To the guy in the black Acura MDX

I'm sorry you were so offended that I tapped on your car mirror. You were glued to your phone and it was the only way to get your attention and let you know you were blocking the entire bike lane (N. Deaborn @ Post Office) during the rush and forcing cyclists into traffic.

And while I think it was a little ironic to speed down the street to tell me I broke the law, I definitely think throwing a glass bottle was a bit much. However, since it shattered in your car and not on me, I'll let it slide.

I can't even fathom the courage and strength it must have took to put your foot down and whip down the block and around the corner. But boy were you red with embarrassment when I took the alley and cut you off. You must have ran out of bottles because this time you kept the windows up. I'm sure your partner will be proud of the example you set for your daughter in the back seat.

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Permalink Reply by Carter O'Brien on December 6, 2018 at 7:45am

Can I have that framed? My daughter has just enough wall space amongst the cat, super hero, and other such posters - and I'm sure she'd appreciate it! : )

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Permalink Reply by Argonne69 on December 5, 2018 at 1:01pm

It's getting rather silly, no?

Fine, I'll go along with the warped logic for a minute. Go ahead and contact your alderman and insist that they repeal the "no vehicles stopped in bike lanes" ordinance. Insist that they paint over the handful of bike lanes in the city. That's certainly your right as a citizen.

However, until the day that the law is revoked, and the bike lanes removed, I will continue to be f*cking pissed off that the city doesn't enforce the law, along with dozens of others laws on the books that aren't enforced. Don't even get me started on the total f*cking a*holes that smoke just outside buildings when the God d*mn f*cking signs 2 feet away clearly state that smoking isn't allowed with 25 ft of the door. Are smokers f*cking illiterate?

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Permalink Reply by V W on December 6, 2018 at 5:38am

Amen, and those same smokers often lean on the bike racks and refuse to move when you show up to use the bike rack for its actual purpose.

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Permalink Reply by TonyP on December 6, 2018 at 9:13am

I gotta agree with CLP in that I'm not a fan of bike lanes. In stead of bike lanes all lanes should be treated as sharrows. Cyclists should be treated as the vehicles that we are and motorists should be ticketed for not giving us our three feet, just as motorists think that we should be ticketed for not stopping for stop signs.

Bike lanes can give a cyclist a false sense of security while also giving the motorists something to scream about, as in "get in your bike lane".

Also bike lanes that don't turn into sharrows at intersections are just right hooks looking to happen.

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Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on December 6, 2018 at 9:22am

https://usa.streetsblog.org/2016/01/14/study-sharrows-dont-make-str...

A study by University of Colorado Denver researchers Nick Ferenchak and Wesley Marshall examined safety outcomes for areas in Chicago that received bike lanes, sharrows, and no bicycling street treatments at all. (The study was conducted before Chicago had much in the way of protected bike lanes, so it did not distinguish between types of bike lanes.) The results suggest that bike lanes encourage more people to bike and make biking safer, while sharrows don’t do much of either.

There are more articles on this topic but this one is a good one.

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Permalink Reply by TonyP on December 6, 2018 at 10:11am

I have no study to present but it's my opinion that if sharrows don't work it has more to do with enforcement than anything. If motorists were ticketed for crowding cyclists and cyclists were treated by the police as vehicles entitled to lane usage it would go a long way towards our safety, without the artificial protection of bike lanes.

More cyclists using bike lanes doesn't necessarily mean that they are safer, it could just as easily draw usage from the perception that they are safer. 'Specially if they attract those with no cycling street smarts.

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Permalink Reply by Argonne69 on December 7, 2018 at 8:58am

Not to mention that it's still illegal to stop in a shared bike lane.

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Permalink Reply by Anne Alt on December 6, 2018 at 10:11am

The results suggest that bike lanes encourage more people to bike...

Isn't that what we all want to see?

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Permalink Reply by Yasmeen on December 6, 2018 at 10:21am

At the end of the article:

Ferenchak told Streetsblog sharrows seemed to have a small effect on encouraging people to bike but provide no additional protection. This is in line with what Dutch bike planner Dick Van Veen told Streetsblog about sharrows in the Netherlands: They should be used in tandem with significant traffic-calming measures — on a street with fast traffic, to put down sharrows alone would be considered “unethical.”

“I think our main takeaway is that we need appropriate infrastructure,” Ferenchak said. “Sharrows don’t dedicate any space to bicyclists.”