problem city planners are having is that they want to be "bike friendly" in every way except educating road users. Some stripes on the road don't make cycling safe. Cyclists that think carefully and act predictably do, and no stripe on the road is ever going to do that.

We need drivers education classes that cover driving from the perspective of a cyclist. This will ensure that when drivers want to ride their bike, they do it safely, and it will ensure that drivers know to share the road with bicycles. (I would take it a step further and require licensing for bicycle-only drivers, but that is too unpopular to ever happen.)

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Re:The Economics of Bike Lanes by pyre on Monday October 24, 2011 @09:52PM (#3152421)

  > Some stripes on the road don't make cycling safe.
  > Cyclists that think carefully and act predictably do

I don't have any data to back this up, but it's my feeling that there are more drivers on the road that just don't pay enough attention to the road than there are reckless cyclists. At the very least, when there are cycle lanes there is a 'barrier' where if a driver crosses it they are unquestionably in the wrong.

  > require licensing for bicycle-only drivers

I would argue that there is less of a need to cyclists to get licensed. Recklessly driving a car is far more dangerous than recklessly driving a bicycle.

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Re:The Economics of Bike Lanes by jrockway on Monday October 24, 2011 @10:19PM (#3152532)

Most drivers at least look where they're going. Nobody wants to cause an accident.

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