Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time

by Jeff Speck

The final question to ask is whether a bike lane is in keeping with the nature of the street. While carving bike lanes out of existing retail Main Streets can sometimes make sense, they should not be allowed to replace curbside parking, nor can they be allowed to create an impediment between cars and shops. For this reason, separated paths rarely belong in a retail environment. All those stripes and posts may send a message of sustainable transportation, but it is still a message of motion, not of the stasis appropriate to a Main Street. The design objective for this type of street should be to create an environment of such slow driving that bikes and cars can mix comfortably at biking speeds. The technical term for this sort of facility is a shared route, and the vast majority of bikeways must remain unmarked streets that belong to everyone. To use an extreme example, a residential cul-de-sac is no place for a bike lane. Only when car speeds get well into the thirties does the need for lanes kick in.