To all the car owners in Halifax who park in Halifax few, precious bike lanes: Please stop.
I know your excuses: You are just waiting to pick someone up. It is inconvenient for you go around the corner. You didn’t know it was a bike lane. You just need to send one more text. You pay gas on taxes which somehow entitles you to park wherever you goddamn please.
I don’t know what’s worse: People who park in Halifax’s few bike lanes or the lack of enforcement of not parking in said bike lanes. It’s a parking violation the city does not seem to take seriously, so the problem persists.
I know a lot of drivers hate cyclists. That is your right. You are allowed to hate us as much as you need to. Have at it. But please don’t park in our bike lanes. Your stupid, oblivious behaviour makes the road more dangerous for everyone. Driving (and parking) is a privilege, not a right. —A Haligonian on Two Wheels
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This article appears in Jun 15-21, 2017.
Hear! Hear!!
yes!! and also we cyclists pay taxes as well, so i’m pretty sure we have the right to use like any lane we want. surprise motorists: it’s not just taxes on gas that pay for the roads hehe
Yeah, what you don’t pay is registration or insurance for them times when your bone-headed moves end up in damaging other peoples’ property. Tit for tat, taxes pay for a lot of shit, including roads where there are no bike lanes, and some of you whining bikers still cannot follow the rules of the road when negotiating them. Still see knuckleheads riding bikes on sidewalks, crosswalks and running red lights.
On the Waverley road in Dartmouth people park in the bike lanes in front of their houses. Shouldn’t there be no parking signs posted if it is illegal ?
@Nakokita: not having insurance does not mean cyclists aren’t liable if they do damage. If a cyclist hits your car and is at fault they’d still have to pay to fix your car.
We require cars to have liability insurance because there is a very real chance a car could paralise someone and end up with a million dollar damage claim. Society realizes that most drivers could never afford that million dollar claim, so we require drivers to have insurance so that paralised (our other similarly damaged) people don’t have to collect on a million dollar debt. The kinds of damage a bicycle would do are much lower in dollar figures, so there’s no societal need to require insurance; it’s a lot easier to collect on $10,000 of damage than $1,000,000.
@schmikel: No, just like there’s no “No Parking” signs at a fire hydrant. MVA says you can’t park in front of a fire hydrant or in a bike lane. It’s on you, the licensed driver, to know that.
I live on Brunswick Street, where a long bike lane opens up only a block from my house and no one ever rides it. It’s filled to the brim with cars driving in or parked next to a grim amount of door prize potential. Cyclists often have to jump up to the sidewalk to avoid cars in the bike lane there-Thankfully the sidewalks along the Citadel side are wide enough to allow for a bicycle and a pedestrian to easily pass one another. I once had a bike trailer for my kid, thinking I could use that downtown. Nope. Pretty soon, I used it only on the wharves, then with the omnipresent construction there, I gave it away to someone in Dartmouth where they have multiple safer biking options. They use it almost everyday. I wish we could here. Separate the bike lanes from traffic and parked cars! Sheesh!
as a courier I would have to disagree. I have had some idiot taking pics of me parked on windsor street, making deliveries and screaming that he’s going to call on me lol. please give me a break my god I am delivering and leaving, if you don’t like it then to bad