Urban Replanning
I don’t know much about designing roads- but I think I know a little about it just from biking around the city. I really think the streets could be designed to better suit everyone’s needs. Maybe something like this:
By doing it this way, suddenly all the unpredictable things are predictable and tucked inside neat little painted lines.
Yes, truly, enough paint can solve anything.
Indeed, enough coats of paint and you can have lanes at different levels like some of those cool complete streets with busway / streetcar lines in European cities.
That looks like something out of the NACTO guide book.
It is hilarious, but unfortunately becoming too true.
Nice drawing depicting all the craziness we have to deal with. I’m definitely for more bike lanes or sharrows. If cars can have lanes then bikes should have lanes as well. It reiterates that bikes belong on the road. And if it stops one motor vehicle from running over a cyclists, then it’s worth it.
Sue, bikes already have lanes.
I think a big part of the problem of over-complication on the road is that many cyclists don’t understand that the general travel lane is already a bike lane. If we would all just use it, rather than trying desperately to avoid it, motorists would start to understand that we belong in it.
Cars do not own the general traffic lanes. It is no more ‘their’ lane than anyone else’s. Bike lanes, far from cementing our place on the road, are just the first step in denying it to us.
You make a very good point. The other problem is that motorists have this delusional idea in their head that cyclists are required to stay in the bike lane and only the bike lane.
Not only do bikes already have lanes but in MA you have to keep in mind that weather there is a bike lane or not the law says that a bike is allowed in the car lane.
If only that were the case here in Maryland. We’re required to use bike lanes by law, no matter how stupid or suicidal they are.
what the hell is a bike lane?
seriously, i’ve ridden 70,000 miles in 25 years in texas–maybe 100 of those miles are in what is shown in the cartoon as bike lane. never needed it.