Time for some uncomfortable truths.

The vast majority of federal bike lane funds are misappropriated. For instance, in my local city, speaking directly with a planner, they wanted to install parking meters as a tax raising effort. They couldn't afford it, so on the random streets they wanted parking meters on, they got federal grants to "add bike lanes" and so now there's this random set of block-long bike lanes that helped pay for the changes needed to install parking meters.

In other cases, the city wanted to direct traffic somewhere else, so they installed block-long bike lanes as a traffic calming measure. No actual plan to make these useful or studies done on effective placement, just purely to reduce car volume.

What you're left with is a patchwork of non-sensical bike lines that don't really get you anywhere, subsidized for by federal funds, used against the spirit of what they should be doing: making bike commutes practical.

However that isn't the real priority of the city.

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matt_kantor 20 hours ago | parent | next [-]

From my layperson perspective that sounds relatively easy to address. For example they could require some minimum distance of continuous bike lanes to get approved for funding.

	▲	exabrial 20 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		I sure wish it would be. I'd love to be able to have bike paths as sensical as interstates.
	▲	cucumber3732842 16 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Decades of this sorts of "aha I know what rule change will fix this" are exactly how we got here though. They all look reasonable in isolation but at the systemic level we get garbage.

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cucumber3732842 16 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

This has been going on forever. Bike lanes are just the current vehicle (heh) for financial waste.

We've got a giant 8-lane intersection on a 2-lane road in the middle of nowhere because 50% off that monstrosity because of fedgrant bucks was cheaper than just DIYing it 100% out of pocket.

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LorenPechtel 16 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Yeah, I consider the bike lanes around here basically completely useless. You can't actually get much of anywhere. And there are too many drivers who harass bikes. We just saw that recently with the boxer who got killed that way.

There's no thought of anything but cars, last spring at least there was a construction spot where they set up some barriers that force a pedestrian into a 35 mph traffic lane (decelerating from 55, so a lot of drivers are going faster than 35.) And while pedestrians at that spot would be extremely rare (there's nothing beyond it--the only pedestrians would be those who were actually seeking nothing. Namely, hikers) there is a decent amount of bike traffic there.