Wayne Pein: Bike lane confusion a disservice toall

Regarding the May 19 news article “Raleigh City Council OKs plan for more bike lanes”: Bike lanes used to be a countermeasure on high-speed roads with few turning movements. Now they are to be programmed for low-traffic neighborhood streets that are already easy to bicycle on and the traditional training ground for novice cyclists. What a disservice to everyone.

Bike lanes are essentially shoulders with a name. Shoulders are used on main roads to support faster motoring and deter run-off-road type collisions. Why not also add double yellow centerlines to neighborhood streets to complete the high-speed conversion?

Bicyclists will be doomed to ride in the tree and other debris that will inevitably collect and will be at risk as they skim by driveways with little leeway from backing motorists.

Bike lanes separated with barriers obviously make it impossible for anyone to turn except at designated locations. This turns bicycle drivers into pedestrians with wheels.

The only way to deal with the manufactured conflicts is to delay everyone with more traffic signal phases. When you have to have a plan to educate everyone on how to safely navigate a bicycling network overlaid on the simple and intuitive existing road infrastructure, it’s evident such addition needlessly adds complication and conflict.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 4:14 PM with the headline "Wayne Pein: Bike lane confusion a disservice toall."