Lobby for bike lanes and you're lobbying to be marginalised and pushed off the road, writes Gordon Kanki Knight.

As a dedicated commuter cyclist, I feel like a minority of one when it comes to discussing our city planners' efforts to make Adelaide bicycle friendly.

In particular, I feel badgered to go along with the call for more bike lanes, but I refuse to give in to the hi-viz-jacket-wearing, pump-wielding mob.

Simply put, I hate bike lanes.

Not for the reasons that snarling, ham-thick-armed men in four-wheel drives hate bike lanes (and bikes), but because bike lanes are bad for cyclists.

Take the bog-standard roadside bike lane: a strip of white painted a few feet from the gutter. As if laid down by a bike hater, it shunts cyclists off to the side of the road to deal with the constantly stopping buses, pedestrians who think bike lanes are for standing in, illegally parked cars, roadside debris and drain grates.

Cyclists in a bike lane can't ensure they stay visible to traffic, nor can they prevent cars overtaking or turning left at an unsafe time.

Of course, exercising one's legal right to cross that white line results in obscenities screamed louder than a banshee and an impressive array of creative hand gestures.

In the eyes of drivers, bike lanes undermine cyclists' right to be on the road. In parts of the US and Japan, cyclists are even legally barred from using the road where bike lanes exist.

Even worse than the roadside bike lane is the separated bike lane, which takes cyclists off the street altogether (in another win for drivers).

Most seem designed with the idea that cyclists are creatures of leisure who meander from pop-up cafe to leafy park to corner store.

The 9km Westside Bike Path, which stretches from Mile End to Glenelg, has more bends in it than a box of pretzels.

When I'm sweating my way to work I don't appreciate a slalom course - give me get-to-work-on-time straight lines.

And bike lanes get messy. Road sweepers can't access separated bike lanes and councils are often slow to react to reports of broken glass or obstructions.

While cycling in England, I was prevented from reaching Brighton due to a fallen tree that covered the cycle lane I was using.

A call to the council was met with, "We know that tree is there but no one uses that bike path so we're not moving it." The irony was lost on them.

But segregated bike lanes aren't the worst offenders; that prize goes to the "shared use" lane.

You'll see these glowingly depicted in artists' renditions of urban redevelopments: smiling cyclists roll down one side of a path, a white line marking its centre, while families with small children and dogs wander along the other.

In reality, such paths are an invitation to the crash of a lifetime. Pedestrians walk at 5km/h, bicycles travel at 30km/h. Children and dogs don't pay heed to white lines.

Lobby for bike lanes and you're lobbying to be marginalised and pushed off the road.

Bicycles are vehicles and cyclists need to understand that they have the same rights and responsibilities as drivers.

Cycle paths simply can't be built everywhere, so cyclists should get used to practising defensive cycling and the more riders there are on the road the safer our roads will be.

Our city planners should work to calm our roads through driver education and suitable speed limits.

So, with apologies to Bing Crosby, my argument is: Let me ride through the wide open city that I love. Don't fence me in.

Originally published as Kanki Knight: Right to ride