The same guy who inspired me to start this blog is at it again. A post on Copenhagenize followed by another post with video about Jarvis street bikelane removal caught my attention.
Looking at the bikeunion.to video, I'm not sure what Mr. Ford thinks he is going to achieve. Remove the bike lane and the drivers will get about 1 meter more of the road space. The other two car lanes do not look very wide to me, so I don't think they could squeeze in another lane for cars. A quick google search tells me there used to be a third, reversible lane before the sidewalks were widened, trees planted and the bikelanes were installed. Or at least that was the plan, I'm not sure if this really happened.
Of course, motorists do not want to sit in rush hour congestion, so some of them keep whining for the 3rd lane back. But there's congestion on streets with no bikelanes, too, so blaming the bikelane sounds pretty stupid to me. And removing a bike lane that was installed a year ago for no other reason than to "smooth traffic flow" as the saying goes, sounds monumentally stupid to me. Maybe the mayor wants to have his own monument so people will remember him.
The video asks "What's wrong with the bikelane?" To me, it looks too narrow and there's no protection from cars. Nothing has been done to the junction to make it safer for the cyclists. You hear me Mr. Mayor, you need to make that bike lane wider, not remove it!
The mayor looks like he hasn't sat his fat ass on a bike since he was a kid, if that. It's no wonder that bucket of lard doesn't see the need for proper bike lanes.
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