Citizen complaint of the day: And take your stupid bike lanes with you

You're obviously not from around here, so please keep your uninformed opinions to yourself. By the way, "being from South Boston" and "living in South Boston" are two different things. So if you do, in fact, live in South Boston, your opinion still doesn't count.

You are 'missing the point'. This isn't about double parking.

Maybe people like that Dunkin' Donuts at Schuberts they can get the coffee pay their bills get scratch tickets. No need for those bikes to be parked outside!

Read the story DILLHOLE! It is NOT about double parking. It is about legal parking in a LEGAL spot. Adamg should be ashamed of himself for misquoting the original post and creating all of this mess.

Looking around all i see are disgruntled cyclist.

Actually blah blah blah. If you want to ride your bike get on it and go. What is so hard about that? You have survived this long without one.

As you are "roadman", I'm sure you know of how 100 years ago, cars kicked cyclists off the roads they had acquired through the Good Roads Movement. Maybe cyclists should never have shared the roads so generously.

Roads are a shared resource. Lane markings, traffic signals, signage, laws, and the like are intended to improve use of this shared resource, by improving safety, improving efficiency by keeping traffic more orderly, and the like. Some of these desires are easily quantifiable, some of them less so. For instance, there has been a lot of study on how and when traffic lights improve traffic flows, so there is a fairly easy quantitative formula based on traffic volume which can be applied to determine whether a traffic light would be warranted.

Bike lanes are a lot newer, and less well understood. I remember just 10 years ago, when there were fewer bike lanes and they were much more poorly designed, such as frequently staying to the right of right turn only lanes guaranteeing conflicts. These days, I see a lot more that merge with or cross the right turn only lane earlier, giving you a larger window do do a cleaner merge with fewer conflicts. But this has only been in the past 10 years or so that this has happened. I don't think that traffic engineers and standards bodies have enough data to create a quantitative model for them like they can with traffic signals.

Beyond that, it's something that's harder to collect data for, because many cyclists avoid roads that don't already have facilities. Traffic signal studies can be based on existing traffic volumes, but you can't really base bike lane studies on existing traffic because people are avoiding the area specifically due to the lack of bike lanes.

But anyhow, even without quantitative studies, these are being installed based on democratic processes. The whole point of a democracy is that if you don't like the "idiotic laws" that get passed, you lobby your representatives for a change or work to vote them out of office.

I'm not really sure what to say about your complaints about cyclists using regular lanes. First of all, we create dedicated lanes for certain classes of usage because those forms of usage help reduce impact and congestion. For example, that's why we have HOV lanes, and dedicate bus lanes, and separate railroad tracks, and the like. It's not like someone says "hmm, I wonder who should get special privileges", there are real reasons for wanting dedicated lanes for certain forms of travel.

That said, it's not practical to put bike lanes in everywhere. There are some roads that are too narrow for it, or some roads where traffic is light enough that there's really no need, people can share the lane without causing congestion. On those roads, it makes perfect sense for cyclists to use the regular lane.

Now, on roads where there are bike lanes, it is still sometimes necessary for a cyclist to use the whole lane. Despite you protestation that "taxis can't park in a bike lane even for a moment to pick up or drop passengers", as a cyclist who uses bike lanes all the time, I can tell you that they absolutely do stop in the bike lanes to pick up and drop off passengers, and I've never seen a cop hassle them about it. Delivery vehicles, double parked cars, cops, and so on all do as well. Cars that are parallel parking will also frequently wait in the bike lane until there's a break in traffic or another car leaves before they park. Sometimes you need to get out of the bike lane to simply make forward progress. Heck, if you drive at all, you should be familiar with this; cabs, delivery vehicles, people picking up passengers don't always stop in a parking lane, they will frequently block an entire travel lane, so you need to merge into the next one on the left to get around them.

Beyond that, as I mentioned, planners aren't always all that familiar with bike lanes, and there aren't really good standards yet. A lot of times, people will try to squeeze a bike lane next to a parking lane in which they are both too narrow, so the bike lane is directly in the door zone of the parked cars. Most people exiting cars don't bother to check for oncoming bicycles, so dooring is a real danger. It's sometimes necessary to ride outside of the bicycle lane because you see several cars that are parked a little too close to it, and you want to avoid being doored.

There can be other hazards in a bike lane; potholes, glass, pedestrians. Sometimes these hazards may not be obvious to you when driving a car (a pothole that would just be an unpleasant bump to a driver could be deadly to a cyclist).

Cyclists also need to use the regular lane for turning left.

Bike lanes can be great for helping to provide shared expectations; they give cyclists some room that is dedicated to them, and help keep the traffic patterns obvious. That doesn't mean that they are or should be slavishly adhered to.

You ask what would happen if pedestrians were to walk in the road. Well, they already do, and do so all the time. They walk in the road to cross (and no, not always at a crosswalk or with a light). They walk in the road to avoid obstacles on the sidewalk. They walk in the road because there's snow. Or they just walk in the road because it's wider and more pleasant and it's a back road without much traffic and they can step onto the sidewalk if any cars come. Or heck, when some large event lets out like a game at Fenway, pedestrians frequently entirely clog the road on their way back to their cars or the T or their bikes.

And cars do drive on sidewalks as well. For one, they must drive across sidewalks to enter most driveways. And there are some places where drivers will drive their car up onto the sidewalk to get it out of the road when parking. And I see cops and maintenance vehicles on sidewalk/bike paths all the time (sometimes, frustratingly, parked right in the middle of the lane and blocking me on my bike).

There is no reason to be completely absolutist about "cyclists should never be in a travel lane if there's a cycle lane available" or "pedestrians should never be in the road if there's a sidewalk available". Instead, everyone should do their best to be respectful of other users of the road. If you're a slow moving vehicle and obstructing traffic, pull over to let traffic by. If you're a pedestrian in the road and a car is approaching, step out of the road to let it by. Likewise, if you see a cyclist or pedestrian in a travel lane, don't get too upset by it; they're probably there for a reason, and they'll probably get out of your way as soon as it's safe to do so.

As far as your "very rational ideas", you do realize that the reason that there's registration, traffic violations going your license, and so on for drivers is that cars are substantially more dangerous and have a substantially higher impact on the road and congestion that bicycles, right? I mean, yes, you can find a freak case here or there where a cyclist has killed someone riding their bike, but even with all of the training, traffic citations, and safety features that we put so much effort in for cars, cars still kill far more people than bicycles do. The reason we don't have all of these things for bikes is that they just aren't necessary. There are lots of things that people do that are slightly unsafe, where the costs of regulation are not considered worth the benefits of lowering risk.