In the US, we don't have a plan to reduce traffic speeds. So far from making things safer, our push to install bicycle infrastructure will result in more casualties.

I was a "vehicular cyclist" living in Boston and commuting by bike for about 6 years, then I moved to NYC 6 years ago during this incredible bike and bike infrastructure boom. It took me a long time to appreciate bike lanes. Like many "vehicular cyclists" I thought bike lanes were death traps, convincing cyclists they were safe but setting them up for crashes. Many bike lanes were striped in the door zone. Any experienced cyclist can see that 'contra flow' bike paths contradict motorists expectations and present problems. Certainly the issue of the right hook is a problem in the 'parked car protected' bike lanes like Kinzie.

HOWEVER. After a number of years with these various NYC attempts at bike improvements, I think we are learning and making it better for cyclists.  There are problems, but the most incredible thing is that it seems every time we install a new piece of infrastructure, more people are inspired to cycle. And as we learn what cyclists need, these treatments are improving. I would recommend anyone check out Allen St in the Lower East Side of Manhattan for what might be the best cycling infrastructure on a roadway in the US.

My point is that some bike infrastructure may be hazardous to start, but the increase it brings in the number of cyclists improves everyone's safety, and the more cyclists we have the more and better infrastructure we get and this will eventually make cycling safe for everyone.

You are cherry-picking your studies. Most of the recent research on protected bike lanes such as in Montreal, NYC, and Copenhagen shows that protected bike lanes mean fewer crashes and fewer injuries for cyclists, and at the very least that they don't make any difference in risk but that they get many more people using the bike route. The health benefits of cycling outweigh the risks at any rate. It's a bonus that cycle tracks appear to be safer than a similar road with no cycling facility. If you look on wikipedia you can see that there is plenty of research that supports cycle tracks: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Segregated_cycle_facilities

You said: "You don't know that they're safer, and the studies show that they are not. To simply assume and insist that they are safer when no study has been done to prove your point is to fall into the same uncritical thinking that supports these death traps."

I'm not sure why people should take you at your word. You don't make any claim in the comments that you're an expert in such matters and that you can point to a comprehensive survey of the studies to prove your point.

I'm a CAN-Bike Instructor (Canadian cycling safety course) in Toronto but I believe a lot more in providing some cycling skills to people rather than try to get their buy-in to the "vehicular cycling" dogma. I don't think it's a coincidence that the hotbed for vehicular cycling right now seems to be southern Florida with the "CyclingSavvy" folks. Very few people bike in Florida, they have virtually no cycling infrastructure, no political power to put in cycling infrastructure and have a fairly high fatality/injury rate given the cycling population compared to places like Toronto. I was told this by a visiting CyclingSavvy instructor. Their education program seriously drifts into hard-line dogma, giving me the impression that such dogma is much more likely to be borne where almost no one bikes.

Most cyclists in major North American cities want bike lanes now and are smart enough to know that some measure of skills comes along with it. But that is a far cry from "vehicular cycling". Likewise, there is no sign of a counter-revolution in the Netherlands and Denmark against all their protected bike lanes.

Regarding vehicular cycling, I'm actually the same age as Ian, and as a result this has been the way I've been forced to ride due to lack of suitable infrastructure until recently.  To me there's nothing sacrosanct about vehicular cycling.  It just represented a practical way to deal with a problem for which governments were unwilling to spend any money on until very recently.  I for one would welcome cycling infrastructure which lets me ride free from the stress of constantly dealing with multi-ton vehicles.  The fact that I'm fairly competent at it after 33 years is irrelevant. I'd just as soon not have to deal with it any more-at all.  For that to happen though, we need to do better than protected bike lanes, which at best are a halfway house. 

I looked up the paper by Agerholm, and found that it does not support your "death trap" claim AT ALL.

First of all, they found a NON-statistically-significant increase of 14% in injuries (21% for cyclists). They didn't look at fatalities, (evidently because it would be hopeless to try to obtain statistically significant results from fatalities as the numbers are too small). 

Second, the Danish cycle paths have a different design and allow mopeds, which were the only type of road user that had a "nearly significant" increase in injuries (the conclusion, if you ask me, is that mopeds on bike paths are a bad idea). I'm not convinced that the results are applicable to the bike paths in NYC and Chicago.

