NIMBY on Bike Lanes, 2/16
A victory for local democracy
In the community where I live, planners installed experimental bike lines on a major street. I bike a lot, but I had no use for the bike lanes. A lot of people did not like them.
Under most circumstances, left-wing planners would just put in the bike lanes and not ask for any feedback. In this case, the people in the community gave a lot of negative feedback. That probably was not what the planners wanted or expected, but they did agree to nix the bike lanes. Assuming that holds, this will be a story with a happy ending.
I wonder if there is any community where the broader public would voice support for bike lanes on major streets. My guess is that most of the time the lanes are installed, no organized objection materializes, and people just suffer in silence. But because years ago somebody had the foresight to set up a community association in our neighborhood, and because people in the association keep it going, we have an organized political voice.
I have ridden my bike work for 20 years in Boston, and I enjoy it. I think the recent pandemic bike lanes go way too far. Every road should not be bikable, it would be safer for everyone to segregate traffic and leave major roads for cars. The recent bike lanes in Boston are on roads that few ever rode their bikes on. A new bike lane near my house used to be safer without the bike lane (I was one of the few that would occasionally ride on it). It had a wide shoulder, and if you did not mind cars going fast, it was one of the safe roads in Boston to bike on (Boston has lots of narrow streets). Now they have removed a lane for cars, it is crowded, drivers are frustrated, and caught in unnecessary traffic. As a city cyclist, one of the worse things to encounter is a frustrated driver - they are unpredictable. Sure enough on this road, random drivers will get frustrated enough to pull into the bike lane and fly up the road - someone will be killed. The bike lanes are not about encouraging riding anymore, they are used to discourage driving - and cyclists will pay.
I appreciate bike lanes in theory, especially where I live, which has congested high speed traffic with narrow shoulders between me and all practical destinations. But whoever decided I wanted to bike with the traffic, ride in a bike lane for a half mile, then merge into the traffic again. Like passenger trains, to get the point of bike lanes you need to travel abroad.