Bike Lanes!

[boywonder.livejournal.com]

So, I've noticed a lot of bike lanes popping up on the streets of Somerville lately. While I wholeheartedly applaud the effort, they seem to me to have been done haphazardly. Kinda like they're almost in the middle of the car lane? On Powderhouse Blvd. and Cameron Ave. for example, there seems to be barely enough room, if clearly not enough room, for a car to safely pass a cyclist in the new bike lanes. Has anyone else seen them? It's like, maybe if they had moved them closer to the sidewalk a foot or so, there would be plenty of room for bikes and cars, but it seems the city made an error in it's effort...

Comments

[turil.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the sharrows are reasonably good band-aid solutions, but only when done right. They remind people that cyclists belong in the road with all the other vehicular traffic. But in most places in Somerville and Cambridge they install them way, way too far to the right, in the door zone and/or gutter area, making them more dangerous than helpful, as they encourage people to drive their bikes badly.

And of course, the bike lanes are nearly all insane. When the city needing the bike committee's ok on the plans for a bike lane on Somerville Ave years ago, everyone on the bike committee agreed that the lanes were dangerous, but then everyone but me voted to OK them, for some bizarre reason of "not wanting to upset the DPW". (That's when I pretty much gave up on the bike committee as being a force for positive change...)