Bike Lanes in Lancaster: Some Thoughts

I'm planning on racing with this
thing in April, look out for that.

Last month I decided to buy a pretty nice road bike off Facebook Marketplace. It's a Trek Domane 2, and it came with front and rear lights, a seat post bag, along with a few other extras, and for an entry level road bike it is a hell of a get. Although I already had a bike-- an REI branded mountain bike outfitted with a rack and panniers that I love dearly-- I wanted something a little lighter and faster, so now I have the bike I can take to the grocery store and one I can take to charity rides and use as an excuse to wear Lycra shorts and wraparound sunglasses. 

I still go running more than I go cycling, though, and part of that is because of where I live. The first time I took my REI mountain bike for a spin I hit a pothole in the bike lane and scraped my leg pretty badly (I finished that damn ride, even though the tumble took off some of my tattoo). Often, when driving to work, I see people using the bike lane as their own personal expressway, which doesn't offer much confidence when it's my fleshy body and 20 pounds of aluminum versus a half-ton of Nissan Maxima with a driver on their cell phone going 65 miles per hour. Running isn't much better since I've nearly been splatted by drivers who forget pedestrians get the right of way, but at least I'm not going as fast as I would be on a bike and I'm able to stop a lot faster. 

I was thinking about all this because of a post on Facebook I saw from the mayor talking about the benefits of bike lanes, with a link to a Fast Company article that-- hilariously-- can't be found. 

"I am normal and can be trusted with
running a city of 174,000 people."

He talked about how, while traffic might be a little slower, bike lanes are important from a safety standpoint, then offered no elaboration as to how they make roads safer. Granted, I'm just some guy who uses bike lanes and sidewalks throughout the city, but I think he's half right in this case. 

The BLVD, the downtown area of Lancaster, California, is his pride and joy, and is an attempt in urban design that almost works. It offers walkable shops and restaurants, a farmers market every Thursday during the warmer months, mixed use buildings with upper floor apartments and lower floor store fronts, and-- most importantly for the purposes of this post-- mixed use streets for bikes and cars. The infrastructure for being less car-centered is cool in theory, but it's only a quarter mile strip of street in the city, and car parking takes up a lot of space in that quarter mile.  

Essentially, my point is this: R. Rex Parris is almost right. Bike lanes, and by extension pedestrian-friendly infrastructure, is good for public safety, but primarily because it reduces the likelihood of being in a car accident. Fewer cars means fewer accidents, and fewer accidents means fewer injuries and deaths as a result of driving. However, the east side of the city-- the poorer side, where I live-- is in desperate need of infrastructure repair. Sure, I can ride my bike to Aldi pretty easily if I need some milk and whatever insane limited-run shit they have (I really hope they re-release the Aldi branded shoes), but the bike lanes shoulder up to car traffic going a mile a minute, and the state of the pavement makes for a rough ride whether you're on a bike or in a car. Riding a bike to The BLVD is doable from the east side, but is often a hair-raising experience. 

Having goods and services accessible without the need of a car would do a lot for the well-being of the community, which means more mixed-use neighborhoods, pedestrian-friendly infrastructure like protected bike lanes and sidewalks with actual shade during the triple-digit heat of the summer, fixing rutted and potholed streets beyond the gentrified strip in the center, and incentivizing biking, walking, and public transit in general. It's a lot to ask of a city built up by suburban sprawl but, if the mayor wants to talk about bike lanes and safety, he should consider making the streets actually safe to use. 

I know the city has a lot of issues to address, but hopefully infrastructure improves so bike lanes can actually make things safer.