Bridge lane

On the Richmond San Rafael Bridge in place of a "parking lane" on one side they installed a protected bike lane. This bridge has two layers with this bi-directional bike lane on only the bottom layer.

Already the drivers are crying that if they get a "fender bender" during commute hours it slows them up too much to have to pull into the parking lane across one additional lane.

Drivers now are so Whackadoodle that they ASSUME that there will be wrecks in the commute traffic. It would never occur to them for one second that if they drive carefully, instead of weaving from lane to lane as fast as they can possibly go, that fender benders would seldom happen and if they would allow cars in the other lane to move through to the damaged vehicle lane that there would be extremely little traffic problems. On 5 lane freeways we have cars in the far right hand lane doing 85 mph when traffic is trying to enter there.

Instead we have perhaps 10% of the drivers going a minimum of 15 mph over the speed limit and cops doing nothing about it. In the last 8 or 9 years since I've been cogent enough to watch I HAVE seen the very occasional cop with a car at the side of the road but it might very well have been the cop simply calling a tow truck. The only time I saw a ticket book out was in a two car accident.

There are only two bridges left without protected bike lanes now. The San Mateo Bridge and the Carquinez Straits bridge. Also the Bay Bridge bike lane only goes as far as Treasure Island as they argue about how they can fit a bike lane on the old San Francisco suspension bridge side. They can't hang a lane off on the side of the bridge without a balancing bridge on the other side. They are talking about laying a bridge over the top of the double layer structure But that would require thought and San Franciscans are woefully inadequate when it comes to that practice.