130
Bike lanes on Richmond-San Rafael Bridge are contributing to pollution, car drivers say
(www.cbsnews.com)
These copium addicts will say anything lmao
this post was submitted on 07 Jul 2025
130 points (96.4% liked)
Fuck Cars
12491 readers
764 users here now
A place to discuss problems of car centric infrastructure or how it hurts us all. Let's explore the bad world of Cars!
Rules
1. Be Civil
You may not agree on ideas, but please do not be needlessly rude or insulting to other people in this community.
2. No hate speech
Don't discriminate or disparage people on the basis of sex, gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, or sexuality.
3. Don't harass people
Don't follow people you disagree with into multiple threads or into PMs to insult, disparage, or otherwise attack them. And certainly don't doxx any non-public figures.
4. Stay on topic
This community is about cars, their externalities in society, car-dependency, and solutions to these.
5. No reposts
Do not repost content that has already been posted in this community.
Moderator discretion will be used to judge reports with regard to the above rules.
Posting Guidelines
In the absence of a flair system on lemmy yet, let’s try to make it easier to scan through posts by type in here by using tags:
- [meta] for discussions/suggestions about this community itself
- [article] for news articles
- [blog] for any blog-style content
- [video] for video resources
- [academic] for academic studies and sources
- [discussion] for text post questions, rants, and/or discussions
- [meme] for memes
- [image] for any non-meme images
- [misc] for anything that doesn’t fall cleanly into any of the other categories
Recommended communities:
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
The coalition argues that not only does the bike lane create more traffic,
False. Cars create the traffic, and "one more lane, bro" will do nothing to help. This is a fact played out EVERYWHERE.
but it also creates more pollution from all the cars backed up on the bridge.
Sounds like a car-made problem, man.
He says he's tired of seeing cars idling endlessly, inching along the bridge with the bike lane empty, or - if not empty - at least under-utilized.
Quite curiously, Google Maps seems to suggest that the BRIDGE never has bad congestion, but the highway leading up to the bridge (without bike lanes) is very congested during rush hour, beginning 4km away.
That bike lane took forever to get through. It will NEVER be used as much as cars taking up the bridge.
Whining about it is like complaining that sidewalks use up valuable space alongside a road.
"We don't want to eliminate the bikers, that's not what we're trying to do," said Fisher, while advocating the removal of bikelane, thus eliminating the biker. This smell fishy.
They can still bike around in their driveways or whatever they do.
That has the same vibe as, "I don't hate black people. I just don't think they deserve to drink from the same fountain, use the same bathroom, or eat in the same restaurant as me!"
Rather than advocate for the removal of someone else's active, green form of transportation, he should be advocating for car pooling, better public transportation, WFH to lessen the burden of commuter traffic, and smaller vehicles.
But then how will they use their Ford F40000 Fleshreaper™ "blood for the car god"© to sacrifice to moloch?
Comparing transportation modes with racism? Damn
They can still ride on the road, you’re exaggerating
It’ll make it less safe though
They can still ride on the road
It’ll make it less safe though
Lmao.
And no i'm not exaggerating. The safety of bicycle lane is exactly why there's an average of 140 cyclist using that bridge daily. Removing it will lower it to a single digit, if not 0. Not many people want to risk their life and ride alongside an american driver.
Simple: connect BART to Marin. Unfortunately they shot that down years ago as the poors might use it.
If they wanted to cut pollution, they'd ban all cars from the bridge and make it public transit + bike only. Cars aren't idling when there's no cars.
Unfortunately it’s not that easy. They’re still needed for many places, when moving stuff around, when public transportation isn’t developed enough, which is pretty much the case worldwide if you want to go to a specific address
Honestly, while I'd typically say the solution is to use the bike lane, the bridge is 5.5 mi (8.85km) long, the very shortest commutes between destinations on the two sides is about 7mi (11.25km), taking about 40mins each way. Still the fact that a few hundred cyclists use it each day is impressive, and there would be little car-free access between the cities otherwise.
A dedicated public transit bus lane with frequent service between SMART and BART, would be a lot better of an idea.
Or a shared lane for buses and bikes? But it might defeat the purpose of providing more comfort and safety to cyclists
the bridge is 5.5 mi (8.85km) long, the very shortest commutes between destinations on the two sides is about 7mi (11.25km), taking about 40mins each way.
Unless someone is riding at a very slow 16km/h pace, it would take far less than 40 minutes to ride that 11km (without an ebike).
On that note, if someone had the choice of sitting in traffic for an hour, or enjoying a beautiful 40 minute ride over a bridge, I think it would be an easy choice to make 🤗
It's also super windy exactly across the bridge most of the time. Sucks for biking, I never could bring myself to do it