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When is a bike lane not a lane?

The city is now planning not just to keep the existing east-west bike lanes that inspired such outrage in the venerable DN columnist, but to add North-South bike lanes as well.

OMG, wait till Stu gets wind of this! The city is now planning not just to keep the existing east-west bike lanes that inspired such outrage in the venerable DN columnist, but to add North-South bike lanes as well, according to today's report from Peter Mucha.

You can read the whole story for more details, but a couple stood out to your Earth to Philly correspondent:

"We've been working with police and the city's health department to come up with a program," she [Rina Cutler] said. ". . . We want people to stop putting other road users at risk."

The reluctant rider, who is "interested but concerned," is the target audience for these bike initiatives, Cutler said.

That's great, because one of the chief selling points for bike lanes is to increase ridership, pulling in those who might be wary of attempting to share the road with Philly's sometimes excitable drivers. So... what, then, is this?

The new routes might have blocks that share the road with cars, Cutler said.

Um... then we're not really talking bike lanes, are we... but rather bike-lane segments? What gives, City of Phila? The east-west ones go river to river, and that's what makes them so noteworthy. Hope the City getst this worked out pronto, because it's an unfortunate mixed message for bike safety advocates.