Comment 70340

By Undustrial (registered) - website | Posted October 05, 2011 at 12:53:37

Markland's contra-flow bike lane has been in operation for years. It sees a surprising amount of traffic these days. There have been some problems, but mostly with cars who don't realise the stop signs are bicycle-specific and end up driving the wrong way up the street.

I also have to (again) echo the concerns of Mr Harrington - bike lanes can be a very effective means of getting more bikes on the road, but they aren't the only one and it can be risky to focus too much on one measure in isolation. The new lanes on York are a good example - they're very narrow and have no physical separation, so they end up feeling much less safe than before. Many times, especially in suburban areas, I can't tell if there's a bike lane or just a white line marking the gutters/shoulder.

People aren't afraid to cycle because of a lack of bike lanes, it's because of the Mad-Max-esque state of our roads. This isn't just about perception, as one commenter noted on here at the time, even the Bixi representatives got screamed at while giving a presentation in front of our City Hall. Why, as mentioned in a recent thread, might a mother not want to commute across town on a bike? A sad state of affairs, but not hard to understand. A well-designed network of bike lanes helps a lot - the King Street Bridge lanes, for all their flaws, have done a lot of good. Still, the city needs to firmly establish that cyclists have a right to be on all roads.

"Today, the notion of progress in a single line without goal or limit seems perhaps the most parochial notion of a very parochial century." — Lewis Mumford

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