Bike-Friendly?

Rochester is trying to be more bike-friendly, but it's still a car-oriented sprawly mess.

I commute by bike on every day that the weather allows me to without arriving looking like I just finished a triathlon, soaked to the skin or frostbitten.  It's only two miles but I am sure I experience a pretty full range of Rochester biking annoyances.

The best of them is this gem.  Imagine you're on your bike on a two-lane road. It's a 40MPH speed limit, double-yellow line, pretty busy.  The cars wave at that speed limit as they whiz by it.

But it's all good - you are in a dedicated bike lane.  True, it's only about two-feet wide but you have a decent pace going and no trouble keeping it straight.  Then you look up and... there's a sign, "BIKE LANE ENDS".  Not even at an intersection.  In the middle of a long straightaway, the road narrows a bit, and Poof! there goes the bike lane.  Now it's just you and the cars, all jostling for the same width of road.

This happens all around Rochester.  I guess our bikes need to be fitted out with a device where we can de-materialize at random locations, only to re-materialize the 150 or 300 yards further down the road where the bike lane magically resumes.  As wonderful as the folks at Full Moon Vista have always been for us, they do nothing but giggle when I ask about them stocking this wondrous device.