Jim Kunstler, one of my
favorite authors and famous or his cranky social commentary, has a feature on his
website called Eyesore of the Month. Once a month, there's a new picture to illiustrate just exactly how screwed up our built environment is. There's been some great ones, which you can see by looking through the past months, but
April's hit home (home being Providence, of course).
That picture was taken in California, but you can find something very similar on Allens Ave in PVD. I wish I was home to take some shots to illustrate this, but you'll have to wait two more months. There's a "bike lane" on Allens Ave, and once it hits the 95 on-ramp, it becomes a sand and broken glass strewn lane of asphalt in the shoulder/breakdown lane of the 4 lane street. When they painted those biker symbols on there I wanted to grab the personified DOT and shake it: "white paint does not a bike lane make!"
In Montreal I saw the way bike lanes should be made if you really want people to
use them as transit alternatives. If you're serious about promoting biking over driving, which makes a lot of sense in urban areas, you need to do more than waste a couple thousand dollars on paint. You need to do something
like this. That little concrete curb means everything in making bikers of all ages and skill levels comfortable, especially given the
near homicidal mania that overtakes some people when they get behind the wheel. And you need to make people comfortable if you want to get them out of their cars and "light trucks."
Someone put me in charge of the Department of Transportation. And while you're at it, I'll take an unlimited budget. Then we'll get somewhere...