Lafayette Bike Lane Dangers and Restrictions Home to the University of Louisiana, Lafayette is one of the biggest college towns in Louisiana. Everyone knows that a majority of college students are poor. Having to pay for food, gas, bills, rent, and school all for the first time it is hard for students to keep up. Many students choose to ride their bike to school or even to run everyday errands. Lafayette has a big problem with biking accidents due to a lack of bike lanes around town. Being a college town we are very far behind on being bicycle friendly. We need to add more bicycle lanes around town, add barriers between the cars and bicycles, and spread bicycle awareness. Biking around Lafayette can unfortunately be very dangerous. As of right now there are only two main roads in Lafayette that have a bike lane. Saint Marry Street and Johnston Street and on those two roads the bike lane does not even span the whole road and instead just little parts of the road. When there are not bike lanes on roads, bikers are forced to ride in the motor vehicle lane obeying the same laws as a large car or truck. This can cause many problems to both cars and bicycle riders. Even the fanciest race bicycles cannot keep up with the 45-mile per hour speed limit on most Lafayette roads. When there are no bike lanes, bikes are expected to ride in the regular lane and obey regular traffic laws. This causes a problem due to the amount of vehicles that pile up behind the slow moving bicycle. Once the motor vehicle traffic starts to build up the drivers get very angry and start to drive aggressively. Aggressive driving does not only put other cars in danger, but it especially puts bicycle riders in danger since they are so unprotected from collisions. Besides the fact of the lack of bike lanes, Lafayette’s bike lanes are too small and close to regular traffic. There is nothing blocking the unprotected bikers from the oncoming and speeding traffic, putting them in harm’s way. If you drive down Johnston Street at any time of the day you will see that many of the drivers put half of there car in the bicycle lane. If a driver were to look down for a just a split second at their phone or another distraction, they could possibly hit a cyclist. Many people do not realize how damaging a car to bicycle collision could be to the cyclist. A majority of cars weigh a couple thousands pounds, while a majority of bicycles weigh less than twenty pounds. When you are in a car you feel semi-safe because you have a seatbelt, airbags, and a giant metal shell protecting you. While you are in this great ball of safety you do not realize that the bicycle on the side of you can only go a fraction of your speed, does not have airbags, and most of all is completely exposed to outside forces. A majority of drivers on the road pay no mind to the cyclist around them, putting said cyclist in great danger. If the city of Lafayette spent a little time and effort they could easily make this city a much safer environment for cyclist. One of the major problems to address is the lack of bicycle lanes. It does not cost much to add a bicycle lane to a road. Instead of adding an unneeded terminal at the Lafayette airport, the government could use that extra one-cent tax towards bicycle lanes. The government could also host a bicycle race or a triathlon to raise for bicycle lanes. All the city has to do is paint an extra couple of lines and clearly mark that space is for bicycles only.

Another thing the local government could do to make this city safer for cyclist is to add some sort of wall or permanent cones between the cyclist and the drivers. Adding a barrier would prevent drivers from riding half of their car in the bicycle lane and significantly decrease the chance of collisions. The Government could also use the money they earned from they bicycle raise to pay for this. St. Mary Street through campus already has a barrier between bicycles and cars so the government could use this as an example for their own public roads. If the Government does not want to add barriers for bicycle lanes they could make the lanes more visible, especially during nighttime. Making bicycle lanes more visible would not be difficult. They could put some sort of reflective material on the roads instead of just a plain white line. If the government put a reflective material then cyclist would be much more visible to drunk drivers at nighttime. Along with adding more bike lanes on popular streets and adding a barrier between cars and cyclist, the city could also raise the awareness of cyclists. Someone needs to go on the news in front of the general public and stress the concerns to the local citizens of Lafayette. It is true that not every citizen watches the news, but spreading the word to the majority of them is better than spreading the word to no one. The city could also make streets signs reminding drivers to be cautious of cyclists and pedestrians alike. The city and University could also spread the word of awareness to local citizens by means of social media. Majority of social media is very easy to use and completely free. By posting cyclist awareness on social media the government and university could greatly decrease the amount of cyclist injuries. The government could host a contest for high school students in order to get them to make a low-cost advertisement to post on social media. They could tell the students that whoever designed the best add would have theirs featured all over government social media and they could even give the students a small reward. Making Lafayette more bicycles friendly would significantly help the community and benefit our local society. If there were less biking accidents then more people may be inclined to bike. Making Lafayette more bicycle friendly would not take large amounts of money like other projects the city is working on. It would just take time and effort that hopefully one day the city is one day willing to put forth. If Lafayette were a safer biking community, it would make Lafayette appear to be a much more appealing place to live. Having a safer biking community would make cyclist feel safer cycling around town and may promote more people to start cycling for exercise. In order to make Lafayette safer for cyclist we could install barriers between the road and cyclist, reflective lines to clearly identify bike lanes, ad more bike lanes and promote cyclist awareness safety. Lafayette could form some sort of temporary tax or have a fundraiser to fund these bicyclist safety measures. Lafayette would be a much more pleasurable place for people to live.