Dallas Observer this week

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The cover story is about the ousting of Dallas' former "bike czar", Paul Summer, seemingly over the controversial issue of bike lanes.  To summarize: Summer is a vehicular cyclist, as I'm sure many of you also are, possibly without knowing it.  When the question of whether to implement a bike lane system in Dallas came up in the past, his was the voice against, with the rationale being: 1. that designated bike lanes only serve to cement the cyclist's position as a second-class citizen of the road and 2. that bike lanes are actually more dangerous to the cyclist than lawful vehicular cycling.

Okay, so, I don't know how to link to the story, but I'm sure you all know how to use Google.  I'm really just kind of idly curious as to what everyone thinks.  Have you commuted in a bike-laned city?  What did you think?  How's Dallas working out for you?  What would you change here?  Could we be Portland?  Do we really want to?

I now return you to your regularly scheduled black friday.

[mikey]

http://www.dallasobserver.com/2009-11-26/news/dallas-former-bike-czar-tells-newbie-riders-to-go-play-in-traffic/

I think this is it.

[519]

I am a VC. I like PM Summer.
I am bummed out by BFOC's vilification of him, but I understand the ease in which opponents can resort to childish namecalling matches.

Bike lanes are dangerous, in my opinion. Chicago, 7 years.

Look at it like this: It's the Wild West here.
Become a better cyclist and you will be truly free.

[Will]

Well, if you read the comments at the Observer website, you can see pretty much what my feelings are on the topic (look at the usernames, it's not hard to figure out who I am over there).  Bottom line for me is that VC techniques are very useful to know and to put into practice, but the VC mindset does not help to get new cyclists out onto the roads, while it most certainly appears that quality infrastructure does.  Unfortunately, for hardcore VCs like Summer appears to be, any deviation from the "infrastructure is evil" mantra is heresy and that a comprehensive approach is tantamount to failure (I never thought of it this way before, but it just struck me that there are a lot of similarities between the VC camp and the abstinence only crowd).

I've lived and started serious cycling/commuting in Albuquerque, a town that had decent facilities when I started, and then blossomed with a well thought out complete streets type philosophy over the last few years.  And that allowed it to transform from an OK place to ride into a wonderful town to ride in.  You could get pretty much anywhere in the area with minimal thought as to how to get there, because pretty much everywhere had a good, comfortable bike friendly route.  Even high speed, high volume roads were comfortable to ride along thanks to their structure.  When I moved here, I was shocked at how lousy the riding conditions were in comparison.

One final thing: One of the most annoying things about these "debates" is that they always focus on "bike lanes".  Already, in the first three posts we see that tack being taken here.  Bike lanes are only one type of infrastructure, there are other tools in the complete streets arsenal that can be used where appropriate; and bike lanes when used inappropriately do suck.  So please don't make the mistake of concentrating solely on them.

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I think we may be in agreement, Will, and forgive my using "bike lanes" as shorthand for "all of the bicycle infrastructure available and not yet dreamed of".  I lived in Chicago for a number of years, and began commuting by bicycle there, encouraged by the ever-present bike lanes.  I got comfortable, then confident, and ended up using the bike lanes less and less.  I'm sure I would have gotten up the courage to ride without the infrastructure, but eh.  They're kind of like commuter training wheels.  Once you've been without them for awhile, you can't imagine ever wanting anything to do with them again.