[*BCM*] Re: Bostoncriticalmass Digest, Vol 34, Issue 17

[Topher Cyll]

> Bike paths are not the answer to making things safe for cyclists. In
> fact they are counter-productive. Bike paths on the roadside become
> full of debris, cars double-park in them and they often aren't outside
> the door zone. Segregated cycle paths become full of joggers and
> pedestrians. The biggest problem with any kind of bicycle path is that
> it's impossible to have them everywhere and you're eventually going to
> wind up on an actual road, only now it's with drivers who don't expect
> you to be there. Why spend a ton of money on segregated roads for
> cyclists when there are perfectly usable roads?

I'm admittedly not a bike commuter, but I recently moved to Boston
from Portland, Oregon where I biked around the city a lot.

In my experience, bike lanes worked very well for Portland.  I never
encountered any problems with debris or double parking, although the
door zone thing was an issue at times.  And drivers were very chill
about bikers using the main road on streets without bike lanes.

But things are so different here, and I can see how those might be
problems.  Traffic in this city is just insane.  It could be a
function of urban size, but intuition tells me it's the road layout.
=\  Driving is plain infuriating.

Anyways, as someone who likes to bike, I'd love to see (and help with)
broad transportation reform and restructuring.  Maybe someday we'll
have things fixed up enough to alleviate some of the negatives you
pointed out as affecting bike lanes... I hope so anyways.

Just chiming in,
Toph