Do I hate bike lanes?

Sometimes I'm asked if I hate bike lanes. This question may surprise some people, for not everyone is aware that bike lanes are controversial amongst urban cyclists. But indeed some cyclists hate bike lanes, and sometimes I'm asked if I'm one of them.

My answer is no, I don't hate bike lanes, but I don't always favor them either. Sometimes bike lanes help. And sometimes bike lanes are a cheap way for a city to claim credit for bike friendliness while failing to address actual bike safety.

A common objection to bike lanes is that they take away the cyclist's right—whether legally in fact or as perceived by motorists—to ride in the middle of the lane, with traffic, so as to maintain visibility and physically prevent unsafe passes from behind by motorists. For example, there's an unsafe moment to pass a cyclist from behind when approaching an intersection that isn't made safe by having a white strip of paint separating the cyclist from the passing vehicle. This moment occurs when the cyclist, who is on the far right side of the road, gets passed on the left while an oncoming car waits to turn left across the intersection. During this moment the oncoming motorist can't see the cyclist because the passing car occludes the cyclist from view. The oncoming motorist, unaware of the cyclist, waits only for the passing car to clear the intersection before beginning their turn—just as the cyclist enters the intersection. Right-of-way is a fiction here; the motorist must see the cyclist and react quickly to avoid a collision. Usually the motorist does so, but it's a scary moment for any cyclist. Bike lanes cause more of these scary moments by preventing the cyclist from physically blocking the would-be passing car and thus remaining visible to the oncoming motorist waiting to make a left turn.

But opposing bike lanes because of this one objection is extreme. This is a fault with bike lane design, not bike lanes in general. Indeed, here in Phoenix most bike lanes avoid this problem. Many of the half-mile roads are roomy two-lane roads with a bike lane on each side that, near intersections, become four lanes and lose the bike lanes. This is a good compromise between motorists and cyclists: the right lane is a de facto turn lane that keeps fast-moving traffic in the left lane and allows the cyclist the option of taking the whole of the right lane to stay visible to oncoming traffic.

My chief complaint against bike lanes is something different: they add more paint to the road. Bike-route roads need less paint, not more. Painted lines have a way of making motorists—and cyclists—feel at ease and encouraging them to feel entitled to their strip of pavement—and to pay more attention to the paint in front of them than to the cars, bikes, and pedestrians around them. My observation is that motorists drive faster and more aggressively when a road is divided into lanes than when a road requires each driver to negotiate and share with others. This is why, given the choice between biking on a road with a center stripe and bike lanes and biking on a road with no center stripe and no bike lanes—all else held equal—I will choose the road without bike lanes.

So it's not so much as I don't like bike lanes as I don't like car lanes.