All it takes is some paint.

One of the items we will be talking about at our Bike Rally this Thursday will be about separated bike lanes. My thought has always been that to improve cycling infrastructure in a dramatic way, in Langley, will only take a bit of paint on the road. Well, the people of Portland did such a thing for only $80,00 on Southwest Broadway! The road configuration is: sidewalk, bike lane, parking, travel lane. The Oregonian has an article called A bit of paint, and voila! a bike-lane experiment:

Thanks to the recession, bicycling is the only mode of commuting that's on the rise in Portland, growing by nearly 30 percent last year. Both the buffered bike lanes and cycle track should make both sides more comfortable mingling on the road, the mayor said.

Transportation officials said they built the buffered bike lanes and the $80,000 cycle track simultaneously to determine which configuration works better.