For six or seven years, the loudest and best financed bike lobbying organizations
have been saying we need "protected" bike lanes everywhere. They say it's
obviously inadequate to have just a paint stripe separating bikes from cars; we
need at _least_ posts, and preferably a line of parked cars. You know, so the
bicyclists are totally hidden from motorists until the motorist crosses the bike
lane to access a street or driveway.

Segregation skeptics have been saying for just as long that the "protection"
vanishes precisely where the conflicts are worse. And the design adds new
surprises to traffic interactions. Surprises in traffic are NOT good.

And there have been crashes, just as predicted. A mile of "protected" bike lane
put in Columbus, Ohio a few years ago went from 1.5 car-bike crashes per year
to 13 crashes (IIRC) in the year it was installed.

And here's the latest one: https://sf.streetsblog.org/2019/04/0...e-mixing-zone/

The solution? "Protected" intersections everywhere! https://vimeo.com/86721046

I haven't seen any cost estimates for this new cycling nirvana. That would be
interesting.

- Frank Krygowski