[sologoub]

The dedicated bike lane is surely a great invention, but the implementation is often luck-luster and I think causes more harm than good.

Santa Monica probably has more good bike lanes than most other US cities, but I am terrified to even try the new on 28th leading from Ocean Park to Pico and beyond to Olympic. They basically took a narrow street and tried to leave space for parking and add a bike lane on top of that. As a result, most SUVs or wider cars don't fit into the designated lanes.

As the result, they either try to leave room for bicycles and drive slightly over the center or in the bike lane. If they try the former, they end up swerving violently into the bike lane to avoid on-coming traffic, so I don't know which is worse.

If the bike lanes were actually well implemented the entire way to the office, I would leave my car parked most days... as it stands now, that's not happening any time soon.

[_delirium]

As a result of issues with those kinds of lanes, Copenhagen changed direction a bit ago and now puts in only bike lanes physically separated by a curb from the car lanes, at least where possible (excluding some narrow streets). If there's street parking, the lane is also typically on the other side of the parked cars (the sidewalk side), making it even more impossible for someone to swerve from the car lanes into the bike lane. Also reduces "door" incidents, since the lane isn't on the driver-door side of parked cars. In addition to being much safer for cyclists, it also helps reduce drivers' need to watch out for the other direction, cyclists unexpectedly swerving into the auto lanes, e.g. to pass another cyclist. That part becomes particularly important if getting people to bike is actually successful: if you have a major route with a steady stream of >10 cyclists/minute, you really want that stream managed in its own space, segregated from both the cars and pedestrians.

I believe some of these kinds of "really separated" bike lanes exist in the U.S., but not many. The last statistics I saw were that the U.S. (in total) has about 200 miles of physically protected bike lanes (including bike-only routes), while Greater Copenhagen alone has 600 miles of them.

edit: some photos of various configurations, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Physically_separ...

[sologoub]

I have big hopes for the metro line project in SM that includes a dedicated bike path that is linked with the path along the beach. The beach path is fully separated and the link that is not would only be a few blocks long.

The ocean bike path stretches from past Redondo beach to Pacific Palicades.