Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort
and big fat piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's
your update on our advanced efficient bicycle systems from
yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
[Front page item headline}
Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
[Subhead]
Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a
sensible network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’

by Julie Bykowicz

BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists
down Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can
switch gears and take a swig from your water bottle, you’ve
reached the end.

The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile
long. Then it dumps out in the middle of five lanes of
traffic, near entrance and exit ramps of an interstate.

It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute
instructional video. Watching it takes longer than biking
the lane itself.

City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of
miles of bike lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that
began during the pandemic and capitalize on federal grants,
including from the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law.

But car culture and political realities—anything that makes
driving or parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of
voters—mean these routes are sometimes counterintuitive,
unsafe and just plain pointless.

Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t
wait to try out the newly painted lane down North Avenue.
When she did, she was underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,”
she said. “And then there you are, on your bike, surrounded
by cars.”

While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic,
bike lanes sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people
began using them. Now, as cities come back to life, the
mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is proving a bit rocky.

In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells
and dodging guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve
stepped into two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all
signal their presence, or stop for red lights, so on some
streets it has become pedestrian beware.

The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes,
low-traffic roads good for biking and off-road paths,
according to the Adventure Cycling Association, which is
assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route System. New
York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
since 2020, according to transportation officials.

Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social
media.

“Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike
lane as a customer staging area at First & K St SE. What
gives?” a D.C. resident posted on Twitter earlier this
month, tagging an account “Bike Lane Squatters of D.C.”

A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police
cars parked in bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map
of Chicago bike lane obstructions include a police training
facility.

The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some
are head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove
recently got its very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.

“I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
construction, and then when I saw the end result I
thought—Blimey! That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill
Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have to smile every time I drive
by it.”

The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path,
and county officials say it offers a more direct and safer
cycling route through town.

Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no
denying urban areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s
like a commandment: ‘Thou shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said
Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore cyclist group Bikemore.

On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National
Motorists Association, are urging cities not to make
pandemic-era pedestrian and cycling accommodations
permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes. They’ve taken
to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”

“That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how
these bike lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said
Shelia Dunn, a spokeswoman for the motorists group.

“I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What
about Big Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason
we have streets is because cars are the engine of the economy.”

The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck
between two camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone
else,” said James T. Smith Jr., a former county executive
who was chief of staff to the Baltimore mayor during
development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.

“You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see
that as such a bad thing.”

But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason
cities end up with bike lanes to nowhere and other
impediments to a smooth ride.

When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials
ripped out an existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn
lane for truckers into the facility. The consolation prize
for cyclists was to paint a new bike lane on the sidewalk.
Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a
church complained about losing public street-parking spaces
to a bike lane. It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.

In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so
far into a bike lane that the city painted an arrow
indicating cyclists should just give up, cross the
opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.

“You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?”
said Josh Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.

Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest
car-commuting times, has dialed back some of its cycling
development over worries about impeding traffic. In 2015,
L.A. approved a master plan for a network of bikeways and
has since carried out about 3% of it. At that rate, it’ll be
wrapped up in the year 2248.

In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short,
unconnected bike lanes.

This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting
the Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district
and downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for
its wide, pedestrian access and bike lanes.

Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County
Bicycle Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.

To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular
views of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes,
cyclists must first weave through lanes of traffic with
scant signage for bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.

“It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr.
Kaufman. “The logic is, there is no logic.”

[1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking
of efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33
hours late.
[2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos
of serious looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle
facilities' and other marvels are priceless.
--
Andrew Muzi
<www.yellowjersey.org/>
Open every day since 1 April, 1971

On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort
> and big fat piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's
> your update on our advanced efficient bicycle systems from
> yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
> [Front page item headline}
> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
> [Subhead]
> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a
> sensible network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>
> by Julie Bykowicz
>
> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists
> down Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can
> switch gears and take a swig from your water bottle, you’ve
> reached the end.
>
> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile
> long. Then it dumps out in the middle of five lanes of
> traffic, near entrance and exit ramps of an interstate.
>
> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute
> instructional video. Watching it takes longer than biking
> the lane itself.
>
> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of
> miles of bike lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that
> began during the pandemic and capitalize on federal grants,
> including from the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law.
>
> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes
> driving or parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of
> voters—mean these routes are sometimes counterintuitive,
> unsafe and just plain pointless.
>
> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t
> wait to try out the newly painted lane down North Avenue.
> When she did, she was underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,”
> she said. “And then there you are, on your bike, surrounded
> by cars.”
>
> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic,
> bike lanes sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people
> began using them. Now, as cities come back to life, the
> mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is proving a bit rocky.
>
> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells
> and dodging guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve
> stepped into two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all
> signal their presence, or stop for red lights, so on some
> streets it has become pedestrian beware.

Funny how the author did not mention ALL of the cars doing the rolling stop sign maneuver or the rolling right turn on red stunt. Never ever coming to a full stop. Its all the bicyclists running over the pedestrians. Blame the mosquito for biting the person. Never mind the snakes crawling around on the floor. Typical WSJ in the past few years since being boughten by Rupert Murdoch in 2007.

>
> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes,
> low-traffic roads good for biking and off-road paths,
> according to the Adventure Cycling Association, which is
> assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route System. New
> York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>
> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social
> media.
>
> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike
> lane as a customer staging area at First & K St SE. What
> gives?” a D.C. resident posted on Twitter earlier this
> month, tagging an account “Bike Lane Squatters of D.C.”
>
> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police
> cars parked in bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map
> of Chicago bike lane obstructions include a police training
> facility.
>
> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some
> are head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove
> recently got its very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>
> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
> construction, and then when I saw the end result I
> thought—Blimey! That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill
> Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have to smile every time I drive
> by it.”
>
> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path,
> and county officials say it offers a more direct and safer
> cycling route through town.

Makes sense to me to link two bike paths together with a bike path. Isn't it better to have one long path instead of two shorter paths that end in the middle of nowhere? A reporter for Rupert Murdoch would not see this logic apparently. Up north of Des Moines Iowa on a trail system they are building and acquiring land to make an eight mile long path to link together two 50-100 mile long trail systems. Previously you had to ride on some county roads (which was fine and dandy) and a 4 lane interstate highway (not fine or dandy) to connect the trail systems.

>
> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no
> denying urban areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s
> like a commandment: ‘Thou shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said
> Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore cyclist group Bikemore.
>
> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National
> Motorists Association, are urging cities not to make
> pandemic-era pedestrian and cycling accommodations
> permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes. They’ve taken
> to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>
> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how
> these bike lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said
> Shelia Dunn, a spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>
> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What
> about Big Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason
> we have streets is because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>
> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck
> between two camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone
> else,” said James T. Smith Jr., a former county executive
> who was chief of staff to the Baltimore mayor during
> development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>
> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see
> that as such a bad thing.”
>
> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason
> cities end up with bike lanes to nowhere and other
> impediments to a smooth ride.
>
> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials
> ripped out an existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn
> lane for truckers into the facility. The consolation prize
> for cyclists was to paint a new bike lane on the sidewalk.
> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a
> church complained about losing public street-parking spaces
> to a bike lane. It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>
> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so
> far into a bike lane that the city painted an arrow
> indicating cyclists should just give up, cross the
> opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>
> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?”
> said Josh Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>
> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest
> car-commuting times, has dialed back some of its cycling
> development over worries about impeding traffic. In 2015,
> L.A. approved a master plan for a network of bikeways and
> has since carried out about 3% of it. At that rate, it’ll be
> wrapped up in the year 2248.
>
> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short,
> unconnected bike lanes.
>
> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting
> the Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district
> and downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for
> its wide, pedestrian access and bike lanes.
>
> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County
> Bicycle Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
>
> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular
> views of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes,
> cyclists must first weave through lanes of traffic with
> scant signage for bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
>
> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr.
> Kaufman. “The logic is, there is no logic.”

Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge. But that is not how the world works. Everyone wants the dessert, spectacle first. Then the grunt work is done later.. When multi billion dollars stadiums are built, they build the fancy revolving roof stadium first. Parking lot is built at the end. 8 lane highways to get people in and out of the parking lots is last of all. No one builds the highways first, the parking lots next, and then finishes with the great stadium, which is the real destination.

