We have this same nonsense here. To make our roads more “bike friendly,” they are taking lanes out and turning them into protected bike lanes. The resulting congestion is a monstrosity, and these lanes are only used by a handful of bicyclists, many of whom are also our “homeless” populations (who in addition to bikes wheel their shopping carts down the bike lanes).
I get impacted by two of these going to and from work every day. I know exactly how much this affects me, despite various traffic studies by the city claiming there will be no adverse effects. My car keeps track of my miles per gallon. Before the bike lanes my mileage was consistently 28.6 mpg. Now it’s down to 24.4 mpg. That’s an almost 15% loss of efficiency and increased gasoline consumption for ONE car. Now multiply that by thousands of cars that are similarly affected and the fumes they belch as they crawl along, and you will quickly see that this supposed improvement to our environment by putting in bike lanes is totally bogus.
Add on to this a huge increase in road rage and unsafe driving as cars try to maneuver in clogged, too-narrow lanes. It’s actually scary a bunch of the time. Recently we were caught in a clog, and a car behind us frustrated by this decided to pull out and go the wrong way down the other side of the street and then pull a left turn across the red light to another street. It managed to sideswipe us in the process and we had to then get our car repaired at the cost of couple thousand dollars of body work.
“these lanes are only used by a handful of bicyclists, many of whom are also our “homeless” populations (who in addition to bikes wheel their shopping carts down the bike lanes)”
Those people are “pioneers” of the brave, new lifestyle that progressives have planned for you and I. Welcome back to the dark ages, except you won’t have draft animals to pull your cart so you better get used to pulling it yourself.