Masonic Avenue, Richmond-San Rafael Bridge, and the bike fantasy

Dick Spotswood in the Marin Independent Journal:

We’ll soon find out if cycling activists’ contentions that flocks of commuters will bike across the windy 5.5-mile long bridge is realistic or a pipedream. Caltrans maintains 24/7 cameras on all parts of the span. Two months after the cycleway opens, I’ll be hiring high school seniors to monitor those cameras. We’ll then report the exact count of bikes and pedestrians during a typical peak period weekday. Then we’ll learn how useful a $25 million bikeway is in the real world.

The "real world" has nothing to do with the bike fantasy. San Francisco just spent $26 million on bike lanes on Masonic Avenue that few cyclists are using. 

Like the project Spotswood is writing about, the city never had any information that many cyclists wanted to go North/South in this part of the city, but the Bicycle Coalition and its enablers in City Hall pushed the project through anyhow. 

The SF Bicycle Coalition is okay with spending hundreds of millions for a bike lane on the Western end of the Bay Bridge. Fortunately, no one else seems to think that's a good investment.

See also Billion dollar bike path for the Bay Bridge? and Big Lie on safety to justify screwing up Masonic.