Since I moved to Syracuse 15 months ago, I’ve biked over 10,000 miles around the city, mostly delivering sandwiches for Jimmy John’s. As someone who no longer owns a car and who relies on riding a bike everyday in Syracuse to earn a living — I was ecstatic that the city had bicyclists’ wellbeing in mind.

However, there are sometimes unforeseen consequences that arise from well-intentioned plans.  There have been tons of complaints from motorists, but I am here voicing a concern from the perspective of an avid cyclist:

Prior to the re-design, the conventional four-lane road proved perfectly safe and suitable for both cars and bikes. Now, riding in the new bike lanes, I have experienced far more danger than ever; I have had vehicles driving directly at me inside the bike lane — terrifying! Of course, some of this can be attributed to its newness, while car users are still adjusting to having a two-lane road.

Even given the adjustment period, the re-designed traffic pattern still contains an inherent design flaw — the “floating park lane” — a row of stationary, parked cars, to buffer the faster-moving car traffic from the bicycle traffic. While this seems like a great idea on paper, there are some kinks to be worked out in reality.

I have recently had several near run-ins because of the “floating park lane”—coupled with the existence of multiple driveways along the new bike path. When cars decide to turn from Waverly into Bird Library (or, e.g., the Greek house next to it), they can’t see the whereabouts of bikers in the new lanes because parked cars are in the line of vision.  No pun intended, but this is a huge oversight.

It seems the new bike lane only provides a false sense of security, if cars are liable to suddenly intrude the lane with little visual warning.  This makes me not want to ride in the lanes at all — which kind of begs the question, why even have them?

I think a better and simpler solution would be to have integrated — not isolated — bike paths along such corridors as Waverly and Comstock.  Bikes would only be separated from traffic by a painted line and not a row of “floating parked cars” — but they would at least be visible to drivers.   Until then, if you see “the JJs guy” biking in the road and not in the lanes — you know why.

Charlie LaNoue

Published on November 20, 2014 at 12:01 am