On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 12:15:11 PM UTC-7, AMuzi wrote:
> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort
> and big fat piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's
> your update on our advanced efficient bicycle systems from
> yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
> [Front page item headline}
> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
> [Subhead]
> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a
> sensible network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>
> by Julie Bykowicz
>
> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists
> down Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can
> switch gears and take a swig from your water bottle, you’ve
> reached the end.
>
> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile
> long. Then it dumps out in the middle of five lanes of
> traffic, near entrance and exit ramps of an interstate.
>
> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute
> instructional video. Watching it takes longer than biking
> the lane itself.
>
> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of
> miles of bike lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that
> began during the pandemic and capitalize on federal grants,
> including from the roughly $1 trillion infrastructure law.
>
> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes
> driving or parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of
> voters—mean these routes are sometimes counterintuitive,
> unsafe and just plain pointless.
>
> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t
> wait to try out the newly painted lane down North Avenue.
> When she did, she was underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,”
> she said. “And then there you are, on your bike, surrounded
> by cars.”
>
> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic,
> bike lanes sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people
> began using them. Now, as cities come back to life, the
> mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is proving a bit rocky.
>
> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells
> and dodging guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve
> stepped into two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all
> signal their presence, or stop for red lights, so on some
> streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>
> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes,
> low-traffic roads good for biking and off-road paths,
> according to the Adventure Cycling Association, which is
> assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route System. New
> York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>
> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social
> media.
>
> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike
> lane as a customer staging area at First & K St SE. What
> gives?” a D.C. resident posted on Twitter earlier this
> month, tagging an account “Bike Lane Squatters of D.C.”
>
> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police
> cars parked in bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map
> of Chicago bike lane obstructions include a police training
> facility.
>
> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some
> are head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove
> recently got its very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>
> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
> construction, and then when I saw the end result I
> thought—Blimey! That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill
> Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have to smile every time I drive
> by it.”
>
> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path,
> and county officials say it offers a more direct and safer
> cycling route through town.
>
> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no
> denying urban areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s
> like a commandment: ‘Thou shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said
> Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore cyclist group Bikemore.
>
> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National
> Motorists Association, are urging cities not to make
> pandemic-era pedestrian and cycling accommodations
> permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes. They’ve taken
> to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>
> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how
> these bike lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said
> Shelia Dunn, a spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>
> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What
> about Big Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason
> we have streets is because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>
> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck
> between two camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone
> else,” said James T. Smith Jr., a former county executive
> who was chief of staff to the Baltimore mayor during
> development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>
> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see
> that as such a bad thing.”
>
> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason
> cities end up with bike lanes to nowhere and other
> impediments to a smooth ride.
>
> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials
> ripped out an existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn
> lane for truckers into the facility. The consolation prize
> for cyclists was to paint a new bike lane on the sidewalk.
> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a
> church complained about losing public street-parking spaces
> to a bike lane. It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>
> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so
> far into a bike lane that the city painted an arrow
> indicating cyclists should just give up, cross the
> opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>
> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?”
> said Josh Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>
> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest
> car-commuting times, has dialed back some of its cycling
> development over worries about impeding traffic. In 2015,
> L.A. approved a master plan for a network of bikeways and
> has since carried out about 3% of it. At that rate, it’ll be
> wrapped up in the year 2248.
>
> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short,
> unconnected bike lanes.
>
> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting
> the Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district
> and downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for
> its wide, pedestrian access and bike lanes.
>
> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County
> Bicycle Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
>
> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular
> views of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes,
> cyclists must first weave through lanes of traffic with
> scant signage for bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
>
> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr.
> Kaufman. “The logic is, there is no logic.”
>
>
>
>
>
> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking
> of efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33
> hours late.
> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos
> of serious looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle
> facilities' and other marvels are priceless.
> --
> Andrew Muzi
> <www.yellowjersey.org/>
> Open every day since 1 April, 1971

The interference with the parking problem has been experiments a bit around here but the best way was to put the bicycle lane outside of the parking lane. Most roads are make with an outside lane wide enough for heavy trucks to park and sling a door open without interfering too badly with moving traffic and that plays direct to that manner of installing bike lanes. Now a cyclist DOES have to beware of a car opening door directly in his path but I've found that not to be much of a problem and it only took about 5 years for drivers to become used to bike being close enough to hit and damage their doors and that being THEIR FAULT and damages coming out of their insurance before it has pretty much ended.

On 7/23/2022 5:51 PM, Tom Kunich wrote:
>
>
> The interference with the parking problem has been experiments a bit around here but the best way was to put the bicycle lane outside of the parking lane. Most roads are make with an outside lane wide enough for heavy trucks to park and sling a door open without interfering too badly with moving traffic and that plays direct to that manner of installing bike lanes. Now a cyclist DOES have to beware of a car opening door directly in his path but I've found that not to be much of a problem and it only took about 5 years for drivers to become used to bike being close enough to hit and damage their doors and that being THEIR FAULT and damages coming out of their insurance before it has pretty much ended.

If a cyclist is hit by an opening parked car door, the cyclist is at
least partly at fault. It's foolish to ride in the door zone.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlOnnDvr9Uw

Some people think they can simply "be aware" and stop if the door opens.
If you're riding above walking speed, that's roughly impossible. Human
reflexes and limitations on bike braking (caused by pitchover, not brake
force) mean you _will_ hit the door.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=cyclist+doored

And BTW, it can be worse to just barely hit the door. If it hooks your
right handlebar, the bike throws you to the left under passing vehicles.

Take the lane. It's your right. It works.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
> [Front page item headline}
> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
> [Subhead]
> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>
> by Julie Bykowicz
>
> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>
> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
> ramps of an interstate.
>
> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>
> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
> infrastructure law.
>
> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>
> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>
> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
> proving a bit rocky.
>
> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>
> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>
> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>
> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
> Squatters of D.C.”
>
> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
> obstructions include a police training facility.
>
> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>
> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>
> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>
> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
> cyclist group Bikemore.
>
> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>
> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>
> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>
> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>
> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
> bad thing.”
>
> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>
> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
> lane on the sidewalk.
> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>
> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>
> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>
> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>
> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
> bike lanes.
>
> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
> and bike lanes.
>
> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
> biked it on opening day July 10.
>
> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
> dedicated pathways.
>
> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
> logic is, there is no logic.”
>
> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
> are priceless.

Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
the paywall.

One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.

Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?

Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!

--
- Frank Krygowski

On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
<frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

>On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>> [Front page item headline}
>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>> [Subhead]
>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>
>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>
>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>
>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>> ramps of an interstate.
>>
>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>
>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>> infrastructure law.
>>
>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>
>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>
>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>> proving a bit rocky.
>>
>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>>
>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>
>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>
>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>
>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>
>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>
>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>
>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>>
>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>
>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>
>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>
>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>
>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>
>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>> bad thing.”
>>
>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>
>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>> lane on the sidewalk.
>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>
>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>
>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>
>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>
>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>> bike lanes.
>>
>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>> and bike lanes.
>>
>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>
>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>> dedicated pathways.
>>
>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>
>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>> are priceless.
>
>Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>the paywall.
>
>One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
>lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>
>Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
>guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>
>Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!

On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>
> >On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
> >> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
> >> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
> >> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
> >> [Front page item headline}
> >> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
> >> [Subhead]
> >> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
> >> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
> >>
> >> by Julie Bykowicz
> >>
> >> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
> >> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
> >> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
> >>
> >> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
> >> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
> >> ramps of an interstate.
> >>
> >> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
> >> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
> >>
> >> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
> >> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
> >> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
> >> infrastructure law.
> >>
> >> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
> >> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
> >> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
> >>
> >> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
> >> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
> >> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
> >> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
> >>
> >> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
> >> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
> >> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
> >> proving a bit rocky.
> >>
> >> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
> >> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
> >> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
> >> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
> >>
> >> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
> >> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
> >> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
> >> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
> >> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
> >>
> >> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
> >>
> >> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
> >> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
> >> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
> >> Squatters of D.C.”
> >>
> >> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
> >> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
> >> obstructions include a police training facility.
> >>
> >> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
> >> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
> >> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
> >>
> >> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
> >> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
> >> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
> >> to smile every time I drive by it.”
> >>
> >> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
> >> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
> >>
> >> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
> >> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
> >> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
> >> cyclist group Bikemore.
> >>
> >> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
> >> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
> >> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
> >> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
> >>
> >> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
> >> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
> >> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
> >>
> >> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
> >> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
> >> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
> >>
> >> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
> >> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T.. Smith
> >> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
> >> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
> >>
> >> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
> >> bad thing.”
> >>
> >> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
> >> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
> >>
> >> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
> >> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
> >> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
> >> lane on the sidewalk.
> >> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
> >> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
> >> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
> >>
> >> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
> >> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
> >> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
> >>
> >> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
> >> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
> >>
> >> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
> >> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
> >> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
> >> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
> >> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
> >>
> >> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
> >> bike lanes.
> >>
> >> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
> >> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
> >> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
> >> and bike lanes.
> >>
> >> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
> >> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
> >> biked it on opening day July 10.
> >>
> >> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
> >> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
> >> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
> >> dedicated pathways.
> >>
> >> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
> >> logic is, there is no logic.”
> >>
> >> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
> >> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
> >> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
> >> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
> >> are priceless.
> >
> >Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
> >the paywall.
> >
> >One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
> >lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
> >being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
> >pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
> >
> >Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
> >guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
> >riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
> >And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
> >
> >Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
> >frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
> >never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>
> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>
> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
> annually in auto crashes..
>
> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
> times safer then autos...

