Phone booth?!
Well, that's what it looks like...
That isn't the only poor design. Right here in New Jersey, the town of Madison (spotlighted in Bicycling Magazine for its "bike town" project) put in bike lane markings on some streets as well as share the road signs (which unlike the lanes per se are probably useful, although how much so its impossible to say).
Unfortunately, when they installed the bike lanes they left in place on street parking and in-street leaf dumping. Smart.
This one is another example of "special" bike lane design. Presumably it's intended for "tree huggers" as it directs the riders, via painted arrow and clever placement, headfirst into an oak.
In Seattle, on Sept. 7, 2007, a cyclist Bryce Lewis was killed on the bike lane. He was goign straight and a dump truck turned right across his path, dragging the cyclist 25 feet to his death.
In New York, some bike lanes result in policemen hassling or giving tickets to cyclists who move out of the lane -- even when that lane sends them into the path of flinging car doors from parked vehicles, such as what killed a cyclist in NYC earlier in 2008. Lately the Bloomberg administration has been touting their building of new bike lanes as evidence that the administration cares about cycling safety. While lanes that add what is essentially a usable shoulder space to a road are useful, bike lanes filled with hazards, parked cars or trucks (common in NYC which doesn't appear to enforce it's ticketing policy for obstructing bicycle lanes) or lanes that are seperated physically from the street, turning them into sidepaths, are all unsafe and a detriment to the very cycling safety the Bloomberg administration is touting...
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