Bike lanes have sped up car traffic in New York City

I'm OK with the occasional cyclist. It is when there is a group of 30 from a club riding in a pack, going 15 MPH, on a 45 MPH highway with not a lot of passing areas that get irritating. The other thing that I don't like is having to pass the same cyclist several times in traffic. They pass you on the right when traffic is stoped, but don't move over so you can pass them on the left when traffic starts to move again.

Someone already commented on this but it must be re-emphasized in blunter terms: the OP's title is sensationalized bullshit, period.

What has caused the improvement in speed is the building of dedicated left lanes. The fact that the city also added bike lanes at the same time does not mean that the bike lanes caused the speeding-up of car traffic (correlation != causation, and all that)...

Read from the source article that the OP references (and then glosses over):

http://www.citylab.com/cityfixer/2014/09/when-adding-bike-la...

> So what happened here to overcome the traditional idea that bike lanes lead to car delay? No doubt many factors were involved, but a DOT spokesperson tells CityLab that the steady traffic flow was largely the result of adding left-turn pockets. In the old street configurations, cars turned left from a general traffic lane; in the new one, they merged into a left-turn slot beside the protected bike lane (below, an example from 8th and 23rd). This design has two key advantages: first, traffic doesn't have to slow down until the left turn is complete, and second, drivers have an easier time seeing bike riders coming up beside them.

This article is horrible. The author also states that

> One is that, for the most part, driving lanes weren't actually eliminated when they bike lanes were built — they were simply narrowed.

But there is nothing to support the claim that narrower lanes speed up traffic. Also this phrase is copy pasted verbatim further down the article.

Im sure its annoying, but its that way for a reason. You are belted into a multi-thousand-pound steel-reinforced vehicle. They are riding on some pipes with a Styrofoam block strapped to their head.

I most states its legal for cycles (motor and non) to pass cars and pull to the head of the line at a light. Not sure why; but that's the way it is. Stopped cars + agile cyclist = no problem.

When traffic is moving after the light, the car sure as heck better leave some room for the cycle, because any error there means an ambulance.

> Bikes aren't automobiles no matter how much we debate about it. They shouldn't be sharing the road with cars.

While I understand the sentiment you need to understand that cyclists are put in a pretty awkward legal situation themselves. They exist in a no-mans-land between pedestrians and vehicles.

Sidewalks are often too narrow, too close to blind corners, etc for safety. They're often VERY bumpy. At 2mph a sidewalk is fine, but at 15mph it tries to shake your bicycle apart. Pedestrians don't expect cyclists on the sidewalk and that can make for horrific collisions.

In the street cyclists get no respect. Cars cut cyclists off making right turns regularly. "Dooring" is a very real phenomena that can put people in the hospital. Cyclists regularly get killed by cars and the drivers suffer no real consequences.

Here's a NYT article on precisely this subject: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/10/opinion/sunday/is-it-ok-to...

> pure safety concerns for the biker (who I as the automobile driver am responsible for in the case of an accident)

As you can see from the NYT article that's often not true at all. The police tend to look at cyclists the way you do, and many times don't find fault with drivers even if cyclists are KILLED much less injured or have their bikes destroyed.

> generally shitty entitled attitude lots of bike riders seem to have (probably earned from dealing with irritated drivers like me)

A lot of the shitty attitude has to do with a constant fear of death. Further cyclists are definitely treated as second class citizens on the road, despite being required to obey all traffic laws however ill-suited they are for pedal powered vehicles.

But if the law applies evenly to cars and bikes then cyclists have every right their three feet of roadway and possibly the WHOLE lane (depending on how wide the shoulder is and the lanes are) without fearing for their lives. But often that's not the case. It makes "sharing the road" a very adversarial experience and worse is that cyclists can't see who's about to run them over, honk at them, swerve far closer than legal, throw something, etc because the cars are usually going faster than the cyclist.

The idea that bike riders have shitty attitudes and drivers do not is a non-starter. The problem -- as you've stated -- is best solved by making dedicated room for cyclists rather than expecting everyone to just magically get along in situation which rewards neither for doing so.