This new bike lane on Van Ness (You know, the Van Ness you never think about because it is not Old, Extended or Downtown) has everyone all messed up.
Admittedly it is some weird looking shit. It requires processing. And processing we are.
Maybe the best thread I saw about it came from a local musician’s on Facebook. We will call him T.
I always feel a little queasy pulling Facebook threads out here into the open part of the Internet so I won’t use any real names of people in these quotes but they are real and sum up the bike lane drama:
The fact that they took so many parking spaces away in front of people’s homes makes no sense at all. Besides passengers aren’t normally looking for bicyclist on their side if the car when they get out so there’s that hazard.
L
I don’t even want to know how much of our money they spent researching this lovely idea.
It’s a drunken stagger zone. For City liability insurance. Only intoxicated Fresnans work or travel through this area. It is known.
K
From what I’ve observed, almost no one is using this properly–almost everyone just parks their car against the gutter as they always did, totally blocking the new bike path. I wonder if they sent out a notice or anything.
N
Doesn’t make sense to me. I would rather not ride in a bike lane sharing the road with cars without any concrete divider. I do not trust drivers. I ride my bicycle on the sidewalk as long as there’s no pedestrians around.
D
It’s nuts! I wouldn’t park in those spaces! You might a well put a target on the back of your car! 2am catastrophe
F
Yes, this was a total fail. Half the parking is gone, and now the bike lane is useless because people are using it for parking. Here’s my proposal. Go back to curbside parking, and turn all that new parking weirdness into a big fat bike lane.
L
This is the lane in question:
When you go a little further up the road next to FCC, those college educated kids are having problems too:
It’s not ALL bad pedal press though:
I ride that route fairly regularly. It is an adjustment, but the idea is to separate bikes from moving traffic. And it reduces the chance that you ride into a quickly-opening door.
T
Ha ha! Tell me about it. Complete Streets are something that the org I work for espouses, but I don’t like them when I’m driving, huge hypocrite that I am. It makes sense to stop designing our transportation systems solely around making it easier for cars. Perhaps making the world safer for bikes will encourage more people to ride?
C
I don’t known that my opinion is valid since I only drive on there occasionally and can’t remember the last time I rode a bike through there.
But, I will still say, it feels like we are scared of this new thing. It will be confusing at first but we will get it. Some street has to be the street we learn on, might as well be regular old Van Ness.
I believe protected bike lanes are a build-it-and-they-will-come sorta thing, not a “Look at all these damn bikers, they need more lanes!!” kinda thing.
And one day it could be as pleasant as this (found on mmwpro63’s feed):
🚴🏻♂️🚴🚲✌️
Update #1: Good ol’ CMAC and the City Of Fresno teamed up to make a video of bike lane protection:
Update #2:
Thanks to Ed for the heads up on this thread and flyer:
Hopefully we will all keep trying to make Fresno safer and radder for biking around, even if it gets funky sometimes.
This is why I avoid the Fresno Facebook groups. So many bad carbrained opinions. Parking-protected bike lanes like this are completely normal in large cities but Fresno adds it on one of its thinnest streets and the locals’ heads start reeling.
The one about how this is bad because passengers aren’t used to looking for cyclists is particularly dumb. Drivers already don’t check for cyclists before opening their doors. The average car has just one person in it, so moving cyclists out of the path of driver doors greatly improves the odds of not smacking into one.
The FCC one is weird too. I agree that the parking protection design is dangerous…IF THE BIKE LANE IS FULL OF CARS. That’s why I prefer fully grade-separated bike lanes that are physically impossible to park in. Painted lanes like this require enforcement to be effective, and it’s going to take a major cultural shift at the FPD to get cops largely from rural farm town backgrounds start sympathizing with cyclists.
As for the complaints about losing a few street parking spots: I’m sorry you’ll have a bit less space to store your private property in a public right-of-way, but I think improved transit is a greater good to the city than car storage. Plus having a protected bike lane in front of your house is a nice little property value boost that taxpayers funded, so I think it’s fair to ask these people to walk a few extra feet to their car.
Good comments, Costard!
I definitely have sympathy for the businesses and people that live in the apartment buildings there. But I also believe we have made life too easy for cars and it is time to make things easier for bikes. So I am a little torn.