by A.K. Streeter, Portland, Oregon on 11. 4.10
TreeHugger - Cars & Transportation (bikes)

Further separating bike and ped lanes to fast and slow sides might be one way to reduce conflicts. Photo courtesy Binary Ape via flickr and Creative Commons license.
I'm a big proponent of bicycle commuting. When an acquaintance at a meeting this morning remarked how nice it is that as a 35-year dedicated cyclist she's noticing a lot of new - and welcome - company on the bike lanes, I just nodded. But later on, I thought about my own morning commute. It should have been ideal - unseasonably warm and dry fall weather and a super-simple 2.3 mile commute, nearly all on bike lanes. But being out in commuting prime time of 8:00 a.m. (which I normally don't need to do) meant several not-so-happy speedier cyclists made clear that slowpokes like me are an irritation to faster walking and biking commuters. The problem is acute enough, reports the WSJ, for a group of London businesspeople to plan to create a slowpoke shopping lane on Oxford Street sidewalks.