A New Protected Bike Lane, and A New Start?

The city next to mine has a protected bike lane, finally. (My city still doesn’t.) The bollard-protected lane is short, however, and immediately dumps you into a non-protected lane and then into a general traffic lane marked with a useless sharrow. But it’s a start, I guess. That’s what we always say. That’s what we’ve been saying for years, since the 1970s, in fact, when people in the Netherlands revolted and insisted on the re-engineering of their entire country to be safe for people — and the USA didn’t.

I discovered the protected bike lane last weekend when my mother was in the hospital and I was staying with her, my folding bike in the trunk of my car for running errands and retaining my sanity. Today seven people in North Carolina are in a different hospital — another (exactly my age) is dead — after a drunken man in a car barrelled into them while they were legally riding their bikes this past Saturday morning. People in the comments on social media are saying the usual disgusting things we’ve come to expect here in America about fellow human beings riding bicycles.

I do continue to have hope, especially now, especially after America has voted to stop living in hate and fear. And yet, every one of us on a bike knows the hate is still out there, and that there is reason to fear. It’s sad. I’m sad. The ironic part? My bike rides make me feel better.