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Letter: Berryhill bike lanes unnecessary

Posted on September 18, 2009 by Staff

Bike lanes on busy thoroughfares are an important safety measure and should be installed wherever possible. However, when installed on quiet side streets with very light traffic, they call to mind Sarah Palin’s “bridge to nowhere.” The bike lanes installed on both sides of Berryhill Drive, a quiet residential side street with very light traffic, is a case in point.

Because the bike lanes prohibit parking “anytime,” they deprive local residents of needed street parking. Inviting guests to one’s home involves a complicated explanation about where to park because of the bike lanes, which nobody ever uses. If a guest is elderly and can walk only a short distance, the problem may be insurmountable. Holding a house party, say, to drum up support for Obama’s health care reform initiative, is impossible.

To complicate matters, the “No Parking” signage in the south side of Berryhill Drive is confusing. It is invisible because it is located beyond a bend in the street, on a stretch of road where there are no street lamps, and it faces the opposite direction. Did any town official take the trouble to look at this?

But the main point about this is that these bike lanes are never used, are entirely unnecessary and they adversely affect the quality of life of local residents on a daily basis.

In France, they have a saying: Bureaucrats are there to torture you. So get used to it, and you’ll be all right. But this is America, even though we are the Paris of the Piedmont. Hope springs eternal that bureaucrats are enlightened enough to respond to input from their citizens, and even humble enough to admit their mistakes and correct them. But if the powers that be in the Town of Carrboro remain convinced that the bike lanes on Berryhill Drive are a vital public benefit that outweighs the harm they do to the neighborhood, I have a bridge I would like to sell them.

Frank Stallone
Carrboro

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