The AP story "Two Indiana Deaths Worry Biking Advocates," which ran in the Times-Union on Monday, June 2, 2008, ends with a suggestion that bike lanes be painted on streets to make motorists more aware of bike riders. In my experience, bike lanes do the opposite.
I used to live near a place where a busy, narrow road with drop-offs on each edge intersected a road that quickly became a city street with a bike lane painted on it. When I rode down the narrow road, drivers would give me a wide berth - sometimes too wide. But once I got onto the street with the bike lane, the drivers would refuse to shift a single inch, and the last time I rode on that street, a car rapped my knuckles with a door handle. Thereafter, if I couldn't get there without using the bike lane, I didn't go.
Note that these were the same people who were too considerate on the other road - the drivers were "not" coming too close on purpose.
Drivers perceive bikes in a bike lane as being on a separate facility, and, therefore, not their responsibility. For this perception to be accurate, the cyclist would have to ride so far from the white line that he is safe from a driver who keeps his passenger-side tires on the line even when the vehicle has extended mirrors or protruding cargo.
The cyclist must also allow for the fact that neither cars nor bikes follow a dead-straight line accurate to the nearest millimeter. And he must keep well clear of the curb: If the front wheel of a bike strikes a ridge that is almost parallel to its path of travel, the ridge will steer the bike out from under the rider and cause a dramatic crash.
"Well clear of the curb" is a greater distance in a bike lane than in a shared lane, because the white line keeps cars out of the bike space when no bikes are using it. When cars never enter the bike space, the dirt that's swept out of the street into the bike lane stays there. Then the cyclist himself takes up about a yard of space. Add all these distances together, and you come pretty close to the width of a motor-vehicle lane. Bike lanes "that" wide are not going to happen.
