this post was submitted on 27 Jul 2023
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Things like these are generally to satisfy environmental or urban development legislation or to get some kind of government grant for the project. Bikeability/walkability on paper for the beauracrats.
Same reason you see a row of like five bike racks on the side of giant multistory parking garages.
Thats pretty much what is happening in Seattle.
Of places ive biked, it has to be the most pro car, bleeding edge of dying, designed by a moron area I have ever seen.
If you have trails its full of pedestrians, people with pets, homeless campers on the path and no clear markings for bicycles. So you end up weaving in and out making sharp turns and constantly having to slow down. Then theres the incomplete trails where you have to cross a parking lot, dirt lot, crossroad, some private property. Oh did I mention they have old railroad tracks that will really fuck with your tires and usually get stuck since some of them run parallel with the trail.
Then theres the city... where we occasionally have marked lanes but you better be comfortable getting close to drivers and hope that they have 360 cameras. The steep hills, heavy signage, usually distracting weather, heavy outsiders (usually first time visiting the city) and foreign drivers (have never driven in their life) are all a perfect storm to make any bicycle commuters life a living hell.
Finally we have the wonderful designated, cordoned off bike lanes... that really dont have barriers, usually just a flappy thing that has been ran over so many times no one really notices it. Delivery vehicles usually park in them because conveniently the city decided to leave the openings large enough for a vehicle to enter. You might get police, the occasional tourist parked in the lane too.
But hey! We are ranked one of the top bicycle cities in the U.S. and pride ourselves on force feeding that to everyone because we are a shining beacon of car/bicycle/pedestrian nirvana.
Vancouver Canada as well. Non-car-dependence theatre.
My friend used to work for Cascade Bicycle Club and they host a Bike to Work breakfast fundraiser. My friends were giving me shit for not biking to it but there was no way in fuck I was going to bike downtown (I took the bus). At the breakfast one of my friends mentioned that someone was killed while biking on 2nd the previous night.
It is better than it used to be and cars do seem to be more aware but it still needs to get a lot better. Painted lines and those stupid flappy things are not infrastructure. I was in Missoula recently and downtown (or whatever is makes for a downtown there) had a designated bike lane on the sidewalk. While that comes with its own issues, a bike hitting a pedestrian at 12 MPH is a hell of a lot better than a 1 ton vehicle hitting a bicyclist at 25 MPH.
What we really need is two bike lanes on one side separated by concrete curbs. I can't imagine that would be significantly more expensive than those dumb flappy pieces of shit.