Maybe some places shouldn’t have those pet “bike lanes”

bike_lane_ip_5944Driving on Divide Avenue yesterday I noticed people swerving around an obstruction in the road.  I rolled up on it myself and noticed that the problem was one of those “bike lane” markings protruding into the driving lane, freshly painted and marked with a cone.  I think these are a bad idea in the first place, but they’re a real head-scratcher when found in places like this.

 

bike_lane_ip_5904Aside from mixing bike traffic with motor vehicle traffic in an unsafe manner, these markings are often placed in areas where that merging can’t possible work well.  Case in point: this is a hundred feet or so down the road from the previous photo.  Traffic on Divide is pushed into two lanes to provide a left turn lane at 4th Street.  Where’s the room for the cyclist here?  This bottleneck seems dangerous to me.

 

bike_lane_ip_5956If people have to cross the center line to get around the cone and paint, are they going to do the same to avoid a cyclist?  That’s better than hitting the guy on the bike, sure…but still not a desirable result on a busy street.

This is just one more example of how some of the starry-eyed “progressive” ideas of our community leaders don’t always translate into real world solutions.  If I find myself biking this area, I’ll just stay on the sidewalk, thanks.