On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:04:17 -0700 (PDT), "russellseaton1@yahoo.com"
<ritzannaseaton@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>> >On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>> >> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>> >> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>> >> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>> >> [Front page item headline}
>> >> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>> >> [Subhead]
>> >> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>> >> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>> >>
>> >> by Julie Bykowicz
>> >>
>> >> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>> >> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>> >> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>> >>
>> >> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>> >> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>> >> ramps of an interstate.
>> >>
>> >> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>> >> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>> >>
>> >> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>> >> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>> >> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>> >> infrastructure law.
>> >>
>> >> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>> >> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>> >> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>> >>
>> >> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>> >> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>> >> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>> >> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>> >>
>> >> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>> >> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>> >> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>> >> proving a bit rocky.
>> >>
>> >> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>> >> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>> >> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>> >> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>> >>
>> >> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>> >> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>> >> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>> >> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>> >> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>> >>
>> >> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>> >>
>> >> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>> >> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>> >> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>> >> Squatters of D.C.”
>> >>
>> >> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>> >> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>> >> obstructions include a police training facility.
>> >>
>> >> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>> >> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>> >> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>> >>
>> >> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>> >> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>> >> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>> >> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>> >>
>> >> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>> >> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>> >>
>> >> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>> >> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>> >> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>> >> cyclist group Bikemore.
>> >>
>> >> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>> >> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>> >> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>> >> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>> >>
>> >> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>> >> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>> >> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>> >>
>> >> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>> >> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>> >> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>> >>
>> >> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>> >> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>> >> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>> >> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>> >>
>> >> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>> >> bad thing.”
>> >>
>> >> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>> >> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>> >>
>> >> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>> >> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>> >> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>> >> lane on the sidewalk.
>> >> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>> >> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>> >> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>> >>
>> >> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>> >> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>> >> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>> >>
>> >> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>> >> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>> >>
>> >> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>> >> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>> >> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>> >> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>> >> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>> >>
>> >> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>> >> bike lanes.
>> >>
>> >> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>> >> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>> >> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>> >> and bike lanes.
>> >>
>> >> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>> >> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>> >> biked it on opening day July 10.
>> >>
>> >> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>> >> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>> >> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>> >> dedicated pathways.
>> >>
>> >> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>> >> logic is, there is no logic.”
>> >>
>> >> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>> >> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>> >> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>> >> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>> >> are priceless.
>> >
>> >Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>> >the paywall.
>> >
>> >One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
>> >lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>> >being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>> >pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>> >
>> >Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
>> >guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>> >riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>> >And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>> >
>> >Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>> >frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>> >never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>
>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>
>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>> annually in auto crashes..
>>
>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>> times safer then autos...
>
>I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles traveled for comparison. Not just participants. Take smoking. I am a smoker!!!!!!! I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe three or four total. But I smoked, so I'm a smoker. I doubt I will get lung cancer though. From smoking anyway. Same with drinking. I have drank alcohol in my life. Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!! So I am a drinker. But I don't think I am going to get liver cancer from drinking. I rarely drink.
>
>You need better numbers than mere participants. Miles traveled? But the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really comparable either. Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus cars. You would still need some way to take into account the different terrain. Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country roads. Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic. Comparable?

On 7/24/2022 5:08 AM, John B. wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:04:17 -0700 (PDT), "russellseaton1@yahoo.com"
> <ritzannaseaton@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>>>>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>>>>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>>>>> [Front page item headline}
>>>>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>>>>> [Subhead]
>>>>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>>>>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>>>>
>>>>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>>>>
>>>>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>>>>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>>>>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>>>>
>>>>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>>>>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>>>>> ramps of an interstate.
>>>>>
>>>>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>>>>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>>>>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>>>>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>>>>> infrastructure law.
>>>>>
>>>>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>>>>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>>>>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>>>>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>>>>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>>>>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>>>>
>>>>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>>>>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>>>>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>>>>> proving a bit rocky.
>>>>>
>>>>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>>>>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>>>>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>>>>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>>>>>
>>>>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>>>>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>>>>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>>>>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>>>>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>>>>
>>>>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>>>>
>>>>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>>>>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>>>>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>>>>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>>>>
>>>>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>>>>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>>>>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>>>>
>>>>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>>>>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>>>>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>>>>
>>>>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>>>>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>>>>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>>>>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>>>>
>>>>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>>>>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>>>>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>>>>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>>>>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>>>>
>>>>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>>>>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>>>>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>>>>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>>>>
>>>>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>>>>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>>>>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>>>>
>>>>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>>>>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>>>>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>>>>
>>>>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>>>>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>>>>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>>>>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>>>>> bad thing.”
>>>>>
>>>>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>>>>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>>>>
>>>>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>>>>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>>>>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>>>>> lane on the sidewalk.
>>>>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>>>>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>>>>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>>>>
>>>>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>>>>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>>>>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>>>>
>>>>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>>>>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>>>>
>>>>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>>>>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>>>>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>>>>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>>>>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>>>>> bike lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>>>>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>>>>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>>>>> and bike lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>>>>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>>>>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>>
>>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>>>>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>>>>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>>>>> dedicated pathways.
>>>>>
>>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>>>>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>>>
>>>>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>>>>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>>>>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>>>>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>>>>> are priceless.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>>>> the paywall.
>>>>
>>>> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
>>>> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>>>> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>>>> pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>>>>
>>>> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
>>>> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>>>> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>>>> And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>>>>
>>>> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>>>> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>>>> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
>>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>>
>>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>>
>>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>>> annually in auto crashes..
>>>
>>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>>> times safer then autos...
>>
>> I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles traveled for comparison. Not just participants. Take smoking. I am a smoker!!!!!!! I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe three or four total. But I smoked, so I'm a smoker. I doubt I will get lung cancer though. From smoking anyway. Same with drinking. I have drank alcohol in my life. Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!! So I am a drinker. But I don't think I am going to get liver cancer from drinking. I rarely drink.
>>
>> You need better numbers than mere participants. Miles traveled? But the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really comparable either. Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus cars. You would still need some way to take into account the different terrain. Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country roads. Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic. Comparable?
>
> But, cars and bicycles travel over the same terrain, at least they do
> in the country I live in, and, I would guess, in much of the U.S.
>
> I'm not disagreeing with you but how else can you even approach a
> study of relative dangers? The CDC, for example, simply counts the
> number of deaths.... no "well he was going down hill doing 90 miles an
> hour...", just dead bodies laying on the ground.

On 7/24/2022 1:04 AM, russellseaton1@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>
>>> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>>>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>>>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>>>> [Front page item headline}
>>>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>>>> [Subhead]
>>>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>>>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>>>
>>>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>>>
>>>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>>>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>>>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>>>
>>>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>>>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>>>> ramps of an interstate.
>>>>
>>>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>>>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>>>
>>>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>>>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>>>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>>>> infrastructure law.
>>>>
>>>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>>>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>>>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>>>
>>>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>>>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>>>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>>>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>>>
>>>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>>>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>>>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>>>> proving a bit rocky.
>>>>
>>>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>>>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>>>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>>>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>>>>
>>>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>>>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>>>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>>>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>>>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>>>
>>>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>>>
>>>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>>>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>>>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>>>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>>>
>>>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>>>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>>>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>>>
>>>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>>>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>>>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>>>
>>>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>>>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>>>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>>>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>>>
>>>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>>>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>>>>
>>>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>>>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>>>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>>>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>>>
>>>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>>>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>>>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>>>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>>>
>>>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>>>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>>>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>>>
>>>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>>>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>>>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>>>
>>>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>>>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>>>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>>>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>>>
>>>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>>>> bad thing.”
>>>>
>>>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>>>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>>>
>>>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>>>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>>>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>>>> lane on the sidewalk.
>>>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>>>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>>>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>>>
>>>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>>>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>>>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>>>
>>>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>>>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>>>
>>>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>>>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>>>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>>>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>>>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>>>
>>>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>>>> bike lanes.
>>>>
>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>>>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>>>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>>>> and bike lanes.
>>>>
>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>>>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>>>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>
>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>>>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>>>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>>>> dedicated pathways.
>>>>
>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>>>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>>
>>>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>>>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>>>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>>>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>>>> are priceless.
>>>
>>> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>>> the paywall.
>>>
>>> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
>>> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>>> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>>> pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>>>
>>> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
>>> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>>> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>>> And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>>>
>>> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>>> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>>> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>
>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>
>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>> annually in auto crashes..
>>
>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>> times safer then autos...
>
> I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles traveled for comparison. Not just participants. Take smoking. I am a smoker!!!!!!! I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe three or four total. But I smoked, so I'm a smoker. I doubt I will get lung cancer though. From smoking anyway. Same with drinking. I have drank alcohol in my life. Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!! So I am a drinker. But I don't think I am going to get liver cancer from drinking. I rarely drink.
>
> You need better numbers than mere participants. Miles traveled? But the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really comparable either. Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus cars. You would still need some way to take into account the different terrain. Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country roads. Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic. Comparable?
>
> So bicycles 7 times safer than autos is probably not accurate. Maybe higher or lower. Not sure.
>
>
>>
>> Perhaps we need "Auto only" lanes (:-)
>
> Those are called Interstate highways. Federal highways. Cars only. Except in a few remote spots where the only road between spots is the Interstate, so cyclists are also allowed to use it.
>
>
>> --
>> Cheers,
>>
>> John B.

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>> [Front page item headline}
>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>> [Subhead]
>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>
>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>
>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>
>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>> ramps of an interstate.
>>
>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>
>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>> infrastructure law.
>>
>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>
>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>
>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>> proving a bit rocky.
>>
>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>>
>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>
>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>
>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>
>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>
>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>
>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>
>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>>
>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>
>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>
>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>
>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>
>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>
>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>> bad thing.”
>>
>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>
>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>> lane on the sidewalk.
>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>
>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>
>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>
>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>
>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>> bike lanes.
>>
>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>> and bike lanes.
>>
>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>
>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>> dedicated pathways.
>>
>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>
>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>> are priceless.
>
> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
> the paywall.
>
> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
> pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>
> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
> And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>
> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
>
Cycle lanes need to work, ie be useful ie not just drop folks at busy
junctions and so on.

