By Jan Heine
In the discussion about separate or “protected” cycle tracks, it has been surprising that planners and decision makers don’t seem to want input from those who actually ride bikes.
https://janheine.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/separated-cycle-paths-who-asks-the-cyclists/
[B’ Spokes: I’m not sure if I agree with everything here but the main point is valid, Solicit the ideas from those that do ride. Granted if you have two cyclists you get three opinions and it’s an art form trying to distill that down to something that works well on the ground. But still my impression is that trails are done by trying to find every penny to skimp on to the detriment of cyclists and to “benefit” the motorists. Which to me is kind of like saying “Look at all the money we can save by not putting in any side windows on buses.” – It’s silly argument that any mode can do consistently without the best engineering standards when it comes to the “little” details.
Just the other day I was on the B&A trail and saw signage “For Public Safety” cyclists and only cyclists must do a bunch of junk. Well guess what, how about we put down a bunch of signs that “For Public Safety” this trail should be at least 12′ wide not the current hazardous 8′. There should be a center stripe along the whole length, even better there should be a separate pedestrian path. Oh, and let’s not forget a list of things pedestrians must do (If we are admonishe to give warning then pedestrins must also be responsible to hear. That is to say, no headphones, of course that’s nasty that’s why I want more width. But as it is I am tired of ringing my fool bell off to no avail.) As I previously posted This really reminds me of riding on our trails and they think the problem exsits soley with the cyclists, ya right. And I haven’t even gotten to the vehicular cycling aspects that the quoted article gets into as we can’t even do the midsection up to a decent standard.
Can you imagine a 16′ wide trail? That’s twice the width of what we do here.
Now don’t get me wrong, something is better than nothing but there is a problem when almost everything we do is described that way. We seriously need a bikeway upgrade program.]