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In my area, bike lanes are a joke. Regularly on the single lane of a two lane road, no shoulder to speak of, and where traffic speed is set (for cars obviously) at 35-40 mph and in some cases curvy roads at that. You’d have to have a death wish to even think about using “bike lanes” like that. And to be honest, I think bike lanes and traffic don’t mix simply because of the speed differential involved. A fast biker can ride at 10-15 mph. A slow car riding the breaks goes 20-25. There’s just no way you can have a roadway set up for both without a physical Barrier to protect bikers from traffic. If we were taking about building bike lanes away from cars — dedicated lanes where there’s no roads connected to it, I think the perception would be better. As it stands, from the POV of car drivers, bikers are basically a road hazard to them — they have to brake hard suddenly with cars behind them going 40 mph putting them at substantial risk of being in a wreck themselves for trying to not hit a biker in the road. It simply doesn’t work from a design standpoint to try to fit a vehicle that moves less than 20 mph into a space where other vehicles are going anywhere from 30-60 mph.
And the barriers don’t seem to happen mostly from a money standpoint. The barriers cost money, then you need more money to redesign intersections to accommodate your barriers and bike lanes, you need better traffic control. None of that is cheap. To do bike paths alongside the actual road with protective barriers, updated traffic control, signage and parking costs millions and the majority of road users will never get use from it.
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