On 7/24/2022 11:02 AM, AMuzi wrote:
> On 7/24/2022 1:04 AM, russellseaton1@yahoo.com wrote:
>> On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>>>>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our
>>>>> advanced
>>>>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>>>>> [Front page item headline}
>>>>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>>>>> [Subhead]
>>>>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>>>>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>>>>
>>>>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>>>>
>>>>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>>>>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears
>>>>> and take
>>>>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>>>>
>>>>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile
>>>>> long. Then it
>>>>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and
>>>>> exit
>>>>> ramps of an interstate.
>>>>>
>>>>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional
>>>>> video.
>>>>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>>>>
>>>>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of
>>>>> bike
>>>>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>>>>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1
>>>>> trillion
>>>>> infrastructure law.
>>>>>
>>>>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes
>>>>> driving or
>>>>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these
>>>>> routes are
>>>>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>>>>
>>>>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait
>>>>> to try
>>>>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>>>>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then
>>>>> there you are,
>>>>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>>>>
>>>>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>>>>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>>>>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot
>>>>> traffic is
>>>>> proving a bit rocky.
>>>>>
>>>>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and
>>>>> dodging
>>>>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>>>>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their
>>>>> presence,
>>>>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian
>>>>> beware.
>>>>>
>>>>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>>>>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>>>>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>>>>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>>>>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>>>>
>>>>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>>>>
>>>>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike
>>>>> lane as a
>>>>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C.
>>>>> resident
>>>>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>>>>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>>>>
>>>>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars
>>>>> parked in
>>>>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>>>>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>>>>
>>>>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>>>>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got
>>>>> its
>>>>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>>>>
>>>>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>>>>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>>>>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s
>>>>> ludicrous. I have
>>>>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>>>>
>>>>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>>>>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route
>>>>> through town.
>>>>>
>>>>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>>>>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment:
>>>>> ‘Thou
>>>>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>>>>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>>>>
>>>>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>>>>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>>>>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>>>>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>>>>
>>>>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how
>>>>> these bike
>>>>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>>>>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>>>>
>>>>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What
>>>>> about Big
>>>>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have
>>>>> streets is
>>>>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>>>>
>>>>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck
>>>>> between two
>>>>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T.
>>>>> Smith
>>>>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>>>>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see
>>>>> that as such a
>>>>> bad thing.”
>>>>>
>>>>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>>>>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>>>>
>>>>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>>>>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>>>>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new
>>>>> bike
>>>>> lane on the sidewalk.
>>>>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>>>>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>>>>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>>>>
>>>>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>>>>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should
>>>>> just
>>>>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>>>>
>>>>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said
>>>>> Josh
>>>>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>>>>
>>>>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>>>>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>>>>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>>>>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>>>>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>>>>
>>>>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>>>>> bike lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>>>>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>>>>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>>>>> and bike lanes.
>>>>>
>>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
>>>>> Kaufman,
>>>>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>>>>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>>
>>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
>>>>> of the
>>>>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>>>>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>>>>> dedicated pathways.
>>>>>
>>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr.
>>>>> Kaufman. “The
>>>>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>>>
>>>>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>>>>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>>>>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>>>>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>>>>> are priceless.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>>>> the paywall.
>>>>
>>>> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of
>>>> bike
>>>> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>>>> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>>>> pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>>>>
>>>> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because
>>>> "you
>>>> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>>>> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>>>> And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>>>>
>>>> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>>>> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>>>> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such
>>>> nonsense!
>>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>>
>>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>>
>>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>>> annually in auto crashes..
>>>
>>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>>> times safer then autos...
>>
>> I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles
>> traveled for comparison.  Not just participants.  Take smoking.  I am
>> a smoker!!!!!!!  I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college.
>> Maybe three or four total.  But I smoked, so I'm a smoker.  I doubt I
>> will get lung cancer though.  From smoking anyway.  Same with
>> drinking.  I have drank alcohol in my life.  Even before I was legally
>> able to!!!!!!!!!  So I am a drinker.  But I don't think I am going to
>> get liver cancer from drinking.  I rarely drink.
>>
>> You need better numbers than mere participants.  Miles traveled?  But
>> the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really
>> comparable either.  Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle?
>> That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus
>> cars.  You would still need some way to take into account the
>> different terrain.  Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country
>> roads.  Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go
>> traffic.  Comparable?
>>
>> So bicycles 7 times safer than autos is probably not accurate.  Maybe
>> higher or lower.  Not sure.
>>
>>
>>>
>>> Perhaps we need "Auto only" lanes (:-)
>>
>> Those are called Interstate highways.  Federal highways.  Cars only.
>> Except in a few remote spots where the only road between spots is the
>> Interstate, so cyclists are also allowed to use it.
>>
>>
>>> --
>>> Cheers,
>>>
>>> John B.
>
> Good point. Mileage or even hours of operation would be useful but data
> are scant, mostly conjecture.
> Then again, I don't want to live under a regime which centralizes data
> on bicycle mileage or hours of operation!

On 7/24/2022 3:11 PM, Roger Merriman wrote:
>
> Cycle lanes need to work, ie be useful ie not just drop folks at busy
> junctions and so on.
>
> Certainly in london getting better stuff, not uniform but it’s certainly
> getting better and useful.
>
> And more than simply the white middle aged man on a road bike, the
> Embankment for example you see a much more diverse bunch of folks using the
> segregated bike lane to the Tower, it’s arguably slightly slower for folks
> like myself who pre it would just punch it from Westminster to the tower.
>
> Though some of that is that you don’t need to clock, along at 20+ Mph but
> can pootle as your not riding down a multi lane road…

FWIW, when riding a multi-lane road, I don't try to hit 20+ mph. For one
thing, it's gotten harder as I've aged. But it turns out I don't need
to. I ride the middle of the right lane at whatever my normal speed
happens to be. Motorists notice me from way back and adjust by changing
lanes, usually very early.

Really, the difference between cruising easily at (say) 14 mph and
working like crazy to go 18+ mph has almost no effect on motorist
behavior. It's a negligible change in closing velocity.