Third, I find the way in which the authors estimate the "expected" number of accidents highly questionable. They compare with a "control road" that didn't have a bike path added, and assume that the road that got the bike path should change its accident rate to the same extent as the control road. That is, as if the introduction of the bike path had no influence in the number and kinds of road users. In fact, what was observed is that the number of accidents decreased slightly when the bike paths were introduced, but not as much as it decreased on the reference roads.

To give a concrete example, imagine that, in NYC, we put a bike path on 1st Ave but not on 3rd Ave, and we used the latter as our "control road". After a few years, we find that the number of bike accidents on 3rd Ave. decreased 30%, while on 1st Ave it decreased only 5%. The Danish authors would treat this as a "35% increase", obtained by dividing the new rate for 1st Ave by an "expected rate" that is 30% smaller than the rate before adding the bike path. But it could very well be that bike traffic on 3rd Ave decreased 30%, while on 1st Ave it increased 100%! (taking not only some 3rd Ave users who decided to make a detour to use the bike path, but also new users that decided to bike only because the bike path became available.) This would mean that the actual per-user rate stayed constant on 3rd Ave but decreased by more than 50% on 1st Ave.

I haven't looked at the other studies you cite, but given what I saw here I wouldn't be surprised if you weren't also misrepresenting their results, or their applicability to the situation in NYC or Chicago, or the studies themselves had questionable methodologies too.

http://hembrow.blogspot.com/2011/02/all-those-myths-and-excuses-in-one-post.html

You can thank me  later!

We have a similar road treatment in my area and the plows just use the side lanes as places to put the snow in the winter. So it makes it worst for us as the lanes are unusable for bicycling when it snows and what's left of the road lane is too narrow to share. So in winter they make a road that would have been sharable unusable.

I think it IS possible to make non-vehicular bicyclists feel safer and also to be safer. Unfortunately, it would be expensive to do it right and it also involves things like the strict enforcement of vehicle speed laws, the addition at intersections of new lights and light phases that would slow everybody down, and so on. But I'm not against that if we can get the political will to do so.

But defending any and all infrastructure, even if it is obviously designed with no consideration to safety, strikes me as an odd form of advocacy.

It would be far better for everyone if bicycle advocates became CYCLIST advocates and looked out for the welfare of cyclists rather than the welfare of bicycle manufacturers. Bums on saddles sells bikes - it doesn't keep cyclists safe. Maybe if bike advocates spent their time educating people about the real dangers caused by traffic fear and about the real safety of cycling legally and confidently in the road, instead of lobbying to get ribbons of concrete poured alongside roads, streams and railways, fewer cyclists would get killed and injured

By the way, I'm 49. I don't become 50-something until next June. Yes, many cyclists who are unafraid of traffic are older, but that doesn't mean they're wrong. People my age and older grew up in an environment in which road cycling was encouraged by a government and a society which knew where the real risks were. That knowledge got lost somewhere along the way. Hopefully, we'll find it again. In the meantime, cyclists who shouldn't die will die. I don't like that and I won't be silent while it's happening.

Heck, I'm not even against bike infrastructure if it's done right. The problem is, it's never done right. Protected bike paths would be a great idea if they had underpasses at intersections which would prevent intersection conflicts (which are the cause of the vast majority of bicycle-car collisions). But they never do, because underpasses are expensive.

Here's an idea: You and your small, exclusive, bearded, male, 50-something-year-old clan of vehicular cyclists from the 1980s can still bike all over Chicago in the middle of the roadway with the cars. There's nothing stopping you fellows from doing that. There are still TENS THOUSANDS of miles of un-protected motor vehicle travel lanes for your vehicular biking pleasure. No one is going to take that away from you any time soon.

Apparently, you have not noticed that there is a huge number of your fellow citizens who have never felt comfortable biking in car lanes with cars. Many of these citizens would very much like to try biking on Chicago streets. We would like to join other world cities in biking with our children, our groceries and our elderly friends in safe, protected bike lanes. We see these kinds of bike lanes making streets safer and more pedestrian and bike-friendly all over the world. We want to try this in Chicago now in a few spots.

So, please, while we try out this new idea, do us a favor and mind your own business. Protected bike lanes are working very well to make streets safer in NYC, Washington D.C., London, Paris and many other cities around the world. I live in Boston and you vehicular cyclists have done ENORMOUS damage here in holding back this city's infrastructure and insuring that our city is far less bike-friendly than it has to be.

