Cindy Lange-Kubick: Bike lanes? Good idea, bad design
Bike lanes are sensible.
They’re progressive.
They’re hip and cool.
They play to all the things we and those savvy 2015 visioners want our city to be.
Except, you know those bike lanes in downtown Lincoln? Those itty-bitty, gang plank-wide strips down the middle of our one-ways?
Let’s just say this: Great idea, not so great execution.
I’m noticing this more since I started biking to work on sunny summer mornings.
I seem to have no trouble scooting north down 14th Street from my Indian Village home, pedaling merrily along, skirting parked cars and dodging careless squirrels until suddenly — annoyingly! — magically, the bike lane appears, like the Yellow Brick Road to Oz, just as perilous, only much, much shorter.
First, there’s the problem of getting from your relatively safe space into the bike lane.
And then there is figuring out, a few short blocks later, how to get out of the bike lane without ending up like one of those flattened squirrels you just passed.
Maybe it’s just me, I think, watching other bikers forge fearlessly along the concrete tightrope, their backs to approaching traffic on both sides.
Thursday, when I decide to play it safe and drive downtown, I spot a bike merging into its lane.
I roll down my window at the stoplight on O Street.
How do you like riding in the bike lanes, I ask in my most fair and balanced journalist voice.
Jewel Noll doesn’t hesitate: “I think it’s really scary.”
The graduate student, on her way to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, grew up in Wisconsin, where not only do they make good Gouda, they design darned good bike lanes.
She’s always owned a helmet, Jewel explains. She just never wore it until she got to Lincoln.
Not only does she have a problem with her lane being in the middle of the street, she can’t figure out the logic of which street they chose.
A bike lane on a bus route?
“It’s silly.”
The buses have to dodge her. She has to dodge the buses. Cars have to dodge them both.
“It seems like the whole bike system is an afterthought. Drivers are irritated. I feel like the buses are probably really irritated.”
And Jewel?
“My comfort level is absolutely gone.”
Longtime Lincoln biker Bill Swearingen agrees. The 14th Street bike lane? Bad idea.
“I think 12th Street is way better.”
Fewer buses, less traffic, still a straight shot to the University.
Sarah Porto has issues with the bike lanes, too, as a driver.
Try figuring out the lanes on 11th Street, she says.
Is that short skinny space with parked cars on one side and a bike lane on the other near the parking garage a driving lane? If it is, why do so many people keep giving her the one-fingered salute when she’s in it?
She called the police to make sure the lane she was driving in was a real one.
“They said it was.”
That doesn’t stop traffic on the other side of the bike lane from turning into her.
“If you’re in the wider lane and you’re turning left you’ll cut off a bike. People don’t know what to do.”
It’s a big deal, she says.
Can anyone say, accident waiting to happen?
“The idea of bike lanes is great,” says Porto. “But ...”
But.
That sums up my bike lane thoughts perfectly: Bike lanes are great, but not just for the sake of having them.
I don’t have the ultimate solution.
Although Jewel did mention that back in Wisconsin, where lots more people ride bikes, and fewer people need to find parking downtown, some businesses offer financial incentives for people to bike to work.
A dollar a day to bike to the office? I’ll take it.
The more bikes on the road, the harder it will be for cars and cities to ignore their needs.
And to continue my quest to be fair and balanced, I called city transportation planner David Cary, who says the bike lanes are standard width, 12th Street wasn’t chosen because it’s not a continuous one-way and a lane in the middle of the road is safer than one next to parked cars.
The truth is, bicyclists still have to get from home to the bike lanes. And from the bike lanes to work and back again.
And the truth also is that some of Jewel’s bike-riding friends have started to take alternate routes to campus.
Why?
To avoid those scary bike lanes.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
They’re progressive.
They’re hip and cool.
They play to all the things we and those savvy 2015 visioners want our city to be.
Except, you know those bike lanes in downtown Lincoln? Those itty-bitty, gang plank-wide strips down the middle of our one-ways?
Let’s just say this: Great idea, not so great execution.
I’m noticing this more since I started biking to work on sunny summer mornings.
I seem to have no trouble scooting north down 14th Street from my Indian Village home, pedaling merrily along, skirting parked cars and dodging careless squirrels until suddenly — annoyingly! — magically, the bike lane appears, like the Yellow Brick Road to Oz, just as perilous, only much, much shorter.
First, there’s the problem of getting from your relatively safe space into the bike lane.
And then there is figuring out, a few short blocks later, how to get out of the bike lane without ending up like one of those flattened squirrels you just passed.
Maybe it’s just me, I think, watching other bikers forge fearlessly along the concrete tightrope, their backs to approaching traffic on both sides.
Thursday, when I decide to play it safe and drive downtown, I spot a bike merging into its lane.
I roll down my window at the stoplight on O Street.
How do you like riding in the bike lanes, I ask in my most fair and balanced journalist voice.
Jewel Noll doesn’t hesitate: “I think it’s really scary.”
The graduate student, on her way to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus, grew up in Wisconsin, where not only do they make good Gouda, they design darned good bike lanes.
She’s always owned a helmet, Jewel explains. She just never wore it until she got to Lincoln.
Not only does she have a problem with her lane being in the middle of the street, she can’t figure out the logic of which street they chose.
A bike lane on a bus route?
“It’s silly.”
The buses have to dodge her. She has to dodge the buses. Cars have to dodge them both.
“It seems like the whole bike system is an afterthought. Drivers are irritated. I feel like the buses are probably really irritated.”
And Jewel?
“My comfort level is absolutely gone.”
Longtime Lincoln biker Bill Swearingen agrees. The 14th Street bike lane? Bad idea.
“I think 12th Street is way better.”
Fewer buses, less traffic, still a straight shot to the University.
Sarah Porto has issues with the bike lanes, too, as a driver.
Try figuring out the lanes on 11th Street, she says.
Is that short skinny space with parked cars on one side and a bike lane on the other near the parking garage a driving lane? If it is, why do so many people keep giving her the one-fingered salute when she’s in it?
She called the police to make sure the lane she was driving in was a real one.
“They said it was.”
That doesn’t stop traffic on the other side of the bike lane from turning into her.
“If you’re in the wider lane and you’re turning left you’ll cut off a bike. People don’t know what to do.”
It’s a big deal, she says.
Can anyone say, accident waiting to happen?
“The idea of bike lanes is great,” says Porto. “But ...”
But.
That sums up my bike lane thoughts perfectly: Bike lanes are great, but not just for the sake of having them.
I don’t have the ultimate solution.
Although Jewel did mention that back in Wisconsin, where lots more people ride bikes, and fewer people need to find parking downtown, some businesses offer financial incentives for people to bike to work.
A dollar a day to bike to the office? I’ll take it.
The more bikes on the road, the harder it will be for cars and cities to ignore their needs.
And to continue my quest to be fair and balanced, I called city transportation planner David Cary, who says the bike lanes are standard width, 12th Street wasn’t chosen because it’s not a continuous one-way and a lane in the middle of the road is safer than one next to parked cars.
The truth is, bicyclists still have to get from home to the bike lanes. And from the bike lanes to work and back again.
And the truth also is that some of Jewel’s bike-riding friends have started to take alternate routes to campus.
Why?
To avoid those scary bike lanes.
Reach Cindy Lange-Kubick at 473-7218 or clangekubick@journalstar.com.
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