Laura Greenwood: Bike lanes add hassles for bikers

In response to Julie Tisdale’s July 23 Point of view “An unjustified expense in Raleigh”: I am in complete agreement.

I have used my bicycle as my primary mode of transportation for over 20 years. The recent bike lanes and traffic calming projects in east Raleigh forced me to change my routes.

I preferred the once comfortably wide Brookside Drive as my route downtown before it was “calmed.” The lanes are now terrifyingly narrow with the inbound bike lane still putting me perilously close to cars and and tire tipping mini-medians. There’s no outbound bike lane and a car cannot safely pass me.

My favorite places are all on Wilmington Street. You would think I love that bike lane, but things were better before it existed. It ends and takes up again in numerous places including a hazardous start just north of Jones Street where I had to move to the left to use it just as a CAT bus was moving right to get into a bus lane.

If anything, the city is discouraging cycling with these ill-conceived and expensive projects.

This story was originally published July 26, 2016 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Laura Greenwood: Bike lanes add hassles for bikers."