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Comment by souterrain | Hacker News Reader

While Baltimore is reversing protected a bike lane implementation as a result of pressure from retail business and constituents who prefer cars. (The neighborhood in question is one of the most affluent in the city.)

https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/maryland/baltimore-city/bs...

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My city did that. Only they waited for most of the businesses to fold first. What a great reward for weathering the recession those businesses got. Turns out when you kill parking in favor of bike lanes in a small city that does a lot of business by being a commerce destination for the surrounding towns it doesn't work well. Also nobody bikes here because the entire city is hills (plenty of people walk though) so bike lanes are an attempt to solve a problem that doesn't exist but they tried it anyway because they're politically fashionable, details of the specific situation be damned

This part of Baltimore doesn't fit this model, however, since parking was not removed. The bike lane was inserted between the parking zone and the curb. Previously, the bike lane was between the rightmost travel lane and the parking zone.

Poor driving, or factors related to poor driving, may be a contributor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/transportation/2018/08/30/dc-...

Or, it may just be an anti-cycling bias, but I don't have evidence to support this.

I'm not saying Baltimore did that. I'm just saying you can't just go around with a hammer looking for nails because you have a politically popular hammer. It's not going to work in every case.

in this particular neighborhood, the bike lane was also fairly unpopular with local cyclists too, who felt they were being forced to bike through the dirtiest, most obstacle prone portion of the road.

I think you're really overstating the case in blaming bike lanes for the majority of closures of businesses in a given area.

Also note: this same road was the location of a cyclist killed by a drunk bishop.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/us/baltimore-bishop-charg...

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