Fuck your existing lanes and fuck your 1.5-tonne beasts. Make some space, it won’t fucking kill you.
The irony of the idea that cyclists are “taking lanes” can only come from the mind of a motorist ignorant that roads in North America only started getting paved with smooth asphalt due to a campaign by what is today The League of American Bicyclists. It was only due to the hard work and advocacy of cyclists that roads ever became hospitable to colonization by machines in the first place. If motorists were ever honestly adamant in their demand that no lanes ever be “removed” then it would mean undoing every single car lane.
In an effort to improve riding conditions so they might better enjoy their newly discovered sport, more than 100,000 cyclists from across the United States joined the League to advocate for paved roads. The success of the League in its first advocacy efforts ultimately led to our national highway system.
https://bikeleague.org/about/equity-and-history/
TIL
The zero sum game conservative mentality rears its ugly head again to yap some heinous shit.
IIUC, in Ontario cyclists are legally allowed to take up a whole lane on most roads.
And these statistics (I would appreciate OOP’s sources if they’re available) would be good ammunition in the lawsuit filed against the Ontario government for their bill that is spuriously trying to remove bike lanes in Toronto.
Legally allowed doesn’t mean a whole lot when it’s 100kg vs 2000kg.
I don’t mean that it’s not a fair point, but is it worth a life?
I suppose carrying a few cameras would help to insure safety.
That just means the footage would go on cyclists/protestors getting owned compilations.
The real answer is to have your own vehicles blocking other traffic while the cyclists do their protest… and to be armed.
I don’t think many judges watch owned compilations.
“But your honour, I can’t pay the awards, I can’t even begin to pay it!”
“You can start with the revenue you make from those ‘owned’ videos you posted on YouTube.”
“But YouTube pays me shit!”
“That’s not the court’s problem. You injured the cyclist and destroyed his bike: you pay for it.”
Gotta survive to get your day in court.
You better survive if the defendant knows what’s good for wt:thon.
Thon might be facing a number of charges.
When using a crosswalk on foot, I always make sure a car is stopped in it’s lane before proceeding to the next lane. Full eye contact. It doesn’t matter that I’m in a crosswalk. I might have been in the right, but that won’t matter if I die.
It’s the same with cycling. Cameras will only help after the fact, and maybe a bit if it’s very visible. But the best thing you can do is not trust any car, and avoid travelling where you have to trust cars.
We take the lane for safety, actually. There are many situations where it is much safer to take the lane.
In most coastal US cities, if bike-specific facilities are unavailable or blocked then it’s legal to take a full motor lane. At your own peril of course, most drivers and many cops are indifferent to this information. Vehicular cycling is sadly not the answer to getting everyone out on a bike.
Let the motorists know your disapproval. There might be many ways to express such. 😁
Organized protests should not be too difficult (probably ditto many unorganized ones. 😁🙂).
I think you left out an “n’t”.
corrected and thank you for the correction. 😁🙂
I loved this one:
I kinda like it too. 😁
Thanks for posting it!
I mean I’d love to believe this but there’s no source
Found one and updated it!
In Tokyo the bike lanes are all loading and unloading parking for the large trucks, taxis, and private vehicles. Means you gotta merge into traffic because none of the bike lanes lanes are enforced. I see a lot of cops stopping cyclists to check their registration, but I’ve never seen them ticket the trucks and taxis illegally parked. Tokyo needs better enforcement and separate bike lanes like Amsterdam (with a physical barrier or different grade from the street), otherwise its really dangerous to bike on streets even with bike lanes.
Bicycles are registered in Tokyo?
Sounds like a good set of laws to me - especially registration (mostly to help drive down bike theft rates).
Good point, but it might be used against cyclists by the car lobby, and perhaps even a future bicycle manufacturing lobby.
also e.g. “From now on, police can seize any bike with a tire pressure over 5% the recommended maximum.” or “But your honor, I didn’t realized I had to register my bike, and I think the confiscation and fine are racially motivated.”
My neighborhood is one of the poorer ones, and it’s got more people taking bikes than most other places I’ve seen in LA, yet the only places that get dedicated lanes or bike paths are wealthy areas where I don’t even see recreational bikers, let alone those getting to work.
That said, I’m 98% certain my local conservative city council is skimming the coffers, so I’m not expecting much.
