Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials. They're super cheap to build and so it's more of an issue of simply having the political will to remove a lane of traffic from exclusive car use.
Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.
There's actually some organized opposition to bike lanes in the US, from some of the more conspiracy theory oriented members of the Tea Party and the Libertarians. They think bike lanes are part of the UN's "Agenda 21", which they see as a nefarious plot to take away our sovereignty.
Bike lanes, for example, according to these people encourage people to bike more, which encourages higher density cities (as people want to be within bike range of work). Having us packed tighter into cities will make it easier for the UN troops to round is up and take away our guns and then our property.
These people tend to be politically active, and have turned up in enough numbers at some city councils where bike lanes were being considered to shout down those in favor or bike lanes, and scare the politicians into thinking bike lanes are actually controversial among the general electorate.
The Republican Party is encouraging this stuff. They made opposition to Agenda 21 an official part of their party platform. They didn't mention any particular things, like bike lanes, put simply mentioning Agenda 21 is going to encourage the conspiracy nuts.
Here in Colorado a couple years ago the Republican nominee for governor (who was a Tea Party insurgent) tried attacking the Democratic nominee for this. The Dem nominee was the then-mayor of Denver and had pushed for and gotten a bike share program in the city. Everyone realized the Republican was nuts and it started a downhill spiral in his campaign.
Maybe outside of the denser urban areas it's cheap. Inside them though, I can't imagine how one could justify it being "cheap". Everything is built up already with cars in mind. You might say "Turn an existing car lane into a bike lane" - that is vastly more complicated than you might think. You're reworking traffic patterns, displacing parking spaces, and in the end just painting lines on the ground that no driver is obligated to respect. In some cities that can be an utter nightmare - I'm thinking mainly of DC here with the convoluted road network(which already has a few bike lanes and more on the way, as well as a widespread bike-sharing program). I want bike lanes or otherwise improved bike access too, but it is an immense proposition for a dense urban core that was developed around the automobile. In a lot of cases the issue is not that there is a lack of demand from the people or attention from public officials, it's that the planning and execution involved can be a nightmare.
I dunno why people downvote what they "dont like to hear". Sounds pretty much accurate to me (some guy is going to tell me my opinion doesnt matter if its not baked by graphs tho).
In SF, there are quite a few bicycle lanes. That's cool. Half of them are ruined by parking. That's not cool. Half of my bike-riding coworkers have been "doored" so far.
Heck, it's still a lot better than no bike lane, but it's hard to get right since the space is already taken by car lanes and parking lanes.
In Paris, even thus, as per previous posts, scooters ride on it, some lanes are actually part of the sidewalk and are forbidden to pedestrians.
In Germany I've seen that too (albeit theyre not as well designated IMO). Advantage: no one car park on it. No car can even cross them. Feels a lot safer.
Unfortunately in Paris that's not the norm, its only a few places where they were able to do that.
> Folks in the US need to start demanding bike lanes from their elected officials.
North American bike lanes, as they're currently implemented, in general, are easily criticized because they don't actually buy a safer ride for cyclists. They buy the illusion of a safer ride[1].
Some of the problems:
* Bicycles going straight through an intersection are encouraged to overtake cars
that are turning right on their right side. The motor vehicle can turn into the
path of the overtaking cyclist.
* Bicycles going straight through an intersection are encouraged to stay close to
the curb, where they can be hidden from the view of drivers turning left into
their path by cars that are traveling in the same direction and slightly
ahead of them. The left-turning car then turns behind the car travelling in
the same direction as the cyclist and into the cyclist.
* Bicycle lanes widen the travel lane, encouraging drivers to travel
at higher speeds.
There are bike lanes that actually encourage safer riding habits, but they're far less common, so the overall statistics don't show decreased accident rates when bike lanes are added.
Incidentally, Vancouver's bike share is well en route to a stillbirth thanks to BC's think-of-the-children (literally, http://web.archive.org/web/20100829214539/http://www.richmon...) helmet law. It was first supposed to launch in spring of 2012, there's still no concrete date as of today.
The Dutch think-of-the-children 1970's campaign resulted in the great cycling infrastructure we have now.... A far cry from such a here's-some-body-armour-if-you-want-to-commit-suicide law.
My kids are 8 and 10 and cycle 1km to school each day without me or my wife riding along. And that's a mix of regular streets, cycle paths and residential areas. I feel pretty thankful to the ones campaigning in the 70s!
Such political bravery can pay off. Vancouver BC's Gregor Robertson (and his councillor slate) has been elected twice with strong mandates in large part because of his commitment to bike lanes.