[richk449]

There is a bike lane near my house painted on the right side of the road. At some point, it just ends. Then a hundred feet away, it just starts up again on the left side of the road. Every time I ride it, I’m amazed that such a crazy design is still there. Do the civil engineers think that bikes are able to teleport?

Sometimes I think it is a decorative bike lane - there to give the impression of biking, not for actual use.

[midoridensha]

It's there to satisfy a requirement, nothing more. It's not actually intended to be used. The people who made the requirement don't ride bikes, and are just fishing for votes. The people who made the lane are just fulfilling the contractual requirement for the city, and also don't ride bikes.

[DangitBobby]

People who actually ride bikes were not consulted about any of these designs, no question. I love getting shouted at by belligerents about not using the bike lane because I consider it to be hazardous.

[cge]

Being around local government conversations in California, public and private, for mostly unrelated reasons, and only privately being interested in bicycle and pedestrian policy, I became enormously disillusioned and depressed about the chances of making real change. There was a sense that anyone arguing for good bicycle infrastructure was seen as akin to a militant political extremist who should be excluded from any real conversation: I once waited while a planning hearing for a major project was delayed for around forty five minutes while the simple request from a father that a single bike rack be put near a public park was met with a sea of concerned residents who seemed to describe him as everything from a likely outside invader, to a paid activist, to someone who should be investigated by CPS (Where was the mother of the children? Why wasn't she at the meeting?), to someone who wanted to make the park a place where murderous teenage bicyclists would run down senior citizens trying to walk on pleasant paths. Bicycle infrastructure was only really discussed in terms of getting funding, then placed in pointless locations, or left in endless planning. What seemed like a wilful misinterpretation of Vision Zero was used as an argument against any pedestrian safety improvements other than speed limit reductions and speed bumps, with a seeming focus on suburban single-family-home residential areas where, entirely coincidentally I am sure, residents were upset about traffic noise. I actually heard a transport commission member argue that the city should not consider improving crosswalk and pedestrian intersection safety, because Vision Zero showed speed limits were better for preventing fatal accidents. Even simply asking if police would increase pedestrian patrols instead of driving on pedestrian paths in even small parks in street patrol cars was met with enormous hostility.

At best, bicycle and pedestrian topics would get a question or two at local debates, usually along the lines of "Do you walk, or take public transport, or ride a bicycle in the area?", almost always answered along the lines of "Yes, of course, in [some rare situation], but I can't normally because it isn't suitable transportation when working". But as locals would primarily vote based on somewhat arbitrary senses of feeling and intuition, without considering direct local questions or any research, nothing really changed.

The same projects and funding, which out-of-the-way places to add patchwork bike lanes to, and whether those bike lanes should be painted, or maybe just "bike route / share the road" signs on the side of the road, are probably being discussed now, a decade later.

[DangitBobby]

Almost every bike lane near me is like this. Just randomly fucking ends with no notice, dumping you onto a 4 lane divided highway. Or has you weaving in and out of traffic between cars in the far lane and the turn lane. Or there's parking to the left of the bike lane, and people park in the bike lane (never ticketed, of course) instead of the designated parking area with plenty of room. Or there are cars parked to the right of the bike lane that you must watch very carefully in case a door suddenly opens in your path. Or there's just a bike painted onto the shoulder (2.5 feet wide shoulder) where all the rocks, broken glass, and other debris accumulate. The worst offender I've seen is a set of sharrows in downtown that leads you directly onto a highway that legally cyclists are not allowed on (they certainly couldn't ride there safely), and terminate after you're already beyond the point of no return down the one-way on-ramp. If you didn't know better, you could end up in real trouble.

If it weren't so frustrating it would be comical.

[mathieuh]

I’m not in the US but that happens all the time in the north of Ireland where I live. I’m convinced that bike lanes here are designed by someone who drove a Transit van down the road once.