Lobby for bike lanes and you're lobbying to be marginalised and pushed off the road, writes Gordon Kanki Knight.
As a dedicated commuter cyclist, I feel like a minority of one when it comes to discussing our city planners' efforts to make Adelaide bicycle friendly.
In particular, I feel badgered to go along with the call for more bike lanes, but I refuse to give in to the hi-viz-jacket-wearing, pump-wielding mob.
Simply put, I hate bike lanes.
Not for the reasons that snarling, ham-thick-armed men in four-wheel drives hate bike lanes (and bikes), but because bike lanes are bad for cyclists.
Take the bog-standard roadside bike lane: a strip of white painted a few feet from the gutter. As if laid down by a bike hater, it shunts cyclists off to the side of the road to deal with the constantly stopping buses, pedestrians who think bike lanes are for standing in, illegally parked cars, roadside debris and drain grates.
Cyclists in a bike lane can't ensure they stay visible to traffic, nor can they prevent cars overtaking or turning left at an unsafe time.