See, Ian. You are one kind of cyclist. You are not every kind of cyclist. Not everyone rides a bike like a 50-year-old bearded man. The way that you want streets to work is not necessarily best for the majority of your potential fellow cyclists.

like Ian, with many bikes owned and many miles of riding (although I own motor vehicles too and hold a commercial driver's license with endorsements), my only "close calls" on a bicycle were on cycle tracks or riding to the far right of the roadway.  The further to the left I ride, the fewer "close passes" vehicles make and the earlier motorists move over into another lane to pass me.  The more that I drive my bike like any other vehicle, the more civility I experience from other drivers.

It is correct that ignorant people choose cyclist inferiority methods of commuting by bike.  Although ignorance is a curable condition, instead it is the exalted status of victimhood (WATCH OUT FOR US!!!) that our bike lobby seeks on behalf of tomorrow's teeming masses of "miceaclists".  Our current national policy is to promote cyclist inferiority riding in keeping with the "leading brand" of "bike advocacy" - as opposed to the "better brand", which promotes cyclist equality and real safety over "feeling comfortable' and "butts on bikes" numbers.

The USA has much bigger distances, population, and cultural obstacles to conquer than Europe when it comes to transportation bicycling challenges. Playing "catch-up" with Europe (where bike facilities are already being out-grown!) is a terrible idea! We need new and better solutions that empower cyclists and make bicycle transportation highly efficient, safe, and practical. Here is a proposed road "treatment" - Treat the road like you have a right to use it, because YOU DO! 

OCCUPY THE LANE!  EDUCATE! 

Just examine the facts on the NYC DOT on before and after stats on all of their projects. CASE CLOSED! reductions on all of these streets in deaths and injuries for bikes, peds, AND motorists and a safer cycling environment. Those are FACTS and these paths have increased cycling and people who want to. Really you need to do some research. I'm so happy the Vehicular Cycling crowd's narrow views on cycling no longer are the mainstream or we would still have only small handfuls of cyclists in cities

What are your qualifications? Ever taken a cycling course? How much mileage and years of cycling do you have under your belt? Do you have a clue?

Segregated infrastructure is a death trap. It sends people into intersections with no visibility and at a severe risk of being hit. You cycle on these things if you want, but if you get hit, don't come crying to me, because I've warned you. Ignore the warnings at your peril.

You don't know that they're safer, and the studies show that they are not. To simply assume and insist that they are safer when no study has been done to prove your point is to fall into the same uncritical thinking that supports these death traps. And to suggest that I'm not being truthful when the studies so clearly support my argument is disingenuous.

We need facts, not hope and blind acceptance of the most optimistic view. Hope and acceptance of bad design, in cases like these, kills. You can ignore the facts all you like, you can close your ears to the truth, but the studies do not lie. All your insistence that things are better only serves to injure and kill more cyclists.

I don't even really know how to respond to your statement about 'bicyclists potentially sacrificing themselves for my goal.' You make it sound as if I'm the culprit for the demise of people who have lost, and continue to lose, their lives in traffic accidents due to poor traffic planning, or that I have some malicious idea that will kill people unnecessarily.  People are 'unknowingly sacrificing their lives' in auto accidents everyday because our urban planning is in general very poor and our streets are dominated by too many metal boxes.  

I don't have numbers to post right now about cycling safety stats, but you can't just take percentages for face value without looking at other variables.  Maybe some of our roads without any infrastructure aren't statistically more dangerous because the few cycling on them are experienced.  And if nobody is cycling on them then potential fatalities for cyclists is going to be 0%.  I like that percentage as it means no cyclists are dying.  But that doesn't help with making our cities more livable or easing congestion if nobody is cycling. 

Is it possible for DOT to make the wrong decisions, certainly.  I would like to see more separated infrastructure like those in Holland, which are statistically and subjectively safe.  We probably aren't going to see anything like that anytime soon, unfortunately.  Only time will tell how this new lane in Chicago will hold out.  The alternative is to keep the status quo of car-centric planning, forcing most people to drive everywhere.  And then we're probably unfortunately not going to ever see less-than 30,000 + auto traffic-related fatalities each year in the US.   

What are you talking about?  Do you own a bicycle?  Have you ridden these lanes?  Get a clue.

Although there are obviously some improvements that could be made in a perfect world to many of the US style adaptions of the European protected cycletrack the absolute truth is these roads are so much safer than they used to be and to suggest otherwise is not being truthful, and it dilutes the effectiveness of anything you are trying to say.

In NYC we have had the same designs in effect for over three years now and there has not been one fatality in the lanes, ridership has doubled in 4 years, and the streets are safer for every mode of travel.