We don't need no steenkin BIKE LANES !

Here in rural country, often you see farm implements on the road. If possible, farmers know it's unwise to move these things during what passes for "high traffic" times, up here. Consider your neighbor, and all.

Mostly, it's Minnesota plates that think it's ok to do 65 on the back roads. Nope. It's 55. Folks with limited leisure times will ride you for doing the speed limit, and take the best opportunity to pass you. Ok -- go to it.

Smarter farmers will stick to the right as much as possible, riding the shoulder too, to allow cars to pass -- when safe -- on the left hand side. It's courtesy of the roads. If you are doing 20 in a 55, and you know you need to be passed on single-lane roads, you hug the right shoulder and allow vehicles to pass when safe.

In Madison, it looks like the idiots have the run of the day:

If you are a big-ego'ed biker, imagine the lift you must have when you realize, in a single-laned road, you can slow down everyone behind you by refusing to get to the right (you know, someone might open a parked car door on you) and allow them to safely pass. Why, you could easily tie everyone up for blocks, simply because you are a biker, and instead of employing common sense, you are intent on exercising your right as a "vehicle" entitled to your own rate of speed, with others behind you obligated to follow until it is safe to pass...

It's like driving a beater that can only do 10 or 20 mph, on a back road, and not getting over to allow others to pass, when you can.

I'm glad, have I said this before?, that I live in a place where you share roads more often with farmers than bikers.

Because, I fear, if she sticks to road riding instead of the designated bike paths that are paid for with state money and go to helping bike riders get where they are going safely, Althouse is finally going to get recorded that "fight" she and her new husband are so obviously begging spoiling for...

(That's an observation, btw, not a threat. You won't find me inching behind those bikers on Madison roads. Not when there are much better -- and healthier too, both in a safe way and a fresh-air way -- options upstate. That in-town coal plant always had me wondering, like I did watching all the skinny vegans sucking on their cigarettes...)

ps. What kind of a boy-man is retired in his 50s, and spends his days videorecording hippie protests hoping for a crowd reaction, and encouraging his ladylove to ride bikes on the roads where there is obviously traffic resentment? Keep this up, and we'll probably see professor-smear all over the roadway, and surely no one, even the Madison haters and the hype mongers, wants to see that?

ADDED:
Commonsense in the comments:

rhhardin said...
It's a misguided experiment, that will produce a strong bicyclists are assholes stereotype.

There's enough room for bikes and cars both without lane markings at all, if the bikes stay out of the way where it's obvious that they can.

I do 8,000 miles a year that way and it works fine.

and,
obviously: there's something political going on below the surface here -- hello Madison! -- other than just finding efficient modes of transport for all types of vehicles:

MadisonMan said...
When I'm biking on Kendall, if there's a car behind me, I yield. It's called being polite. I don't care if I have the right-of-way on that Bicycle Boulevard.

If I'm on the Bicycle Boulevard on the east side, however, I don't yield because people on the East side expect bikers to be inconsiderate SOBs and I don't want to disappoint.

and response:

Ann Althouse said...
MadisonMan, you're part of the problem! Kendall is for bikers. Car drivers who venture there will find themselves slowed down. It will not be a shortcut anymore.

It's kind of like, making certain roadways "off limits" for cars, but doing it in an underhanded way (Ride so slowly you inconvenience everybody but bikers and clunkers going waaaay under the posted speed limit.) instead of out-and-out advocating for more bike lanes (bikes only) that can exist side-by-side with marked out car lanes.

Sad, and will be deadly too, I predict...

One more comment:

Unless Madison is willing to invest quite a bit in a campaign to inform drivers of this oddity, I can't see how this won't cause far more trouble then its worth. The law may say one thing, but frankly, the law has limits. Legally, you may be able to take up that lane. But should you?

or two:

Please be careful. Having the right to obstruct traffic doesn't provide a magical force field to protect your back tire from a car's front bumper. Back home, the bikes-in-the-street movement has taken off over the last five years, and that's been followed by a marked increase in the number of memorials to mowed-down cyclists. Knowing you had the right of way is small comfort when you're, you know, dead.