--
- Frank Krygowski

On 7/24/2022 7:39 PM, Frank Krygowski wrote:
> On 7/24/2022 11:02 AM, AMuzi wrote:
>> On 7/24/2022 1:04 AM, russellseaton1@yahoo.com wrote:
>>> On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B.
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>>>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation,
>>>>>> effort and big fat
>>>>>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your
>>>>>> update on our advanced
>>>>>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street
>>>>>> Journal [1][2]
>>>>>> [Front page item headline}
>>>>>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It
>>>>>> to Go Somewhere?
>>>>>> [Subhead]
>>>>>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them
>>>>>> into a sensible
>>>>>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of
>>>>>> ends.’
>>>>>>
>>>>>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane
>>>>>> beckons cyclists down
>>>>>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you
>>>>>> can switch gears and take
>>>>>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached
>>>>>> the end.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is
>>>>>> roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>>>>>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near
>>>>>> entrance and exit
>>>>>> ramps of an interstate.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It’s so confusing that the city made a
>>>>>> two-minute instructional video.
>>>>>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds
>>>>>> of miles of bike
>>>>>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began
>>>>>> during the pandemic
>>>>>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the
>>>>>> roughly $1 trillion
>>>>>> infrastructure law.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But car culture and political
>>>>>> realities—anything that makes driving or
>>>>>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of
>>>>>> voters—mean these routes are
>>>>>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain
>>>>>> pointless.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she
>>>>>> couldn’t wait to try
>>>>>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she
>>>>>> did, she was
>>>>>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she
>>>>>> said. “And then there you are,
>>>>>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the
>>>>>> pandemic, bike lanes
>>>>>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began
>>>>>> using them. Now,
>>>>>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike
>>>>>> and foot traffic is
>>>>>> proving a bit rocky.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their
>>>>>> bells and dodging
>>>>>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware
>>>>>> they’ve stepped into
>>>>>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all
>>>>>> signal their presence,
>>>>>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has
>>>>>> become pedestrian beware.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes,
>>>>>> low-traffic roads
>>>>>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the
>>>>>> Adventure Cycling
>>>>>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the
>>>>>> U.S. Bicycle Route
>>>>>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles
>>>>>> of bike lanes
>>>>>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on
>>>>>> social media.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire
>>>>>> ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>>>>>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What
>>>>>> gives?” a D.C. resident
>>>>>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an
>>>>>> account “Bike Lane
>>>>>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling
>>>>>> police cars parked in
>>>>>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago
>>>>>> bike lane
>>>>>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more
>>>>>> bike lanes. Some are
>>>>>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove
>>>>>> recently got its
>>>>>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with
>>>>>> the road closed for
>>>>>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I
>>>>>> thought—Blimey!
>>>>>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill
>>>>>> Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>>>>>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle
>>>>>> path, and county
>>>>>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer
>>>>>> cycling route through town.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists,
>>>>>> there’s no denying urban
>>>>>> areas are still dominated by drivers.
>>>>>> “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>>>>>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed
>>>>>> Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>>>>>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the
>>>>>> National Motorists
>>>>>> Association, are urging cities not to make
>>>>>> pandemic-era pedestrian and
>>>>>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it
>>>>>> with the bike lanes.
>>>>>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates
>>>>>> “Big Bike.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “That was a term I coined because it’s
>>>>>> just unbelievable how these bike
>>>>>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said
>>>>>> Shelia Dunn, a
>>>>>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who
>>>>>> say, ‘What about Big
>>>>>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But
>>>>>> the whole reason we have streets is
>>>>>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials
>>>>>> “stuck between two
>>>>>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone
>>>>>> else,” said James T. Smith
>>>>>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff
>>>>>> to the Baltimore
>>>>>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project
>>>>>> and other lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “You end up with compromises,” he said,
>>>>>> “and I don’t see that as such a
>>>>>> bad thing.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big
>>>>>> reason cities end up
>>>>>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a
>>>>>> smooth ride.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city
>>>>>> officials ripped out an
>>>>>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane
>>>>>> for truckers into
>>>>>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was
>>>>>> to paint a new bike
>>>>>> lane on the sidewalk.
>>>>>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after
>>>>>> a church
>>>>>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces
>>>>>> to a bike lane.
>>>>>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard
>>>>>> blobs so far into a
>>>>>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating
>>>>>> cyclists should just
>>>>>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on
>>>>>> the sidewalk.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “You ride up to that and you’re like,
>>>>>> what is going on?” said Josh
>>>>>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s
>>>>>> longest car-commuting
>>>>>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development
>>>>>> over worries
>>>>>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a
>>>>>> master plan for a
>>>>>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3%
>>>>>> of it. At that
>>>>>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of
>>>>>> short, unconnected
>>>>>> bike lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct
>>>>>> connecting the Boyle
>>>>>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts
>>>>>> district and downtown—a
>>>>>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
>>>>>> pedestrian access
>>>>>> and bike lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto
>>>>>> this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>>>>>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
>>>>>> Coalition, who
>>>>>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its
>>>>>> spectacular views of the
>>>>>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists
>>>>>> must first weave
>>>>>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
>>>>>> bicyclists, let alone
>>>>>> dedicated pathways.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it
>>>>>> wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
>>>>>> “The
>>>>>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it.
>>>>>> Speaking of
>>>>>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33
>>>>>> hours late.
>>>>>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article,
>>>>>> photos of serious
>>>>>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities'
>>>>>> and other marvels
>>>>>> are priceless.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I
>>>>> was stopped by
>>>>> the paywall.
>>>>>
>>>>> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has
>>>>> said "99% of bike
>>>>> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums
>>>>> of money are
>>>>> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost
>>>>> every case, those
>>>>> pushing the projects know nothing about competent
>>>>> bicycling.
>>>>>
>>>>> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent
>>>>> cyclists because "you
>>>>> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new
>>>>> riders." That is, new
>>>>> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are
>>>>> being lured into.
>>>>> And in what other field does competence disqualify a
>>>>> person's input?
>>>>>
>>>>> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected"
>>>>> bike lanes, with
>>>>> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and
>>>>> "unsafe." So we're
>>>>> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have
>>>>> them? Such nonsense!
>>>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>>>
>>>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there
>>>> were 47.5
>>>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that
>>>> nearly 1,000
>>>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>>>
>>>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor
>>>> vehicle drivers in
>>>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000
>>>> are killed
>>>> annually in auto crashes..
>>>>
>>>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500
>>>> cyclists and auto
>>>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes
>>>> bicycles nearly 7
>>>> times safer then autos...
>>>
>>> I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity
>>> of miles traveled for comparison.� Not just
>>> participants.� Take smoking.� I am a smoker!!!!!!!� I
>>> smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe
>>> three or four total.� But I smoked, so I'm a smoker.� I
>>> doubt I will get lung cancer though.� From smoking
>>> anyway.� Same with drinking.� I have drank alcohol in
>>> my life.� Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!!�
>>> So I am a drinker.� But I don't think I am going to get
>>> liver cancer from drinking.� I rarely drink.
>>>
>>> You need better numbers than mere participants.� Miles
>>> traveled?� But the speed of cars and bikes is different,
>>> so mileage isn't really comparable either.� Maybe hours
>>> in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you
>>> a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus
>>> cars.� You would still need some way to take into
>>> account the different terrain.� Many bicycle rides are
>>> on paths or empty country roads.� Many cars are driven
>>> on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic.� Comparable?
>>>
>>> So bicycles 7 times safer than autos is probably not
>>> accurate.� Maybe higher or lower.� Not sure.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps we need "Auto only" lanes (:-)
>>>
>>> Those are called Interstate highways.� Federal
>>> highways.� Cars only. Except in a few remote spots where
>>> the only road between spots is the Interstate, so
>>> cyclists are also allowed to use it.
>>>
>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> John B.
>>
>> Good point. Mileage or even hours of operation would be
>> useful but data are scant, mostly conjecture.
>> Then again, I don't want to live under a regime which
>> centralizes data on bicycle mileage or hours of operation!
>
> If such data ever becomes monetarily valuable, you will live
> under such a regime, unless you continue carefully avoiding
> use of smart phones, Garmin, Strava, etc.
>
> While Tom can't find some of his history of where he's
> ridden, how slowly he rode, etc. I'll bet there are
> commercial interests who now know those facts. Ditto for
> other Strava users.
>
> Vaguely related: One advocacy group I belong to was briefly
> excited about anonymized mass data on Strava. They said this
> would be very valuable to determine where people wanted to
> ride, and so where money should be spent on kiddie paths.
>
> I pointed out that it would be valuable only for learning
> mostly where "fast recreational riders" wanted to ride, and
> probably very inaccurate at predicting the bulk of actual
> riding, especially practical riding.
>
>

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 7/24/2022 11:02 AM, AMuzi wrote:
>> On 7/24/2022 1:04 AM, russellseaton1@yahoo.com wrote:
>>> On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>>>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>>>> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>>>>>> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>>>>>> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our
>>>>>> advanced
>>>>>> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>>>>>> [Front page item headline}
>>>>>> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>>>>>> [Subhead]
>>>>>> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>>>>>> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>>>>>>
>>>>>> by Julie Bykowicz
>>>>>>
>>>>>> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>>>>>> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears
>>>>>> and take
>>>>>> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile
>>>>>> long. Then it
>>>>>> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and
>>>>>> exit
>>>>>> ramps of an interstate.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional
>>>>>> video.
>>>>>> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of
>>>>>> bike
>>>>>> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>>>>>> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1
>>>>>> trillion
>>>>>> infrastructure law.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes
>>>>>> driving or
>>>>>> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these
>>>>>> routes are
>>>>>> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait
>>>>>> to try
>>>>>> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>>>>>> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then
>>>>>> there you are,
>>>>>> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>>>>>> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>>>>>> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot
>>>>>> traffic is
>>>>>> proving a bit rocky.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and
>>>>>> dodging
>>>>>> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>>>>>> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their
>>>>>> presence,
>>>>>> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian
>>>>>> beware.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>>>>>> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>>>>>> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>>>>>> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>>>>>> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike
>>>>>> lane as a
>>>>>> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C.
>>>>>> resident
>>>>>> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>>>>>> Squatters of D.C.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars
>>>>>> parked in
>>>>>> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>>>>>> obstructions include a police training facility.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>>>>>> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got
>>>>>> its
>>>>>> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>>>>>> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>>>>>> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s
>>>>>> ludicrous. I have
>>>>>> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>>>>>> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route
>>>>>> through town.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>>>>>> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment:
>>>>>> ‘Thou
>>>>>> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>>>>>> cyclist group Bikemore.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>>>>>> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>>>>>> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>>>>>> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how
>>>>>> these bike
>>>>>> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>>>>>> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What
>>>>>> about Big
>>>>>> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have
>>>>>> streets is
>>>>>> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck
>>>>>> between two
>>>>>> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T.
>>>>>> Smith
>>>>>> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>>>>>> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see
>>>>>> that as such a
>>>>>> bad thing.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>>>>>> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>>>>>> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>>>>>> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new
>>>>>> bike
>>>>>> lane on the sidewalk.
>>>>>> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>>>>>> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>>>>>> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>>>>>> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should
>>>>>> just
>>>>>> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said
>>>>>> Josh
>>>>>> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>>>>>> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>>>>>> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>>>>>> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>>>>>> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>>>>>> bike lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>>>>>> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>>>>>> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>>>>>> and bike lanes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
>>>>>> Kaufman,
>>>>>> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>>>>>> biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
>>>>>> of the
>>>>>> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>>>>>> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>>>>>> dedicated pathways.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr.
>>>>>> Kaufman. “The
>>>>>> logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>>>>>> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>>>>>> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>>>>>> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>>>>>> are priceless.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>>>>> the paywall.
>>>>>
>>>>> One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of
>>>>> bike
>>>>> lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>>>>> being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>>>>> pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>>>>>
>>>>> Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because
>>>>> "you
>>>>> guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>>>>> riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>>>>> And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>>>>>
>>>>> Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>>>>> frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>>>>> never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such
>>>>> nonsense!
>>>> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>>>>
>>>> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>>>> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>>>> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>>>>
>>>> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>>>> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>>>> annually in auto crashes..
>>>>
>>>> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>>>> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>>>> times safer then autos...
>>>
>>> I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles
>>> traveled for comparison.  Not just participants.  Take smoking.  I am
>>> a smoker!!!!!!!  I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college.
>>> Maybe three or four total.  But I smoked, so I'm a smoker.  I doubt I
>>> will get lung cancer though.  From smoking anyway.  Same with
>>> drinking.  I have drank alcohol in my life.  Even before I was legally
>>> able to!!!!!!!!!  So I am a drinker.  But I don't think I am going to
>>> get liver cancer from drinking.  I rarely drink.
>>>
>>> You need better numbers than mere participants.  Miles traveled?  But
>>> the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really
>>> comparable either.  Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle?
>>> That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus
>>> cars.  You would still need some way to take into account the
>>> different terrain.  Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country
>>> roads.  Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go
>>> traffic.  Comparable?
>>>
>>> So bicycles 7 times safer than autos is probably not accurate.  Maybe
>>> higher or lower.  Not sure.
>>>
>>>
>>>>
>>>> Perhaps we need "Auto only" lanes (:-)
>>>
>>> Those are called Interstate highways.  Federal highways.  Cars only.
>>> Except in a few remote spots where the only road between spots is the
>>> Interstate, so cyclists are also allowed to use it.
>>>
>>>
>>>> --
>>>> Cheers,
>>>>
>>>> John B.
>>
>> Good point. Mileage or even hours of operation would be useful but data
>> are scant, mostly conjecture.
>> Then again, I don't want to live under a regime which centralizes data
>> on bicycle mileage or hours of operation!
>
> If such data ever becomes monetarily valuable, you will live under such
> a regime, unless you continue carefully avoiding use of smart phones,
> Garmin, Strava, etc.
>
> While Tom can't find some of his history of where he's ridden, how
> slowly he rode, etc. I'll bet there are commercial interests who now
> know those facts. Ditto for other Strava users.
>
> Vaguely related: One advocacy group I belong to was briefly excited
> about anonymized mass data on Strava. They said this would be very
> valuable to determine where people wanted to ride, and so where money
> should be spent on kiddie paths.
>
> I pointed out that it would be valuable only for learning mostly where
> "fast recreational riders" wanted to ride, and probably very inaccurate
> at predicting the bulk of actual riding, especially practical riding.
>
>
I’d agree that lot of utility riders will not use Strava, and even those
that do may not for the commute.

