South Texas doesn't much care for cyclists. Down here, you are expected to have a motor vehicle, even if it's one of those weenie little compact cars. The majority drive SUVs & trucks.This may explain why we have so few designated bike lanes (I can think of only four streets off the top of my head: Holly, Kostoryz, Ennis Joslin and Ocean Dr.). What's maddening about these bike lanes is the varying sizes of the lanes (and the fact that they occasionally disappear altogether).
On my morning commute, I head a couple miles down a street with no bike lane to Ocean. At Ocean, the bike lane is EXTREMELY small--barely wider than my handlebars. It widens and narrows along the route, and by the time I hit Cole Park it's big enough to park an SUV in (because people park SUVs in it, of course). Cole Park is also where it disappears, so the rest of the ride is done in the street.
On my ride home, I'm largely on streets without bike lanes (though on-street parking lanes are sometimes present, and a nice buffer unless I have to go around a parked car
) until I hit Holly. Holly is another road where it widens and narrows at random before disappearing at Staples and picking up again after the intersection--not the greatest situation.
) until I hit Holly. Holly is another road where it widens and narrows at random before disappearing at Staples and picking up again after the intersection--not the greatest situation. The narrowness of the lanes in some spots is more than a little ridiculous--at Weber I was stuck awkwardly between the right turn lane and the traffic at the light. The first truck at said light had a side mirror that jutted out so far it actually blocked the bike lane; had I pulled up next to him it would've smacked me in the head when the light changed.
The problem, I think, is that the city never considered bike lanes until 2005, at which point they decided that any street being resurfaced or widened (Ennis Joslin, Kostoryz, and Holly so far) needed to include a bike lane. So they aren't really widening the street at all, just giving cyclists whatever's leftover after shaving a little bit off of the rest of the lanes. Not an ideal situation, but it's better than nothing!
The problem, I think, is that the city never considered bike lanes until 2005, at which point they decided that any street being resurfaced or widened (Ennis Joslin, Kostoryz, and Holly so far) needed to include a bike lane. So they aren't really widening the street at all, just giving cyclists whatever's leftover after shaving a little bit off of the rest of the lanes. Not an ideal situation, but it's better than nothing!
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