D: Father David Bauer Drive was repaved this summer.
Nominally it has a bike lane. Nominally...
The top pic is as a good stretch. While the sewer grate is best recessed out of the bike lane entirely at least it is flush with the road surface.
The bottom pic is all too common. This is the result when the sewer grate does not line up with the pavement level. Asphalt, I should say.
The soothing stretch becomes a very unpleasant ride.
On a no-suspension bike with high-pressure tire, I imagine very much so.
A car driver would complain if a section of road felt like it would knock your fillings out.
The lip on the extra asphalt is also in line with my tire path.
Meaning I get nervous that my tire might skip sideways on it.
After rain, huge puddles form around these elevated sewer grates in the bike lane.
Now not only will my feet get soaked, even with fenders.
But now I cannot see what I am riding on, making me doubly nervous.
A cyclist is left with 2 options:
1) ride on the sidewalk
2) periodically swerve into the car lane, unexpectedly at least from a driver's point of view.
This undoubtedly results in grumbling about 'why should we bother building bikes lanes if the cyclist won't use them anyway'.
A coworker that drives offered a similar opinion about the Westmount/Northfield bike lane. Since I ride it, I can testify the construction if typically of high quality.
However, patches of broken glass from broken bottles are a regular appearance.
To be fair, the city has been good about cleaning it up every coupla weeks or so.
But after a couple weeks, there is so much debris in the lane that picking out broken glass on sight becomes difficult.
I switch to a different route to work in that final week before the street sweeper helps.
I reiterate, simply 'build it and they will come' is not true.
1) build it WELL and
2) maintain it well,
3) even if the quality is at the expense of quantity,
and only THEN is cycling not an exercise in masochism.
Leaving sewers in a bike lane implies that this bike lane won't last anyway, that it is a mere afterthought, that it simply exists as a temporary feature while in transition to additional car lanes.
With that attitude, of course sensible people will not cycle more.
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