Active transportation infrastructure is one of the most important things a community can build, but some so-called “bicycle amenities” barely deserve the title.
Last week, the good people behind the must-watch YouTube channel Not Just Bikes https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0intLFzLaudFG-xAvUEO-A took to Twitter https://twitter.com/notjustbikes/status/1491499943265284099 to ask their followers a critical question: what’s the worst “bike-centered” road project you’ve ever seen, and what, exactly, makes it so bad?
The avalanche of lame lanes, shitty sharrows and substandard shared-use paths that followed is a testament to just how far communities around the world have to go to make streets truly accessible to people who walk and roll — especially considering that many of those monstrosities were built in perfect compliance with legal standards https://twitter.com/MelbourneWay/status/1491509034213511172, as a few submitters pointed out.
“One of the things advocates for vehicular cycling https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vehicular_cycling cite is that bicycle infrastructure is often bad, and it’s safer to cycle on the road than in bad bike infrastructure,” said Jason Slaughter, the creator of the channel. “And to be fair, it probably is. But the solution is not to make everybody learn to cycle like a car, because that is an ableist position that excludes the majority of people from cycling. The solution is to build safe cycling infrastructure that does not have these issues.”
Here are a few of the most common themes in the thread. And just for fun, we’ll take a vote at the bottom to find out which is the worst of all; think of it as a mini-edition of the Sorriest Bus Stops https://usa.streetsblog.org/category/sorriest-bus-stops-2021/ Bike Infrastructure contest.
https://usa.streetsblog.org/2022/02/14/out-damn-sharrows-vote-for-the-sorrie... /