Many of our local roads have a feature that is so familiar that you might not even notice it. Share the road signs aren’t just a friendly reminder to traffic to be a little more careful; to me it’s a signal that the roads have been engineered with the community in mind, and that it’s a good place to have a run or a ride. Long stretches of the roads in our town feature these bike (and pedestrian, and dog) friendly lanes.
Consider the alternatives: sections of road, for example: all of East Road, and Route 77 from Four Cornersto Fish Road lack these lanes, and biking or running, or even getting the mail out of your mailbox on these stretches of road can be terrifying for both other users and drivers. It’s not safe to get the local Boy Scout troops out onto these roads to pick up the trash, and that’s a little sad. It’s certainly not very expensive to build or maintain these lanes when you compare them to sidewalks, or to a separate lane altogether like the bike paths you see in other parts of the state.
There are other benefits to bicycle lanes in addition to increased safety, the positive economic data is extensive. Usually opponents of bike lanes are in congested cities like Los Angeles or Cambridge for example. These are places where the bike lanes have to be built at the expense of traffic lanes, but
that’s not the case in our little town. It is usually shown that the presence
of these lanes in urban areas helps encourage people to bike to work, or use
public transportation, actually helping relieve congestion. I was thrilled to
see that the new Sakonnet Passage Bridge will have a bike lane. Since we have
no bus service in town, it will allow us Tiverton folks to bike across the
bridge to easily accessible bus stops in neighboring Portsmouth without having
to leave a car at the Park and Ride.
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There are groups that , and for the more substantial infrastructure that is required for bike paths, like the ones that have taken over many of the old unused railroad beds in our state. A quick search found http://southcountybikepath.org/ and http://www.rigreenways.org/.
To be honest, even though I’m a huge fan of the bike lanes where they can be
found in town, when I started to look at all the beautiful bike paths that seem
to be everywhere but here, I feel a little left out.
