I’m belatedly discovering Wharton’s belated response to my post stating that Greensboro city planners are shoving bike lanes and greenways down our throats.
Wharton writes:
I think Sam is mistaken about the origin of Greensboro’s very small number of bike lanes. The scuttlebutt I used to hear from city staff was that GDOT’s transportation head, Jim Westmoreland — himself an avid competitive cyclist — was opposed to bike lanes, because he believed that they don’t actually increase bike safety.
But GDOT held a number of public hearings when it started a review of its pedestrian transportation plans a couple of years ago, and the people who showed up at those meetings told GDOT very strongly that they wanted bike lanes……
I’m a lot more comfortable with the kind of public input and give-and-take that goes into our newer transportation guidelines. Besides, I like to drive, walk, and ride my bike safely. And I’ve noticed that the new bike lanes on Spring Garden St. get heavy use, which shows to me that there was pent-up demand for them.
Fair enough, Professor. But I do have one question regarding the pent-up demand for bike lanes. Is it possible that the bike lanes are accommodating bicycle traffic that would exist anyway, considering the fact that a good chunk of Spring Garden runs along UNCG?
