Cycling commissioners say painted bike lanes don’t make cyclists feel safer
Painted bicycle lanes are actually dangerous in my opinion. I cycle almost every day in London for now about 6 years. I avoid streets with painted cycle paths if I can (and take parallel side roads instead).<p>The way I see it, painted cycle lanes makes cyclists feel secure, but does not create much awareness by motorists. They are mainly used on roads with a lot of traffic. Because they are painted they have sometimes hazardous layouts crisscrossing mainlanes (to turn right). The blue ones can be very slippery when wet. I really don&#x27;t trust them when it is wet.<p>Having a curb between the road and the cycle lanes, or elevating the cycle lanes on the level of the sidewalks is much saver for cyclists, because motorists can literally not cross over them. It also forces the planners to do a good job when designing junctions. For elevated cycle lanes though, paint can help rasing the awareness of pedestrians who often got in the habit of crossing anything without looking.<p>What TfL needs is having their planners cycle to work, and to generally rethink their approach to pedestrians and cyclists. The fact that most pedestrian traffic light are often showing red even if no traffic is routed through them and the fact that many junctions with traffic lights for cars (even big ones) do not have pedestrian traffic lights, reeducates everyone not to care about the lights and just walk into the traffic. This is almost as much a hazard to everyone as cars (on smaller roads.with speed bumps anyway), as pedestrians can cross without warning. If this happens this obviously creates the risk of a cyclist (cycling on the far outside of the road to avoid cars) either swerving into traffic or taking a pedestrian out.