Check. That describes ours, as well. We even have center striping on them (dashed pretty much everywhere, I believe).Quote:
Originally Posted by dilettante
That may be it. We do have bike police patrols and volunteer patrols (not on bikes). The police patrols are quite rare, though, so I'm not sure that really does account for the difference. After all, I don't know of any rules they enforce aside from leash laws.Quote:
Because it become impossible to police this (imagine that every Joe Weeble started walking down paved streets one day) bike rotes were moved back into the road by restriping 4-lane roads into 3-car+1-bike lanes (center car lane for left turns only).
That's not the case out here, and perhaps that's the real difference. Our greenbelts are in places where people can't build due to it being a riparian flood zone. Despite the reservoirs upstream, almost every year sees parts of the greenbelt submerged as the dams release water to dig a big enough hole to handle the snowmelt. That's a fun little exercise to observe each year. They've got it dialed in pretty well. When the water managers start to freak out, then everybody should, and that's when it gets fun for those of us nowhere near the river.Quote:
Another wrinkle is that if by fiat those were declared to be sidewalks the cost of snow clearing and repairs all falls on the adjacent property owners. They've paid nothing directly for them ever unlike all other sidewalks. They also lose their primacy and become subject to crowding by trees, shrubs, utility pole guywires, crossing driveways, etc.
In places that more closely resemble what you described, we don't have bike routes, just sidewalks (standard width, or narrower, and uneven) and some bike lanes. So, the real difference might just be that for the most part, we didn't build bike paths like you have, and everybody is just on the roads. Where we do have paths, they really can't be seen as sidewalks.
