Cycle Lanes
Created | Updated Jan 28, 2002
One of the great mysteries of public transportation. Not a footpath and certainly not a road. Somebody woke up sweating in the middle of the night with the idea of roads for cyclists. Depending on the kind of town you live in, you may get loads of these things, or the poor cyclist may be left to battle it out with forty tonne monsters on the Queen's Highway. The cycle lane may be a specially constructed mini-roadway with traffic lights and nice expensive gentle kerbs, or the result of one drunken night with the council's line-marking machine.
The end product, however, is always the same. The cycle lane is always the one that the drunks smash their empty bottles of Pils onto on a Friday night. The cycle lane is also the convenient area which any utility company will dig up to lay pipes and cables before resurfacing with a mixture of boulders and six inch nails. It is also the unofficial car park in any residential area.
Where cycle paths and roads meet, there is always a certain amount of confusion as the two mediums fight for supremacy. The car always wins, and many cyclist have the bruises and lacerations to prove it. Anything to keep the maniacs on four wheels from crushing cyclists to a pulp. And anything to keep the two-wheeled lunatics from scratching up your precious car's paintwork.
The end product, however, is always the same. The cycle lane is always the one that the drunks smash their empty bottles of Pils onto on a Friday night. The cycle lane is also the convenient area which any utility company will dig up to lay pipes and cables before resurfacing with a mixture of boulders and six inch nails. It is also the unofficial car park in any residential area.
Where cycle paths and roads meet, there is always a certain amount of confusion as the two mediums fight for supremacy. The car always wins, and many cyclist have the bruises and lacerations to prove it. Anything to keep the maniacs on four wheels from crushing cyclists to a pulp. And anything to keep the two-wheeled lunatics from scratching up your precious car's paintwork.
