A Reminder that Protected Bike Lanes Can Make Streets Safer for Everyone. “A 2019 study spanning thirteen years in twelve cities found that protected bike lanes dramatically reduced fatalities for all road users on the streets that added them.”
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Comments 3
I’m the type of person who adores protected bike lanes. Loved them since they started being installed in Manhattan. Loved them as they started installing them on Pennsylvania Avenue in DC, where I work.
But like so many good things, they’ve been ruined in DC by wrong-way riders on e-bikes and questionably-legal mopeds, constantly zooming in the wrong direction and either scaring the bejeezus out of pedestrians as they try to legally cross the streets, or colliding with them as they step off the sidewalks. To make it worse, the speed demons in the bike lanes have pushed the electric scooter riders up onto the sidewalks, further terrorizing the pedestrians.
I wish it could work. I really do. But as a person who commutes on foot through an urban area, I’ve grown to hate the bike lanes because the e-bikes have made them so treacherous.
Former DC resident here, while your points are real and I agree – you have a problem with DPD and enforcement, not protected bike lanes. Biking is the most efficient way to get around the district and that is made possible by their constant investment in infrastructure. Compare this to Portland OR, where I now reside, the infrastructure is mediocre at best and only works because of the deep biking culture here – something DC does not have, and likely never will.
TLDR maybe one day the mayor will enforce traffic laws.
Entirely possible that bike lanes will never really work in the US because Americans are too American.
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