I don’t want to disagree with your experience but I did want to inquire if are you in the wealthy areas during the morning commute times for their work? Most of the bikers I see in Denver are either retired MAMILs heading to the greenway trails for a 40-60 mile exercise ride or the health conscious tech/finance bros who are heading to gym then work at 6-7 AM. Then you get the next batch of wealthy dads on their $5-10k minivan-esque cargo bikes at 7:30-8 AM, then it goes dead until the evening commute. At the end of the day you then get the group rides like critical mass rolling through. The wealthy/poor divide on bikes is always interesting: If you’re poor it’s seen as “Broke ass can’t even afford a car” but the rich treat it like the people in the 2000s treated owning a Prius, and the people who show up to the city council meetings treat it as such.
Fuck bike lanes. We need to dedicate a percent of the roads to be cycling-only roads
As a car-brain it would be really nice if I knew bikes weren’t going to be in my lane. Then I know I could go faster.
Honestly, this is the argument to make. Almost every human is selfish when it comes to a strangers convenience or theirs. Make the argument that it’ll be more convenient to drive with bikes out of the way, and that sidewalks will be safer (almost everyone walks every once in a while). I’ve convinced people this way, but never with explaining the safety, let alone city livability or environmental reasons.
Bike lanes might help insure this.
I don’t think they provide insurance, but I do think that’s what the previous commenter was saying it’d ensure. You’re most likely in agreement.
You just need to properly segregate them
There’s no reason for bike lanes to be side by side car roads. Bikes don’t need the same level of turn rate or intersections at all
Like my commuter road in oslo takes me about 30 minutes, and is only next to the road for a km or two. Even then it’s not in the road, but on an elevated track next to it. Most of the time it’s an entirely separate route, shared with pedestrians.
“Paint is not infrastructure” is a catchy tagline
shared with pedestrians
Ugh this isn’t entirely related, but as someone who walks a lot, I hate these. If you’re already building infrastructure, why not separate it.
Yes, that would be awesome
I think that’s their point.
In South Africa roads are not even designed with pedestrian walkways. I would hear all the time in the news about drunk drivers hitting a group of cyclists or pedestrians. Its genuinely unsafe to go anywhere without a car. I now live in the Netherlands and I only bought a car 3 years after I moved here, because there is actual working public transport and even the rural areas have bike lanes.
Why did you buy a car?
Pretty handy to have a car. I have one too, for the first time in 10 years. But I don’t use it to commute and I actively try to avoid using it.
But sometimes you need to take the wife and kids to visit some family out of town or go down to the local hardware store to pick to materials. There’s a lot use usecases
I drive, and I disagree with the quoted post about not removing driving lanes.
I live in a fairly rural area, we have no bike lanes, and everything is too far away for it to be practical to get there by any other method than to drive. Though, I used to live in a major metro, and I drove when I was there too, mainly out of convenience.
As someone who travels primarily by driving, I want to see more bike lanes. Not for my benefit or convenience, but for the safety of those that travel by bike. I’ve seen the close calls that some cyclists experience daily, and it’s unacceptable. The current set of drivers includes a nontrivial number of folks who have no regard for cyclists and their safety. The courts have proven time, and time again that they will not uphold laws meant to protect cyclists. So the only path forward to preserve life and limb for those that use a bicycle to travel, is dedicated lanes.
Having bike lanes put in without affecting the number of driving lanes is ideal but when that is not an option, then reducing driving lanes to create bike lanes is necessary.
I’m fucking tired of all these fucks thinking that more lanes somehow makes traffic flow better. It really doesn’t. It can help when people are turning or something, but so can dedicated turning lanes. At worst, you’ll have to wait for someone to turn and though that’s an inconvenience, it’s hardly a problem. In any case, fuck these fucking fucks and their metal boxes burning prehistoric forests.
They only way to remove conflict between bikes and cars, where the bike usually loses, is to remove cars or bikes. Giving the road to cars is tried and always runs into standstill traffic and stupendous infrastructure costs. Bike infrastructure turns out to scale more and is cheaper.
I’m on the bicycle commission for my city, and I’m constantly hounding the engineers for any kind of hardening of their planned class II lanes. They had the gall to say that they didn’t like flexi-posts because they got hit and needed replacing too often and we were like “yeah, how do you think the cyclists feel?”
Cars don’t belong in cities
They feel entitled to other people’s lives.
