A permanent, predictable bike lane doesn’t impact traffic nearly as much as random cars parked on the street (everyone in the lane has to move over), but these people never complain about too much street parking.
If it’s part of a system, I suppose that’s fine. A better alternative could be expanding the sidewalk and providing patio space for restaurants etc. But if the plan is “we paint white lines and put up parking meters and it will slow people down”, then f that. It’ll just cause accidents and reinforces the area as a driving destination.
I think their claim is that bike lanes mean that you’re permanently blocking that parking lane off so you can’t have 2 lanes instead of 1, or forgetting that the second lane is normally parking spaces. I think my favorite bit of all of this is all the videos of bike lanes without stop and go bikes where drivers record and say “no one’s using them!”
Wait, how do “bike lanes worsen traffic congestion”?
A permanent, predictable bike lane doesn’t impact traffic nearly as much as random cars parked on the street (everyone in the lane has to move over), but these people never complain about too much street parking.
A few streets here re-introduced street parking explicitly as a traffic calming measure (in addition to a separate bike lane behind the parked cars).
I know it works. I can tell it works. But I still don’t really like it.
If it’s part of a system, I suppose that’s fine. A better alternative could be expanding the sidewalk and providing patio space for restaurants etc. But if the plan is “we paint white lines and put up parking meters and it will slow people down”, then f that. It’ll just cause accidents and reinforces the area as a driving destination.
I think their claim is that bike lanes mean that you’re permanently blocking that parking lane off so you can’t have 2 lanes instead of 1, or forgetting that the second lane is normally parking spaces. I think my favorite bit of all of this is all the videos of bike lanes without stop and go bikes where drivers record and say “no one’s using them!”
There’s pretty solid research about these things from the past 30 years or so. At this point, ignoring literature is just rank anti-intellectualism.
Good luck, sounds like you’re going to need it.
They don’t