For example this cyclist riding in Baltimore.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hhJ4D-tWU2w
You can see the bike lane appear, then disappear. Then there is a sign saying it ends. Then you can see it's still painted on the ground. It's also in the middle of traffic. This doesn't make sense. How can one ride around here? How can a bike lane be in the middle of traffic disappear then reappear? I see this in other cities as well. Why is America so non bike friendly?
by InterestingVids
24 Comments
America is a country on wheels, automobile wheels. If an American rides a bicycle, more likely than not, they are doing it to exercise. They don’t ride bicycles to get around.
Cars are more profitable.
That’s about it
You can prob blame Detroit… Home of US Automaking. American cars have a much longer and storied history than bicycles. Easy as that.
Older cities and communities weren’t planned for multi use roads. Car, trucks, and SUV keep getting bigger over time. Car culture marketed and even lobbied by auto manufacturers.
Partly because American culture is currently overwhelmingly selfish.
But mostly because a large chunk of the populace is poorly educated (arguably by design), and as a result, has been easily manipulated by our capitalist political apparatus to hate each other rather than the 1% of the 1%.
Cars are an excellent vehicle for transferring wealth from the bottom to the top.
Americans love when people can’t do things. Freedom of movement is just another thing we can stomp on.
Aside from the well-known issues with American cities being car-dependent and designed around cars, even when cities try to improve bicycle infrastructure it’s clear that there is a lack of experience and understanding on the part of planners, I’m sure most of the people working on bicycle infrastructure in the USA don’t ride and will never ride on any of the projects they work on. There are a number of places around my county where deliberate additions or “improvements” to bicycle lanes have created some really sketchy and awkward spots that any cyclist would have called out if they sat through a single simulated ride-through or gave feedback on a map of the plan. Overall I’ve seen improvements since I moved here but some of the stuff is just a complete WTF.
One of the worst that comes to mind is a spot where for just a few hundred feet they have the bike lane merge from the road to a dedicated cycle path that goes off into the landscaping over a little rolling hill, and then merges back into the street immediately before a turn-in for an office parking lot. So if a driver happens to need to turn into that driveway, a cyclist merging back into the road will be up over shoulder height as the driver is checking their mirrors and blind spot (assuming they bother…). It’s super dumb and unsafe and not something that anyone who thought through anything would have signed off on.
Car makers lobbied American legislators to pass laws to make people feel like local transportation that wasn’t by automobile was moral failure. For example, they literally wrote a law that made it illegal to cross a street because, by their reasoning, nothing deserved to be in a lane of traffic other than a car.
You don’t want to be some scoundrel law-breaker, do you, Good Citizen? Of course not! So what’s it gonna take to get you into this beautiful Chrysler today?
Bc cycling is woke and they should use sidewalks if they want to be safe /s
Exxon, Detroit, and insurance companies LOVE cars. Cars (and mega-trucks nowadays) are designed to appeal to the rugged individualism we all think we possess. Doesn’t leave any room for bicycles.
Post war economy and development meant that every working class American could easily afford a car and a single family home. It was profitable and easy to build sprawl and car centric development
american road engineers so easily excuse shitty transportation infra that it’ll make your headspin. Often all it takes is randomly placed signs that say “share the lane” for them to pat themselves on the back for a job well done making another street into a pedestrian and cyclist killer.
other times they just point to a bike lane a mile away and say “they should take that”
fundamentally, reactionary morons are in charge of the infra and we’ve witnessed the best our country will ever do for cyclists.
Well it goes beyond cyclists, the system is shit for anyone except for the banks laughing as people take car loans they cant afford to get to their fucking custody hearings before their kids get taken away forever and given to some white family who never will let you talk to your kids again
anyways I digress
They hate us.
I’m not a e-biker or a bike rider
And I don’t live in a lane or eat fiber or own a snow bike
And I don’t know Jimmy, Sally, or Suzie from Baltimore,
Although I’m certain they ride really nice bices,
I ride a prime specialized, not a public bike
I speak English and French, not Dentistan,
And I pronounce it “Trek”, not “Twreak”,
I can proudly sew my labels on my backpack,
I believe in cycling, not teeth pulling,
Dentistry, not unshaven loins
And that the beaver is a truly proud and noble animal,
A helmet is a hat.
A velocipede is a bike,
And it is pronounced Trek, not Twreak, Trek.
Baltimore has the second largest bike ass,
The first nation of dental,
And the best part of Old America.
My name is Fred,
And I AM A CYCLIST
Thank-you.
$$$. Like everything else in America, follow the money.
When you’re riding your bike, nobody is really making money off of you. At least not as much compared to other modes of transportation, like driving. All the fuel you need to move forward is pure will and what you had for breakfast, unlike gasoline. A solid bike with basic mechanical parts is far cheaper and easier to maintain, unlike a motor vehicle. (I will concede that even a little bit of car maintenance can last you a very long time, but the barrier to entry is generally much higher.)
Them mental prowess of the average American means they’re very easy to bait into a culture war and against their own interests. In a lot of the country, riding a bike is seen as something poor people or dirty hippy liberals do. It’s more manly and “efficient” to drive an F250 to get groceries (just don’t worry about parking; those lines are anti-freedom) so you feel nice and warm in your gender affirming vehicle/pavement princess.
I don’t think you can generalize from Baltimore to the whole country. Some cities in the US have far better bike infrastructure than anything I’ve seen anywhere else. But yes, Baltimore is horrible.
For the same reasons Trump got elected again.
My little town in Alabama is very bicycle friendly
*Looks at the last election*
*Looks at this question again*
*Remains confused*
We live on the infrastructure of white flight and automotive corporations have exclusive access to our politicians, so it’s not easy to make things more accessible by bicycle.
Americans.
that was awful, we have those ‘bike lane ends’ here in arizona. I would imagine his lbs would tell him they refuse to ride on that street.
im collecting tons of pix of ends of lanes here and planning on going to local city planning meetings
This is unfriendly to you? Looks perfectly fine to me, I’d have no problem riding there. The rider recording made some questionable things like riding on the sidewalk or overtaking cars waiting in line under traffic lights from the left side.
Wanna ride safely? Be predictable and obey the same traffic rules you do while driving a car.
How is that even a question, honest?
I have found problem with bicycle lanes is on street parking. People think parking in right-of-way is public right and removing for bikes is opposed until council back pedals. With no protection biking is limited for all ages and abilities.