> painted bicycle gutters are NOT proper bicycle infrastructure either
To be clear, where I live there are recently installed “dedicated” bike routes which are separated from car traffic by concrete barriers and curbs, and also separated from pedestrian traffic by curbs and intermittent heavy ceramic planters. The problem is that the separations are interrupted to allow turns and deliveries. All of the separation is partial. I feel a ton safer in a painted gutter, and much safer still in the middle of a car-wide lane.
To make matters worse, the particular “dedicated” infrastructure I’m thinking of is on the left side of a one-way street and introduced complicated signal timings that surprise even regular riders and drivers. I’ve posted this before here and elsewhere: when I have to go somewhere in that part of the city and have to brave even a stretch of the route, I deliberately choose to be in car traffic even with drivers irrationally yelling at me to get in the bike lane and trying to run me off the road with their cars, because it feels safer than being in the bike space.
The theory of dedicated bike infrastructure is interesting to me, but what I’ve seen in practice where I live mostly motivates me to ride on roads with sharrows right in the middle of the road clearly indicating that I’m allowed to be there even if every single driver forgot their driving instruction.