Oh joy, Lincoln's Downtown bike lanes are staying as they are.
The bike lanes are a reasonable idea in theory, but boy oh boy do I dislike how they've worked out in practice. For the most part they just don't feel like they belong. I suspect that's because they were painted onto existing streets, rather than the road surface, traffic signals, and so on being built with the bike lanes in mind. The result is a product that's close, but imperfect enough to feel uncomfortable. It's sort of the uncanny valley of traffic theory.
Personally my favorite bit of Downtown lane goofiness is outside the Zoo Bar at 14th and P. From west to east you've got: parking; car lane; bike lane; car lane; bus lane. That doesn't sound so bad, but in practice you'll see all kinds of zaniness. For example, folks who pull out of parking stalls often want to turn east onto P Street, so they back out of their spots at odd angles and work their way (illegally) across 14th to get to P. Or they don't want to pull into the nearest driving lane because it becomes left turn only on the other side of P Street so again, they wiggle across 14th so that they can go straight. Drivers in the left lane realize they don't want to turn left at Q Street so they cross the bike lane to the right lane. Drivers in the right lane realize they do want to turn left so they cross to the left lane. Or right lane drivers want to turn right onto P Street, but they get confused because what appears to be a right turn lane is actually a bus only lane. Some drivers use the bus lane as a right turn lane, others don't. The result is near-miss after near-miss as the legal and illegal drivers duke it out. And the buses ... they sometimes pull into the bus lane (blocking cars behind them who thought it was a right turn lane), sometimes they don't, and sometimes they fake out nearby drivers by pretending to do one or the other only to change their mind at the last second. When the buses are ready to proceed, they have to cross all lanes to get to the left so that they can turn onto Q Street.
And in the middle of all that? A poor little bike lane that itself is occasionally used by cars.
(Notice the white van illegally straddling the bike lane while waiting at the red light; and the white car illegally using the bus lane to turn right onto P Street.)
The one thing Downtown Lincoln's bike lanes do have going for them is confusion. Normally driver confusion is a bad thing, but on the plus side it does force drivers to pay attention. Well, in theory anyway. If drivers are confused about where they should be and where they should go, one hopes they'll look around and see that bicyclist they're about to run over in the next lane. In practice, confusion doesn't seem to slow down drivers as much as you might hope.
So what's the ultimate problem? Is it lane layout, like my gut tells me? The traffic engineers say it's good enough, so why does my gut disagree? Perhaps it's a matter of driver education. If that's the case, Lincoln's drivers have had years to figure it out. What's taking them so long? Maybe it's a signage problem.
In any event, we're going to have to keep dealing with many of these issues. Here's hoping somebody figures it all out.
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See what your friends and neighbors have to say about this.
I know they understandably make some people uncomfortable, but I have never had a problem cycling in the bike lanes.
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