Frank Krygowski <frkrygow@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> On 7/24/2022 3:11 PM, Roger Merriman wrote:
>>
>> Cycle lanes need to work, ie be useful ie not just drop folks at busy
>> junctions and so on.
>>
>> Certainly in london getting better stuff, not uniform but it’s certainly
>> getting better and useful.
>>
>> And more than simply the white middle aged man on a road bike, the
>> Embankment for example you see a much more diverse bunch of folks using the
>> segregated bike lane to the Tower, it’s arguably slightly slower for folks
>> like myself who pre it would just punch it from Westminster to the tower.
>>
>> Though some of that is that you don’t need to clock, along at 20+ Mph but
>> can pootle as your not riding down a multi lane road…
>
> FWIW, when riding a multi-lane road, I don't try to hit 20+ mph. For one
> thing, it's gotten harder as I've aged. But it turns out I don't need
> to. I ride the middle of the right lane at whatever my normal speed
> happens to be. Motorists notice me from way back and adjust by changing
> lanes, usually very early.
>
> Really, the difference between cruising easily at (say) 14 mph and
> working like crazy to go 18+ mph has almost no effect on motorist
> behavior. It's a negligible change in closing velocity.
>
>
my old commute beastie on a fast dual carriageway can feel a bit dicey,
it’s why I like my old cycleway which bypasses the well bypass! While the
gravel bike is significantly faster and more tolerable, but it’s
potentially double the speed! In that the commute beastie has a very
upright position and heavy so 10/11mph is normal.

To be fair the embankment was always horrible to ride on, and during rush
hr the non segregated bit to the west still is. Lots of stop start traffic
and generally hairy driving/riding.

Roger Merriman

Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russellseaton1@yahoo.com:
> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:

>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
>>
>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
>>
>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
>>
>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
>
> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
> But that is not how the world works.
I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
because
1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
2) the land use is least difficult for bridges

Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.

Rolf

On Monday, July 25, 2022 at 3:21:54 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
> Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russell...@yahoo.com:
> > On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
>
> >> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
> >> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
> >> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
> >> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
> >>
> >> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> >> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
> >> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
> >>
> >> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
> >> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
> >> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
> >> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
> >>
> >> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
> >> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
> >
> > Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
> > bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
> > the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
> > logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
> > paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
> > But that is not how the world works.
> I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
> for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
> because
> 1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
> 2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
>
> Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
> leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
> examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
> were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.

Here we had a highway system which had virtually unlimited speed limits (at the time few cars could significantly exceed the speed limit). Then they started building "Freeways" which did not allow slower traffic such as bicycles on them. Then the highways began being used to interconnect freeways and it became extremely dangerous to ride on highways because of mindless drivers. Now it is only safe to ride on streets though some might be called highways. One of the local centuries takes what used to be a highway that was originally a road between towns (originally it was the main route from the San Francisco Bay Area to Sacamento) But it is now nothing more than a two lane road that more or less parallels the freeway. When this road was made it went over the dirt wagon trail so it matched all of the rollers rather than flattening any of them out.

When I was planning club rides I would also use this road to (now) wind its way to Davis and then Sacramento.

On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:21:51 +0200, Rolf Mantel
<news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:

>Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russellseaton1@yahoo.com:
>> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
>
>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
>>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
>>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
>>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
>>>
>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
>>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
>>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>
>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
>>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
>>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
>>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
>>>
>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
>>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
>>
>> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
>> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
>> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
>> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
>> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
>> But that is not how the world works.
>I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
>for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
>because
>1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
>2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
>
>Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
>leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
>examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
>were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.
>
>Rolf

(:-) Actually the Autobahn system was started in the 1930's (:-)

But the system of building roads is normally, as you say, to start
with the bridges, or elevated portions, primarily because that is what
takes the most time to build.
--
Cheers,

John B.

On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 4:09:05 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:04:17 -0700 (PDT), "russell...@yahoo.com"
> <ritzann...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> >On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
> >> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
> >> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
> >>
> >> >On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
> >> >> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
> >> >> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
> >> >> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
> >> >> [Front page item headline}
> >> >> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
> >> >> [Subhead]
> >> >> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
> >> >> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
> >> >>
> >> >> by Julie Bykowicz
> >> >>
> >> >> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
> >> >> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
> >> >> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
> >> >>
> >> >> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
> >> >> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
> >> >> ramps of an interstate.
> >> >>
> >> >> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
> >> >> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
> >> >>
> >> >> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
> >> >> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
> >> >> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
> >> >> infrastructure law.
> >> >>
> >> >> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
> >> >> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
> >> >> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
> >> >>
> >> >> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
> >> >> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
> >> >> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
> >> >> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
> >> >>
> >> >> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
> >> >> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
> >> >> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
> >> >> proving a bit rocky.
> >> >>
> >> >> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
> >> >> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
> >> >> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
> >> >> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
> >> >>
> >> >> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
> >> >> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
> >> >> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
> >> >> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
> >> >> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
> >> >>
> >> >> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
> >> >>
> >> >> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
> >> >> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
> >> >> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
> >> >> Squatters of D.C.”
> >> >>
> >> >> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
> >> >> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
> >> >> obstructions include a police training facility.
> >> >>
> >> >> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
> >> >> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
> >> >> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
> >> >>
> >> >> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
> >> >> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
> >> >> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
> >> >> to smile every time I drive by it.”
> >> >>
> >> >> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
> >> >> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
> >> >>
> >> >> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
> >> >> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
> >> >> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
> >> >> cyclist group Bikemore.
> >> >>
> >> >> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
> >> >> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
> >> >> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
> >> >> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
> >> >>
> >> >> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
> >> >> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
> >> >> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
> >> >>
> >> >> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
> >> >> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
> >> >> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
> >> >>
> >> >> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
> >> >> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
> >> >> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
> >> >> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
> >> >>
> >> >> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
> >> >> bad thing.”
> >> >>
> >> >> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
> >> >> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
> >> >>
> >> >> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
> >> >> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
> >> >> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
> >> >> lane on the sidewalk.
> >> >> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
> >> >> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane..
> >> >> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
> >> >>
> >> >> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
> >> >> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
> >> >> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
> >> >>
> >> >> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
> >> >> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
> >> >>
> >> >> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
> >> >> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
> >> >> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
> >> >> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
> >> >> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
> >> >>
> >> >> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
> >> >> bike lanes.
> >> >>
> >> >> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
> >> >> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
> >> >> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
> >> >> and bike lanes.
> >> >>
> >> >> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
> >> >> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
> >> >> biked it on opening day July 10.
> >> >>
> >> >> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
> >> >> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
> >> >> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
> >> >> dedicated pathways.
> >> >>
> >> >> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
> >> >> logic is, there is no logic.”
> >> >>
> >> >> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
> >> >> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
> >> >> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
> >> >> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
> >> >> are priceless.
> >> >
> >> >Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
> >> >the paywall.
> >> >
> >> >One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
> >> >lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
> >> >being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
> >> >pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
> >> >
> >> >Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
> >> >guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
> >> >riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
> >> >And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
> >> >
> >> >Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
> >> >frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
> >> >never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
> >> But are Bike lanes really needed?
> >>
> >> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
> >> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
> >> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
> >>
> >> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
> >> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
> >> annually in auto crashes..
> >>
> >> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
> >> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
> >> times safer then autos...
> >
> >I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles traveled for comparison. Not just participants. Take smoking. I am a smoker!!!!!!! I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe three or four total. But I smoked, so I'm a smoker. I doubt I will get lung cancer though. From smoking anyway. Same with drinking. I have drank alcohol in my life. Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!! So I am a drinker. But I don't think I am going to get liver cancer from drinking. I rarely drink.
> >
> >You need better numbers than mere participants. Miles traveled? But the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really comparable either. Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus cars. You would still need some way to take into account the different terrain. Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country roads. Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic. Comparable?
> But, cars and bicycles travel over the same terrain, at least they do
> in the country I live in, and, I would guess, in much of the U.S.
>
> I'm not disagreeing with you but how else can you even approach a
> study of relative dangers?

