Hints for keeping bicycles out in highway traffic

Peter Schultz

June 8, 2014

Here are some hints for local planners, to help them to urge cyclists out onto the highways instead of using the bike paths.

• Keep writing roadwork contracts with "glitches" in them, such as the recent one that allowed the work crews to dig rumble strips down the middle of several bike paths, rendering them virtually unusable.

• Lay rough gravel "bike paths" alongside nice smooth asphalt roads to encourage cyclists to use the road instead of the path.

• Continue to lay glaring white concrete "bike paths" with stop signs at each crossover, down the median strips of nice black asphalt streets that have no stop signs, thus compelling every sensible cyclist to use the road instead of the path.

• And last, for heaven's sake, continue to allow developers to lay out cul-de-sacs that back up to other cul-de-sacs, with no pedestrian/bike access from the back of one development into the back of the other, forcing cyclists (and pedestrians) to go out into the highway traffic and take the long way around instead of proceeding along the residential streets.

Peter Schultz
Lewes

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