So I was driving around the other day and wondered why cities and municipalities do not build more legit bike paths? I'm not talking about sidewalks here but real paths that might actually compete with roads. They'd be about 4 feet wide with smooth gravel and cut through areas so you don't just have to follow a road. In the NorthEast they wouldn't be usable for the entire year but really only 3 months might be out of the question.

I've heard that some cities (maybe portland) have a lot of these. I think they'd work very well. Around here the population expansion is growing faster than the old farm roads are able to keep up. I'd gladly hop on a bike and rid even up to 5 miles to get downtown to a restaurant or shop. Seems like a simple solution to avoid those two or three 1-5 mile car trips I take every day.

I think that's a great idea. The reason I don't hope on a bike more often is I don't like being in the road blocking traffic, but if I had a separate lane I'd do more on my bike.

Yeah the roads around here are far too narrow for me to ride me bike from one development to the other or even downtown. If I had my own space I'd ride far more often. I don't even own a bike now.

I think it's hard to have decent bike paths unless the city is still in the planning stages of an area of development. So most older cities having paths is kinda difficult. From what i have seen in other cities, the bike paths usually seem to usually be in green areas or parks. I wish they had that around here. I'm tired of having to choose between biking on the sidewalk and dodging pedestrians, or biking on the road and having to worry about asshole drivers who don't pay attention.

This gets me thining of the bus system in Ottawa. I was there a few weeks ago and really impressed with how well it worked. They don't have a subway but the buses actually have their own roads/lanes/tunnels that cars can't even access and it works almost like a subway system in places.

I'm not sure if bike paths would work where I live...we have twisty cow path roads, especially in boston where people ride their bikes to work.

we have some bike lanes in cambridge, but I am so seriously nervous when there are any bikes on those paths...the potential for a life ending accident is so huge because of the nature of our streets.

One reason I love Boise is that it's one of the most bike-friendly cities in the nation. I'd even venture it's better than Portland (which is also very good, as well).

http://www.compassidaho.org/maps/bikemap.pdf

http://www.trans.ci.portland.or.us/Bicy ... pFinal.gif

a lot of the cities here in oregon are very bike friendly. Portland, eugene, medford, ashland.

it is nice, but here it seems to be either too hot or too rainy to use them much. Plus, they end up being a great spot for homeless camps, which in the most part doesn't bother me much, becuase they are tucked away and not visible from anywhere, but then a 15 yo girl got raped here at like 7pm on a saturday a few months back by some of them, so now I feel all sketchy using them solo.

C

There are shitload of bike paths near where I live, and nobody ever fucking uses them. The damn bikers insist on riding in the streets when there's a perfectly good bike path no more than 6 feet away.

It annoys me to no end.

I hate when there is a sidewalk on one side of the street and people walk in the street on the other side instead of crossing and using the sidewalk.

I just hit them with my car.

On topic: bike paths are good. Or, just widen the pavement and make space for bikes on the side.

You know damn well this is a lie, Tubbie.

I glanced over some article the other day about Toronto and how they are taking an old railway line or something and gonna turn it into a bike path that will cut times for poeple biking downtown in half because they wont have to stop at any lights or soemthing. classy

I don't understand why areas can't make paths with relative ease. Hell we pay millions to expand our roads, why can't we put in some bike paths? We're not talking nearly as much space as roads.

They're making paths out of old railroads here as well but more often than not the rail lines don't really lead to anything.

Perhaps in the future these paths could be used for small transportation devices such as the Segway. It just seems that with expanding suburban sprawl it might be better to add a network of bike paths than expand roads. Once I get home from work my travels usually encompass the same 5 miles.

We just did a bike path and hard path construction for some open space/trails in the City of Westminster here in Colorado. Its about $4.50/lineal foot for crusher fines (doesn't include compaction costs). So a 4' wide, 1 mile trail would cost appox. $25,000-$30,000 which doesn't include the cost for the land itself. Compared to road construction these costs for trails are rather cheap, but you can see a 5 mile trail adds up to alot of money for smaller townships and municipalities.

The reason some cities are using old railroad trails is the right-of-way can be transfered to a community for $1.00 and there are some state fundings for the rails to trails program in PA.

Zut, any idea how much it costs to add a few feet on the side of an existing road for bikes? Or to a road that's being constructed?

For a 4' wide, 1 mile long bike lane (one side of the road only) for new construction would be approx. here in Colorado would be about $55,000. For an existing road it maybe slightly more expensive. Again this doesn't include any land costs, only construction costs.

For approximation, you could say a crusher fines bike path would be about $5.00/lf and a hard surface bike path on a roadway would be about $10-11/lf.

I can answer this a bit, though Zut will expound more than I can, probably.

The most simple way to do it is to eliminate or reduce existing street parking. It's been done on a few roads here.

As far as the cost goes to acquire land, it could vary widely. For example, if a small strip of land is taken from the owner--even the 4-6 feet a bike path would entail, it could greatly affect his property. An example might be that an entire row of parking might have to be removed because there's not enough room.

damn that shit is expensive.

We have a beautiful bike path here Chicago along the lake parallel to Lake Shore Drive. The problem is, what started out as a bike path turned into a bike/rolling blading/foot path that is now so congested that it's downright dangerous to go anywhere near it, particularly in the summer.

Aren't bike paths on the side of the road usually smaller than that? The ones around here are only like 3 feet wide.

I just wanted to compare a 4' wide bike lane with a 4' wide bike lane for 1 mile in length. Anyway construction standards are different from city to city nevertheless state to state; so the pricing is just an approximation at best.