On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 19:10:25 -0700 (PDT), "russellseaton1@yahoo.com"
<ritzannaseaton@gmail.com> wrote:

>On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 4:09:05 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 23:04:17 -0700 (PDT), "russell...@yahoo.com"
>> <ritzann...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> >On Sunday, July 24, 2022 at 12:10:51 AM UTC-5, John B. wrote:
>> >> On Sat, 23 Jul 2022 22:07:23 -0400, Frank Krygowski
>> >> <frkr...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
>> >>
>> >> >On 7/23/2022 3:14 PM, AMuzi wrote:
>> >> >> Some roughly fifty years of attention, innovation, effort and big fat
>> >> >> piles of tax revenue for kiddy paths. Here's your update on our advanced
>> >> >> efficient bicycle systems from yesterday's Wall Street Journal [1][2]
>> >> >> [Front page item headline}
>> >> >> Here’s Your New Bike Lane. Oh, Did You Want It to Go Somewhere?
>> >> >> [Subhead]
>> >> >> Cities install miles of bike lanes. Connecting them into a sensible
>> >> >> network proves harder. ‘It just sort of ends.’
>> >> >>
>> >> >> by Julie Bykowicz
>> >> >>
>> >> >> BALTIMORE—A freshly painted green bike lane beckons cyclists down
>> >> >> Baltimore’s busy North Avenue. But before you can switch gears and take
>> >> >> a swig from your water bottle, you’ve reached the end.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The picturesque new “cycletrack” is roughly a quarter-mile long. Then it
>> >> >> dumps out in the middle of five lanes of traffic, near entrance and exit
>> >> >> ramps of an interstate.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> It’s so confusing that the city made a two-minute instructional video.
>> >> >> Watching it takes longer than biking the lane itself.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> City officials across the U.S. are installing hundreds of miles of bike
>> >> >> lanes as they respond to a cycling boom that began during the pandemic
>> >> >> and capitalize on federal grants, including from the roughly $1 trillion
>> >> >> infrastructure law.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> But car culture and political realities—anything that makes driving or
>> >> >> parking harder doesn’t tend to win a lot of voters—mean these routes are
>> >> >> sometimes counterintuitive, unsafe and just plain pointless.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Kate Drabinski, a Baltimore bike commuter, said she couldn’t wait to try
>> >> >> out the newly painted lane down North Avenue. When she did, she was
>> >> >> underwhelmed. “It just sort of ends,” she said. “And then there you are,
>> >> >> on your bike, surrounded by cars.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> While commuters stayed home at the start of the pandemic, bike lanes
>> >> >> sprang up seemingly everywhere, and more people began using them. Now,
>> >> >> as cities come back to life, the mixing of car, bike and foot traffic is
>> >> >> proving a bit rocky.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> In New York City, cyclists are furiously ringing their bells and dodging
>> >> >> guys in suits who don’t seem to be aware they’ve stepped into
>> >> >> two-wheeled traffic. But the cyclists don’t all signal their presence,
>> >> >> or stop for red lights, so on some streets it has become pedestrian beware.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The U.S. has more than 18,000 miles of bike lanes, low-traffic roads
>> >> >> good for biking and off-road paths, according to the Adventure Cycling
>> >> >> Association, which is assembling what it calls the U.S. Bicycle Route
>> >> >> System. New York City alone has added about 120 miles of bike lanes
>> >> >> since 2020, according to transportation officials.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Documenting bike lane clashes has become a pastime on social media.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “Food truck shamelessly using the entire ‘protected’ bike lane as a
>> >> >> customer staging area at First & K St SE. What gives?” a D.C. resident
>> >> >> posted on Twitter earlier this month, tagging an account “Bike Lane
>> >> >> Squatters of D.C.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> A New York cyclist maintains a website chronicling police cars parked in
>> >> >> bike lanes. Hot spots on a crowdsourced map of Chicago bike lane
>> >> >> obstructions include a police training facility.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The U.S. isn’t the only place building more bike lanes. Some are
>> >> >> head-scratchers. The central England town of Kidsgrove recently got its
>> >> >> very first bike lane. It is 20 feet long.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “I wasn’t sure what they were doing with the road closed for
>> >> >> construction, and then when I saw the end result I thought—Blimey!
>> >> >> That’s it?” said nearby resident Bill Priddin. “It’s ludicrous. I have
>> >> >> to smile every time I drive by it.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The tiny lane links two sections of an off-road cycle path, and county
>> >> >> officials say it offers a more direct and safer cycling route through town.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Even as cities try to do more for cyclists, there’s no denying urban
>> >> >> areas are still dominated by drivers. “It’s like a commandment: ‘Thou
>> >> >> shalt not upset drivers,’ ” said Jed Weeks, head of the Baltimore
>> >> >> cyclist group Bikemore.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> On the other side, pro-driver groups, including the National Motorists
>> >> >> Association, are urging cities not to make pandemic-era pedestrian and
>> >> >> cycling accommodations permanent—and to cool it with the bike lanes.
>> >> >> They’ve taken to calling cycling advocates “Big Bike.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “That was a term I coined because it’s just unbelievable how these bike
>> >> >> lanes are being constantly pushed on us,” said Shelia Dunn, a
>> >> >> spokeswoman for the motorists group.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “I get roasted all the time by Twitter folks who say, ‘What about Big
>> >> >> Car?’” she said. “Yeah, true. But the whole reason we have streets is
>> >> >> because cars are the engine of the economy.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> The various modes of locomotion leave city officials “stuck between two
>> >> >> camps: the biking enthusiasts and everyone else,” said James T. Smith
>> >> >> Jr., a former county executive who was chief of staff to the Baltimore
>> >> >> mayor during development of the North Avenue project and other lanes.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “You end up with compromises,” he said, “and I don’t see that as such a
>> >> >> bad thing.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> But those tweaked routes, cyclists say, are a big reason cities end up
>> >> >> with bike lanes to nowhere and other impediments to a smooth ride.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> When Amazon built a warehouse in Chicago, city officials ripped out an
>> >> >> existing bike lane to make way for a left-turn lane for truckers into
>> >> >> the facility. The consolation prize for cyclists was to paint a new bike
>> >> >> lane on the sidewalk.
>> >> >> Baltimore also routed cyclists onto a sidewalk, after a church
>> >> >> complained about losing public street-parking spaces to a bike lane.
>> >> >> It’s typically illegal to bike on the sidewalk.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> In Tucson, Ariz., one median on Broadway Boulevard blobs so far into a
>> >> >> bike lane that the city painted an arrow indicating cyclists should just
>> >> >> give up, cross the opposing-direction lane and get on the sidewalk.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “You ride up to that and you’re like, what is going on?” said Josh
>> >> >> Lipton, who owns the nearby store Campfire Cycling.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Los Angeles, which posts some of the country’s longest car-commuting
>> >> >> times, has dialed back some of its cycling development over worries
>> >> >> about impeding traffic. In 2015, L.A. approved a master plan for a
>> >> >> network of bikeways and has since carried out about 3% of it. At that
>> >> >> rate, it’ll be wrapped up in the year 2248.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> In the meantime, cyclists describe a patchwork of short, unconnected
>> >> >> bike lanes.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the Boyle
>> >> >> Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and downtown—a
>> >> >> half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide, pedestrian access
>> >> >> and bike lanes.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli Kaufman,
>> >> >> executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle Coalition, who
>> >> >> biked it on opening day July 10.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views of the
>> >> >> city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must first weave
>> >> >> through lanes of traffic with scant signage for bicyclists, let alone
>> >> >> dedicated pathways.
>> >> >>
>> >> >> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman. “The
>> >> >> logic is, there is no logic.”
>> >> >>
>> >> >> [1]WSJ is paywall so you cannot otherwise read it. Speaking of
>> >> >> efficiency, I just received my Friday paper roughly 33 hours late.
>> >> >> [2]For those of you who can see the actual article, photos of serious
>> >> >> looking two-way twenty-foot-long 'cycle facilities' and other marvels
>> >> >> are priceless.
>> >> >
>> >> >Thanks for the post. I'd heard about the article but I was stopped by
>> >> >the paywall.
>> >> >
>> >> >One well known cyclist advocate and friend of mine has said "99% of bike
>> >> >lanes give the others a bad name." I agree. Large sums of money are
>> >> >being wasted on some crazy, crazy stuff. In almost every case, those
>> >> >pushing the projects know nothing about competent bicycling.
>> >> >
>> >> >Often, they don't even want to hear from competent cyclists because "you
>> >> >guys will ride anyway. We want to encourage new riders." That is, new
>> >> >riders who don't understand the hazards that they are being lured into.
>> >> >And in what other field does competence disqualify a person's input?
>> >> >
>> >> >Worst of all is the constant whining for "protected" bike lanes, with
>> >> >frequent claims that anything less is inadequate and "unsafe." So we're
>> >> >never supposed to ride on any road that doesn't have them? Such nonsense!
>> >> But are Bike lanes really needed?
>> >>
>> >> I recently found that Statista says that in 2017 there were 47.5
>> >> million bicyclists in the U.S. and the CDC says that nearly 1,000
>> >> cyclists are killed annually on bicycles
>> >>
>> >> Statista also shows some 225,346,000 licensed motor vehicle drivers in
>> >> the U.S. in 2017 and the CDC says that more then 32,000 are killed
>> >> annually in auto crashes..
>> >>
>> >> So, it seems that Bike deaths amount to 1 per 47,500 cyclists and auto
>> >> deaths amount to 1 per 7042 drivers. Which makes bicycles nearly 7
>> >> times safer then autos...
>> >
>> >I think with bicycling and car driving, you need quantity of miles traveled for comparison. Not just participants. Take smoking. I am a smoker!!!!!!! I smoked a few cigarettes when I was in college. Maybe three or four total. But I smoked, so I'm a smoker. I doubt I will get lung cancer though. From smoking anyway. Same with drinking. I have drank alcohol in my life. Even before I was legally able to!!!!!!!!! So I am a drinker. But I don't think I am going to get liver cancer from drinking. I rarely drink.
>> >
>> >You need better numbers than mere participants. Miles traveled? But the speed of cars and bikes is different, so mileage isn't really comparable either. Maybe hours in a car seat or hours in the saddle? That might get you a good comparison of the safety of bicycles versus cars. You would still need some way to take into account the different terrain. Many bicycle rides are on paths or empty country roads. Many cars are driven on 80mph highways with stop and go traffic. Comparable?
>> But, cars and bicycles travel over the same terrain, at least they do
>> in the country I live in, and, I would guess, in much of the U.S.
>>
>> I'm not disagreeing with you but how else can you even approach a
>> study of relative dangers?
>
>As you know John, atomic bombs were dropped on Japan back in August 1945. How many were killed by the bombs? Just the ones who died immediately in the initial explosion? The thousands extra who died from the radiation poisoning in the month or so afterwards? Or the many more thousands who developed cancer in the years afterwards and succumbed? And what about the lost fishing by bombing two cities on the ocean? No fishing after the bombs. Do you count the people who had no fish and food to eat and died into the total for dead? Atomic bomb killed them too. Right?

