Yes, you and I are grinding away on the same sorts of things.
Those idiotic bicycle decals are all over down here now.
Bicycle lanes have been created numerous places, and frankly in some of them it gets down right confusing with all the scroll work on the roadway. The right turn access lanes have to compete with the bicycle lane markings, so those lanes are scrunched down as short as possible to accommodate the bikers. Even they must lose track of their safety zone in these messes.
Meanwhile the new electric street legal golf cart vehicles are relegated to side streets only because their top speed is 30 miles per hour. Never-mind that cyclists ride around at ten miles per hour or even less on the roadway weaving in and out of vehicle lanes.
The cost of these new marking must have been massive considering they had to do it all over. Streets were resurfaced to do it.
The biggest idiotic move I’ve see was one stretch of road in Eagle Rock. There was a three lane section of roadway for about three miles (on one side of the median). These three lanes were full certain of the day. Bicycles being so important an issue, they actually reduced one car lane to install the thin bike lane. As you state, you hardly every see a cyclist in the new lane.
Now cars are having to cram into only two lanes, so you can imagine the impact on traffic. While you’re sitting there in traffic, you can look out at the pristine bicycle path where the other auto lane used to be.
About twenty years ago now, they were going to install an auto lane on a stretch of roadway that feeds my street. I went to the city council and reminded them that street gets a lot of traffic, which is already backed up as it was with two lanes. I asked them to rethink it fast.
Luckily one of the city council members drove that street every day and agreed with me. They had already striped a block with the new one lane traffic, with a nice new bicycle lane replacing one vehicle lane. They had to go back, strip the new markings and return them to the old format.
These people will spend tens of millions (or more) at the drop of a hat. Some of it is just ridiculous in nature. It screws things up royally, in the process.
And of course it is taken out of our gas tax highway funds. So are mass transit buses, trains, rights of way... The list is long. I’ll bet the bullet train to nowhere taps the gas-tax highway fund significantly.
Makes my blood boil.
If you think that’s bad, look at Dublin, Ireland, where they are planning to turn the north quays of the Liffey River (mostly two lanes, eastbound direction) into a one-lane artery by turning the other lane into a bike lane. Dunno if common sense is going to hit at the last minute . . .
Now they're trying to "transform" our beloved nation into a mirror image of that Chi-Com morass in every way!!!
But even more than that, I despise the old-world europeein idea of "ROUND-A-BOUTS!" Then with trucks, cars, bicycles, stretch limos, artickulated busses, skate boarders, golf carts, ete., etc., etc… Well, we left the old country to start our new nation and we don't need kings, queens, parliments, round-a-bouts or none of them other worn out old concepts!!!
I noticed that the city of Placerville, CA has a ballot measure that intends to defeat the city planners and fathers/muthas plan to screw up the main street with round-a-bouts!!! I almost wish I had a home there so I could vote to stick it to that insane round-a-bout notion!!!