Mini Exasperation #16

A Pattern Language, For Sure. Protect These Lanes or Don't Bother.

Kea Wilson’s reporting is always excellent, but this piece caught my eye this morning for a few reasons. First: I’ve been harping about this idea for years. Sometimes, and not all times, a poorly designed bike lane makes cycling less safe than simply no change to the road infrastructure at all. Like most concepts in transportation, this idea is counterintuitive and is harder to communicate without diving into data and building an entire campaign around challenging the narrative from the right and the left side of the “biking issue,” or whatever we’ll call it.

Second: the reported piece could use some additional editorial comment, taking nothing away from Kea’s reporting, and in fact, hoping to add to it. The comment is this: unprotected bike lanes confound the shared language of the street. What do I mean by that?

Every street—and sometim…