Am 26.07.2022 um 00:57 schrieb John B.:
> On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:21:51 +0200, Rolf Mantel
> <news@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
>
>> Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russellseaton1@yahoo.com:
>>> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
>>
>>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
>>>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
>>>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
>>>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
>>>>
>>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
>>>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
>>>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
>>>>
>>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
>>>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
>>>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
>>>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
>>>>
>>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
>>>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
>>>
>>> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
>>> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
>>> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
>>> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
>>> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
>>> But that is not how the world works.
>> I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
>> for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
>> because
>> 1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
>> 2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
>>
>> Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
>> leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
>> examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
>> were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.
>
> (:-) Actually the Autobahn system was started in the 1930's (:-)

Right but in the 1930's they didn't build useless bridges (and the A8
Autobahn in Ramstein built 1936 was converted into a military airport 3
years after opening, with a subsitution built a mile further south after
the war).

> But the system of building roads is normally, as you say, to start
> with the bridges, or elevated portions, primarily because that is what
> takes the most time to build.

On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 1:12:35 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
> Am 26.07.2022 um 00:57 schrieb John B.:
> > On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:21:51 +0200, Rolf Mantel
> > <ne...@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
> >
> >> Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russell...@yahoo.com:
> >>> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
> >>
> >>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
> >>>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
> >>>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
> >>>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
> >>>>
> >>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> >>>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
> >>>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
> >>>>
> >>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
> >>>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
> >>>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
> >>>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
> >>>>
> >>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
> >>>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
> >>>
> >>> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
> >>> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
> >>> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
> >>> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
> >>> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
> >>> But that is not how the world works.
> >> I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
> >> for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
> >> because
> >> 1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
> >> 2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
> >>
> >> Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
> >> leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
> >> examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
> >> were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.
> >
> > (:-) Actually the Autobahn system was started in the 1930's (:-)
> Right but in the 1930's they didn't build useless bridges (and the A8
> Autobahn in Ramstein built 1936 was converted into a military airport 3
> years after opening, with a subsitution built a mile further south after
> the war).
> > But the system of building roads is normally, as you say, to start
> > with the bridges, or elevated portions, primarily because that is what
> > takes the most time to build.

John to repeatedly show that he can google. Do you suppose he is attempting to convince you that he was there and then?

On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 9:14:57 AM UTC-5, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 1:12:35 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
> > Am 26.07.2022 um 00:57 schrieb John B.:
> > > On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:21:51 +0200, Rolf Mantel
> > > <ne...@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
> > >
> > >> Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russell...@yahoo.com:
> > >>> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
> > >>
> > >>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
> > >>>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
> > >>>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
> > >>>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> > >>>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
> > >>>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
> > >>>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
> > >>>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
> > >>>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
> > >>>>
> > >>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
> > >>>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
> > >>>
> > >>> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
> > >>> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
> > >>> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
> > >>> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
> > >>> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
> > >>> But that is not how the world works.
> > >> I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
> > >> for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
> > >> because
> > >> 1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
> > >> 2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
> > >>
> > >> Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
> > >> leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
> > >> examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
> > >> were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.
> > >
> > > (:-) Actually the Autobahn system was started in the 1930's (:-)
> > Right but in the 1930's they didn't build useless bridges (and the A8
> > Autobahn in Ramstein built 1936 was converted into a military airport 3
> > years after opening, with a subsitution built a mile further south after
> > the war).
> > > But the system of building roads is normally, as you say, to start
> > > with the bridges, or elevated portions, primarily because that is what
> > > takes the most time to build.
> John to repeatedly show that he can google. Do you suppose he is attempting to convince you that he was there and then?

Tommy once again shows his lack of education. Long ago, when I was in grade school or maybe junior high, I learned that Germany before WW2 built massive highway systems in the country. No Google or internet or even computers back then. Just History class.

Tommy, I wonder if you ever attended any schools at all in your lifetime. Were you home schooled and your mother failed to teach you anything at all? You brag incessantly about dropping out or flunking out of high school. But I am suspect whether you ever even attended high school.

On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 6:08:17 PM UTC-5, russellseaton1@yahoo.com wrote:
> On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 9:14:57 AM UTC-5, cycl...@gmail.com wrote:
> > On Tuesday, July 26, 2022 at 1:12:35 AM UTC-7, Rolf Mantel wrote:
> > > Am 26.07.2022 um 00:57 schrieb John B.:
> > > > On Mon, 25 Jul 2022 12:21:51 +0200, Rolf Mantel
> > > > <ne...@hartig-mantel.de> wrote:
> > > >
> > > >> Am 23.07.2022 um 23:43 schrieb russell...@yahoo.com:
> > > >>> On Saturday, July 23, 2022 at 2:15:11 PM UTC-5, AMuzi wrote:
> > > >>
> > > >>>> This summer, L.A. opened the Sixth Street Viaduct connecting the
> > > >>>> Boyle Heights neighborhood to the city’s arts district and
> > > >>>> downtown—a half-billion-dollar project celebrated for its wide,
> > > >>>> pedestrian access and bike lanes.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> Only one problem: “Uhhh, how do we get onto this?” said Eli
> > > >>>> Kaufman, executive director of the Los Angeles County Bicycle
> > > >>>> Coalition, who biked it on opening day July 10.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> To access the eye-catching new bridge, with its spectacular views
> > > >>>> of the city and its appealingly safe bike lanes, cyclists must
> > > >>>> first weave through lanes of traffic with scant signage for
> > > >>>> bicyclists, let alone dedicated pathways.
> > > >>>>
> > > >>>> “It’s actually funny, if it wasn’t so upsetting,” said Mr. Kaufman.
> > > >>>> “The logic is, there is no logic.”
> > > >>>
> > > >>> Sounds like a mix up in planning. They did the big spectacular
> > > >>> bridge in the middle of nowhere for the publicity. Then will build
> > > >>> the connecting trails to the big bridge later. In a completely
> > > >>> logical and non emotional world, they would have built the boring
> > > >>> paths and trails first and then finished with the spectacular bridge.
> > > >>> But that is not how the world works.
> > > >> I don't think you understand the building logic. It was the same thing
> > > >> for German Autobahn building in the 1970's: first they built the bridges
> > > >> because
> > > >> 1) the building duration is highest for the bridges
> > > >> 2) the land use is least difficult for bridges
> > > >>
> > > >> Then they built the connections, using the existing bridge as additianal
> > > >> leverage (we must connect to the existing bridge). There are several
> > > >> examples of 'lost' highway bridges in our region where the overall plans
> > > >> were changed or abandoned aber the bridge was built.
> > > >
> > > > (:-) Actually the Autobahn system was started in the 1930's (:-)
> > > Right but in the 1930's they didn't build useless bridges (and the A8
> > > Autobahn in Ramstein built 1936 was converted into a military airport 3
> > > years after opening, with a subsitution built a mile further south after
> > > the war).
> > > > But the system of building roads is normally, as you say, to start
> > > > with the bridges, or elevated portions, primarily because that is what
> > > > takes the most time to build.
> > John to repeatedly show that he can google. Do you suppose he is attempting to convince you that he was there and then?
> Tommy once again shows his lack of education. Long ago, when I was in grade school or maybe junior high, I learned that Germany before WW2 built massive highway systems in the country. No Google or internet or even computers back then. Just History class.
>
> Tommy, I wonder if you ever attended any schools at all in your lifetime. Were you home schooled and your mother failed to teach you anything at all? You brag incessantly about dropping out or flunking out of high school. But I am suspect whether you ever even attended high school.

Sorry for the extra post. But we also learned in History class in elementary or junior high school about Ike, President Eisenhower, was very impressed with the German road system during the war that when he became president of the USA, he began the USA Interstate highway system. Taught in History classes throughout America. From books. Google inventors also learned the same information in History classes too.