A Bethesda man wrote to the Post in 1990 to complain about the lack of bike lanes - and of bus exhaust. He openly coveted the 4-foot wide bike lanes he saw in Madison, WI.
I have recently purchased a rather expensive bicycle, which I can not ride for two reasons.
First: no bicycle lanes. Have you ever tried to ride a bicycle down Connecticut Avenue? Not unless you are crazy. I recently visited Madison, Wis., and discovered the urban bike lane. It is a narrow (about four feet wide) lane next to the curb specifically for bikes. It allows one to commute on one's bike and reduce traffic.
Second (and not so easy to solve): bus exhaust. I know mass transit is supposed to cut down on pollution, but when I ride behind a Metrobus I don't see how it does it. Isn't a bus the perfect vehicle to electrify?
How happy he would be now. Some of our bike lanes are even wider than four feet! And buses now put out much less exhaust.
There also weren't always bike helmet laws. Howard County had the first one in the area in the same year. So yeah, we had helmet laws before we had bike lanes.
This part is just for JimT
a council majority ultimately was moved by statistics that showed 75 percent of all bicycle-related deaths are caused by head trauma and that 85 percent of cycling head injuries could be prevented with helmet use.
Statistics also show that helmets prevent 85% of arm injuries*. Go figure.
*Statistics may not actually show this, but they probably could be made to.
Posted by: DE | October 13, 2015 at 08:21 AM