UPDATE: Joe Soucheray of the Pioneer Press balked when this nonense came to St. Paul. He's right.

Traffic circles have already been rejected by residents along Jefferson and signs -- preciously called "sharrows" -- that were painted on Jefferson near Snelling Avenue were painted mistakenly and had to be painted over.

In other words, despite the best intentions of Transit for Livable Communities, the non-elected activists who got their mitts on a million dollars of federal money for the Jefferson Avenue project, Jefferson pretty much still looks like what it is supposed to be, a significant east-west artery for motorists.

But at least we now know the importance of that median. It's entirely symbolic. Without it, Jefferson remains exactly what it has always been: a serviceable avenue for our preferred mode of transportation. And there will still be bicyclists; they just won't have brass buttons.


...
Let me try to explain something, but probably to no avail. I have been an avid bicyclist and might be again, particularly as I shy away from motorcycling. I believe that bicycling is a great exercise.

But that's it. Winter? Forget about it. Bicycling is not our preferred mode of transportation. Yes, there are people who can commute to work on a bicycle, but their numbers are few. And there is no way Mom is going to get her five kids onto a bicycle and haul home school supplies from Target.

Now, TLC, which is in the so-called nonprofit business of compelling bicycle riding, might wish otherwise, but they are delusional. Why taxpayers should fund that delusion is where we find ourselves as these people can essentially dangle that million dollars in front of the city's public works department. The proposal goes before the city council Aug. 17. Every one of us can look around the city and find dozens of better uses for that million dollars.

or, Never Underestimate the Cost of a Pampered Ego.


ADDED: Here's a recent story, upstate, of a healthy man who lost his life ... riding his bike on an "empty" country lane.

He was clearly "in the right", but ended up dead nonetheless, as the bigger vehicle took no mercy and the biker was unable to practice defensive maneuvers, being as he was riding -- legally -- with his back to traffic.

Landgraf taught physical education for the Bloomer School District for 25 years, retiring in 2006. He stayed on as the head coach of the Blackhawks track and field team. In his 27 seasons as head coach, his teams won three Heart O' North Conference championships (1995, 2010 and 2011) and one Middle Border Conference championship (1992). He also coached the BHS cross-country ski team.

Landgraf was one of only three people to participate in every Birkebeiner and was one of the event's founders.

The Sawyer County Sheriff's Department received a report Friday at 6:50 p.m. about a bicyclist who was hit by a vehicle on STH 27 near Boylan Road, town of Sand Lake. The Stone Lake Ambulance was dispatched along with Sawyer County deputies. A helicopter was also dispatched to the scene.

According to the Sawyer County Sheriff's Department, Anna Amparo, 24, Hayward, was operating a blue Mitsubishi Galant southbound on STH 27. Amparo turned around in her seat to speak to her two children. When she turned back around to face forward, she struck Landgraf. Amparo attempted to swerve to avoid striking Landgraf, but she was unsuccessful. The impact threw Landgraf from his bike, and he landed in a ditch, sustaining life-threatening injuries.

Landgraf was transported to Hayward Area Memorial Hospital and then transported to St. Mary's Hospital in Duluth by helicopter.
Amparo and her children were not injured.

The crash scene was reconstructed by Wisconsin State Patrol. Citations have been issued to Amparo from the Sawyer County Sheriffs Office.

AND IN THE END ...
Clearly, it's not just an ego thang. It's an ego, AND a money thang!

Ann Althouse said...
"Really? Was Kendall paid for with gas tax money? If so, it's for cars, and everyone else is a guest who owes the owners, car drivers, the right of way. They paid for it, and they're paying for its upkeep."

I paid over $13,000 in property taxes last year. I don't want to hear about it.
and

MadisonMan said...
If so, it's for cars, and everyone else is a guest who owes the owners, car drivers,

I own a car. So I paid for Kendall. Behave on my property.

8/29/11 2:25 PM

8/29/11 2:18 PM

or,

Don't mind the stares.
We've PAID for these chairs...

And the right to slow down everybody behind us, because ... we can.

The Boomer's Final Rallying Call.